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.
Summer doesn't officially arrive until 11:32 pm tonight but with the weather looking very sunny and hot outside and me needing to put on the ancient fan inside, I think that I can jump the gun by several hours and provide something of the season here.
(short version)
Why not go with some Beat Takeshi（ビートたけし）then? Yes, indeed this is the comedian-turned-international cinematic auteur that we're talking about here. Around New Year's Eve in 2019, I provided the first Beat Takeshi song on KKP with "Asakusa Kid"（浅草キッド）, an autobiographical ballad with him humbly singing about his origins in show business. This time, though, I give you his 2nd single, "Itaike na Natsu" (Nice Summer) which came out in February or June 1981.
"Itaike na Natsu" wasn't a Beat creation but a song written by Kiyotaka Norishige（教重清隆）and composed by Kunihiko Kase（加瀬邦彦）and arranged by Ginji Ito（伊藤銀次）. I'd been wondering about providing another song whose melody was made by Kase since I'd provided an article yesterday involving his efforts with the band Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans（寺内タケシとブルージーンズ）, and it looks like providence has given me a hand. Indeed, "Itaike na Natsu" sounds like some "Beach Blanket Bingo" tune with the boss saxophone, lanky guitars and the overall doo-wop feel of it all...a perfect fit for that Harajuku 50s fad that was going on at the time. And would you get a look at young Beat Takeshi on the cover? He's got quite the mullet beginning to come in with the surf.
Well, a couple of things that we are seeing today are: 1) Father's Day and 2) the coming of the Summer Solstice in several more hours. As for the first thing, our family tucked into a nice Chinese dinner and as for the second, I'm certainly feeling plenty hot right now.
I had been wondering what I could do on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" to pay tribute to Father's Day today and last week's "Uta Con"（うたコン）episode came to the rescue with a short tribute to the holiday. Through the old videotape, I got to see the late actor/singer Gannosuke Ashiya（芦屋雁之助）perform "Musume yo" (My Daughter). Ashiya had been in show business since 1954 when he was in his early 20s and he sporadically lent his voice to singles beginning in 1960. In fact, after that first single, it would be another nine years before his sophomore effort came out.
But it was his third single, much later in February 1984, which got a lot of ears' attention. "Musume yo" has Ashiya being the stoic and stern Showa Era father, but as would usually be the case when the daughter gets married and leaves for her husband's household, Papa reluctantly lets his guard down to become a little more jellified. Written by Minoru Torii（鳥井実）, composed by Takayuki Matsuura（松浦孝之）and arranged by Takaharu Ikeda（池多孝春）, "Musume yo", which had already been completed three years before release, sounds especially rich and traditional even for a woodsy ol' enka with the harmonica and guitar, but it's those strings that really stand out. All of those instruments stand behind Ashiya's vocals which sound like they truly belong to a proud father from the countryside singing off his daughter to her new life. Tear up much? The voiceover by the singer reassuring his girl that the old man will be OK and that she should be looking forward to being with the love of her life probably had a whole ton of fathers futilely insisting that they weren't crying...just a bit of pollen.😢
There must have been a lot of appreciative fathers and mothers out there. "Musume yo" peaked at No. 6 and eventually became the 7th-ranked single of 1984 with the song winning a special prize at the Japan Record Awards. It also earned Ashiya an invitation to NHK's Kohaku Utagassen that year and sold over a million records. According to his discography, the singer suddenly found himself very busy in the recording booth for the next several years. Ashiya passed away in 2004 at the age of 72.
Yep, the cover does say it all: a trumpet with fire blasting out of it like a volley from The Human Torch. This belongs to Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra's（東京スカパラダイスオーケストラ）3rd compilation of BEST hits, "BEST OF TOKYO SKA 1998-2007" that was first released in March 2007. If you're looking for some Saturday-night partying at home with that ska beat, this can help.
I don't think that I ever gave a proper introduction about TSPO so I will import this edited quote from the Wikipedia article on this group that has been around since 1985: Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (東京スカパラダイスオーケストラ), commonly abbreviated by fans as Skapara or TSPO, is a Japanese ska and jazz band formed in 1988 by the percussionist Asa-Chang, and initially composed of over 10 veterans of Tokyo's underground scene. At the time, the band's sound was unlike that of any of its contemporaries in the then fledgling Japanese ska scene, and over the course of the past 31 years, they have been influential on Japanese music as a whole. Its sound, the product of the musical influences of its members, is a mix of traditional ska, jazz, and rock. In the vein of many other more traditional ska acts, many of Skapara's songs are purely instrumental.
The first time I heard and heard about ska was in the early 1980s when all this great music was flowing in from the United Kingdom which included this particular genre and its proponents such as The Specials and Madness. For that latter band, "Our House" was a huge hit in Canada, although perhaps the song was more of a mix of ska, pop and New Wave. Little did I know that Japan would be another birthplace of one ska-happy group of guys.
Anyways, here is the list for Disc 1 of "BEST OF TOKYO SKA 1998-2007":
Well, let's get the party started with the first track "DOWN BEAT STOMP" which was originally from TSPO's May 2002 album"Stompin' On DOWN BEAT ALLEY". The album hit No. 1 on Oricon and "DOWN BEAT STOMP" pretty much has everybody getting onto the dance floor with an increased number of TSPO members getting behind the mike. The video certainly reflects the atmosphere of fun of booze and dancing. TSPO bassist Tsuyoshi Kawakami（川上つよし）was the composer while baritone saxophonist Atsushi Yanaka（谷中敦）took care of the lyrics.
Also from "Stompin' On DOWN BEAT ALLEY" is "Mekureta Orange" (Peeled Orange). As well, this was actually TSPO's 20th single from August 2001 that peaked at No. 35 on the charts. Over the years, I've been enjoying the band's work with other cool artists. For example, there is their collaboration with happily zany Hiroto Komoto（甲本ヒロト）of The Blue Hearts for "Hoshi Furu Yoru ni"（星降る夜に）that is also included on Disc 1. And then there is "Mekureta Orange" which has special guest Takao Tajima（田島貴男）, aka Original Love（オリジナル・ラヴ）, helping out on this mix of ska and swing jazz. It was also Kawakami and Yanaka behind words and music here. I tried looking at the lyrics and I think the story sounds as if a couple of guys were greeting the sunrise with a mix of bleary-eyed exhaustion and possibly some scars. Would you like a brawl with your boilermaker, sir? Not sure where the orange peel comes in...except as a garnish in a cocktail glass.
The instrumental "Hi no Tama Jive" translates into "Fireball Jive" which is a great title for this song which was the band's 17th single from May 1999. TSPO multi-instrumentalist (bass, saxophone) Tatsuyuki Hiyamuta（冷牟田竜之）was responsible for this true fireball which not reminds me of the swing/jazz revival sometime in the 1990s but also of the orchestra that was providing the great music in Jim Carrey's"The Mask". Despite all of the action and flame, there is also some poignancy to "Hi no Tama Jive" since this was drummer Tatsuyuki Aoki's（青木達之）final single with TSPO before his untimely death. He passed away only 10 days before its release.
Hiyamuta and TSPO trumpeter NARGO were on words and music respectively for "SKA ME CRAZY" which has been described in J-Wiki as having a skinhead reggae arrangement in its recorded form. Sounds a bit scary there so I've put up their live version which is apparently a little different. It's another jump-and-dance-and-headbang number, and judging from the above video, you will believe a pianica can rock. "SKA ME CRAZY" was also the coupling song for the band's 22nd single from February 2002, "Utsukushiku Moeru Mori"（美しく燃える森）, another duet this time with Tamio Okuda（奥田民生）from the rock band Unicorn.
"Ginga to Meiro" (Galaxy and Labyrinth), TSPO's 23rd single from February 2003, is a familiar song to me and that's probably because I heard it on the various music shows. It was used as the theme tune for the Fuji-TV drama "Bijo ka Yajuu"（美女か野獣...Beauty or Beast） so I gather that its commercials were also playing the song as well. Still a lot of fun ska to be experienced here, too, but it's also noticeably mellower than some of TSPO's other party favourites, maybe along the lines of the aforementioned "Mekureta Orange". Yanaka and NARGO were behind words and music respectively with drummer Kin'ichi Motegi（茂木欣一）on vocals as the single broke into the Top 10 at No. 9.
One more track that I will throw in is an instrumental cover of Donald Fagen's"Walk Between Raindrops" from his 1982 classic album"The Nightfly" for which I've already covered "I.G.Y." in a ROY article. Listening to this version, I can understand why TSPO decided to tackle it because that original shuffle beat works so well with these guys. Heck, I swear that the band even borrowed the same organ from Fagen that starts the song off.
I'll have to cover Disc 2 sometime in the near future but as it is, there's lots to enjoy in Disc 1. "BEST OF TOKYO SKA 1998-2007" peaked at No. 2 on the charts.
I read the report on Mixi about an hour ago and unfortunately, Takeshi Terauchi（寺内タケシ）, the leader of Takeshi Terauchi & Blue Jeans（寺内タケシとブルージーンズ）, the ereki band from the early 1960s, passed away yesterday at the age of 82 from pneumonia. Allow me to give my condolences to his family, friends and fans.
It was only back in April this year that I first read about Terauchi in the book "Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon ~ A Geopolitical History of J-Pop"(2012) by Michael K. Bourdaghs, and as such, I wrote up about his band's "Ame no Omoide"（雨の想い出）from 1965. One thing that I didn't mention in that article is his grand title: "Ereki no Kamisama"（エレキの神様...The God of the Electric Guitar）.
As tribute to Terauchi, I give you one song that has been called one of Terauchi & Blue Jeans' trademark tunes, "Blue Jeans No. 1". According to an Instagram page, the song was released with "Your Baby" as a 45" single in August 1965 and according to the YouTube explanation for the above video, it was also a track on a 1964/1965 LP release titled "Beat! Beat! Beat! Vol.1&Vol.2".
This instrumental "Blue Jeans No. 1" is a robust and jaunty guitar lark with skippy drum beats and a cheerful electric organ that was all concocted by Blue Jeans' member Kunihiko Kase（加瀬邦彦）. Terauchi and the gang sound like they're having a good time of it all. Considering the date of release, the song probably wouldn't fall under the Group Sounds umbrella but within the last little bit of the ereki boom in the early part of that decade.
For any City Pop fan, isn't this the video for you? Driving around the Tokyo Bay area at night in a convertible with all of the wonderful lights of the city smiling at you?
And yet, "Hikari no Disco" (Disco of Light) isn't a City Pop song per se. The duo capsule did have their early Shibuya-kei fun with songs like "Music Controller" before ramming into their EDM which I have to admit that I still have yet to explore in greater detail, but perhaps their "Sugarless GiRL" is one example which I've covered. In any case, getting back to capsule's first regular single in several years, "Hikari no Disco" is actually a throwback to the synthpop of the 1980s and the video even tries to emulate that somewhat dated look of VHS tape. However, I'd like to think of that slightly blurry appearance as the viewer's bleary-eyed sight after getting a little too drunk during a Tokyo pub crawl and vocalist Toshiko Koshijima（こしじまとしこ）dutifully driving them home. I say that because I have been in that very situation in the backseat once when I was an undergrad who had multiple Screwdrivers and Creamsicles one night to my later great discomfort and dismay.😵
Of course, Yasutaka Nakata（中田ヤスタカ）prepared "Hikari no Disco" for its release a couple of weeks ago and being a literal student of the 1980s, I've been having a good time with this nostalgia trip, and perhaps a lot of the old Vaporwavers are swooning at this right now. However, for an even better insight into "Hikari no Disco", I refer you to Eddie Lehecka'sarticle about the song on the "Otaquest" site.
I've only known about this anime franchise "Knights of Sidonia"（シドニアの騎士）by name only but it looks to be quite the space opera, and apparently "Hikari no Disco" is the theme song for its second motion picture "Knights of Sidonia: Ai Tsumugu Hoshi"（シドニアの騎士 あいつむぐほし）which came out in theatres on June 4th this year. The other interesting thing that I've learned is that the "Hikari no Disco" music video that I've been swooning over has some resemblance to that of a past capsule song "World of Fantasy" which came out as a digital single over 10 years ago. I will have to definitely take a look at that one, too, and perhaps write about it soon enough.
Anyways, may we all have our chance to take that drive over Tokyo Bay Bridge soon enough once the pandemic is over.
It's been a while since I've put up an Awesome City Club song so I think tonight's a good night to do so.
This group of Tokyo-based musicians and singers exploring the various facets of rock, R&B and Neo-City Pop has been around since 2013 and I've contributed a couple of articles on Awesome City Club so far: "Don't Think, Feel" and "Outsider"（アウトサイダー）. A good friend of mine has been a convert to their cause for a while and I got to find out about ACC through from him some years ago. Since writing about "Outsider" in 2018 though, there have been a couple of departures from the group. Vocalist and rapper Takumi Matsuzaka（マツザカタクミ）left in 2019 while drummer Yukie（ユキエ）said goodbye in 2020.
But let's go back to January 2017, shall we? ACC released their fourth and final album in the "Awesome City Tracks" series titled logically enough "Awesome City Tracks 4", and one of the tracks is "Seishun no Munasawagi" (Apprehensions of Youth). Listening to this one song and the other two that I've come across, I think ACC has been about looking at the positivity in life, and even with Matsuzaka and vocalist/keyboardist Miho "PORIN" Doshida's（土志田美帆）lyrics about what seems to be efforts in bringing life to a relationship that has fallen on hard times on the first snow in Tokyo (specifically Shibuya), the impression is that things are very likely to be salvaged and brought back to a healthier state. Vocalist/guitarist atagi was responsible for the lightly funky music.
"Awesome City Tracks 4" was their best of the four albums in terms of Oricon rankings as it hit No. 30. Incidentally, I always wondered how the band came up with their name. Well, according to J-Wiki, it was Matsuzaka who came up with the term City Club that he thought better described themselves than as a regular band since he felt that the group had more of a looser project-type feeling. Then, the Awesome was placed as the first word because it felt really good reading it.
Hope ACC is continuing to do well. They actually released their latest digital download single a few months ago "Matataki"（またたき...Blink）.
The more that I go further down the road learning about Miho Morikawa（森川美穂）, the more I get interested in her songs. Since first learning about her via the 1990 anime "Fushigi no Umi no Nadia"（不思議の海のナディア...Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water), for which she provided the opening and ending themes including the dynamic pop/rock"Blue Water", I've discovered that she had started out as a regular mid-80saidoru with "Kyoshitsu"（教室）and then fairly quickly jumped onto the City Pop/J-R&B bandwagon going into the later part of that decade.
Well, I've been enjoying this really refined ballad from her November 1988 album"Ow-witch!" which sounds like an epithet that Bugs Bunny once threw out after he hit his head. "Eien ga Owatta Asa"(The Morning Eternity Ended) already has a great title but it also benefits from the light soul (maybe Quiet Storm?) provided by composer Julia and arranger Jun Sato（佐藤準）. There's also some added class thanks to that soft jazzy piano.
Keiko Aso's（麻生圭子）lyrics relate the story of a woman who's gradually coming out of her funk from a relationship that is now in the past of her life. As one line puts it, no matter whether that fellow is in or our of her life, she's still there and she will be the pillar to support herself. I remember Morikawa going for some more of those lower-register vocals when she recorded "Blue Water", but with "Eien ga Owatta Asa", she aims for high and floaty. The song as a whole is a good reminder of how female vocalists and/or songwriters such as Miki Imai（今井美樹）and Akiko Kobayashi（小林明子）were enjoying some richer and perhaps more velvety melodies in the late 80s and early 90s.
As for "Ow-witch!", it reached No. 12 on Oricon on CD and No. 16 on LP.
