Blondie -- Heart of Glass

 

On this week's regular Reminiscings of Youth, I have this memory of a song that could have been the transition between the old disco and the New Wave.

This is going to sound so weird but whenever I hear Blondie's "Heart of Glass", my memories go back to a fishing trip that consisted of my brother, myself and a friend of mine from junior high school on Centre Island which was a five or ten-minute ferry ride away from Toronto's harbour over Lake Ontario. "Heart of Glass" was playing all over the park speakers and I thought it was an odd musical accompaniment to the attempts of getting successful at the trout pond. So, it hasn't been the fragrance of cologne and tobacco at Studio 54 but the smell of fish and lake water that has been my sense memory of this hit song from January 1979. 

Still, I'm never going to confuse rainbow trout with the beautiful visage of Deborah Harry who was the vocalist behind "Heart of Glass", a song that I think mixed the disco and New Wave and has become one of my early music touchstones. It was the first time that I had heard of Blondie so I was surprised that "Heart of Glass" wasn't the debut single but something like the 10th single by the band according to their Wikipedia discography although it was first heard on their third album "Parallel Lines" from September 1978. That album cover, by the way, with Harry looking rather stern in front of her smiling band is pretty darn iconic to me.

"Heart of Glass" hit No. 1 in several countries including Canada and the United States and has even made it onto Rolling Stone's list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. 

So, according to Showa Pops, what was also coming out in January 1979 in Japan?

Hiroshi Madoka -- Musoubana （夢想花）(released in Nov. 1978 according to J-Wiki)

Mariko Takahashi -- Anata no Sora wo Tobitai　(あなたの空を翔びたい）(released in Nov. 1978 according to J-Wiki)

Alice -- Champion （チャンピオン）(released in Dec. 1978, according to J-Wiki)

Yu Hayami -- Yuuwaku Kousen Kura!（誘惑光線・クラッ!）

 

Maybe this could be the beginning of Japanese pop singers' Birthday Alley. I say this because a mere couple of days ago, it was Anri's（杏里）birthday so I celebrated with an article for her, and now today, I find out from someone I'm following on Twitter that it's the birthday today of 80s aidoru Yu Hayami（早見優）! Although Japanese music genre-wise, Anri and Hayami may inhabit different areas, both of them have been known for their sunny summery ways.

Well, then, for today, I offer you her 9th single from March 1984, "Yuuwaku Kousen Kura!" (Temptation Beam Flash!) which is this slightly disco-ish and nimble tune about a girl trying to nudge her boyfriend into a higher level of the relationship. The dynamic duo of lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）came up with this very Hayami-esque number which won an award in the Pop division for the 3rd Annual Megalopolis Kayo Festival（メガロポリス歌謡祭） sponsored by TV Tokyo. Plus, Hayami sang it for her second appearance at NHK's Kohaku Utagassen as the top batter for the Red Team. The arrangement was handled by Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）.

"Yuuwaku Kousen Kura!" tied with her arguably most famous song, "Natsu Iro no Nancy" (夏色のナンシー）, at No. 7 on Oricon as her highest-ranked single, and it finished 1984 as the 85th-ranked single. One last thing that I'll mention about the song is that the very last line, "Wakaru deshou? Ne ne ne"（わかるでしょう?ネッネッネッ）reminds me of a very famous catchphrase from the Monty Python gang.😁

Asagaya Romantics -- Dourotou（道路灯）

 

I recollect that I have put up this photo as an article thumbnail at least once before but just to remind folks, this is a view from my old apartment in Ichikawa one very snowy February day in 2010. Specifically, it's a view over the outside washing machine on my extremely narrow balcony. One observation that I've had about apartments and condos in Japan is that the corridors and stairwells are all exposed to the outside unlike in Canada and the United States where everything is interior. So, if you have some sort of hot pot party or the like in a Japanese apartment, most likely folks who want to get a smoke or get some fresh air will have to go out the front door and hang out there instead of squeezing onto the balcony.

And yet, I see the members of pop band Asagaya Romantics（阿佐ヶ谷ロマンティクス）happily enjoying life on a balcony of what looks like a pretty old apartment in the thumbnail image for the video above. Still, I think that it's a very appropriate shot of the guys because when I first introduced the band back in the summer of 2018 onto the pages of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I had been writing about a bunch of us meeting up at a student's apartment in the Tokyo neighbourhood of Asagaya. We didn't crowd out on her balcony, mind you, but it was still a very homey and comfy visit so it felt like how the band looks like in the thumbnail.

By the way, the video here represents a track from the band's January 2017 album "Machi no Iro"（街の色...Colour of the Street）, "Dourotou" (Street Lights) created by Asagaya Romantics guitarist Tomoya Kishi（貴志朋矢）. I'm not sure of the lyrics but taking into consideration the title and the laidback nighttime melody, I could imagine that it is about a very pleasant evening ride in the convertible on the highway. Maybe it could be something that belongs in the city, but the arrangement doesn't quite sound Neo City Pop...just very dreamy pop aside from perhaps Kishi's rock guitar taking us home.

It's been almost a decade since I left my Ichikawa 2K and I still miss her from time to time, especially when I had friends over for dinner. Early on in my stay there, I even had as many as 20 people squeezed into the living room for that hot pot party, and yeah, it included a few guys who simply needed to get that smoke outside my front door.

Platinum 900 -- Mercedes Life

 

Back on Christmas Day last year, KKP contributor HRLE92 introduced himself and one of the underrated and overlooked urban contemporary bands, Platinum 900, and from listening to some of their material, I do feel that I should have rated and looked at them if given the chance. Alas, I had never even heard of these guys during my time in Japan between 1994 and 2011.

HRLE92 mentioned the album "Concerto für Jazz, Disco and Bossa Nova", Platinum 900's sophomore effort from 1998, and even one of the tracks in there, "Mercedes Life". Written by Jon Miles and vocalist Naoko Sakata（坂田直子）with guitarist and bassist Kazuhiko Nishimura (西村一彦), and keyboardist Hiroshi Iihoshi (飯星裕史) handling the melody-making, "Mercedes Life" is one splendid automobile journey of velvety soul and some disco strings. Sakata especially sounds as if she had temporally transported herself from a New York record studio in the early 1970s with that groovalicious voice of hers. Satoshi Nakamura（中村哲）, a saxophonist and keyboardist who's had a working relationship with the Anzen Band（あんぜんバンド）, took care of the arrangement with those strings and the flute.

"Mercedes Life" is the ideal mix of those 70s sunny soul nights and the Japanese music industry's late 90s/early 00s' foray into its own R&B filled with that disco, soul and funk which invited singers such as Misia, Bird and Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）. I gave the analogy above about the song being a wonderful car ride. Well, obviously, that conveyance just has to be that titular Mercedes-Benz driving through the highways and byways of Tokyo. Moreover, although the Bubble Era had burst itself onto the ash heap of history almost a decade previously, "Mercedes Life" brings that sort of hedonistic mood back in a cool way. But in this case, the setting is not a chaotic Julianas dance club but a far more chill lounge several floors up in a Roppongi skyscraper.

Rajie -- Natsu ~ Hachi-gatsu no Memoir（夏～8月のメモワール）

 

September has entered rather peacefully here. It's sunny and unlike several of the past days, it actually feels cooler and drier (although I've still got the fan going in my room). Knowing Toronto, in a few weeks, we may actually be hearing frost warnings at night. Sorry to my heat-loving fellow Torontonians...I don't mean to jinx anything.

Anyways, I was trying to see if there were any other September-themed kayo out there but I did discover this song by Rajie titled "Natsu ~ Hachi-gatsu no Memoir" (Summer ~ Memoirs of August) that seems to fit the bill whenever I write anything at "Kayo Kyoku Plus" on September 1st. It's fairly contemplative with the singer's breathy vocals and that languid piano. "Natsu" does feel like the summer has suddenly gone into hibernation again and it's just a matter of time before the leaves begin changing colour. Uploader purplesound was quite accurate when he describes it as a Dream Pop number. Maybe it's a little like Fashion Music as sung by folks like Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）and Asami Kado（門あさ美）.

The song comes from Rajie's October 1984 album "Gogo no Relief"（午後のレリーフ...Afternoon Relief） with lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composer Takashi Sato（佐藤隆）working on it, and City Pop master Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）arranging everything. 

Crest Four Singers/Minako Yoshida -- Rum wa O-Suki?（ラムはお好き？）

 

Although among my friends, I'm most likely the most teetotaling member of the group, I have enjoyed the odd beer, sake and shochu both here and in Japan. I even have a soft spot in my heart for the sweeter liqueurs such as cassis, Kahlua and rum. That last one is something that I've had in cake and Coke along with my cocktails.🍹

Therefore, if anyone in Japan asks me something like "Rum wa o-suki?", I can nod my head to a certain reluctant degree...in moderation, of course. Speaking of which, I have this song by the jazz vocal group Crest Four Singers with the very same title. "Rum wa O-Suki?" (Do You Like Rum?) is the B-side to the quintet's 1979 single "Hey! Mister Smile".

I've already posted up one other song by Crest Four Singers, the Big Band-friendly "Sun Shade"（サン・シェイド）and I found out about that one through the YouTube channel, New J Channel. Lightning has apparently struck twice since I've just discovered "Rum wa O-Suki?" in the same fashion, so my thanks to the channel administrators. In any case, compared to that first Crest Four Singers song, "Rum wa O-Suki?" is definitely another tune made in the mold of The Manhattan Transfer, specifically in the delivery by the group, but the Big Band feeling has been taken down for this particular song and there's a bit more in the way of cute little contemporary bleeps and bloops of synthesizers accompanying the laidback melody, strangely enough.

Well, the reason behind this is that two of the songwriters happen to be straight from technopop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra. Yup, Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）and Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）helped arranged the latter's music, and another surprise is that J-R&B queen Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）provided the lyrics. I gather that because of the title, "Rum wa O-Suki?" may be a second cousin to another booze-themed title a little over a decade down the line, "Whiskey ga O-Suki deshou?" (ウィスキーが、お好きでしょ）, which is a torch song by enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）.

Going further down the rabbit hole, I've discovered that Crest Four Singers' version is actually a cover of the Yoshida original from her March 1976 album "Flapper". The same jazziness is there but without the synthpop aspect. Instead, the original has a taste of Hosono's Tin Pan Alley sound. I actually feel like that I am sitting in a Tiki bar as I listen to it, although I hope that Yoshida was able to get rid of that over-insistent bartender at the end.

Akiko Futaba -- Sayonara Rumba（さよならルンバ）

 

Over the past several weeks that the sports events of the Tokyo Olympics, the Paralympics and the annual high school baseball tournament at Koshien Stadium in between, there have been a lot of cancellations on the NHK schedule. That includes the kayo program "Uta Con"（うたコン）, and though I haven't exactly curled up into a traumatized fetal position because of its weeks-long disappearance from the television, I'm hoping that it will be returning fairly soon. It would be nice to get some of the old music back into my ears again.

Well, until that happens, there is always YouTube. And indeed, I did find an oldie but a goodie from November 1948. "Sayonara Rumba" (The Goodbye Rumba) was performed by Akiko Futaba（二葉あき子）as one of her string of hits in the immediate postwar period along with her cover of "Yoru no Platform"（夜のプラットホーム）.

Written by Ko Fujiura（藤浦洸）and composed by Takio Niki（仁木他喜雄）, "Sayonara Rumba" has that flavour of that swanky Latin nightclub in a snazzy area of Tokyo such as Ginza (although I'm not sure how ritzy the neighbourhood was in 1948 so relatively soon after the war). In addition, judging from Fujiura's lyrics about fondly but adamantly saying goodbye in some nighttime establishment after a torrid love affair, perhaps "Sayonara Rumba" can also be considered to be a predecessor of the typical Mood Kayo. Simply have that final dance on the floor before fading away in two directions.

Covers of "Sayonara Rumba" have been done over the years by singers such as Mitsuko Nakamura（中村美津子）and Machiko Watanabe（渡辺真知子）below.

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