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 a couple of days ago on Wednesday, I provided Part 1 of The Works of Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）and there I included one of his brief projects which was the band MASH with their variety of City Pop and AOR.
Well, it was just the one 1981 album for MASH, titled "MASH", so I'm bringing over another track called "Poreus". Composed by Naoya Matsuoka（松岡直也）, who was the co-keyboardist alongside his Padawan Shimizu, and written by Yumi Kojima（児島由美）, "Poreus" is more on the West Coast rocking AOR side of things with Yumi Murata（村田有美）behind the mike.
To be honest, I had no idea what "Poreus" meant so looking up the Cambridge Dictionary, I found out that it is the Dutch word for "porous". Not sure whether there's anything about liquid being allowed to pass through in the creation of the song, but then again, Matsuoka and Kojima may have just come up with the name out of the air rather than liquid.
Welcome once again to the regular edition of Reminiscings of Youth. Tonight, going back to my teen years of music exploration, we go for some Canadiana once more.
Aside from some MTV love for one of its music videos as the first of its kind from a Canadian indies label to get played on the American music channel, the Toronto New Wave band Blue Peter didn't get a whole lot of fame outside of Canada, although according to its Wikipedia page, vocalist Paul Humphrey and his band opened for some of the globally-known groups such as The Police and Simple Minds.
That acclaimed music video was for "Don't Walk Past" which was a track from Blue Peter's 1983 album"Falling". Not only was the song, which was created by guitarist Chris Wardman, catchy as all heck for the jangly guitar riff, the rolling piano in the bridge, the wailing synths and the percolating urgency of the beat, the video had mighty atmospheric style. I later discovered that it had been inspired by "Blade Runner", so I can now see some of that futuristic sheen on the Film Noir settings and fashion. It would be the second example of music on KKP that got its inspiration from the cult classic alongside Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）"TATTOO".
To be honest, "Don't Walk Past" is the only Blue Peter song that I've been attached to all these years, but what a song to be attached to. Sorry to say but sadly Humphrey passed away a couple of years ago at the age of 61 due to illness.
Wikipedia would only say that "Falling" had been released in 1983, so let's go with October that year as to see what was on top of the Oricon list.
Right at the end of last month, I posted a Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）article for her "Pearl Colour ni Yurete"（パールカラーにゆれて）single because I'd seen her performance of the song on an old episode of "Yoru no Hit Studio"（夜のヒットスタジオ）. Well, on the same episode, there was also 70s aidoru Rumiko Koyanagi（小柳ルミ子）.
Her contribution for the evening was her 20th single"Aitakute Kitaguni e" (I'm Heading to the North to See You) from September 1976. A pretty intrepid tune with a bouncy beat possibly reflecting the female protagonist's feelings and that train ride up north of Tokyo, the lass is quite assertive in asking the love of her life to take her up there with him (hometown or job transfer?) if there's room in the apartment. Oh, those Tokyo ladies!
"Aitakute Kitaguni e" was written by Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）and composed by Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）, formerly of the Group Sounds band Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets（ジャッキー吉川とブルー・コメッツ）and someone who would change his name to Daisuke Inoue（井上大輔）in 1981. The song would peak at No. 15 on Oricon and Koyanagi got her 6th invitation to come onto NHK's Kohaku Utagassen to sing it at the end of 1976.
I've got a relative and a friend having birthdays coming up in the next several days, and it just so happens that a few weeks ago on "Uta Con"（うたコン）that AKB48 used this song to celebrate enka singer Yoshimi Tendo's（天童よしみ）birthday.
Yup, AKB48 has sung on many themes and it looks like birthdays are no exception. "Namida Surprise!"(Tearful Surprise!) was the group's June 24th 2009 maxi-single as written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）. Akimoto was really straight with the lyrics as they completely describe a young girl's classmates giving her one heck of a surprise by holding a birthday party for her in the school gym.
According to the J-Wiki article on the song, "Namida Surprise!" first went on sale on the same day that Rie Kitahara（北原里英）, who had been part of the group at the time, was celebrating her 18th birthday. Incidentally, June 24th is also a birthday for the Lionel Messi and Japanese singer LiSA. It ended up hitting No. 2 on Oricon and finished the year as the 39th-ranked single, going Gold. "Namida Surprise!" was also included on AKB48's second BEST compilation, "Kamikyoku-tachi"（神曲たち...Masterpieces）, which was released in April 2010 to a No. 1 ranking on the weeklies and then a No. 12 yearly ranking. The song was also performed on the 2009 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen.
Probably when this song was released by gregarious instrumental producer Nash Music Library in 2021, a lot of people were hoping for the day when good clear air could be inhaled again without a mask, although as I recollect, I was already breathing free by the end of the year.
In any case, this is "Clear Air" by NML from the "Brand New Day" collection, and with the tinkling piano, it really does sound like the clear air from a brand new day of hope and possibility. Nowadays, with the seasons changing and the air getting fresher, the song is an appropriate one for breathing in some of that chill nitrogen-oxygen mix with a snap. Although we had a stifling summery week to begin October here in Toronto, this past week has been very autumnal.
Writing the blog all these years have provided a lot of revelations, one being that even during the late 1970s and early 1980s, technopop wasn't all Yellow Magic Orchestra. Whether it be the individual members doing their own thing such as Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）helping out the duo Testpattern, other genres adopting some of those synthesizers such as aidoru music, and wholly separate technopop bands such as Hikashu（ヒカシュー）and Playtechs providing their own different spin, fans back then were able to find these enterprising groups and fans now are unearthing them once more.
Regular KKP commenter YMOfan04 gave me a short list a few days ago on some other recommended technopop groups. One, Sympathy Nervous, had the obscure label put next to it. Of course, that meant a challenge that I had to tackle. Fortunately though, it wasn't too difficult to find a song by this project which was started in 1979 by Yoshifumi Niinuma（新沼好文）. His first album in 1980, "Automaticism" includes the track "Polaroid".
Intrepid and playful at the same time, "Polaroid" doesn't have me think of old-style cameras; instead, I actually get images of a mole digging its darndest underground all over the backyard with no intended goal. The voyage of tunneling is its own reward. Applying those minimalist synths and the vocoder voice gives those shadings of potential thrills and chills. Does the mole find a nice juicy tuber for lunch or does it encounter a terrifying nest of angry ants?
From what I've read so far about his biography via the website Minimal Wave, Niinuma was born in 1955 and was influenced by classical music and Krautrock. Kinda like the City Pop band Presents which I wrote about late last year, his music was produced at home with Niinuma himself creating some of the equipment necessary. Sadly though, a lot of his stored material and equipment were washed away in the massive tsunami that struck the Pacific coast of Japan in March 2011 although by a great stroke of luck, he had passed over the audio masters to Minimal Wave beforehand. "Polaroid" was included as part of a popular 2011 compilation titled "The Hidden Tapes" that has gotten a reissue this year.
Being only a couple of months away from his 64th birthday in December, let me wish Nobuyuki Shimizu a very early Happy Birthday. My, he really cut a dapper figure on the cover of his sophomore solo album"Anything Goes" in 1982. It's been a long while since I posted a Creator article on the blog, and as I noted in Yasuhiro Abe's（安部恭弘）"Kanojo ni Dry na Martini wo"（彼女にドライなマティーニを）last Friday, I figured that Shimizu needed to get his due here soon.
The Tokyo-born Shimizu has had plenty of mentions on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" over the years. It's no surprise since he's not only a musician on the keyboards (main), guitar, bass and drums, having begun in the 1970s, but he has been a composer and an arranger since the 1980s. His connections with other figures in the Japanese music industry began very early in his life with one of his classmates in piano lessons being future fellow musician and songwriter Yuuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）. Additionally, during his time at Tokyo Metropolitan Matsubara High School, he created a band with his kohai EPO, Yoshiyuki Sahashi（佐橋佳幸）and others after which he became a student of the late Latin jazz pianist Naoya Matsuoka（松岡直也）.
From my view, Shimizu has been one of the most prolific songwriters and arrangers in Japanese pop music, so I realized that I need to divvy up this tribute to him in two parts. The first half will go into his early days as a band man and then arranger entering the 1980s.
When I first wrote about Kinokuniya Band（紀ノ国屋バンド）in 2018, it was for this jazzy cover of Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"4AM" on their one-and-only album "Street Sensation" (1979). What I hadn't realized until later was that a 17-year-old Shimizu was a part of the band when they started up in 1976. Afterwards, he would also act as a support musician for Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, Ohnuki and Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and become a general session musician.
Shimizu may be primarily known as someone who supports other singers but he has put out his own discography beginning with his 1980"Corner Top" album. From that one is the romantic and urbane "Sayonara Mata Itsuka". Enjoy the sunset! 🌇
Shimizu was also involved in another short-lived if slightly flashier urban contemporary band project, MASH, with their own self-titled album in 1981. This time, he was matched up with his mentor Matsuoka, vocalist Yumi Murata（村田有美）and drummer "Ponta" Murakami（村上秀一）.
The way the J-Wiki timeline posits, Shimizu's arranging career started with his kohai and former school bandmate EPO's classic "Downtown", her debut single. A marked contrast from the original Sugar Babe New Music/rock tune from the mid-1970s, the half-decade-later cover has that added funkiness with synthesizers that make her "Downtown" a City Pop favourite and not a technopop tune. It really did sound like a welcome to bright and sparkly Tokyo of the 1980s, and for me, the template was set for Shimizu's arrangement style at least where this decade was concerned.
EPO was a frequent client of Shimizu but so was another City Pop veteran, Yasuhiro Abe, beginning with his own debut single"You Got It!". The fantastic and wailing electric guitar leading the way has struck me as another Shimizu trope during that time. Abe and Shimizu co-arranged this one.
Well, the aforementioned Abe and Ohnuki helped out on backup vocals for this Shimizu-arranged "U, Fu, Fu, Fu", a huge hit for EPO. The singer and the arranger collaborated to shape the melody into this bright and cheerful tune matching her style with the help of the keyboards and strings. The strings near the end really send listeners soaring into the ether.
Composer Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）and lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）created the most well-known song from the "Macross"（マクロス）anime franchise, and it was with Shimizu's arrangement that "Ai Oboeteimasuka?" became this epic aidoru-cute yet Zentraedi-destroying ballad. There wasn't anything urgent nor military about it at all; just a simple love song to the universe and a career-making song for Mari Iijima（飯島真理）.
