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.
When it comes to soulful female vocalists from the era of City Pop, I can easily identify them as Kimiko Kasai（笠井紀美子）and Noriko Miyamoto（宮本典子）. So I gather that it's no surprise that the two songstresses have performed the same song on their own albums.
That song is "Yarikake no Jinsei" (A Life in Progress), and Kasai was the first to record it onto her 1977 album"Tokyo Special". It's a dreamy ballad that has that 1970s City Pop Haze effect from the keyboards, and with that saxophone accompanying Kasai's silky vocals, I couldn't help but feel that the city that's been channeled here is New York City with the singer herself looking out at the Big Apple from the top of a brownstone. There's something quite dusky about the arrangement as well.
Jazz bassist Isao Suzuki（鈴木勲）was behind the melody for "Yarikake no Jinsei" while Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）came up with the lyrics. Suzuki was also responsible for collaborating with Miyamoto for her 1978 single"Push" for which her cover of "Yarikake no Jinsei" was the B-side. Given an additional English title, "My Life" (and English lyrics for Miyamoto), the cover is just slightly more upbeat, maybe a bit more disco, with Suzuki's bass taking over for that saxophonist from the Kasai original. Otherwise, the arrangement is pretty much the same in my estimation although overall with Miyamoto's take, the feeling is more striding downtown than contemplating life on that brownstone.
It was a fairly good catch of interesting acts on "Uta Kon"（うたコン）the other day as the show continues its new normal of no audience and combination of live guests and past performance footage. One group that I was happy to see was Crazy Ken Band（クレイジーケンバンド）.
The ever-cool Ken Yokoyama（横山剣）and his group were there to perform "Ivory" from their first single in about 5 years, "Ivory ep" which was released last month. Nice and summery, I love that underlying groove and the horns that take me back to Bobby Caldwell and "What You Won't Do For Love". Some good ol' relaxing cocktail-friendly AOR with some jazz thrown in. The end even has me thinking of that New Music from Yumi Arai（荒井由実）.
Furthermore, the music video brought back all sorts of memories since some of the traveling scenery reminds me of some of the trains that I took west of Shibuya Station to see some students in places like Den'en-Chofu and Tamagawa Gakuen. Supposedly, it's the view from Ken's car but I still like to think that it's from one of the lines that I rode.
Good heavens! It's been a long time since I wrote about Mika Nakashima（中島美嘉）. Was able to find one of her appealing jazzy ballads from "Love Addict".
Like that title "Aroma", the song is quite heady in the intro with the aural twinkling and the bluesy guitar. Written by Nakashima and composed by singer-songwriter Yoshiko Goshima（五島良子）, "Aroma" has that attraction of listening to it in an intimate basement club...the one with that brick wall behind the performer. Along with the guitar and groovy keyboards, I do hear those drum brushes sliding on the snare and a more subtle bass puffing away. Lovely solo they have, too.
Nakashima's lyrics are bittersweet. She describes someone recovering from a relationship that didn't end too well. There's the hurt and resentment but also the aroma of the former lover that she still can't quite let go of.
"Aroma" first made its appearance in "Resistance", Nakashima's first mini-album from November 2002 and it hit No. 1 for 2 weeks. The one version that I have is her live performance of the song that has been recorded onto "Love Addict" that came out in April 2003 and peaked at No. 5.
When I first got started on my hobby of enjoying kayo kyoku decades ago, there were a number of audiotapes belonging to my parents. One was a compilation of hits (which I actually bought for them as a souvenir during the 1981 trip to Japan) that helped me discover some singers such as Mizue Takada（高田みづえ）and Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）, another was a Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）BEST tape, and there was another one that I hadn't bought but somehow came into their possession (maybe my brother got it when he went over to Japan the following year).
That mystery tape was for an enka singer named Akemi Misawa（三沢あけみ）. I never played it and had no idea who she was. Moreover, I certainly haven't seen her appear on shows such as "Uta Kon"（うたコン）during my time back in Toronto, so I finally decided to do some digging. Born in Nagano Prefecture as Toshiko Miyashita（宮下登志子）in 1945, she became one of the fresh-faced newcomers as an actress in 1960 via the Toei New Face audition process, sponsored by the Toei (Movie) Company.
In 1963, Misawa debuted as a singer with "Furare Jouzu ni Hore Jouzu"（ふられ上手にほれ上手...Good at Rejection and Good at Falling in Love）but certain powers-that-be decided that she was simply too sexy for the small screen and didn't allow her to appear on TV for that particular song...not a great way to sell a record. However, karma paid her back most kindly with her 2nd single later that year, "Shima no Blues"(Island Blues) which she recorded as a duet with Mood Kayo group Hiroshi Wada and Mahina Stars（和田弘とマヒナスターズ）.
A huge hit for both Mahina Stars and Misawa, "Shima no Blues" is a go-touchi（ご当地ソング）song or an enka/Mood kayo number about a certain city or region. In this case, "Shima no Blues" was referring to Amami Oshima（奄美大島）, a large island belonging to Kagoshima Prefecture. It's become known as the home of many rare and endangered species of fauna.
Getting back to the song itself, it's quite the majestic enka number with lyrics by Shizuo Yoshikawa（吉川静夫）, and it contains some whistling that I had first thought was someone in the audience providing his/her approval. However, the composer for "Shima no Blues", Masanobu Tokuchi（渡久地政信）, actually whistled this during recording (according to J-Wiki), but I don't know what the significance of this is. Is it some sort of Amami Oshima tradition?
Although the original recording of "Shima no Blues" is that duet between Misawa and Mahina Stars, so far I could only find the one video of them singing it together in the video near the top (the one so nice apparently that the uploader recorded it twice). The other videos on YouTube have Misawa singing the song as a solo, including the one performance by her on the 1963 Kohaku Utagassen. She also earned a Best New Artist prize at the Japan Record Awards that year. Her history on the Kohaku has totaled 5 appearances with the 1968 Kohaku being the last one to date.
Being a song in tribute to Amami Oshima, minyo artists associated with the island have covered "Shima no Blues" over the years. As for Misawa, she has recorded 30 singles and several albums up to 2011, but ironically her list of acting performances is actually fairly short according to J-Wiki. She has also been currently hosting a kayo program on satellite TV.
One of the earliest songs that I wrote about on the blog was Original Love's"Asahi no Ataru Michi"（朝日のあたる道）, the band's 6th single from April 1994. As I mentioned in that article, it was my first exposure to Takao Tajima（田島貴男）when he still had a number of people with him under the Original Love name, and I heard it in my friend's car one rainy day. "Asahi no Ataru Michi" was this blend of fun pop, soul and jazz that struck me as being quite different from what was hot during those times in music when the Komuro Boom was beginning its steamroller run and while guitar pop/rock bands such as Mr. Children and Spitz held sway.
Well, it didn't take long until I copied my friend and bought the album that had "Asahi no Ataru Michi", "Kaze no Uta wo Kike" (Hear the Song of the Wind), Original Love's 4th album released in June 1994. According to J-Wiki, it hit No. 1 and ended up as the 63rd-ranked album of the year. But for all that, I played the whole album on my Onkyo in my apartment in Ichikawa...and then put it into my shelf of compact discs for several years without playing it again. I gave the same indifferent treatment to Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"History 1978-1984", and the reason was the same: as I would find out many years later, it wasn't at all the fact that the songs were bad; I myself was simply not quite ready to embrace either Original Love or Ohnuki because they both dared to provide songs which went in all sorts of directions.
(19:46)
I'm definitely much older and a little wiser now as I appreciate both albums. With "Kaze no Uta wo Kike", there is a lot to chew on in terms of what vocalist and songwriter Tajima provided here. And here I start with Track 1, "The Rover".
Now when it comes to remembering anything called Rover, I'm someone who's very much in the minority since it's not a name of a dog that comes to my mind first. For me, Rover means that terrifying gigantic white balloon/enforcer from the 1960s British thriller series "The Prisoner". Rover scared me into the crack between sofa cushions when I saw it capture errant Villagers, and I think it actually got a shoutout in the final episode for Season 2 of "Kaguya-sama: Love is War" last weekend.
Ahhh, but now, I can sleep more soundly now that Rover can refer to "The Rover" by Original Love. Written and composed by Tajima (unless noted otherwise, all tracks have been handled by Tajima), the music video for this first track sure shows one heck of a crazy road trip accompanied by just-as-crazy film footage. I'm sure hoping that at least the driver didn't have any illicit chemical compounds in his system, but the video goes back-and-forth between frolicking in the desert and then whooping it up in some go-go dance club from the 1960s. I had been wondering what the deal was with those photos in the album's cover booklet...and it turned out to be colour shots of the dancers.
There's some good ol' James Brown-like funkin' going on with Tajima and the gang, and apparently according to the description of the song by Tajima in the J-Wiki article, "The Rover" was based on a re-arrangement of an earlier song "Ai no Circuit"（愛のサーキット...Love Circuit） from Original Love's 1992 album"Kesshou"（結晶...Crystal） and a whole lot of experimentation. It certainly sounds like the band enjoyed going into this song like me going through a tenderloin steak. Incidentally, the lovely Yuiko Tsubokura（坪倉唯子）provides backing vocals on a number of the tracks including this one.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find the actual track from "Kaze no Uta wo Kike", but "Jisa wo Kakeru Omoi"（時差を駆ける想い...Memories Running Through the Time Difference）, which is being performed here on Tajima's "Hitori Soul Show" (Soul Show by One) released in June 2012, is the one other song besides "Asahi no Ataru Michi" that I remembered even after that first listening to the album. I believe one reason is the bossa nova in the melody devised by Tajima and bassist Hideyuki Komatsu（小松秀行）, and although I hadn't realized it at the time, I was always quite attracted to the genre. There is something so very romantic and sweeping about "Jisa wo Kakeru Omoi", and yet according to Tajima, the lyrics are all just based on his childhood memories of running around with buddies and smelling that wonderful soup before dinnertime. Those memories came flooding back to him as he was on a plane either heading over to or coming back from Morocco in 1993 for filming.
There's some more of that home movie camera style for the video (taken down unfortunately) of "It's A Wonderful World", and according to Tajima, the song was inspired by the works of Curtis Mayfield. Tajima also remarked that it was the first time that he had ever sung an entire song in the higher registers of his voice so he had been a tad worried about how it would go at recording, but as it turned out, he did it in one take. Some fine 70sNew Yorkfunk and soul included here.
"Futatsu no Te no You ni"（二つの手のように...Like Two Hands） sounds like the perfect summer love song as created by Tajima and keyboardist Ryutaro Kihara（木原龍太郎）. All it needs is a park to stroll in. Love the harmonies between Tajima and the rest of the band as well as the horns. The singer stated that he realized that there were at least some spiritual similarities between the song and Yumi Arai's（荒井由実）"Kitto Ieru"（きっと言える）, so perhaps this would be the New Music entry of the album?
One more track that I will provide here is "Fiesta"（フィエスタ）. Now throughout the years of writing in "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I've been able to gain names for some of the famous musical riffs that I've heard over and over again from various sources including The Doobie Bounce and Steely Dan's Mu Chord. Recently, I found out about The Bo Diddley Beat from TV Tropes, and it's been a rock n' roll rhythm that I've also heard in a number of songs such as George Michael's"Faith" and "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow as mentioned in the TV Tropes article.
It looks like I'm hearing that now in "Fiesta" and just from the happy raucous music, my initial impression was that Tajima was channeling some wonderful experience down in New Orleans or somewhere in the Deep South of the United States. However, Tajima in the J-Wiki article for the album has remarked that he was using a Second Line rhythm; the remark has a direct link to the J-Wiki and then the English Wikipedia article on the Second Line tradition of people following a parading band with their own dancing and walking. He also said that he had initially wanted to create something that was comforting in the form of a hymn. Perhaps the end result didn't come out as a hymn, but personally speaking from what little I know of funeral traditions in New Orleans, "Fiesta" is still quite comforting since I assume that the funeral procession down there is one of some celebration and joy over the life that was lived by the person.
Finally, Tajima states that "Fiesta" may be the one track on "Kaze no Uta wo Kike" to reflect what the album is all about. If that is indeed the case, then I think the vocalist was trying to illustrate the celebration and joy of music in general through different modes. Why keep the music chained to one style in one album when there are so many other styles to explore and have fun with? Be free!
All these years, lyricist Shun Taguchi（田口俊）has been quite well-represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" through his works for other artists including enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）for which he provided the jazz torch song "Whiskey ga O-Suki deshou?" (ウィスキーが、お好きでしょ）. Well, he actually started out as a singer in 1980 with the band Lorelei and then began the songwriting aspect of his career from 1982. Just a little after that, he teamed up with Kazuo Horiguchi（堀口和男）to form the singing duo REICO.
Their debut album"REICO" was released in October 1983 as you can see in the thumbnail above and the first track is "Navigator Lover". Man, the sound and the appearance of that album cover couldn't get more 1980s. Throw me that Rubik's Cube, will ya?
"Navigator Lover" has got that West Coast AOR sound down pat right to the fine print, and listening to Taguchi and Horiguchi, who wrote and composed all of the tracks on "REICO", I get nostalgic vibes from their contemporaries at the time such as H2O and Off-Course（オフコース）. That guitar and their vocals had me thinking of a motorcycle ride on the Ventura Freeway one sunny Sunday.
Welcome to July 1st and Canada Day! Our nation is celebrating its 153rd birthday today and though there will be no fireworks displays or parades this year, hopefully everyone in Canada is having a safe and happy day today.
As has been the case each year in tribute to the Maple Leaf, I've been trying to find a kayo or J-Pop song that would actually at least have Canada in the title. This has been a tradition of sorts since I first put up that old karaoke-friendly chestnut "Canada kara no Tegami"（カナダからの手紙）all the way back in KKP's inaugural year of 2012.
Furthermore, I've heard of jazz singerYasuko Agawa（阿川泰子）for years and was aware that she had even contributed songs in the City Pop/AOR genre early in her career, but it was always one thing or another that I never got around to putting any of her tunes onto the blog. Well, I'm killing two (snow)birds with one stone (from the Canadian Shield) on this Canada Day and putting up the first Agawa article with "Canadian Star".
"Canadian Star" is a track on her 1983 album"Night Line" and it's a nice way for me to start the Agawa file because I find it a soothing City Pop/AOR lullaby of sorts. The lady in the lyrics (provided by Ralph McCarthy) seems to be in some hotel in the Great White North writing a letter (not quite sure if there were some inspiration from "Canada kara no Tegami"...ha, ha) to that mystery man of love who swept her off her feet and then swept on out. I wouldn't be surprised if she were penning the letter in the middle of the night as her light is the only one on in the entire hotel.
I found out that Agawa's "Canadian Star" was a cover of an original instrumental track recorded by fusion group Dr. Strut for their 1979 self-titled album. Apparently, the band was once called The Legendary Groovadelics but when they joined up with Motown Records, Berry Gordy insisted that they change the name; perhaps not a bad idea.
Anyways, the big surprise actually happened earlier in my check on this song. Last night, when I wanted to find out who had been responsible for words and music, I did my usual due diligence at the JASRAC database and saw a name: BECKER WALTER CARL. Hm...OK, looks like an application for car insurance, I thought, but the name did ring with some familiarity. Then I looked further and saw the name: FAGEN DONALD JAY.
Wait a metric minute here! Steely Dan composed this tune?! The answer is an absolute yes. The band that provided plenty of inspiration and chords to City Pop artists in the late 70s and early 80s was indeed behind the composition of "Canadian Star" for Dr. Strut. And the interesting thing is that it doesn't really sound like the prototypical Steely Dan song to me, although even more devoted fans can probably indicate a tune of theirs that might illustrate a similar arrangement. In fact, when I heard Agawa's cover for the first time, I thought that there was something more Eagles' "Desperado" to it.
As for Agawa, her real name is Yasuko Sato（佐藤康子）and she hails from Kamakura City in Kanagawa Prefecture. According to a June 1981 issue of the journal "Shukan Asahi"（週刊朝日）via J-Wiki, she's also been given nicknames such as Sugar Voice, The Idol for the Necktie Crowd and The Idol for the Old Guys (not quite sure if that last one is particularly complimentary). She made her start in show business in the early 1970s and was also an actress at one point, appearing in movies and TV shows such as "Ultraman Leo"（ウルトラマンレオ）as an alien and the famous cop show "Taiyo ni Hoero!"（太陽にほえろ！）. The singing part of her career began in 1973 when she was introduced to jazz clarinetist Shoji Suzuki（鈴木章治）and then became part of his band Shoji Suzuki & The Rhythm Aces（鈴木章治とリズム・エース）. However, as I said up above, she did have her dabble in City Pop, and I would like to have a listen to her "L.A. Night".
To finally put a bow tie on this article, it's interesting to note that there is a famous train tour in the northern part of my province Ontario, and the region is actually called Agawa Canyon.
