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.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Go-Bang's -- Ai ni Kite I Need You (あいにきて I Need You)


It was 1989 when I did my first tour of duty in Gunma Prefecture. Kayo kyoku was giving way to J-Pop through diversification. It was no longer just aidoru, enka and City Pop anymore. I was seeing glam metal via X Japan, ska from La-ppisch, and the beginning of Shibuya-kei via Flipper's Guitar. MTV Japan helped my education of the new wave, thanks to it appearing late Friday nights.

And one of the best acts I saw was from that program when a girl band from Hokkaido came up with this insanely fun song. "Ai ni Kite I Need You" (Come and See Me! I Need You) was the 5th single from Go-Bang's(ゴーガンズ), a trio consisting of Kaori Moriwaka(森若香織) who was on lead vocal, Mitsuko Saito(斉藤光子) who was the 183-cm (taller than even Sigourney Weaver) drummer, and Misa Tanishima(谷島美砂) who was on bass. The group was around for a decade, from the mid-80s to 1994, and they played a pop-punk fusion which distinguished it from the other girl bands that had been trending for a years such as Princess Princess, Show-ya and Pink Sapphire. This song, though, sounds like something k.d. lang would go for in her early career; more of a country punk.

"Ai ni Kite I Need You" was the biggest hit of their career when it was released in the last week of 1989, and got as high as No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies. It was also later released on the album "Greatest Venus" in March 1990 which was at the top spot on the album chart for 2 consecutive weeks in that month.

There is some mystery about the group's name since it has never been confirmed if "Go-Bang's" was derived by mashing together parts of two well-known American girl groups' names: The Go-Gos and The Bangles. (If anyone out there can confirm or deny this, let me know.)

Kaori Moriwaka is still out there blogging and performing. I even saw her come out on the Fuji-TV music show, "HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP"last year to sing her most famous tune one more time.

I'm proud to say that I have the original CD single of the song...not exactly easy to find now. One of my friends came to visit me during my years in Japan, and although he wasn't a huge J-Pop fan, he did search high and low for that CD, and eventually found it at a used CD shop, Recofan, in Shibuya.




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