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.
Just before Xmas last year, I brought singer-songwriter Masahito Arai（新井正人）onto "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for the first time with his "Fuyu no Photograph"（冬のフォトグラフ）from his first album as a solo artist titled "MASAHITO ARAI" from October 1987.
That song kinda straddled the line nicely between City Pop and straight-ahead pop, and the same can be said for another track from "MASAHITO ARAI", "Dance, Dance, Dance". Written and composed by Arai himself, it's a song that keeps within a certain range in terms of beat but it still has its mellower and dynamic parts. There's also an electric guitar which periodically enters the soundscape to add some more coolness to the proceedings.
Still don't know who did the appealing cover for the album but it's still cute and stylish at the same time. It reminds me a little of the main street of Unionville which is a scenic community north of Toronto; the area is also popular during the Holidays.
With all of the craziness out there these days, including last night's Super Bowl, people may be forgiven if they forgot today is Valentine's Day. Hopefully though, folks are celebrating with romantic dinners, movies and chocolates.
Ah, speaking of the Super Bowl, there will always be the trailers for upcoming blockbuster movies during the broadcast, and along with the ad for the upcoming "Moon Knight", "Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" was unveiled for everyone's perusal and it basically exploded one Marvel-loving corner of the Internet due to it being more chock-filled with stuff and goodness than a really loaded bowl of minestrone. Well, I guess that May 6th can't come soon enough.
There was also sad news from entertainment. Ivan Reitman, the director of movies including "Ghostbusters", "Dave" and "Stripes" passed away over the weekend at the age of 75. Growing up in Toronto, he'd produced and directed so many flicks, but "Ghostbusters" will always be the movie that I identify him with. It wasn't a perfect movie by any means but it still had plenty of heart among the characters and the situation, and there's a part of me who would love to get a Ghostbuster uniform with a proton pack.
In any case, getting back to the matter at hand, I wanted to start this week off with a special Valentine's Day issue of Reminiscings of Youth since although I have paid tribute to the observed holiday in years past with kayo, I don't quite remember whether I actually recognized February 14th with a ROY article.
Now, in all honesty, I never bought the album "Born to Love", a July 1983 release with Roberta Flack and Peabo Bryson recording duets, but I know two of the tracks there because they were on heavy rotation on the radio back when I was in high school. One is "Tonight I Celebrate My Love" which was released as a single in that same year. Though I am about as romantic as a piece of gneiss during a blizzard, I retain a sweet spot for the romantic ballads of the 1980s filtered through soul and Quiet Storm, and that includes "Tonight I Celebrate My Love" which was created by Gerry Goffin and Michael Masser. Will always love a good Fender Rhodes in this way. It did pretty well on the charts as well, placing in at No. 4 on Canada's RPM and the same rank on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart.
Another track that I remember is "You're Lookin' Like Love To Me" which, as I mentioned above, is a song by Flack and Bryson that I heard frequently on the FM band at stations like CHFI here in Toronto. Bob Gaudio, Bob Crewe and Jerry Corbetta were responsible for this song which is also filled with lots of juicy love but has a bit more pop in its step. With both songs, the vocals are just top-notch and listening to them again has brought back a lot of nostalgia and memories of cramming away for examinations and the like.
Going to the Oricon chart for July 1983, what were the Top 3 singles back then?
Over the past few days, I've been hearing that the Kanto region including Tokyo was going to get walloped by the white stuff, but it looks like the megalopolis may have avoided a huge snowy bullet according to NHK's report today. I've been informed that Tokyo used to get snow more frequently in decades past, but during my time there, wintry precipitation was quite rare, and in amounts far smaller than what I'm accustomed to here in my native Toronto, even a couple of centimetres of snow would be enough to have Japan Railways go to Red Alert.
As such, I'd been thinking about putting up a meteorologically appropriate song on KKP tonight but I realized that I'd already put up Cheuni's（チェウニ）"Tokyo ni Yuki ga Furu"（Tokyoに雪が降る）a few years ago, and then when I settled for anything on Tokyo, I also found out that I'd also already posted "Tokyo"（東京）by the folk trio My Pace（マイ・ペース）back in 2018.
Well, then I decided to punch into the Yahoo.jp search engine anything to do with Tokyo-based kayo. I did receive a number of results, one of which was Haruo Oka's（岡晴夫）"Tokyo Chanson". Good choice there, too, since Oka has provided some songs regarding my old stomping grounds such as "Tokyo no Hanauri Musume"（東京の花売娘）and "Tokyo no Sora, Aoi Sora"（東京の空青い空）.
Not sure whether I would place "Tokyo Chanson", which was an October 1947 single by Oka, as an actual chanson, although admittedly my knowledge on the melodic style of the French musical genre is extremely limited. It is a gently upbeat kayo though as Oka sings about seeing the girl of his dreams at some stage play for the first time. I'm wondering whether he was watching a Takarazuka Revue performance since I believe the nationally famous all-women troupe has come up with musicals set in France, and the title is, after all, "Tokyo Chanson". Anyways, Shizuo Yoshikawa（吉川静夫）and Gento Uehara（上原げんと）were responsible for words and music respectively. Additionally, I also hope that Kanto residents are doing their best with the storm; as someone who has also gone through one of the Top 10 most powerful snowstorms in Toronto's history almost a month ago, I do feel their pain.
One old Japanese comedy-variety show that I never really got to watch was "Oretachi Hyokinzoku"（オレたちひょうきん族...We Are The Wild and Crazy Guys） starring Beat Takeshi（ビートたけし）and Sanma Akashiya（明石家さんま）among other comic up-and-comers who have all become decades-long presences on television. I watched far more of The Drifters'（ザ・ドリフターズ）"Hachi-ji da yo! Zen'in Shuugo"（8時だよ全員集合）which was the big comedy program in the 1970s but "Oretachi Hyokinzoku" was the successful upstart going into the 1980s.
The rotating series of ending themes for "Oretachi Hyokinzoku" also gained its share of fame since it included EPO's "Downtown" and "Doyou no Yoru wa Paradise" (土曜の夜はパラダイス）along with Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）"Doyoubi no Koibito"（土曜日の恋人）. Apparently, one of the loose guidelines for a song to be used on the show was that it should have some mention of Saturday in the title or in the lyrics because "Oretachi Hyokinzoku" was televised on that very night. All three songs mentioned were able to fulfill that guideline.
Anyways, according to singer-songwriter Asako Toki's（土岐麻子）website, Toki herself was a fan of "Oretachi Hyokinzoku" and those ending themes. In fact, she wondered where those adults went for fun after hearing the tunes by EPO and Tats. Certainly, I don't blame her...I've also wondered about the night life in good ol' Tokyo on listening to "Downtown" and "Doyoubi no Koibito" for the first time, and happily, I did get to indulge during my time in the megalopolis very often.
Well, for her February 2021 album"HOME TOWN ～Cover Songs～", she was able to come up with a track that paid some tribute to those cheerful uptempo ending themes back in the pre-Bubble Era days and nights. Titled "Rendez-vous in '58", Toki paired up with comedian, TV personality and lyricist Bakarhythm（バカリズム）to perform this just-as-cheerful and uptempo song hearkening back to the feelings of "Downtown" and "Doyoubi no Koibito". To keep things within the family, so to speak, EPO herself came up with the melody while Toki provided the lyrics about a couple imagining flying throughout time and space to settings such as Ibiza in 1985 and Newport in 1958 after having their real date cancelled due to a storm.
As the title for that 2021 album states, "HOME TOWN" is an album of covers, and it turns out that Toki first recorded "Rendez-vous in '58" as a solo final track for her June 2013 album"Heartbreakin'". Either way, it's a stylish contemporary version of the good ol' bright-lights-big-city and painting-the-town-red standards of long ago.
It's been a couple of months but I'm finally covering the last LP in the original 3-LP album representing the epic "V" by Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）. Took care of the last article back in December so from today, I'm taking care of the "Harmony" LP starting with Side 1. However, I have to say that I already covered the first half of this side consisting of "Gin'iro no Pistol"（銀色のピストル）, "Namida wo Tometa Mama"(涙をとめたまま) and "Kon'ya Futari de"(今夜ふたりで) , with the latter two showing up on the very first article for "V" all the way back in August 2012. And since the first half of Side 1 is all together, I can summarize that half as being cool, collected, jazzy & bluesy, and very City. Once again, it was Goro Matsui（松井五郎）and Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）behind words and music respectively.
The overall theme continues with Track 4, "Ima Sugu ni Koi"（いますぐに恋...Love Now） which has one of the best rhythm tracks that I've ever heard on an Anzen Chitai song (try to imagine Tamaki cutting a rug on stage here). It starts out with some synthesized whimsy before listeners are taken downtown or uptown for a fantastical night out with a fellow who has fallen heads over heels for a woman with a high style of fashion and perhaps an ability to twirl men around her well-manicured finger. Some of the lyrics include "Hello my girl" and "Hello my love", but considering how hot the lad has it for the lass, Matsui should have also added "Hello NURSE!".
Next up is "Ano Music kara"（あのMusicから...From That Music） which is rock seductive and sultry. As much as the previous track was about a fellow going nuts over a lady, this time, it's another guy who's gone gaga over a particular song. Tamaki's vocals go more growly here, and one wonders whether he and Matsui had wanted to create a sonic version of how Mick Jagger acts at his sexiest.
And with that guitar diddling at the end there, we are led to the final track and the second bluesy jazz piece on the side with "J no Blues"（Jのブルース...J's Blues）. Once again, Tamaki transforms his voice into whispery and breathy as he describes all that love turning into absolute lust for a woman. I'm always a sucker for a good jazz orchestra, and I usually need a cigarette for the afterglow after listening to this one.
One more side to go and the "V" project for KKP will be done.
Almost a year ago, HRLE92 put up an article detailing some of the side projects that sprouted from that quintessential City Pop/J-AORband of the 1980s, Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）. It was quite fascinating to find out about how individual members and small groupings fared on their own as the times went into the 1990s.
One of the new groups that HRLE92 described was D.O.M.E., otherwise known as Deconstructed OMEGA by Mints Entertainment, which had a couple of members of the original group, guitarist Shinji Takashima（髙島信二）and keyboardist Toshitsugu Nishihara（西原俊次）, join up with bassist Seiichi Bannai（坂内聖一）, drummer Michihisa Ikeda（池田通久）and vocalist Satoshi Mikami（三上哲）. Getting together in 1992, D.O.M.E. released a single in May titled "Megami-tachi ni Aeru Hi" (The Day That I Can Meet The Goddesses) which also was the first track on "DOME", their one and only album that came out a few weeks later.
"Megami-tachi ni Aeru Hi" starts off quietly almost as if representing a sunrise before the main melody by guitarist Takashima comes into play, something that has a faint echo of the mother group but also has some of that rollicking fervor that Omega Tribe's fellow summery band, TUBE, had in spades. Considering the times, Takashima's music was also reminiscent of the sound from another guitar band, DEEN, and interestingly enough, according to that part of the J-Wiki article for D.O.M.E., the composer would begin directing and producing at Being Inc. which represented bands such as the aforementioned DEEN, B'z and ZYYG. So I guess that this spinoff group was something like Omega Tribe with the Being sound.
Minako Ishikawa（石川美奈子）provided the lyrics for the song. As for vocalist Mikami, he has since become an actor and a seiyuu.
Happy weekend! Was slip-sliding all over the pavement this morning to get a newspaper because we've started out at thaw-friendly temperatures although we are dropping back to freezing from this afternoon. I'm particularly sensitive at my age about potentially falling down and breaking my hip.👴
As for the thumbnail, I've chosen a video about what Impressionism is all about. I've never been a huge purveyor of art so aside from the fact that this particular movement was from the 19th century, that's pretty much all I know.
The reason that I've gone for Impressionism is that I'm doing my second article on the eclectic duo INSHOW-HA（印象派）which does mean The Impressionists. Back in August last year, I discovered MICA and miu with their track "le:mon"（檸檬）from their 2017 album"INSHOW-HA wa Kimi ni Toikakeru"（印象派は君に問いかける...INSHOW-HA Would Like To Ask You a Question）.
Now, here is an even earlier song from their June 2013 first mini-album"Nietzsche", "SWAP". It's another catchy number by them and the video once more leaves quite an impression as MICA and miu pop up as nifty computer graphics supermodels doing the runway walk toward us. The techno side this time is a bit more muted aside from the ladies' modulated vocals, but no complaints about the arrangements, especially when the drum n' bass kick in at around 2:22.
