PEPSIMAN!

Youtube.com

Well, this might be one of the few articles or perhaps it is truly the only article in which I couldn't list the singer or the band behind the song since I simply couldn't find the performers (April 2 2018: Daemonskald was able to resolve that question...look at the comments down below). Still, I just had to make its presence known on the blog. In fact, I couldn't even find out when the song or the character himself was realized on screen. The Wikipedia article just stated "...sometime around the mid-1990s". So I will go with 1995 for argument's sake.

Anyways, not long after my arrival in Japan for my second stint there, there came a long-running series of commercials featuring a certain cola, but this time, there was a heroic pitchman behind Pepsi, the aptly-named Pepsiman. Looking like a mix between a tokusatsu hero and Zero, a minor character from the X-Men comics, he ran a Tom Cruise-like sprint whenever there was a perceived lack of justice...or cola...and made things right...or non-Coke. Somehow, though, he managed to end up looking more like Inspector Clouseau after his deed was done.

The reason I'm even mentioning him here is that although it looks like the commercials had been filmed in sunny California, they were supposedly only shown in Japan. The other reason is the theme song which I can only assume was based on the iconic theme for the 1960s "Batman" show. One thing I regret not seeing throughout the commercials is Pepsiman actually doing a Batusi-like dance to his song. You can listen to the full version as you pay full credit to the musicians since they went full-in on the project. Again, I don't know who was responsible for "PEPSIMAN!" but my respects. As for who came up with the CG character, it's been attributed to Canadian comic book artist Travis Charest.

I was pretty amused by this.

(July 23 2018. Chasing Showa was kind enough to let me know about this YouTube video which had just been posted yesterday by a hearty fellow named Daniel Ibbertson about Pepsiman the game character although there is some mention about his time as a commercial pitchman.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5T9btUvsXE

Kimiko Kasai with Herbie Hancock -- I Thought It Was You

For a lot of us growing up in the 1980s, the golden age of music videos, when the name Herbie Hancock is mentioned, we will all think of "Rockit", the huge techno-funky hit from 1983. As well, that video with the mannequins and the strutting pants is a one-of-a-kind although seeing the Grammy performance is no longer quite as amazing as I remembered it.

(Sorry but the Kasai cover has been taken down but here is an excerpt.)

Well, last night, commenter Gen Kanai was kind enough to send me a message giving a tip on a song on chanteuse Kimiko Kasai's（笠井紀美子）1979 album "Butterfly", her collaboration with Hancock. Supposedly, according to an article on the website "Who Sampled", a number of songs on that particular release have been sampled by various hip-hop artists over the years.

One of the tracks is "I Thought It Was You", a 7-minute-plus number that is a cover of Hancock's original from his 1978 jazz-funk fest "Sunlight". The Kasai cover, of course, has her sweet and lovely voice compared to Hancock's vocoder vocals in the original. To be honest, and I'm going with Gen on this, I prefer Kasai's sweet-&-lovely. Still, Hancock's vocoder still makes a guest appearance during a give-and-take with Kasai's scatting.

It's quite the jam as "I Thought It Was You" morphs from a smooth fusion love song into a fun and funky festival and back again. According to Chris Read who wrote the article on "Who Sampled", copies of the LP are hard to track down but I did find a low-priced CD reissue of "Butterfly" up at CD Japan for a thousand yen.

Years after first hearing "Rockit" but of course years before being told about "I Thought It Was You", when I was still living in Japan, I realized how much the Japanese just loved the genre of AOR to death on both sides of the Pacific. I even ended up buying a few AOR compilations myself, and on one of them was a track by Hancock called "Paradise" which was originally on his 1982 album "Lite Me Up", a year before "Rockit", and is about as different in tone from that 1983 hit. Never would have thought the fellow as an light-and-mellow crooner but there we are. Of course, the songwriting team behind "Paradise" consisted of the masters of the genre, David Foster, Bill Champlin and Jay Graydon along with Hancock.

Sachiko Kobayashi -- Usotsuki Kamome（ウソツキ鴎）

I've known veteran entertainer Sachiko Kobayashi（小林幸子）as enka singer, actress, vivacious TV personality and epic set during Kohaku Utagassen broadcasts. She cemented her career with hits such as "Omoide Zake"（おもいで酒）and "Moshikashite Part 2"（もしかして・パート２）.

However I was also aware about her beginnings as a mere kid coming up with a hit song right at her debut in the 1960s although I never got to hear the song itself. Well, I finally got to hear the song last night.

"Usotsuki Kamome" (Lying Seagull) was Single No. 1 for Kobayashi when she was only 10 years old. It was released back in June 1964 and listening to it, I thought that this was a pretty mature song for her considering her age as Sou Nishizawa's（西沢爽）lyrics talk about a woman taking it out on a seagull for making all sorts of noise in the mistaken assumption that her beloved's ship had come into port. Another notable point was that it was legendary composer Masao Koga（古賀政男）who came up with the melody for "Usotsuki Kamome".

Quite some headiness and attention for the preteen Kobayashi and so I wondered what earned her all that special treatment. Well, apparently, it was Koga who scouted her out and perhaps it was he or someone close by who proudly proclaimed her as the second coming of Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）, which could explain why she got something like "Usotsuki Kamome" as her debut. Misora also started out as this kayo child prodigy who immortalized herself into public consciousness dressed up in a very adult tuxedo and with a voice which sounded years older.

I wish I could have found the original recording of "Usotsuki Kamome", but at this point, I will have to settle for Kobayashi's later revisitings to the song as an adult. Having listened to it a few times now, I've noticed how it starts off sounding like an old-fashioned happy-go-lucky kayo strut but then suddenly switches into something quite enka-like and this is around when the lyrics start talking about the woman heading back from the port rather dejectedly.

The fact that the single sold about 200,000 records probably had everybody thinking that Kobayashi was indeed the second Hibari. But as I mentioned as well on "Omoide Zake", there came 15 years of no hits, so it was amazing that she didn't give it all up and hung in there for so long (especially with that second Hibari label hanging over her) until her 28th single, the aforementioned "Omoide Zake" in 1979 which was that next big hit. After that, success became more of a regular and much appreciated tradition for the Niigata Prefecture native.

Hatsumi Shibata -- Love is an Illusion（ラブ・イズ・イリュージョン）

Good Friday to everyone! It was a statutory holiday today but some of us translators decided to get together for some good food and nice conversation at a Japanese comfort food place called Sakawa Coffee by the west end of Greektown. I ordered the Omurice, and while it didn't look like the domed masterpieces created in Japan, the taste was actually quite good. I'm just grateful that the dish now exists here in Toronto. No illusion!

Apparently, love is, though, to Hatsumi Shibata（しばたはつみ）...yes, another one of my "classic" segues. Ahem, anyways, this is "Love is an Illusion", her 12th single from October 1979. This is another one of those City Pop numbers closer to the disco side of things. Written by Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）and composed by Yuuichiro Oda（小田裕一郎）, who would later whip up one of Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）early hits, "Aoi Sangosho"（青い珊瑚礁）, the arrangement has that familiar ring of 1970s downtown life in Tokyo (from what I could remember from watching those ancient VHS tapes from Nippon Video). I can see that mirror ball right now.

"Love is an Illusion" was also used as one of the campaign songs for the Mazda Cosmo and you can hear it at just a little under the 1-minute mark in the above video.

Tohoku Shinkansen -- Thru Traffic (Follow-Up)

Wasn't quite sure whether I would get another crack at talking about this album since I basically covered all of the songs there which had been represented by sites such as YouTube. However, last night, I did find two more tracks from the rare and wonderful 1982 album by the duo known as Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）, "Thru Traffic", the only release that came out of the collaboration.

("Last Message" at 38:29)

Actually "September Valentine" is a song that I have already mentioned in the first article on the album but I am going to talk about it again since 1) it's THAT good to me, and 2) it shares something with "Last Message" in that the two represent the jazzier contributions on the album.

I realized on listening to arguably the best version of "September Valentine" which was originally created by Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）and Atsuko Saito（斉藤敦子）that I've long had an affinity for smoky jazz chorus performances. My first example in my life listening to such a combination was the Norman Luboff Choir's take on the Tony Bennett classic "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" when I was a toddler. And then there was the Manhattan Transfer's "Foreign Affair". Both of those standards were arranged in that way always leave me feeling rather wistful and happily melancholy (as weird as that may sound), and would be the type of music that I'd like to hear when leaving an amazing city for a long time.

This is why that Tohoku Shinkansen's take on "September Valentine" was a stroke of genius. I'd always thought that there was a streak of jazz in the earlier versions by Yukio Sasaki（佐々木幸男）and Abe but Narumi and Yamakawa amped the ballad even further by going full jazz. This cover is simply the theme song for strolling in Yamashita Park at night along Yokohama Bay with the brilliant view of Minato Mirai 21 in the background while that significant other is on your arm.

As for "Last Message", which is a solo for Yamakawa behind the mike, this was written by Arisu (or is it Alice?) Sato（佐藤アリス）and composed by Narumi. It kinda has that mix between a standard and a romantic 1950s ballad, perhaps something that a young Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）could have tackled. It is also the final track for the album so it's a nice way to end this great release on.

To give you an idea about what I mean by those old standard choruses, here is the Norman Luboff Choir. Unfortunately, I couldn't find their version of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" but "But Beautiful" is more than enough to give you an idea of their sound.

And here is the Manhattan Transfer with "Foreign Affair".

Every Little Thing/Rie Takahashi -- Deatta Koro no you ni（出逢った頃のように）

Back in 2015, a small part of the anime-loving corner of YouTube had an explosion when the good folks behind "Hibike! Euphonium"（響け! ユーフォニアム）in its first season decided to surprise the socks off the viewers by having the high school band perform none other than "Rydeen" by Yellow Magic Orchestra. The comment "'Hibike! Euphonium' brought me here" underneath videos of the concert or recorded versions of YMO's trademark song should have been given meme status. To be honest, a part of me inside also threatened to squee when I first heard the marching band version of one of my very favourite Japanese songs.

Well, I think the same thing may be happening in 2018 although the phenomenon might be a bit more muted. Although I won't be seeing the final couple of episodes of "Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san"（からかい上手の高木さん...Skilled Teaser Takagi-san） until this coming Sunday, the last scene from the last episode has already gotten onto YouTube and it has already earned an "Awwww...." with so many Ws in it that it would go all the way from my computer down to Lake Ontario. I won't describe what can be seen so easily in the video above but let us say that Takagi-san got her second critical hit (inside joke) and a punch-in-the-air win at the same time.

What put the icing on this swoon-worthy cake was a cover version of an old Every Little Thing hit by Rie Takahashi（高橋李依）, the seiyuu for Takagi-san herself. Just the abrupt way it started when the character made her realization shot a lot of viewers including me right in the heart.

So, unsurprisingly, viewers of "Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san" may be flocking over to the original song by ELT, "Deatta Koro no you ni" (Just Like When We First Met), right now. In fact, I've already seen at least one example of "'Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san' brought me here" in the comments section. Released in August 1997 as the band's 5th single, this was another song that got lots of attention in the mass media. Hearing it once more got me thinking about the 90s again thanks to those punchy synths. Wow! They did sound like that back then.

Written and composed by ELT keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi（五十嵐充）, "Deatta Koro no you ni" peaked at No. 3 on Oricon and became the 45th-ranked single for 1997 as it went Triple Platinum. It also got recorded onto the band's 2nd album "Time to Destination" from April 1998. That album hit No. 1 for 2 weeks, was the 3rd-ranked release for 1998, and currently stands as the 11th-ranked album in Oricon history by achieving over 4 million in sales.

Not sure how long the above will stay on YouTube but enjoy the not-so-full version of Takahashi's softer cover of "Deatta Koro no you ni". It is so Takagi-san and there's even a nice little shoutout to the opening theme "Iwanai kedo ne."（言わないけどね。）in the instrumental bridge. Apparently, it's been included in a release associated with the show, "Karakai Jozu no Takagi-san ~ Cover Song Collection"（からかい上手の高木さん Cover Song Collection） that just got on sale yesterday. I hadn't realized it but all 7 ending themes sung by Takahashi are cover versions of past J-Pop tunes. Will have to see whether my anime buddy will be picking that up since there were a couple of those ending themes that I enjoyed hearing over the credits.

Clammbon -- Hanare Banare（はなれ ばなれ）

Clammbon（クラムボン）is a band that has had a presence here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" through three previous articles, but only through anime such as their contribution to the second opening theme for the beloved "Shirokuma Cafe"（しろくまカフェ）. And yet, Clammbon also had a presence at the main Shibuya branch of Tower Records which I visited regularly once or twice a month. It used to be that sometimes when I entered the store, there would be some display for the band's latest album or single featuring vocalist/keyboardist Ikuko Harada（原田郁子）, bassist Mito（ミト）and drummer Daisuke Ito（伊藤大助）.

However at the time, even though a part of me was curious about what Clammbon was all about, the rest of me kinda sloughed the idea off since indie pop wasn't really my thing, and that's how I saw them. Well, that was a mistake on my part now that I look back.

That is so especially true after listening to Clammbon's debut single "Hanare Banare" (Separated) from March 1999. I'd like to cite a sentence written on the Wikipedia article for the band, "Their music is characterized by their quirky sound combining jazzy chord progressions with J-pop and electronica influences." That was a paraphrasing from the original description of the band in Akira Morita's October 2005 piece for Chin Music Press.

If I had read this description and got a chance to listen to "Hanare Banare" years ago, chances are that I would have gotten one of their albums at least by this time. Well, as I always say, better late than never. I will have to study them some more.

With "Hanare Banare", which was written by Harada and composed by Mito, there is that feeling of cool soul coming through. At the time, the Japanese version of the genre was starting to pop up more through the works of singers such as Misia and bird, and for some time, a lot of my younger students were really into the oeuvre of Jamiroquai.

The song didn't make it up into the Oricon rankings but, y'know, I think it is one of those numbers that folks like myself have probably discovered in retrospect and delighted in the present. This isn't an avant-garde tune at all; it's very relatable to me. So I will have to further explore Clammbon, which incidentally got its unusual name from some character in a Kenji Miyazawa novel, and see how they have continued their music over the past couple of decades.