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.
Early 80s aidoru pop, or Kayo Kyoku in general, sipped
a lot from the mid-to-late 70s disco sound that, after 1980, went downhill in popularity in the
United States.
“Melancholy Festa”, for example, is essentially a
disco song, but embedded in tragedy. In other words, the arrangement is safe
disco in its purest form, but we're talking about Akina Nakamori (中森明菜) here, so the overall sound is still drenched in a
painful sadness.
As part of an inside joke I usually do with a fellow
friend, which is also an avid J-Pop fan and listener, this song would be
perfect if played in what we affectionatelly call Akina's cabaret: a decadent basement full of liquour smell and cigarette smoke where Akina would
perfectly shine as the true dramatic and sensual diva in front of a questionable audience.
In this case, though, since she was still a very young
lady at the time, her tone, although already distinct enough if compared to the usual aidoru affair, was
far from the deep, powerful and vibrato driven voice we would get used to from 1986 onwards.
“Melancholy Festa” was included in the album “ANNIVERSARY”,
which was released in May 1984 and reached #1 on the Oricon charts, selling
476,000 copies. Lyrics were written by Etsuko Kisugi (来生えつこ), while music was composed by Juichi Sase (佐瀬寿一). As for the arrangement, Mitsuo Hagita (萩田光雄) was the responsible.
Some Canadiana for you on this Tuesday night. "Hinterland: Who's Who" was the classic CBC one-minute vignette on the myriad forms of wildlife in the Great White North beginning with a haunting flute sequence followed by a soothing narrator talking about the animal selected. It was definitely one of my childhood memories and it often preceded some of the other beloved kids' shows such as "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Dressup".
That one minute on the beaver was the closest that I could get to segueing into Necry Talkie's（ネクライトーキー）"Yume Miru Dobunezumi" (Dreaming Brown Rat). And here I thought that the band Qaijff was going to be the one with the unusual name this week that got onto KKP. Perhaps that was indeed hasty thinking since I haven't been able to find out as of yet the origins of this unusual name for this outfit from Osaka.
Necry Talkie has been described on Wikipedia and elsewhere as this pop-punk band which began in 2017, and the blog "Good Morning Aomori" has a good article providing a comprehensive report on the band and their albums. All I can do, though, being a newbie to Necry Talkie is first introduce who the members are: vocalist/guitarist Mossa（もっさ）, guitarist Asahi（朝日）, bassist Fujita（藤田）, drummer Kazuma Takei（カズマ・タケイ）and keyboardist Ayaka Nakamura（中村郁香）. Then, I can introduce one of the tracks from their January 2020 first major album"ZOO!!", "Yume Miru Dobunezumi".
I've gotten the impression that Necry Talkie can go from sweet to raunchy through their discography. However, I think "Yume Miru Dobunezumi" is more on the sweet side of things with Mossa's high and cute vocals and the arrangement which includes a comical quality and some hints of what I used to remember from the bohemian band Jitterin' Jinn. I can even pick up on a bit of alternative in there as well. Asahi took care of both words and music for this one. "ZOO!!" itself peaked at No. 17 on Oricon.
I could do with a bit of happy right now (for example, that slice of apple cobbler a la mode from The Hard Rock Café in Roppongi above) since I'm feeling downright exhausted at the moment. From early this morning, I had to run the gauntlet with a family member through public transit, rush hour and the worst street in Canada to get to a clinic so that he could get his eye issues resolved. Plus, I had to be on hand as an interpreter in an area that I'm not exactly well versed in: ophthalmology. Anyways, we're home now and the stress has taken a lot out of me so I really ought to be turning in early tonight.
Our enka specialist, Noelle Tham, has been doing the heavy lifting when it comes to the Kiyoshi Hikawa（氷川きよし）file on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". In fact, the last time that I covered one of his songs on my own was back in February 2018 with "Shoubu no Hanamichi"（勝負の花道）. And that's about as jaunty enka as one can get.
However in the last few years, Hikawa has been exploring other genres including hard rock and pop, and it is with this latter genre that I label his latest single, "Happy!", which actually got released today in Japan. Specifically, it is the Enka prince's 37th single.
I first heard "Happy!" on last week's episode of "Hayauta"（はやうた）from NHK and it's as poppy as "Shoubu no Hanamichi" is as enka as all get out. Written by Kunihiko Sugii（杉井邦彦）and composed/arranged by Yuuichi "Masa" Nonaka（野中“まさ”雄一）, along with the plenty of happy vibes, "Happy!" has also got a good dollop of samba to get folks' energies up. The official music video is also very happy with special guest star, actress and former Takarazuka Revue member Yuuki Amami（天海祐希）, wordlessly having some fun cutting up the rug beside Hikawa.
And that is because Amami will be starring in the comedy-drama motion picture "Rougo no Shikin ga Arimasen!"（老後の資金がありません!...We Don't Have Any Retirement Savings!）which is starting its run on October 30th. It deals with a housewife having to stop the financial bleeding from her supposedly happy home due to various causes. "Happy!" will be the theme song for the flick.
In October 2018, Kevin Lozano of the website "Pitchfork" contributed a fine article ostensibly on Haruomi Hosono's（細野晴臣）debut solo album "Hosono House" (May 1973) but actually delving into that album and some of his others from the 1970s and 1980s. His point was that there was more to Hosono than just being a part of the technopop pioneers in Yellow Magic Orchestra (of course, YMO in itself was an incredible achievement and influence on music). Since then, with interest in overall Japanese popular music of the past building thanks to the "Plastic Love" phenomenon around the time that Lozano's article was publicized, perhaps the author's wishes may finally be getting realized with listeners discovering Hosono's own music-laden past with Happy End（はっぴいえんど）and Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）in the early to mid-1970s which was far away from the technopop.
The reason I mention all this is that I wanted to cover Hosono's first track on "Hosono House", the quiet but happy-go-lucky "Rock-a-Bye My Baby". When I first laid eyes on the title, I'd assumed wrongly that Hosono was covering some old American pop song from the 1960s but this was actually his own creation on all fronts. In fact, "Rock-a-Bye My Baby", even listening to the LP or CD, sounds like an intimate experience as if Japan's music legend invited himself into your abode to play this on the acoustic guitar and you're happy that he did so. I imagine that Hosono's lyrics are all about enjoying time with that significant other on a bright sunshine-y day in the park with a local diner awaiting your patronage (meat loaf and mashed potatoes for me, thanks!).
Simply my opinion here but because this was Hosono's solo debut after breaking up with rock band Happy End, I think that he wanted to start off the album with something that was very different from that rock sound which he had created with his bandmates. Therefore, Hosono came up with this simple bluesy guitar-driven ditty about a happy day outside. Lozano did mention in his article that Hosono had wanted to come up with "virtual American country" for "Hosono House", and there is something very old country genteel about "Rock-a-Bye My Baby" as if this should be listened to while sipping a Mint Julep in a rocking chair on a wooden stoop. At the same time, there is something about that basic rhythm which had me remembering the theme song for the 1960s"The Dick Van Dyke Show" and a standard that was often played in a number of Warner Bros. cartoons.
In 1975, a couple of Hosono's contemporaries covered "Rock-a-Bye My Baby". One singer was Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）who recorded her version as the final track on "MINAKO", her 2nd studio album from October of that year. Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）arranged the song as a breezy and groovier take with a hint of bossa nova. Although the YouTube video of the actual recorded version exists here, I wanted to include the live version above since it's difficult to find an early Yoshida performance.
Folk singer-songwriter Kyozo Nishioka（西岡恭蔵）did his own cover of the song earlier in July 1975 as the title track of "Rock-a-Bye My Baby" the album. I think the arrangement is similar to the Hosono original although there is a bit of that breeze in Nishioka's version as well. Incidentally, that original was used as the ending theme for the 2015 second season of the anime "Atashin'chi"（あたしンち...My Home） focused on the antics of a family in Tokyo (although despite the thumbnail image of the Tachibanas above, the Nishioka cover is being played).
To wrap up, here is Nishioka on television to sing "Rock-a-Bye My Baby". For some reason, the credits which pop up at the beginning of his performance have Nishioka behind words and music. Hopefully, Harry didn't take that personally.
Belated birthday by almost a couple of months, but Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）did turn 58 on July 24th this year so all the best to her and hers.
The more I delve into this early 1980s aidoru'salbums such as "Summer Delicacy", "Daydream Coast" and "9 1/2", the more I'm convinced that Kawai was just as much a City Pop-influenced teen idol as Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）. My previous article regarding the Osaka native was the relaxing "Home Again, Alone Again" from "Daydream Coast" and before that was "Natsu no Hi no Koi"（夏の日の恋）, a more City Pop take on Junko Yagami's（八神純子）straight-on Latin original.
Like "Natsu no Hi no Koi", "Machikado" (Street Corner) is a track on the 1984 "Summer Delicacy", and both of them are A-siders on the original LP. As such, they were both written by Masao Urino（売野政男）and composed by Yagami. However, arrangement for "Machikado" was handled by Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）. The song is quite the interesting track in that I feel that it straddles that dividing line between City Pop/J-AOR and aidoru exactly. The rhythm has that urban vibe but the instrumentation with the strings and the keyboards still comes across as being very aidoru-friendly twinkly. The overall effect is happy and breezy, just the thing to feel before summer technically goes away in the middle of next week.
I gather that the powers-that-be or even the singer herself came to the conclusion that she and alcoholic beverages make a standout pair, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all.
With me being a casual jazz fan, Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）, who is usually an enka singer, stood out for her torch song "Whiskey ga O-Suki deshou?" (ウィスキーが、お好きでしょ）. I don't touch the stuff myself but even on ordering a Bailey's Irish Cream, I would probably end up having the song get into my head.
That particular single of Ishikawa was released back in 1990 and variations of it have made it onto Suntory Whiskey commercials since then. Not sure if the wine industry has been given the Ishikawa touch, but in June 2017, the veteran singer came out with her 115th single, "Shunkashuutou"（春夏秋冬...The Four Seasons） whose coupling song was "Wine wo Erande"(You Choose the Wine). This time, Ishikawa is going for not only a different alcoholic libation but a slight shift in genres: bossa jazz, always welcome music in my books.
The interesting observation here is that "Wine wo Erande" was written, composed and arranged by none other than Senri Oe（大江千里）, who began his career in the 1980s as the cutest boy wonder pop singer-songwriter but has since gone full bore into jazz. And with "Wine wo Erande", he has concocted quite the glass of velvety Brazilian with some robust class, hints of whirlwind romance and a soupcon of tease. On that note, I will end my sommelier analogy.
I was going to end it right there but then by happenstance, I came across this English-language interview with Oe about going from pop to jazz.
Heck of a time to consider putting up any song having to do with snow when we're not even out of summer yet. Torontonians would mightily groan at the thought of the white stuff right now even with the promise of Christmas.
And yet, here I am with this song titled "snow traveler". Frankly speaking, I was first interested in including it in the blog because of the originating band's name: Qaijff（クアイフ）. For those who can't read katakana, it is pronounced as "ku-eye-fu", and according to the J-Wiki article for this pop-rock group based in the city of Nagoya, the name came about because bassist and songwriter Akihiko Uchida（内田旭彦）was a fan of the Dutch soccer player and coach Johan Cruyff. Uchida was going to go with the band name of Cruijff but then opted to further distinguish it by altering it into Qaijff. Officially beginning from 2012, the band switched from the romaji to the katakana form when they made their major debut in 2017 but then returned to its original form earlier this year.
In addition to Uchida, the band also consists of vocalist, keyboardist and songwriter Ayano Mori（森彩乃）and drummer Yukihiro Miwa（三輪幸宏）. Miwa left Qaijff in April 2021 which sparked the aforementioned name reversion. All three members have their favourite bands and singers who include Bjork, Radiohead, The Blue Hearts and Limp Bizkit.
Getting back to "snow traveler", this was Qaijff's 4th single and first EP released in December 2016. I don't think that this was ever meant to be an Xmas tune despite the release date and the inclusion of "snow", but there's something in the keyboards that kinda hint at the coming of the Holidays. As well, there's also Mori's voice which reminds me of the vocals of Miyuki Hatakeyama（畠山美由紀）. Overall, the arrangement of "snow traveler" made me wonder whether the song had ever been tied up with an anime. I mean, there's that pop-rock sound which seems to exist in a lot of uptempo anison over the past decade.
It's not something that I've seen before, but I also found this video of Qaijff actually reviewing their own music video for "snow traveler". Unfortunately, it's all in Japanese without any English subtitles, but they do talk about that walking machine that they were using during filming.
