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.
Iruka（イルカ）, one of the very first non-aidoru, non-enka singers that I ever heard when I started this journey of kayo kyoku, is someone with a golden voice that I first realized was a folk/New Music singer and songwriter in the 1970s but then also embraced a pop style going into the 1980s. In fact, she joined quite a few other singers from that folk genre as they dove into the urban contemporary genre of City Pop. A couple of representative songs from that latter category would be "Follow Me", arranged by Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）from Off-Course（オフコース）, and "Yoake no Goodbye"（夜明けのグッドバイ）, also produced by Oda, both of which came out in the early 1980s.
Well, I've discovered another example of the City Pop/Pop Iruka, and it is a track from her 1985 12th album"Heart Land". "Konkuri no Tokai de"(In The Concrete City) is quite an interesting animal. This time, this isn't an Iruka creation but one by lyricist Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composer/arranger Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）. Plus, the arrangement seems to combine some of that West Coast AORand the breezy daytime side ofCity Pop. However, although I couldn't find the written lyrics on the Net and had to listen carefully to what was sung, I think Akimoto's bittersweet words talk of a woman getting off at a train platform in her small hometown, perhaps having had enough of the cruel city...most likely to flee from a finished relationship. I love the different synths in play here along with that electric guitar solo near the end.
Even though this isn't Iruka's own creation, she does give another fine performance here and I would be more than happy to purchase "Heart Land", if it hasn't gone haiban.
Going way back into my memories, there are a few very early ones that I still miraculously retain. One would be crawling around on all four on the wooden floor in a family friend's house, and another would be seeing a "Hockey Night In Canada" broadcast on the CBC on the ancient black-and-white TV in our very first apartment.
My early memories also include musical ones, as well. One of the earliest songs that I remember hearing and liking was "All You Need Is Love" by The Beatles, and it is the one that I will always first associate with The Fab Four.
Another one is "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)". Being only around 2 years old at the time, I certainly couldn't retain knowledge of the whole title but I did keep "groovy" in my head. It was such a happy tune that I could imagine that a lot of toddlers reacted to it like candy. But it wasn't the original by Simon & Garfunkel that I loved, and in fact, I only heard the original for the first time just a few months ago and was surprised at how short it was. Nope, it was the 1967 cover version by Harpers Bizarre with that woodwind section. "Feelin' Groovy" was categorized as a sunshine pop song, a genre that I hadn't even been aware of and that was the label which was put onto the band also.
In any case, hearing it again after so many decades, I realized that even the Harpers Bizarre version was also pretty short and kinda reflected what seems to be a very innocent age. At the most basic level, it's such a happy ditty.
So when I heard that Pizzicato V (as it was written back in the band's early days) had also recorded a cover, I first assumed that these would be the guys to cover something like "Feelin' Groovy". But then I discovered that their Japanese-language version had been recorded as an addition to their very first single"The Audrey Hepburn Complex" back in August 1985, and remembering that song, Pizzicato V hadn't taken on that familiar Shibuya-kei sheen quite yet. It was more of a quirky technopop unit with Mamiko Sasaki（佐々木麻美子）as the lead vocalist.
And sure enough, Pizzicato V's take on one of the earliest songs that I could remember is more of a light and spacey version with some snappy percussion, to boot. Instead of go-go boots and mini-skirts, I envisage space boots and rocket packs. But dang, although it still retains that short time, it's also quite catchy with Masami Ogura's（小倉雅美）Japanese lyrics in place. The song is also on the band's first BEST album"Pizzicatomania!"（ピチカートマニア!）from July 1987.
Finished off my final lesson with my student for this year and then I caught some of "The Da Vinci Code" with a horribly-coiffed Tom Hanks. I never caught onto the Dan Brown books despite how crazy the mania became for them. Apparently, the impression that I got from them was that the book was basically airport kiosk material that punched way above its weight.
Anyways, it's past 11pm as I write this on a Saturday night, and it's time to cool down before retiring, so perhaps a bit of slow and mellow nighttime jazz is in order. I found this one sung by akiko, a jazz singer from Saitama. There's another singer with the same stage name although she's in the R&B genre and started her career about half a decade earlier in the mid-1990s, which is why I've distinguished this akiko with the (jazz) attachment.
From her 2003 4th album"akiko's holiday", I bring you "Good Morning Heartache", a cover of a Billie Holiday standard from 1946 created by Irene Higginbotham, Ervin Drake, and Dan Fisher. During my jazz phase, I did go to a few concerts and clubs here and there in Tokyo such as Dug in Shinjuku, and one regret that I do have is that I never got to see one of those trios or quartets playing the cool jazz of the 1950s. I'm not sure if I have my genres correct, but perhaps to pin things down a bit further, I did enjoy the material by folks like Chet Baker and Bill Evans.
akiko's take on "Good Morning Heartache" has that feeling. Curling smoke lifting from a cigarette and a glass of scotch being nursed gently close to the midnight hour in a small club is the image I have when I hear this. I like all sorts of jazz but this is the type of stuff I like when it gets close to closing time. Another reason that I like "Good Morning Heartache" is that the arrangement here reminds me of old episodes from the "Night Ride" series that I used to watch while I was pulling an all-nighter for my studies back in the 1980s. It's all-so-nostalgic watching what downtown Toronto looked like when I was still a university student.
For comparison's sake, here is the original by the divine Lady Day. Sleep tight.
Heck of a time to talk about summery band TUBE a mere few days before Christmas of all times, but, well, I do like to exercise my whimsy from time to time.
Anyways, I was lucky enough to listen to TUBE's 14th album from June 1994"Owaranai Natsu ni" (In The Endless Summer), and according to its statistics, the TUBE Oricon steamroller was alive and well, but later on that.
All of the tracks were written by vocalist Nobuteru Maeda（前田亘輝）and composed by guitarist Michiya Haruhata（春畑道哉）, and one of those tracks happens to be "Natsu wo Dakishimete"(夏を抱きしめて) which was written up by Noelle Tham over a couple of years ago.
"Kizudarake no Hero"（傷だらけのHero...Scarred Hero） is your typical uptempo TUBE spectacular, and as the title states, it's about getting up and continuing the battle even though the differences between you and a pile of pulp are lessening. Nothing like TUBE to get the blood pumping! Chances are that although a TUBE song may never be placed as a campaign tune for a Marvel flick, "Kizudarake no Hero" rather describes the feeling from any of the "Avengers" movies.
"Soredemo Koi wa Suteki"（それでも恋は素敵...Love Is Still Wonderful） is a happy-happy-joy-joy number comparing the various trials and tribulations of love but with the final judgement being that the emotion is still more than welcome. The interesting point is that besides the fact that this almost sounds like something Princess Princess would perform, Maeda and Haruhata have inserted a bit of jazziness into the usual TUBE musical beach party with the solo guitar shredding.
For my final contribution of the article here, it was pretty surprising to hear "Secret". It looks like TUBE pulled one out of the City Pop playbook here. Just from the instrumentation and the arrangement, the band went from the beach and back into downtown Tokyo of the early 1980s. And it sounds just as smooth, as Maeda sings about a couple of lovers exercising their tryst once a week. I do like the horns...reminds me of the music of Anri（杏里）back in the day.
"Owaranai Natsu ni" was another hit for the band as it struck No. 1 on Oricon for two weeks straight, and became a million-seller. It became the 15th-ranked album of 1994.
I've mentioned about this anime in other articles not directly related to it, but this is the first time that "Nichijou"（日常...My Ordinary Life）will be getting its due in terms of its theme songs. It's perhaps the earliest example of the zany school-based comedy anime that I've come across although I've only gotten my fill via the good folks at YouTube. One of the more hilarious yet epic scenes which I've watched is the titanic "Principal vs. Deer" battle. As one YouTube commenter stated, there were scenes in "Attack on Titan" that were less brutal than this. Plus, I have to give my kudos to the guy behind the background music for the series, Yuji Nomi（野見祐二）.
The opening credits for "Nichijou" were also quite epic in their own way and were more than happy to show off what was to come in each of those episodes broadcast in 2011. The theme song as well was something that I found to have as much energy as a superball in a confined room.
The first opening theme for "Nichijou" was "Hyadain no Kakakata Kataomoi-C" (Hyadain's O-O-O-One-sided Love-C) by Hyadain（ヒャダイン）himself, aka singer-songwriter Kenichi Maeyamada（前山田健一）. Now, I've also mentioned one of his other creations under his stage name, the bitterly humourous Xmas tune "Christmas? Nani Sore? Oishii no?"（クリスマス?なにそれ?美味しいの?）.
"Hyadain no Kakakata Kataomoi-C", his impressions of having that first crush, was also his debut single released in April 2011. A lot of earworm fun in this one with that synthesizer, the voices and the varying tempo. Also, the video has plenty of amped-up zaniness and colour in there. I had first assumed that it was a duet between the stripe-suited Hyadain and the young lady who I found out was actress/singer Natsuko Aso（麻生夏子）. However, it turns out the female part, nicknamed Hyadaruko（ヒャダル子）, was also sung by Hyadain whose voice was pitched higher through technology as Aso gamely mouthed the lyrics in the video.
The song peaked at No. 12 on Oricon and was also placed in Hyadain's sole album so far, "20112012" from November 2012. That one reached No. 24 on the album charts.
One other track on the album is "Hyadain to Nomiya Maki no Kakakata Kataomoi-F"（ヒャダインと野宮真貴のカカカタ☆カタオモイ-F...Hyadain and Maki Nomiya's O-O-O-One-sided Love-F）which is the same song in a slightly lower register, and this time Hyadaruko is played by Maki Nomiya, formerly of Pizzicato Five. So I guess the duet did come to pass.
As a postscript, I gotta say that the original music video with Hyadain's head replaced with a box representing both him and Hyadaruko reminded me of the video of Thomas Dolby's"Hyperactive". I also have to point out that the whole aura around "Nichijou" is hyperactive in itself.
Following my trip downtown for Xmas shopping on what has been called the busiest shopping day of the year (actually, getting there at 11am meant that there was very little wait for the cashier...ha, ha), I was still plenty pooped, especially after engorging enjoying a juicy and buttery Porcetta Cubano sandwich down at the St. Lawrence Market. I just decided to not bother with any other translation work and plopped myself down on the bed and watched Turner Movie Classics.
Yep, watching old movies is a hobby of mine, although not nearly as big as my love for kayo kyoku. I managed to catch this 1939 flick called "The Ice Follies of 1939" starring James Stewart and Joan Crawford. This was intriguing for me since I hadn't even heard of Jimmy and Joan in a flick together. Well, I later found out tonight that the movie hadn't been particularly well-reviewed then and even now. Basically, there were words such as terrible.
Well, perhaps the two stars probably wished that no one had ever heard of this one either. Nope, I didn't think it was all that great which made the movie all the more curious since I've been accustomed to seeing those two and Lew Ayres in pretty good-to-legendary pics. In a way, I would compare it to Hollywood's attempt at the superhero movie "Green Lantern". That movie suffered badly from not knowing what it wanted to be...something fairly comedic like "Ant Man" or a straight-ahead adventure with an epic villain like "Spiderman 2". "The Ice Follies of 1939" had some pretty discordant scenes of darkness and madcap comedy, plus a surprise to me in that the last 10 minutes (the above scene) of the movie were filmed in Technicolor a la "The Wizard of Oz", which was also released in the same year.
All that preamble with that cinematic analogy to explain my feelings for this Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）song "Glass no Prism"(Glass Prism). As with Stewart and Crawford, I have known the Queen Aidoru of the early 1980s for decades along with her biggest hits, and as with "The Ice Follies of 1939", I had never heard of this song until a few months ago despite the star behind the mike.
Very happily, my reaction was much more positive to this lovely song which was the B-side to Seiko-chan's 18th single from August 1984, "Pink no Mozart"（ピンクのモーツァルト）. The reason that I had never heard of this was that along with the fact that I had never purchased the single, "Glass no Prism" never showed up on any original album and appeared only on her BEST compilations. It was just my misfortune that it hadn't been included in the BEST albums that I do possess.
As with the perky "Pink no Mozart", "Glass no Prism" was created by a couple of vets from the band Happy End, Takashi Matsumoto and Haruomi Hosono（松本隆・細野晴臣）, and like it, it has this really quirky and appealing arrangement of its own, thanks to Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）. Starting with this ethereal and poppy chorus and this music partly seasoned with sax that seems to propose something wonderful coming over the horizon, Seiko-chan sings this bouncy tune as if it were something for Christmas in a toy store. Then the string-led refrain sweeps in with great tidings like a brisk and refreshing wind. The lyrics are one girl's musings about this love triangle (the prism) that is forming with her as one of the "corners", and it sounds like she's relishing the situation. However for me, it's all about that arrangement.
Will always cherish digging away at the history of Japanese popular music and discovering something old that is new to me again and again.
One of my earliest musical memories was provided by legendary Canadian singer Anne Murray when she sang "Snowbird" from 1970. The breezy pop hit has long imprinted itself into my memory and it was often the case that I saw the Nova Scotia-born Murray on TV shows such as "The Tommy Hunter Show" (yes, I'm sorry, I'm delving too far into the Canadiana here....just had a little too much maple syrup on the pancakes today). In any case, nowadays, whenever anyone says or hears the term snowbird, most likely the image that comes to mind is of retired Canadians heading south to Florida or other tropical climes to flee the winter.
Well, speaking of tropical, I bring you another "Snowbird", but this time by Japanese songbird Miki Asakura（麻倉未稀）. Armed with a bit of Latin shimmy, Asakura's 4th single from November 1982 is a City Pop bittersweet lament about remembering far happier times when a relationship was still intact and involved a trip to that winter lodge. Still, despite that scene, the music by Masahiko Takase（高瀬政彦）is still arranged as if the protagonist will be taking a long lonely walk on the streets of Roppongi later on tonight.
Even with the rather unhappy story, though, I really quite like "Snowbird" for that bit of disco with the guitar and the flute, and it's really quite reminiscent of other singers such as Junko Yagami（八神純子）and Miki Matsubara（松原みき）. The song was also the title track of her 3rd album from December in that same year.
