Yukiko Haneda -- Still in the City (Rain is Falling)

 

Hopefully, everyone is enjoying their weekend. It's pretty darn nice here in Toronto today after going through a repeat of winter on Friday. Still can't believe that snow fell just north of here but the important thing is that the weather is nice and seasonal today and just in time for June.

Anyways, let's start off Sunday with some late 1980s City Pop (oh, by the way, I did enjoy that City Pop Festival organized by DJ Fact 50 on Twitch yesterday) via Yukiko Haneda's（羽根田征子）"Still in the City (Rain is Falling)". The title sounds like something from a book written by a Japanese Mickey Spillane enthusiast which is why I selected the above photo for the thumbnail (it's in deep Shibuya).

Written and composed by Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）, and I think that's her on background vocals yelling "Don't give up!", the intro sounds like as if it were going to go a whole lot more major-chord upbeat than it actually is. However, "Still in the City" then goes into a more suspenseful vein with that bopping percussion, hard rhythmic synthesizers, what sounds like an organ that received its Red Bull wings, and fairly rich and resonant vocals by Haneda. The song was included as a track on the singer's debut album "Beating Mess" from March 1988 which was produced by Yoshida, too.

Hey! Say! JUMP -- Negative Fighter（ネガティブファイター）

 

(incomplete version)

I actually saw the video before hearing the song and when I witnessed these fellows dancing and prancing about on a pastel-coloured football gridiron, I had initially assumed that this was a K-Pop group doing their latest. Such was not the case, of course.

Actually, it's Johnny's group Hey! Say! JUMP with their latest, "Negative Fighter", which was released only a few weeks ago on May 12th. Written and composed by a Japanese Tik Tok user and influencer named Mai Ujita（うじたまい）, "Negative Fighter" is all about kicking the blues away and, gosh darn, getting up and at 'em. It's actually quite nice and catchy and disco-esque, and I wouldn't be surprised if Hey! Say! JUMP ended up doing another round with this song at this year's Kohaku Utagassen on NHK.

The group's 29th single once again hit No. 1 on Oricon, and it's quite incredible to see that every single by Hey! Say! JUMP has reached the top spot ever since their debut back in 2007. So far, it's already sold over 200,000 copies. And hey, the song has even reached the ears, eyes and limbs of song-and-dance group Atarashii Gakko no Leaders（新しい学校のリーダーズ）!

Hibari Misora -- Hanagasa Douchuu（花笠道中）/Rockabilly Kenpou（ロカビリー剣法）

 

Today would have been Hibari Misora's（美空ひばり）84th birthday today. This past week's "Uta Con"（うたコン）episode reminded me of today's special day in kayo kyoku history through a brief tribute involving a couple of songs.

In June 1958, Misora's 138th single, "Rockabilly Kenpou" was released but it was the B-side that was performed on last week's "Uta Con", "Hanagasa Douchuu" (Hanagasa Travels). From what I've read, a hanagasa is a conical straw hat that seems to be most famous now for its use in the midsummer Yamagata Hanagasa Festival. I don't know whether it had a specific purpose in ancient times so I can assume that it was basically just headwear to keep the sun off.

The words and music for "Hanagasa Douchuu" were provided by Masao Yoneyama（米山正夫）, and it's a jaunty enka tune delivered with the singer's usual brio to reflect the mix of happiness and loneliness of journeying the byways of Edo Era Japan. Perhaps from the video above, the traveler was probably some sort of ronin as portrayed by Misora herself. 

The A-side, "Rockabilly Kenpou" (Rockabilly Swordsmanship), is indeed an interesting combination of Misora's pugnacious vocals for an enka tune and some happy-go-lucky rockabilly music. Once again, Yoneyama created words and music for this A-side as the singer gets into cocky form describing her finely-honed capabilities with the sword. As she mentions in the song, women can more than hold their own in a fight. Perhaps this is more Bill Haley and the Katanas rather than the Comets.

Issei Okamoto -- Machi no Seikatsu（街の生活）

 

Seeing that the previous article for Agnes Chan's 1985 "Tasogare Monogatari"（黄昏物語）was concocted by composer Akira Okamoto（岡本朗）, I figure that it's time to bring back one of his old ditties.

(22:15)

Back then, he went by the stage name of Issei Okamoto（岡本一生）and his first representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" was through his debut single "Moonlight Singing"（ムーンライト・シンギィング）which was also the title track for his debut album coming out in June 1978. I found another fascinating track on "Moonlight Singing" which is called "Machi no Seikatsu" (City Life).

I call it fascinating since this song to which he provided words and music expresses itself as a hybrid of sorts. The first few seconds show off that City Pop including that representative Fender Rhodes sparkly riff and some sophistication with the strings before "Machi no Seikatsu" then reveals itself with this odd toy-store marching drumbeat and muted horns which sound as if they came off of a Henry Mancini soundtrack. The inclusion of a honey-toned saxophone and a Latin guitar contribute not to a cacophony but a hearty variety of what Okamoto feels is the usual melding of lifestyles in the city. It's what I would find through a day-long walk through Tokyo as partially shown through the thumbnail photo of the Omotesando-Aoyama intersection at the top. Yep, plenty of different things to see and do in the big megalopolis.

Agnes Chan -- Tasogare Monogatari（黄昏物語）

 

When it comes to the Agnes Chan（アグネス・チャン）file on KKP, I've only written about her 1970s aidoru songs so it was a revelation coming across this particular song.

The album is "Ai ga Mitsukarisou ~ CITY ROMANCE"（愛が見つかりそう CITY ROMANCE...On the Verge of Love） which is a 1985 release by Chan, and it's safe to say that this is no longer the aidoru Agnes behind the mike here. Just from viewing the cover, the Hong Kong-born singer was going for a more mature approach. I had always envisioned her in a frilly white dress but she went for very stylish black, and the lettering for the title gave off a big sign of urban contemporary.

"CITY ROMANCE" has as its first track "Tasogare Monogatari" (Sunset Story), a love ballad that brings together an arrangement reminiscent of some of that West Coast pop feeling. I've heard similar things with 80s aidoru such as Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）when they were pushing the envelope, so to speak, at around the same time. Written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子） and composed by Akira Okamoto（岡本朗）, who had once gone by the moniker Issei Okamoto（岡本一生）, I actually wrestled in my first few listenings to "Tasogare Monogatari" whether this actually fell into the City Pop realm instead of it being purely pop. There may be some disagreement with my final decision, but I think what finally got me to go for both genres (plus AOR) in Labels is the last half when the romantic saxophone joined those keyboards; there was simply something about the ballad that struck me as being rather "City Hunter" via a drive in a taxi in Shinjuku.

When I went a bit deeper into "CITY ROMANCE" and listened to some of the subsequent tracks, I could still hear that voice of Chan that I heard back from her early days as an aidoru. However with "Tasogare Monogatari", if I hadn't seen that cover and not been told who it was, I wouldn't have recognized the singer as Agnes Chan. For the lack of a better word, her vocals seemed to have taken on some more gravitas.

Takeshi Kaga -- Morning Moon

 

Indeed, as one commenter noted for the above video of "Ryori no Tetsujin"（料理の鉄人...The Iron Chefs）, without the gloriously hammy Takeshi Kaga（鹿賀丈史）as the Chairman in the Kitchen Stadium, the show wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. His catchphrase of "If memory serves me correctly...", his handling of food as if they were all called Yorick, and the flair and flamboyance that he showed every week compensated for the seriousness and rush among the chefs trying to get a masterful dinner ready within one hour.

(Sigh...😔) Yes, I know. I start off every Takeshi Kaga article on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with a reference to his 1990s stint on "Ryori no Tetsujin" but I just can't help it. For better or worse, his status in pop culture on both sides of the Pacific Ocean has been sealed permanently as the Chairman...kinda like William Shatner and Captain James T. Kirk.

In any case, his musical status on YouTube seems to be sealed with that 1981 City Pop album "After Dark". I've already mentioned a couple of tracks from this Akira Inoue（井上鑑）-arranged release including "Act 1", and another one from it is "Morning Moon", which isn't to be mistaken for the Chage & Aska hit that wouldn't come out until the middle of the 1980s. Kaga's "Morning Moon" isn't even given the katakana treatment; it's just the romaji as the title.

As Inoue did for Akira Terao's（寺尾聰）"Reflections", he has also provided some buttery City Pop/AOR layers for the tracks on this album including "Morning Moon" which also possesses some of that tropical punch rhythm. Despite the title, the song seems to reflect various periods through the day and night especially in the middle when it seems as if Chairman Kaga is embracing his inner Tatsuhiko Yamamoto（山本達彦）crooning some sophisticated dinner music. Lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）even throws out some Campari soda which was part of the title for one of Terao's tracks on "Reflections". Kiyoshi Hattori（服部清）is behind the music here.

Shigeru Suzuki -- Bad Dream

 

Oh, those wonderfully sunny warm days of summer with folks basking out in the park and the air conditioners were on full blast. It just seems like a few days ago...

WAIT A MINUTE! 😖 It was just a few days ago. 31 degrees Celsius with a Humidex in the low 30s and I was sweltering in my room writing articles for the blog.🌞 Today? It's 3 degrees Celsius with a wind chill factor and I was just told that there were sprinkles of snow falling down from the sky!⛄ Just another day in May in Southern Ontario! Yes, I do remember that I did make some mention of the weather in the first article for yesterday's blog entries but little did I figure that it would come to this.

For all of those sun worshippers in my province out there, this must all sound like a bad dream.

And we make this obvious segue into "Bad Dream", a track from Shigeru Suzuki's（鈴木茂）September 1979 album "Cosmos' 51". Suzuki was responsible for the music here while his old Happy End bandmate, Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, took care of the lyrics, and if indeed this is the first track that I've covered from this particular Suzuki album, then it's an intriguing one to start with. For one thing, Suzuki's melody has got me thinking of a couple of Billy Joel's songs from around the same time period: "The Stranger" and "Movin' Out".

Tower Records has described "Cosmos' 51" as an album containing some refined songwriting accompanied by the sophisticated light n' mellow vocals of Suzuki. Although he has been seen as one of the City Pop pioneers, there isn't any direct reference to the album being a purely City Pop release but I think something like "Bad Dream" can kinda straddle the line between that umbrella genre and straight-on pop.

As for right now, I'll just whip up some hot chocolate.☕