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.
It may have been "Martini Hour" on the cover but boy, the guy looks like he missed out on it by about a minute. All dressed up and now nowhere to go is how Tatsu looks.
But I digress. City Popster Tatsuhiko Yamamoto（山本達彦）, who I first introduced in the annals of this blog last month with his debut single"Last Good-Bye", is really pulling on his inner Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）with this peppy tune from his 2nd album"Martini Hour" from 1983 (which peaked at No. 3). In fact, I hope I'm not offending him, if in the unlikely event that he ever comes across "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but he sounds like he's doing his own version of Inagaki with "Summer Holiday".
With a melody by Yamamoto in there that seems to have popped in from "Hey Nineteen", Masami Sugiyama's（杉山政美）lyrics talk about a couple spending that wonderful and romantic time at some seaside bar with those martinis in hand. The only thing missing from this City Pop tune is the iconic plane jetting off into the sky. Considering how hot today was here in Toronto, I think "Summer Holiday" is the ideal song in the blog to commemorate the first day of the season, but the high temperature is dropping about ten degrees tomorrow. Predictably unpredictable, Toronto weather is.
Although I've heard a lot about this NHK anime titled "Card Captor Sakura"（カードキャプターさくら）, I have never seen a single scene, let alone an episode of it. My anime buddy, though, has told me that it is somewhat like a spiritual predecessor to the entire "Precure" franchise.
However, during the regular part of our Sunday routine which involves listening to anison for about an hour, one song has popped up now and then which has been very pleasing to my ears, and that is "Honey" by singer-songwriter chihiro. It apparently was the 2nd ending theme for "Card Captor Sakura".
Released as a single in May 1999, I was a little surprised to hear that it was a theme song for an anime that appeared to be aimed straight at girls younger than 5 years of age since it sounded like a sunny pop song for couples on a weekend. No matter. "Honey" is still a nice little tune that is as sweet and mellow as its liquid namesake.
As for chihiro herself, I couldn't really find anything about her. The links for her took me on a wild goose chase including one that led me to a Wikipedia article on some sort of Microsoft-based thingie or other. I had thought that it may have been singer Chihiro Yonekura（米倉千尋）but listening to some of her stuff on YouTube and then checking her biography on Wiki, it was evident that it was not the same lady.
The above video by Carol Belle is almost 6 years old but I gotta say "Wow!" She pulled off a fine cover of "Honey". All I can add is that I hope that she has gone places in her music career.
Over the history of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I've had 5 entries for the guitarist and arranger Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）, three of them with him as the headliner and those 3 articles were involved with the same album, the great "First Light" from 1981.
But I'm glad that I could finally profile something by Matsushita outside of that album by going to his next album with the wonderful title of "The Pressures and the Pleasures" from 1982. As with "First Light", I first saw "The Pressures and the Pleasures" in my bible of "Japanese City Pop" and did wonder what it was all about. I need not have doubted. The tracks that I have heard so far are a continuation of the good-time groove from those days, although the first and title track is a pretty ambitious one clocking in at nearly 10 minutes.
The above two videos are "Business Man (Part 1)" and "Business Man (Part 2)" . This is another pure City Pop concoction with some Doobie Bros. and Steely Dan feeling thrown in for good measure as Matsushita gives his ode to the human cog that powered Japan Inc. back in the good old days of the Economic Miracle. As I listen to both jaunty tracks, my mind is filled with images of that shoshaman striding, not walking, on the concrete sidewalks of Tokyo in between the skyscrapers of West Shinjuku amid the rays of the sun in the early morning whilst drinking down his lone coffee breakfast as Matsushita croons in the lyrics. I'm not 100% sure whether he was behind both music and lyrics but I'm fairly confident that he was.
However in between the two parts of "Business Man", there is the aptly-titled "The Bridge" which is this dreamy musical interlude sung by Clara (that's all the information I could get so far). I kinda envision Clara at the top of some hotel lounge in the early sunset hours enticing our hero shoshaman to sit a spell, relax on the sofa and smell the coffee (or a bourbon) for a few minutes between hitting the pavement again and snagging that new client. Especially in those torrid Tokyo summers I know all too well, that well-earned respite is worth its weight in gold for the typical businessman who I've often seen in many a Renoir cafe or a family restaurant during the afternoon.
When I consider that epic title track, the City Pop"Business Man" and the dreamy "The Bridge", I rather equate "The Pressures and the Pleasures" with Chaz Jankel's self-titled debut album from 1978 since the tracks kinda followed a similar eclectic formula. In any case, I haven't purchased my copy of "The Pressures and the Pleasures" quite yet but I might be induced to do so earlier than planned (actually, it was later than planned...finally got the album to do a follow-up).
Well, it's been quite the sluggish Monday. Humidex of 40 degrees Celsius on the first official day of summer and I had to attend the annual homeowners' meeting of our condo complex. Nope, not exactly the most entertaining time and I left as soon as the "Let's scream at the executive board" segment began. But the Timbits were delicious. In any case, I haven't had a go at the blog for a couple of days and I much prefer hitting the keyboard for this purpose than sitting for a couple of hours witnessing local conflicts.
Yesterday, though, was the usual get-together with my anime buddy and the highlight of the day was watching "Girls und Panzer: The Movie", the 2015 cinematic sequel to one of the sleeper hits of 2012. And yep, if you liked the original anime series, then you will like the movie. Even more characters, even more tanks, tons of banter on the order of "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and there was an important life lesson that all of us should learn:
WHEN IN DOUBT, GET IT DOWN IN WRITING!!
Plus, there was the usual stuff about gathering everyone together to fight the good fight, blah, blah, blah. And it was totally enjoyable with an amazing full-orchestral version on composer Shiro Hamaguchi's（浜口史郎）"Panzer Vor!". I was pretty much stamping my feet when that came on at the beginning. Speaking about enjoying it, enjoy the above Hollywood-ized trailer for the movie which was only lacking Mr. Movie Trailer Man.
Anyways, what I wanted to talk about was the opening and ending themes for the original anime from 2012. As much as Hamaguchi's amazing renditions of marches and original score enhanced the enjoyment of watching high school girls go on the attack in their tanks, my memory still remembers those two songs since they were so noticeably different from the score.
ChouCho's "DreamRiser", the opening theme to "Girls und Panzer"（ガールズ&パンツァー）could frankly have been the opening theme to any high school anime, but I guess director Tsutomu Mizushima（水島努）must have gone "What the hey...why not my show?" But hey, it did grow on me as time went on. Written by Saori Kodama（こだまさおり）and composed by rino, "DreamRiser" is the singer's 5th single which got its official release in October 2012.
ChouCho was also the singer behind "Starlog", the opening theme to the first entry in the "Prisma Illya" franchise, and like that theme song, "DreamRiser" has got that arrangement with what I call the disco strings that gave a number of songs by the J-R&B divas that nostalgic touch a decade previously. I think it certainly did a fine job helping out introduce the dozens of characters in the opening credits and gave that positive spin of going to school, even one as unique as Oarai Girls' High School.
According to the J-Wiki article on "DreamRiser", the song was approached by ChouCho by bringing together the singer's dreams of becoming a singer and the dreams of the main character of Miho Nishizumi. It got as high as No. 41 on Oricon.
Then, there is the ending theme as sung by the Ankou (Anglerfish) Team from the show. I went with that name for the title line above just to keep things brief but in the Labels section, I have put down all of the 5 seiyuu portraying the plucky main characters from the team:
Mai Fuchigami（渕上舞） -- Miho Nishizumi（西住みほ） Ai Kayano（茅野愛衣） -- Saori Takebe（武部沙織） Mami Ozaki（尾崎真実） -- Hana Isuzu（五十鈴華） Ikumi Nakagami（中上育実） -- Yukari Akiyama（秋山優花里） Yuka Iguchi（井口裕香） -- Mako Reizei（冷泉麻子）
A cute little tune with the ending credits to match, "Enter Enter MISSION!" was a nice way to finish off each episode but by the end of the climactic finale, the song suddenly took on a heart-swelling pride as the victorious Ankou Team paraded through the streets of Oarai. I was even a tad disappointed that the song didn't make an appearance in the movie although there was an orchestral excerpt sometime in the middle. The prolific Aki Hata（畑亜貴）provided the lyrics with Kana Yabuki and Hiroshi Sasaki（矢吹香那・佐々木裕）making the music. I probably wouldn't be surprised if the real Oarai Station had the song playing on the tracks whenever the trains arrived.
I figure that I will have to write about the famous "Ankou Ondo"（あんこう音頭）sometime soon.
Finally, I got to watch "X-Men: Apocalypse" last night some 3 weeks after its premiere (I think you folks in Japan will have to wait another couple of months before it hits your shores). Considering the mediocre reviews, the lack of buzz behind the movie, and my talk with JTM last weekend, my expectations had been brought lower than The Blob's centre of gravity, so I was actually quite happy with the finished product. Nope, it's not quite up there with Marvel's big superhero grand prize fight "Civil War" but it's also no "X-Men: The Last Stand" either. And once again, Evan Peters' Quicksilver stole the show again. I am actually hoping that that scene gets onto YouTube fairly soon.
Speaking of superhero movies, I have got quite the cast listing up there in the title line this time, don't I? Well, following up on my article for Pay money To my Pain's"Respect for the deadman", the opening theme for "Nobunagun"（ノブナガン）, here is the ending theme for that same 2014 anime. I'm now approaching the end of that entertaining show about mutants of another kind although it seems as if there won't be any large franchise coming out of this manga adaptation, unfortunately.
Unlike the thrashy rock of "Respect for the deadman", the ending theme of "Chiisana Hoshi" (A Little Star) is all cute technopop starring a large chunk of the cast from "Nobunagun". And the song is divided into two versions with "Chiisana Hoshi ver.α" first hitting the ending credits with seiyuu Shiori Muto（武藤志織）as the main character Sio Ogura, Yū Asakawa（浅川悠）as French kiss-crazy Isaac Newton and Sumire Uesaka（上坂すみれ）as moe (and now perhaps cyclopean) Galileo behind the mike.
Then, there is "Chiisana Hoshi ver.β" with Muto again but this time, she's joined by Chiwa Saito（斉藤千和）as good-but-not-nice Geronimo, Mutsumi Tamura（田村睦心）as just-as-good-but-just-as-not-nice Cyx and Ayumu Murase（村瀬歩）as fellow hero and frequent doormat Gaudi. This was the version that finally got my ear when it was first introduced at the end of episode 6. For some reason, it sounds fuller and so the Beta version is the one I actually prefer.
With lyrics by Rie Otsuka（大塚利恵）and music by Kenichi Maeyamada（前山田健一）, "Chiisana Hoshi" shares something with the opener of "Respect for the deadman" in that it has unexpectedly got my ear although I wouldn't say it has leveled up to an earworm. But there is a lot about "Nobunagun" that was unexpected in a happy way.
In any case, I'm looking forward to "Suicide Squad" and "Doctor Strange".
Those "nostalgia from my JET days" feelings continue from my Princess Princess article with Katsumi's "Yes, Dakishimete"(Yes, Hold Me). I did probably hear this for the first time from that commercial selling a particular automobile but it was all confirmed when I bought his 2nd album"One" from February 1991. A bit of an aside about that album; the title track which starts things off is pretty much an anthem based on Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". Katsumi has got the high-tone pipes to do a Freddie Mercury but I'm not sure whether taking a riff off of one of the 1970s greatest songs was the way to go.
Anyways, "Yes, Dakishimete" was Katsumi's 3rd single from November 1990. Seeing Katsumi in that hairstyle and hearing the arrangement had me reminiscing about oyaji gyaru, the sauvage (frizzy) hairdo and the Lambada once again. Written by Katsumi and composed by Hiroshi Ishikawa（石川洋）, it's a pretty happy and frenetic pop song for the most part aside from a rock diversion near the end. This was the single just before Katsumi made it big with another commercial campaign tune, "Just Time Girl" that became his 4th single the following year.
His 3rd single was actually a double-A-side disc with "Yes, Dakishimete" sharing status with "With Me". It went as high as No. 47 on the charts but along with "Just Time Girl", this is the only other tune by Katsumi that I am familiar with.
In one of those "nostalgia from my JET days" moments, I'm putting up this article about Princess Princess'（プリンセス プリンセス）11th single from May 1991, "KISS". First hearing this through the commercial of a Suntory drink, I ended up getting the CD single. Plus I did find the CD cover of the band members looking like they were modeling all of the female hairstyles of the early 90s rather intriguing.
When it comes to Princess Princess songs, I tend to classify them into two types: their happy-go-lucky pop material such as their mega hit "Diamonds" and their pop-rock-it-to-the-wall stuff such as "Oh Yeah!". "KISS" definitely falls into the former category. The song has a pleasant melody line with a fairly lush piano-and-strings riff in the middle followed immediately by a nice guitar solo. My compliments go to vocalist Kaori Okui（奥居香）, guitarist Kanako Nakayama（中山加奈子）and drummer Kyoko Tomita（富田京子）who created this No. 1 hit. In fact, "KISS" has ended up being their final No. 1 hit to date with the song becoming the 26th-ranked single of the year. It didn't get onto an original album but is included on their special album of singles "SINGLES 1987-1992" from July 1992. The Princess Princess brand was still high up there since it stayed at No. 1 for 5 straight weeks and became a million-seller.
