Miyuki Maki -- Indo no Michibata（インドの道ばた）

 

If there were a quintessential song to accompany a nice drive on the toll highways within Tokyo, I could pick this one. "Indo no Michibata" (Roadside in India) is a song by Miyuki Maki（牧ミユキ）which has been included in DJ Notoya's "Tokyo Glow" compilation from 2021 but was originally on Maki's March 1980 album "Love Knot". Written by Toyohisa Araki（荒木とよひさ）and composed by Takashi Miki（三木たかし）, "Indo no Michibata" has a nice and steady strut to it and I'll always welcome some tight horns to any City Pop song.

Maki began her career in 1968 with the song "Exotic Love"（エキゾチック・ラブ）under her real name of Tomoko Kinoshita（木下節子）. Now, the kanji for her given name has a variety of readings but considering that this site has stated that her nickname is Tommy, I'd probably say that Tomoko is the formal reading. According to Discogs, under her stage name of Miyuki Maki, the singer released a couple of singles and a couple of albums including "Love Knot". 

Along with the singing part of her career, Maki has also been a tarento, swimsuit model and thespian. She's also changed her names a few more times as she has been known as Yukie（優希枝）and Yukiko Oka（岡ゆき子）. Although I don't know when this particular webpage was composed, the information states that currently, Maki also has the name of Tomoko Ono（小野節子）in her capacity within movie production, songwriting and other activities. At this point, I'm not sure whether she's under JASRAC or the CIA.

Yasuhiro Abe -- Gosenshi（五線紙）

 

Last week on the regular Yutaka Kimura Speaks segment of Urban Contemporary Fridays, No. 29 was Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Gosenshi" which had been created by lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and singer-composer Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）for her 1980 album "Love Songs". It was a nice little doo-wop number matching Mariya's type of music back then.

Well, about 14 years later, Abe put out his album of covers, "Passage", in October 1994 with one of those tracks being a cover of "Gosenshi". This time, with Greg Adams arranging everything, Abe puts out his version with the backing of one smashing swing jazz orchestra. I was half-expecting an old NBC announcer to come on and say that the song was being performed at the top of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan. By the way, another song that I've covered from "Passage" is "Kuu na"（くーな）, a number that had been first performed by Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）.

Abe and songbird-songwriter EPO had apparently been on backup vocals for the Mariya original, so I gather that it was natural that the two of them would perform "Gosenshi". However, I don't think their version was officially put onto vinyl (which is too bad) but just put out there on a 1986 radio program. Coming in between the Takeuchi doo-wop original from 1980 and the all-out jazz Abe cover from 1994, this EPO-Abe performance is an amazing work that reminds me of some of the jazz vocal groups from the 1950s and 1960s such as Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Heck, I would be thrilled if the current incarnation of the Manhattan Transfer would be able to cover it someday.

ribbon -- Ai no Diary（愛のダイアリー）

 

To be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to the aidoru groups of the early 1990s although I do possess a few of the decade's "Myojo"（明星）magazine issues that had them within their pages such as ribbon and CoCo. These were the last groups before the so-called Aidoru Winter of that decade when it seemed as if the concept and genre of the female teenybopper singers had been thrown onto the pop music ash heap of history (it really only lasted a few years while the Komuro Steamroller took over the pop culture zeitgeist in the mid-90s before Morning Musume came onto the scene).

Marcos V. was the first KKP writer to bring the aidoru group ribbon onto our humble pages when he posted his thoughts on their 1990 2nd single "Soba ni Iru ne" (そばにいるね...I'm By Your Side) back in 2014. The trio consisted of Hiromi Nagasaku（永作博美）, Arimi Matsuno（松野有里巳）and Aiko Sato（佐藤愛子）and I think Nagasaku has been the member that has lasted the longest in Japanese show business since she has gone into acting and appearing on TV programs as a tarento. Above is a popular segment where Nagasaku goes through a rather intense foot massage.

I managed to find my own ribbon song titled "Ai no Diary" (Diary of Love) which is special from a few angles. For one thing, it's one of the group's entries that was never put onto a single or a regular album, only appearing up until that point in their June 1993 BEST compilation "More Delicious ribbon Best II" which peaked at No. 45 on Oricon. Another thing is that "Ai no Diary" had been written and composed by the late Shinji Tanimura（谷村新司）whose tribute I gave a few weeks ago on hearing about his death on October 8th.

Tanimura had created songs for many singers such as the classic "Ii Hi Tabidachi" (いい日旅立ち) for Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）all the way back in 1978, and my impression of him as a songwriter was that he made these elegant ballads that belonged in the New Adult Music realm of Japanese popular music; not enka but not totally pop either. So it was with some surprise to realize that he came up with "Ai no Diary" for an aidoru group like ribbon. Indeed, it's also unusual for the fact that the song is quite long at over 5 1/2 minutes. However, it's worth listening to under Hiroshi Shinkawa's（新川博）arrangement. It's an aidoru song of that decade, to be sure, with the synths and all that, but at the same time, I can actually hear Tanimura's voice (spiritually speaking) in the trio's vocals and his lyrics have that familiar reassuring pat on the shoulder for anyone who's going through tough times. It's almost like a "Subaru"（昴）for aidoru.

I was reading about ribbon's fate on J-Wiki and it seems as if unlike the cases with the other aidoru groups in that decade, Nagasaku and company didn't have any official finale in terms of their songs, albums or concerts or any announcements of a breakup. Basically, their end was characterized by a very long fade beginning at the end of 1993 with what would be their 13th and final single in October, "Yoake Nante Iranai"（夜明けなんていらない...What Do I Need a Sunrise For?）. J-Wiki would note the final album, concert and other appearances on TV and such in a timeline which would extend as far as 1994, maybe 1995 with the feeling that not even the members were sure when the end would be or whether it had already happened. 😦

Patsy Gallant -- From New York to L.A./Gilles Vigneault -- Mon Pays

From Good Free Photos

I once heard a song on the radio a number of times. The singer, Patsy Gallant, who hails from New Brunswick Canada, didn't become a major superstar but her single "From New York to L.A." did catch my ears as a fun and upbeat song about someone unshackling the chains that were keeping her down (including her now erstwhile beau) and making her dreams come true.

There seems to be some confusion on whether "From New York to L.A." was released in 1976 or 1977 but for the sake of argument, let's go with that first year. Listening to the song for the first time in years a few times now, I can now readily hear the disco element in there, but remembering it, I'd assumed that it was also an AOR tune. Whichever the genre though, it's dug so deep into my psyche as a cherished tune that when I wrote about Momoe Yamaguchi's（山口百恵）own dalliance with American AOR through her "Get Free" song, "From New York to L.A." was the first song that came to my mind.

The interesting thing that I found out just before typing this was that "From New York to L.A." is actually a reworking of a 1964 song "Mon Pays" (My Homeland) by Quebec singer-songwriter Gilles Vigneault who created it to pay tribute to his home province. The tone is much more different as the original sounds more like the showstopper piece in a musical. Incidentally, the English lyrics for the Gallant cover were written by Gene Williams and the song itself managed to peak at No. 6 in Canada.

The release time of the song gets even murkier since a month hasn't been ascertained either. But once again for the sake of argument, let's go with November 1976. What were two singles which were released in that specific month?

Hiromi Iwasaki -- Dream (ドリーム)

Pink Lady -- S.O.S.

Miharu Koshi -- Madonna（マドンナ）

 

Whether or not one has a taste for Miharu Koshi's vast and eclectic discography stretched over a variety of genres, one has to admit that she's kept things lively over the decades. It could be her early years from the late 1970s as a bubbly City Pop singer when her name was identified in kanji（越美晴）, and then going deep into the 1980s, she made a hard left into technopop, New Wave and maybe even avant-gardism with her name permanently changed into katakana（コシミハル）. Going into the 1990s, she took another turn into something perhaps melding French or European pop and technopop.

Koshi released her penultimate single in February 1991 titled "Madonna" which seems to be a quintessential example of that 1990s sound. Written by Koshi and Kikuhide Sekiguchi（関口菊日出）and composed by the singer, the first half of the song comes across as a happy-as-all-heck circus polka (led by her on the accordion) before the technology begins filtering in and then "Madonna" gets a little more introspective before the marching band returns. 

Before anyone might make even the slightest assumption that Koshi was paying some odd tribute to the Material Girl, "Madonna" was actually created for a Suntory brand of wine with that name. The commercial for the wine above, strangely enough, has Tomoyo Harada（原田知世）mouthing the song although I think there is enough of a vocal resemblance between her and Koshi that Harada could have possibly sung "Madonna" on her own. The song was also placed in her 1991 10th album "Chichi to Pistol"（父とピストル...Der Vater und die Pistole） but the album version is simply a very truncated take.

The last time I checked on Koshi, she was doing jazz and/or tributes to German music from the early 20th century. As I said, she hasn't been mundane with her career.

Chieko Matsumoto -- Juu-ichi Gatsu no Asa（11月の朝）

 

Yes, indeed it is November 1st as I type this, so I figure that if I can find a November-themed kayo, I will be quite a happy person.

Luckily, it hasn't taken too long at all to track one down. 1970s aidoru Chieko Matsumoto（松本ちえこ）recorded "Juu-ichi Gatsu no Asa" (A November Morning) for her 6th and final album in October 1978, "Wonder Caravan". Written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composed/arranged by Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）, it's a short, sweet and pretty slickly-made tune with those guitar riffs and the classy background chorus. I'd posit that if Matsumoto had decided to continue with her singing career, songs like these could have presaged her transition into a pop singer from teenybopper.

Miura's lyrics are pretty interesting too as they describe a young lady, maybe somewhere in the vicinity between high school senior and college freshman enjoying things like jogging and having that American (read: watered-down) coffee. She also notices all of those Xmas decorations going up on the streets, so yeah, I guess those things going up right after Halloween may have been a tradition going back that far. The overall indication is that the lass is beginning to savor the grown-up lifestyle...before all the burdens fall onto her.

About a couple of years ago, I first wrote about Matsumoto through her 1974 debut single "Boyfriend"（ボーイフレンド）.

Bitei Matsuki & Souki Urakami -- Butai no Ue de（舞台の上で）

 

Watching the video above, I was reminded of some of my final years in Japan when it was usually the case that I came home from teaching class quite a few minutes past midnight. It was because my final school was located on the west side of Tokyo while I was living out east in Chiba Prefecture. Most of the time, I was OK with the subway but sometimes for whatever reason, I missed the final train so I had to splurge for an expensive taxi ride.

Still getting home was tough especially in the summers, when the temperature was a steamy 26 degrees Celsius even past the bewitching hour. Those vending machines just a few metres away from my apartment helped immensely as did the cool showers once I got home.

Anyways, I should get onto the song. Musician and singer Souki Urakami（浦上想起）was someone that I introduced onto the pages of KKP several weeks ago with his 2023 "Touzakaru Inu"（遠ざかる犬）with that combination of old-style jazz and pop. Well, I seem to have found Urakami's melodic soulmate, singer-songwriter Bitei Matsuki（松木美定）. Through a "Tokion" article, I discovered that both not only got inspired by the Carpenters but both also have a love of bringing together those two musical genres that I just mentioned. 

In May 2022, Bitei and Urakami worked together behind and in front of the mike to create a single for the former titled "Butai no Ue de" (On the Stage). With Bitei taking care of words, music and arrangement, the song about getting through the darkness and onto the stage of hope and light has a very pleasant jazz waltz swing to it, although the pacing is a bit more uptempo than Bill Evans' classic "Waltz for Debby". The "Tokion" article mentions that Bitei has melded pop and the old hard bop but I think "Butai no Ue de" feels like Evans' form of cool jazz.

It's been an interesting couple of decades for Japanese pop music, and I'm talking about the music away from the Oricon charts. Being a jazz fan, I've had my interest in these bands that have mixed the genre with other styles, and for that matter, past genres with a more contemporary beat. Ego-Wrappin' comes to mind and I've also read that Matsuki has also been inspired by the band Lamp, a group with some City Pop underpinnings that was also recommended to me years ago.