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.
Will always love coming face-to-face with a catchy pop song for the first time, and so it goes with actress/singer Mika Kaneko's（金子美香）"Hold Me Slowly, Kiss Me Suddenly" from her debut album"Catch Me" in July 1987. That opening synth passage grabbed me right from the get-go and then Kaneko comes and shows that she's got some pop/rock chops there. Written by Mei Miyahara（宮原芽映）and composed by Shoji Nakamura（中村昭二）, I think the song got some more of that secret earworm sauce (OK...maybe not the most palatable description) via Etsuko Yamakawa's（山川恵津子）arrangement.
Born in Chiba Prefecture, according to her J-Wiki profile, she appeared in 1983 on the audition show "Star Tanjo"（スター誕生）and was then scouted by entertainment company Watanabe Productions. She appeared in a number of TV shows and movies, and debuted as a singer earlier in 1987 with "Teenage Blue"（ティーンエイジブルー）. Kaneko released a total of 9 singles up to 2004 and 7 original albums up to 1991. She also helped establish a couple of rock bands in the 1990s, Betty Blue and Paradise Lost.
It was actually quite refreshingly cool when I went out to get the paper this morning. That's a pleasant contrast with the blast furnace that we'd been receiving for the past couple of weeks, but of course, the summer is still young.
I've had this in the backlog for some time now. This would be singer-songwriter's Koh Suzuki's（鈴木こう）1982 album"Sa-Ra-Vah Street", and I'm not sure whether there is any connection between this and Yukihiro Takahashi's（高橋幸宏）1978 release"Sa-Ra-Vah!" but I can say that Suzuki's creation has now gotten my interest and attention following a listen to a few of its tracks.
Pretty much no information on Suzuki himself and just a little more with "Sa-Ra-Vah Street" in terms of who helped out. It's fortified with City Pop/J-AOR goodness thanks to certain people such as Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu（かまやつひろし）who produced it, Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）who was behind the vocal arrangements and chorus, and musicians such as Akira Inoue（井上鑑）on keyboards and Tsuyoshi Kon & Masaki Matsubara（今剛・松原正樹）on guitar.
The first track "Welcome, Tokyo Night" bodes well for my listening pleasure. Starting off with Mike Dunn's bass groove which reminds me of the intro for AB'S"In the City Night", Suzuki (who sounds a bit like Al Stewart at the beginning) greets us with some sultry summer City Pop in early 1980s Tokyo. I can go for some of those hotel bar cocktails right now on the patio (although at the time, I was only eligible for Calpis) with that flowing sax solo. Man, to listen to this while I was walking the streets just outside of the Tokyo Prince Hotel back then.
"One Night Chance" is actually the first track that I heard from "Sa-Ra-Vah Street" and it was the one that got me to bookmark it. It's more on the rock side of AOR and is ideal for that midnight bombing down on the highway in the sports car (without attracting police attention). I do love that guitar work.
One more track that I will provide here is "Tameshi ni Dou Dai?"（試しにどうだい...How About Giving It A Shot?）, a happy-go-lucky hybrid of Doobie Brothers Bounce and City Pop chords. This also seems to be perfect for car stereo heaven, day or night. Maybe you can try it on a J-UtahYouTube driving video for Tokyo. By the way, although I couldn't confirm the songwriting details with "One Night Chance", the other two songs here were written and composed by Hiroshi Suzuki（鈴木浩）according to the JASRAC database. That first name kanji can also be pronounced as "Koh" so I'm assuming that is indeed the performer who's behind the songwriting, and he's not to be confused with Hiroshi Suzuki（鈴木弘）the trombonist who has his own article on KKP.
The above is the video for the entire album so give it a shot and tell me what you think. I will have to put this up on my Xmas wish list.
It's a little more than four hours into July 13th over in Japan as I type this, and July 13th on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" signifies that Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）is having her birthday so all the best to her wherever she is right now.
To commemorate this, I'm going with something a bit more recent (relatively speaking) and seasonal as we here in Toronto are in the middle of a heat wave. "The Heat ~ musica fiesta ~" is Akina's 41st single from May 2002 and is the song coming from her 20th studio album"Resonancia" which was released a few weeks later.
The J-Wiki writeup on "Resonancia" has the album taking on the theme of Latin-infused R&B, and aside from bossa nova, I'm not too knowledgeable on my Latin music, but I think "The Heat" is done like a samba (?). Over her career, Akina has dabbled in a lot of Latin music with examples like "Caribbean" and "Milonguita", and so I wonder if the singer could be born again whether she would choose to come back as a Spanish, Cuban or Brazilian chanteuse. It's just my opinion but my impression has been recently that she she's been at her happiest when she tackles the music of those nations.
"The Heat" was written by Adya and composed by URU. Adya is someone that I just mentioned in the previous article as the vocalist for Seikou Nagaoka's（長岡成貢）"Dancing Until Dawn" so I'm assuming that this is the one and the same person here. The single peaked at No. 20 while its source album "Resonancia" hit as high as No. 15.
Once again, if I've gotten the genre wrong here for "The Heat", let me know. Heck, if Ms. Nakamori herself reads this, I'd be really happy for the correction!
Did my fair share of karaoke and disco-hitting back in the late 1980s with university friends. When I look back at how late I slunk back home and how Mom chastised me for smelling like downtown Toronto on a bender, I rather marvel at how I managed to do that now that I can barely stay up past eleven at night. Dancing is longer an option for me because I would be breaking a hip instead of being hip.
Still, I can shimmy up a storm in my comfy chair as I listen to "Dancing Until Dawn" which is a track on Seikou Nagaoka's（長岡成貢）2009 album"Romantic Gold" with singer Adya. I usually don't wish to become younger again but when I hear stuff like this, it would be nice to go out with my de-aged pals and hit the dance floor once more. I get all sorts of really cool urban contemporary vibe in Japan here. I hear BLU-SWING and Mondo Grosso. As well, there is a nice shoutout to Bobby Caldwell's classic "What You Won't Do For Love" near the end.
But I was wondering about that name Seikou Nagaoka since I believe that I'd heard it before. In fact, I did. Nagaoka has been around for decades and he's a composer, arranger and music producer that has done everything, and I knew him as the fellow who came up with the majestic theme for the anime "Shinpi no Sekai El-Hazard"（神秘の世界エルハザード）back in 1995, and even earlier, he composed SMAP's "SMAP" in 1988 (he's come up with many SMAP tunes). There's a long list of his compositions for many singers including Mika Nakashima（中島美嘉）and Chemistry at his J-Wiki file.
Listening to "Shinpi no Sekai El-Hazard" again and then coming across "Dancing Until Dawn" is like imagining John Williams or Alan Silvestri creating one of his amazing movie scores before taking off the turtleneck sweater and putting on a T-shirt and baseball cap to man the turntables at his favourite dance club beyond the midnight hour.
Nagaoka hails from Mie Prefecture and he taught himself the basics on orchestra and composition before heading up to Tokyo to fulfill his dream of creating movie soundtracks. He has done that and much more.
When it comes to City Pop album covers, the one for Miharu Koshi's（越美晴）1980"On the Street ~ Miharu II" is one that stands out. Maybe it's just the way that the singer-songwriter is crossing the road in that white pantsuit. It just seems so disco for some reason although the disco days were pretty much over by then.
I've yet to get this one. The only Koshi albums I have thus far are the ones from her techno/New Wave era onwards although I was able to purchase her "Golden Best ~ RCA Years"BEST album which includes those early City Pop/AOR numbers between 1978 and 1981.
One track that is on both "On the Street" and that BEST album is "Tsuioku" (Reminiscences). Written and composed by Koshi, it has that light bossa in the City Pop with an intro that reminds me of Gino Vannelli and the keyboard Haze effect, that representative sound for 1970s City Pop. "Tsuioku" sounds oh-so-elegant although the lyrics rummage up a scene of a poor embittered fellow walking along the dark pier wondering what went wrong with a past romance. On the bittersweet level, this chocolate has at least 80% cacao in there.
Remembering Naomi Sugimura's（杉村尚美）"Sunset Memory"（サンセット・メモリー）, her first solo single in 1981 following the breakup of her folk group Higurashi（日暮し）, that song was a pretty jaunty kayo.
Sugimura's 3rd and final single released in June 1982 was "Kaze no Naka no Melody" (Melody in the Wind) is much more of an epic ballad with memories of some of the Carpenters' greatest love songs and some of those belonging to folks like Boz Scaggs. With those strings in there, I can only imagine that the protagonist must have gone through some major obstacles to finally reach her measure of contentment.
"Kaze no Naka no Melody" was written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composed by Yayoi Tanaka（田中弥生）, and it was actually the theme song for a 1982 NTV drama called "Akkerakan"（あっけらかん...Indifference）about a newly-divorced nurse who still has to take care of her two young children.
I may have missed a golden opportunity of sorts by not doing a Father's Day or a Mother's Day special here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". After all, there have been several examples of double generations of artists in the Japanese music industry such as Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and her daughter Sayaka Kanda（神田沙也加）, singer/saxophonist Ayaka Hirahara（平原綾香）and her father, fellow sax player Makoto Hirahara（平原まこと）, and then folk singer Ryoko Moriyama（森山良子）and her son Naotaro（森山直太朗）.
Well, I just completed an article on Asako Toki's（土岐麻子）album"Ranhansha Girl"（乱反射ガール）earlier this morning, and while doing so, I found out that her father is veteran jazz saxophonist, Hidefumi Toki（土岐英史）. Hailing from Kobe, he specializes in the alto and soprano saxophones and has played in the jazz, fusion and R&B genres. After leaving the Osaka College of Music, he joined up with jazz bassist Isao Suzuki's（鈴木勲）group and other bands in the early 1970s before releasing his first solo album"TOKI" in 1975. Even more notably, he, along with keyboardist Toru Tsuzuki（続木徹）and guitarist Junshi Yamagishi（山岸潤史）formed the jazz/fusion band Chickenshack in 1985; sad to say, although I've already written a few articles on the group and even mentioned the main players in the first article, I never made the connection between Asako Toki and her father. Another notable fact is that Toki was a part of Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）concert tours between 1977 and 2011.
In 1978, Toki released his 2nd album"City" and the first track is "Speak Low", a jazz standard that made its debut in the Broadway musical "One Touch of Venus" back in 1943 and has since become popularized via singers and instrumentalists alike according to its Wikipedia article. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm anywhere near the level of a sage jazz critic, and I will simply say that Toki's "Speak Low" speaks to me as a cordial invitation to a classy bar in one of those skyscrapers of New York City which I think is where the cover of "City" was shot. As of 2016, Toki has released 10 albums.
For comparison's sake, you can listen to Sarah Vaughan's version from 1958 and then have a listen to John Coltrane's version with the Sonny Clark Sextet.
There's even a Speak Low cocktail! To finish off, I've been listening to the rest of Toki's "City" as I type this down and it's been a fine accompaniment as cool music on a hot day in my darkened room.
