I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Considering that with the many times that I've come to make announcements on this blog, they've been about deaths in the music industry, it's always welcome news when I actually have something happy to write about. In this case, I heard on NHK this evening (which is now November 3rd or Culture Day in Japan) that singer/actor Akira Terao（寺尾聰）is going to be given some level of the Kyokujitsu-shō（旭日章）or the Order of the Rising Sun. Mind you, he was awarded the Purple Ribbon about a decade ago, but it was still nice to hear the announcement for this Order on television today.
So in tribute to Terao, my last article for the day will be his "Nagisa no Campari Soda" (Campari Soda on the Beach) from his 1981 album"Reflections". Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Terao himself, taking into account the title of the song and what "Reflections" is about, I had assumed that this would be either a City Pop or an AOR track.
But I was wrong. It's actually more of a pleasant little rock n' roll number about a fellow inviting his girlfriend for some fun in the sun while drinking down those titular drinks. Just seeing a young clean-shaven Terao in those dark sunglasses while crooning "Nagisa no Campari Soda" brings back memories of the summer of 1981.
Doing some cross-referencing between the Wiki and J-Wiki articles for the Order, I think Terao is getting the 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette. Apparently, Charles Aznavour (2018), George Takei (2004) and The Ventures (2010) were given the exact honour.
A few days ago, I was watching one of the music channels on TV and there was a program which focused on a round-table discussion involving music critics and other professionals from the recording industry. The question of the show was "Are albums no longer necessary?"
Well, in this age of streaming and downloading, perhaps they are not. Listeners are free to pick and choose their own favourite tunes, download them and then create their own compilations of very long length without having to listen to tracks that they don't like in a traditional album or they can even skip them to get to their beloved songs.
Fair enough. But as someone who still prefers to buy CDs and the odd LP of Japanese music albums of decades past, I think that there have been plenty of gems hidden in those albums that never got their single status. Some of the pros on that TV show reminded me of that, and then I was reading Marcos V.'s article on his Omega Tribe acquisition and made the wonderful discovery of songs that I had never heard before because they may not have ended up on either the A or B sides of an old 45" or a BEST compilation.
And that's true for a lot of other singers as well. I've mentioned before in other articles that getting a BEST compilation of a singer that you've cottoned onto is great to get your feet wet where that singer's hit material is concerned, but that it's also splendid to purchase some of his/her original albums as well since you never know what other tracks might also tickle your fancy even though individually they never got blessed by Oricon's light.
Therefore, I decided to create my own list and separate it over two articles about some of those perhaps hidden gems on various albums by some of my favourite singers. Now, by no means, is this a comprehensive list. There are so many good to excellent non-single album tracks out there for me that I can only provide a small taste (plus for some singers, those particular songs don't seem to exist on YouTube). Some of them have actually made it onto BEST compilations.
"Vitamin EPO" was another great album by the singer-songwriter in my estimation but "Payday" just seemed to particularly show off its EPO-tastic nature through the singer's vocals, the arrangement and that feeling of being downtown on a Friday ready to paint the town red. As with some of the other entries in the list, I was surprised that "Payday" hadn't been released as a single on its own.
This did get onto Seiko-chan's（松田聖子）BEST compilation, "Seiko - Box" but this is actually where I first listened to this really quirky tune by Eiichi Ohtaki（大瀧詠一）and Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, and was one of the reasons that I finally got the original album "Kaze Tachinu"（風立ちぬ）. Perhaps it was too quirky to get single status on either A or B side, but as an album track, it sure is something to behold in terms of that guitar and the overall unusual bounciness.
No singles came out from the album "Circuit of Rainbow" but judging from what I heard from her previous album "Boogie Woogie Mainland" via "Sounds of Japan", I figured that I would be getting some ultra-uptempo R&B numbers. I wasn't disappointed. That whole intro for the title track seemed to open up a new world of where Anri（杏里）was now ruling after hearing her much older material at Kuri, my karaoke haunt.
4. Mariya Takeuchi -- Morning Glory/Album: "Miss M" (1980)
Another non-single track that surprised me in that it didn't get its solo appearance, Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Morning Glory" is so mellow yet happy happy, joy joy that after all these years, it's still hard to not sway side-to-side whenever Mariya sings the refrain. As much as City Pop fans are going gaga over "Plastic Love", I think "Morning Glory" deserves some good love, and consider some of the folks who were behind the production of this track.
Oh, Lord...give me one more chance! No, I realize that lyric is from "4am" which is to Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）current popularity on YouTube as "Plastic Love" is to Takeuchi's own current fame. Well "4am" is getting plenty of chances right now, so I've decided to go with another track from "Mignonne", "Iidasenakute"（言いだせなくて）. It's Ohnuki going Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）Disco on a track which hasn't failed to exercise my goose pimples whenever I listen to it. The backup chorus and the finale sax add some wonderful icing to this cake, and I can't help but reminisce about those late 1970s including me watching the hilarious "WKRP In Cincinnati".
6. Akina Nakamori -- Romantic na Yoru da wa/Album: Bitter & Sweet (1985)
Getting my copy of "Bitter & Sweet" on LP at Wah Yueh back in university, I marveled at the tandem of "Kazarijanainoyo Namida wa"（飾りじゃないのよ涙は）and "Romantic na Yoru da wa"（ロマンチックな夜だわ）. Hearing these two melding into a unit meant that this Nakamori album was cemented as my favourite release by her...a status that hasn't changed in 30 years. For a track that was never released as a single, "Romantic na Yoru da wa" still packs a raunchy punch and considering all of the BEST compilations that have come out for her over the decades, I would be surprised if this second track from "Bitter & Sweet" has yet to show up on any of them. Not surprisingly, the person responsible for words and music is EPO, the lady for the first entry.
I may be a bit busier than usual this weekend, but if I can, I will try and get Part 2 out in the next few days. And once again, I send out the invitation for collaborators and commenters to provide their favourite NSATs.
It's not every day that I come across a contemporary pop band in the 21st century which features a flutist and a violinist as part of the lineup but that is indeed the case with Special Favorite Music.
Getting together in the summer of 2014, the catchphrase on their website is "We are looking for something new!", but in doing so, I think Special Favorite Music has incorporated some of the old appealing groove as have a number of their musical contemporaries.
With a 7-member lineup including two vocalists, lovinyuu and Yusuke Kume, I came across the band for the first time through their video for "Ceremony". That violin and flute start things off for this cool, light and mellow (good golly, sounds like a menthol cigarette) number. As for the video, I kept thinking of it as the opening credits for the Japanese version of "Friends". With seven people, I can only imagine that the apartment that they live in would cost millions of yen more than the pad where Ross and Rachel and the rest of the guys reside in New York. Still, they must have some really great parties!
There seems to be some confusion about the status of "Ceremony". Under the YouTube video, this was supposed to have been their first single from March 2017, but according to their website, it's a track from their 3rd mini-album, "Royal Blue", which came out later that year in August. Heck, it's all good.
Although I think the heyday of Japanese folk in mainstream kayo was perhaps the very late 1960s to the early 1970s, its musical effects still lasted to the end of that decade. There were quite a few songs which had that twangy guitar and rollicking melody at that time even with the advent of urban contemporary rhythms and synthesizers.
I think one of those songs is right here. Singer-songwriter (and current jazz chanteuse) Hiromi Kanda（神田広美）released "Don Juan" as her 5th single in July 1978, and it's certainly a jaunty number about a woman wondering whether to fall for a fellow's charms although she knows full well that he's a love 'em-and-leave 'em playboy.
Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）, one of the pillars of Japanese folk kayo, was in charge of composing this while prolific lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）took care of the words. Considering its contents, I would have thought that "Don Juan" could have made for a bluesy Ginza-soaked Mood Kayo, but instead, it sounds more like a folksy number whose story could have taken place in a much more rural area of Japan.
Saori Yagi（八木さおり）...the name sounded very familiar when I first heard it, and perhaps that was because she has been an actress for a few decades. But no longer being a J-Drama fan, I can't really remember any of the shows that she's been in.
And yet, I did bookmark this YouTube video which features one of Yagi's early songs when the lass spent her early years as an aidoru for a short while in the late 1980s. This thumbnail has her looking rather beatific and according to some text in one of her photo books titled "Metro City" (via J-Wiki), she was born Christian with her baptismal name being Maria Magdalena.
Supposedly, Yagi is also a huge Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）fan but more for guitarist Yutaka Takezawa（武沢豊）rather than vocalist Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）. By the same token, I also found out that Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）was also a huge fan of hers to the extent that he even composed a song for her titled "Tsuki to Koigokoro" (The Moon and One's Love) as a track in her second album"Moon & Love" from November 1987. Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）provided the lyrics.
When I first heard "Tsuki to Koigokoro", there was that certain familiarity in the melody as if this had been made for Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）, although Yagi's delivery is far different from Watanabe's voice, and sure enough, it was indeed Komuro behind the song. In total, Yagi released 6 singles and 3 original albums with her debut single"Hitomi de Kataomoi"（瞳で片想い...Falling In Love with My Eyes）from October 1986 having the highest ranking at No. 20.
Wowzers! When I heard this one for the first time, I was immediately taken by the snazzy melody. It was rather bracing in a good way like morning OJ. At first thought, without making the effort to track down songwriters, I thought it was either Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）or Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）who composed the song because of the snappy drums and that certain synthesizer sound.
However, actually it was singer-songwriter EPO (should've known) behind "Too Young", a track from Chika Nakamura's（仲村知夏）debut album"100 Carat" from April 1988. With Shun Taguchi（田口俊）taking care of the lyrics, this is a pretty catchy non-single cut that flits about like a bumblebee above a clover patch for the right amount of time. Not too long, not too short.
Nakamura, whose real name is Chikako Nakandakari（仲村渠睦子）, hails from Okinawa and started out as an aidoru in 1988. According to her J-Wiki profile, she admired Rebecca's NOKKO and entered the Okinawa Actors School to train in singing and dancing. She didn't have any major hits with most of her 9 singles flitting between the low 30s and high 20s on Oricon. There were also 3 original albums between 1988 and 1989 with only "100 Carat" getting the highest ranking at No. 74, and by 1991, Nakamura decided to call it a short career.
'Tis November 2018 now. One would expect that with the Halloween hijinks all done, the Christmas decorations would already be up in shopping malls. Not quite yet at my local mall; the Halloween stuff is still up there. However, much to my chagrin, Frank Sinatra singing Yuletide tunes has already filtered through the mall speakers. I suddenly felt very exhausted.
Well, it's three months past due, but it's nice to hear "August", a track from Fujimal Yoshino's（芳野藤丸） 2nd album"Romantic Guys" from 1983. It's got all of the City Pop tropes in there: nice plump bass, mellow guitar solo and good noodling on the Fender Rhodes accompanying Yoshino's bluesy vocals (fine harmonies, by the way). I would say that the song doesn't just belong to any August sunset but to even a November sunset. The important thing is that the sun can be slowing sinking below the horizon as one is talking a walk outside while this is playing.
I have to check whether "Romantic Guys" is available at places like Tower Records, but Amazon Japan is selling one copy at a nosebleed price. As I've mentioned, Xmas is just around the corner although I would be thoroughly shocked and delighted if "August" were to play on my mall speakers.
