Yumi Matsutoya/Yoshiko Miyazaki -- Yuyami wo Hitori（夕闇をひとり）

 

Happy Saturday! Hope wherever you are, you're enjoying the weekend. Right now, I'm trying to get through the typically hot and humid weather that is normal for the dog days of August. Had a nice brief conversation with Rocket Brown, and just like myself a couple of weeks ago, he will be co-hosting with Van Paugam soon on a podcast centering upon Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）so I'll be looking forward to that.

But for starters today, I'd like to get onto a track from Yumi Matsutoya's（松任谷由実）12th album from November 1981, "Sakuban O-Aishimashou" (昨晩お会いしましょう）. I wrote up an article about that No. 1-hitting release back in the early days of the blog, and as I will also mention here, "Sakuban O-Aishimashou" is arguably the most City Pop of Yuming's（ユーミン）albums although not every song is of the genre. 

One track that I had yet to cover from the album rather straddles the line between regular pop and City Pop. "Yuyami wo Hitori" (Walking Alone In the Dusk) is definitely one cool cat of a Yuming track. It's about a woman heading home perhaps but without that young fellow that she aches for holding her hand. It's got quite a nice smoky rhythm with the goodly assistance of a thrumming keyboard and the horns, especially an urbane saxophone to finish things off. A lonely walk hasn't sounded so kakkoii.

Actress and tarento Yoshiko Miyazaki（宮崎美子）, who incidentally shares the same initials with Yuming, provided a cover of "Yuyami no Hitori" in her December 1981 album, "Mellow". The arrangement isn't too different from the original aside from some extra backing vocals, more Fender Rhodes and no horns aside from that bluesy sax. I've already covered one other track from "Mellow", the technopoppy "Ima wa Heiki yo"（今は平気よ）. 

Junko Hirotani -- Seaside Parking

 

The above photo is from the top of the Marine Tower in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture. For those anime fans, you know why I was there. Oarai is the pilgrimage town for all those who are mad for the franchise "Girls und Panzer". I decided to make a stop there during my Tokyo trip in 2017 just to see what an anime pilgrimage is like. I actually took the shot from a restaurant specializing in "Girls und Panzer" paraphernalia and the theme was a classroom where I could partake in one of the kyushoku that the tank-driving girls had at school.

Well, this was my lunch with the main dish being stewed mackerel and since I do love my mackerel (not everyone does), I was quite satisfied with my meal overlooking Oarai Harbour. 

Sadly, I forgot which one of the main characters actually preferred the mackerel lunch, but no matter. The topic of this article also has nothing to do with "Girls und Panzer". I only put up the photo because it does reveal some seaside parking, and that is also the title for the late Junko Hirotani's（広谷順子）song "Seaside Parking". That's about as disjointed a segue that I have ever come up with recently.

Right from the start, we can all hear the sunny Doobie Bros. Bounce in the melody by Hirotani herself with the arrangement by Ichiro Nitta（新田一郎）from the fusion band Spectrum（スペクトラム）. Yumi Morita（森田由美）provided the lyrics that probably depict a far more romantic and cheerful scene than my top photo as perhaps a couple is enjoying that drive out by the ocean. This is Track 4 from her February 1983 album "Enough".

That is the Marine Tower.

And that is the huge cast of characters from "Girls und Panzer". It was a nice time in Oarai but I wish that I had been in as good a mood as Hirotani was. I almost sprained my ankle on the way to the Marine Tower so I was in a bit of pain. Luckily, the mackerel helped.

Kengo Kurozumi -- Moonlight Serenade

 

It's almost been a couple of years since I've had singer-songwriter Kengo Kurozumi（黒住憲五）up on the blog as a performer. The last song that I've covered by him behind the mike was "Lusia", the B-side to his 1982 single "My Sweet Lady".

This time, the Kurozumi file is being added through his "Moonlight Serenade", and nope, this has nothing to do with the jazz classic by Glenn Miller. A track on his 2nd album "Still" (1983), "Moonlight Serenade" is a very different animal which is still in his wheelhouse of bouncy party-atmosphere City Pop with AB'S member Yoshihiko Ando（安藤芳彦）providing the lyrics. It's got those soaring strings for a bit of that sophisti-pop taste but at the same time, there is also a Tats-friendly sax solo and bass that makes me wonder whether the setting for the song is some bayside hotel...with a full moon out, of course.

Although his album releases started in the 1980s, Kurozumi did release a couple of singles in the 1970s and there is his output as the vocalist of the band Boomerang（ブーメラン）in that same decade. Unfortunately, none of his works back then are available on YouTube as of yet.

Naomi Chiaki -- Amagumo (song)（あまぐも）

 

Commenter Justin, a few days ago, referred me to Xerf Xpec's recent upload, smoky singer Naomi Chiaki's（ちあきなおみ）January 1978 studio album "Amagumo" (Rain Clouds) . She recorded quite the conversation piece since it brings together three musical acts that I hadn't expected would work together. For one thing, Chiaki, someone that I've usually associated with Mood Kayo and regular Japanese pop, has the backup of the band Godiego（ゴダイゴ）, and for another, all of Side A of the original record was written and composed by the late singer-songwriter Eigo Kawashima（河島英五）, the man behind the introspective folk classic and karaoke favourite, "Sake to Namida to Otoko to Onna" （酒と泪と男と女）.

I've heard the first couple of tracks including the title track from "Amagumo", and I think that all involved including Chiaki were going for something different from their own worlds. At this point, I'd say that the album was perhaps going into a more City Pop direction but without having heard the other tracks thus far, I will go with 1970s New Music for now.

However with the first track, "Amagumo", there is something very sensual and sultry which matches the smokiness of Chiaki's voice. In the first several seconds of the song, there is a feeling of early morning hours but when all of the instruments come into literal play, I realize that it is most likely a case of a setting sometime during a rainy day as the title hints at, with Chiaki or her avatar being in a very hip coffee house somewhere in Shinjuku or Roppongi while she stares through the window with spatters of raindrops.

Kawashima's melody weaves among City Pop, jazz and the more urbane corner of New Music so it's not particularly easy to categorize "Amagumo" into one particular genre. But there are obviously no complaints from me about it as this song also reminds me of how another wonderfully cool chanteuse, Mai Yamane（山根麻衣）, started out a few years later. One last observation about the album itself is how similar the silhouette of Chiaki is to the one given on the cover of Bill Evans' famous "Waltz for Debby". Was this some sort of homage to the amazing jazz pianist?

From Wikipedia

Ikue Sakakibara -- Ame no Requiem（雨の鎮魂歌）

 

I knew that going into the 1980s, singer/tarento Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）was rather transitioning from being an aidoru into something more in the pop realm, but I was surprised to see and hear how nicely she was taking to City Pop. I mean, her vocals were still reminiscent of her teenybopping years but the surrounding music was very much in the urban scene.

Take "Ame no Requiem" (Requiem in the Rain) for example. A track from her 14th studio album "Variety Box" from November 1982, it reminds me somewhat of "Aka to Kuro"（赤と黒）, Yoshimi Iwasaki's（岩崎良美）debut single from 1980 with that jagged electric guitar and string intro that could be mistaken for the beginning of an opening credit sequence of a cop show in Japan. Written and composed by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）, "Ame no Requiem" goes into a cool and breezy down-home City Pop rhythm that gradually fires off some more engrams of memory as it approaches its ending because of the additional backup chorus behind Ikue's refrain. It actually reminds me of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive".

"Ame no Requiem" does its job. Even though I was there in Tokyo in 1981, I still get those urges to step back in time to walk the streets of the megalopolis during those heady days.

Ambrosia -- Biggest Part of Me

 

I'm really going to have to invest in an Eizin Suzuki calendar next year.

Anyways, I realize that I have already put up a ROY article for this week but at the same time, I'm going to exercise Administrator's privilege and write up a second one. The reason is that I haven't contributed a ROY article on an AOR tune in a long while...the one that I remember off the top of my head is Pages' "Who's Right, Who's Wrong" from last September. That is almost a year and considering that I do love my soft rock, before I'm forced to hand in my Perrier bottle in shame, it's time to get another light and mellow tune from my musical memories up here in Reminiscings of Youth.

My choice tonight is Ambrosia's "Biggest Part of Me" from March 1980. I used to hear this song by this soft rock/jazz fusion band all the time on the radio (and in doctors' offices), and at that time when I was a kid, I thought it was a pleasant enough ditty. But decades later, while I was in Japan and folks there (including myself) were getting into the American AOR boom through remastered CDs, hearing "Biggest Part of Me" again just launched the effervescent bubbles of Perrier percolating in my head. Translation: I appreciated it a whole lot more. And apparently, so did the charts way back when. In Canada, the song went as high as No. 18 on RPM and on the Adult Contemporary chart in the United States, it hit No. 3.

What can I say? David Pack was the man who created the song and sang it, and during the 2000s to hear this song once more among the other formerly forgotten delights on those AOR compilation discs that I'd bought at Tower Records and Yamano Music was quite the aural manna from Heaven. All of "Biggest Part of Me" is great but there's that Ernie Watts' sax solo in the middle which still sends shivers up and down my spine. Yup, I'm an AOR otaku!😛

So, what was coming out into the record stores in Japan while "Biggest Part of Me" was coming out in the record stores in Canada and the United States (and perhaps Japan, too)? Well, according to Showa Pops, these three were.

Mariya Takeuchi -- Fushigi na Peach Pie （不思議なピーチ・パイ）

Toshi Ito and Happy & Blue -- Gaman Dekinai wa（我慢できないわ）

Yoshimi Iwasaki -- Aka to Kuro（赤と黒）

Aiko Togawa -- Love Point Getter（ラブ・ポイント・ゲッター）/Kinjirareta Koukishin（禁じられた好奇心）

 

In the 9 1/2 years that I've been involved with "Kayo Kyoku Plus", there have been the gradual transitions on a number of levels. For one thing, in the aidoru section, I of course started off with the famous superstar aidoru including Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）and their many hits, but over those many years, I no longer highlight them so much anymore since I have covered a lot of those hits. Instead, I seem to be coming across those 1970s and 1980s teenybopper singers who had far less than their 15 minutes of fame and have remained somewhat mysterious...at least until now.

Well once again, I have found another such aidoru. Her name is Aiko Togawa（都川愛子）and there's absolutely nothing that I could find out about her outside of those three singles that she released. Her debut single from August 1979 was "Kinjirareta Koukishin" (Forbidden Curiosity) with the B-side being "Love Point Getter". 

Uploader Yoshi Imamura has actually put the B-side first so I will talk about "Love Point Getter" appropriately first as well. Written by Mickey Uchida（ミッキー内田）, composed by Yasumi Matsuo（松尾安巳）and arranged by Jun Kamiyama（神山純）, this song has got that spirited 1970s aidoru beat with the alternately cutting and silky strings and the electric guitar, and it sounds as if it were from an earlier time in the decade (aside from the boopy synths), something more along the lines for a younger Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）or Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）. However, what really stands out are Togawa's vocals. I can't really describe them except that they sound quite distinct and perhaps I can say that they are an aidoru's equivalent of pop singer Machiko Watanabe's（渡辺真知子）own vocals.

From 3:02 is the A-side, "Kinjirareta Koukishin", which was created by the same trio that I mentioned in the above paragraph. Togawa does sound quite different and more innocent here in this song that has more of that exotic kayo feeling thanks to what I think is a mandolin strumming away. The silky strings are still there, though.

According to "idol.ne.jp", Togawa released one more single in February 1980, "Mokuren"（もくれん...Lily Magnolia）, and then it would be many years until a third single, "Osaka Love Story"（大阪ラブストーリー） was released in June 1992. I can't find any sign of this song on YouTube and I'm wondering whether Togawa had intended to make a comeback with something more Mood Kayo.