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.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Momoe Yamaguchi -- Tasogare Matsuri(たそがれ祭り)


Ahhh...blessed be the commenters! They have always come up with the hot tips. Chasing Showa sent me some information right now (which I will be sharing in its own article very shortly) about a Mixcloud page of the vintage kayo by someone named Megane-kun.


The first song on the playlist hit me with some Saturday night-friendly piano as part of an old-fashioned kayo/City Poppy number titled "Tasogare Matsuri" (Sunset Festival). And it is sung by none other than Momoe Yamaguchi(山口百恵)herself. There is always a certain level of joy celebrated by me whenever I initially think that I may soon becoming close to exhausting a veteran singer's worthier part of his/her discography only to discover a new unheard fun number.

"Tasogare Matsuri" is it. Written by Yoko Aki(阿木燿子)and composed by Koji Makaino(馬飼野康二), it is one of the few times that I've observed a song written by Aki that wasn't also composed by her husband Ryudo Uzaki(宇崎竜童). But no problems here since veteran Makaino has whipped up a rollicking beat in a Latin style that is reminiscent of Junko Yagami's(八神純子)"Mizuiro no Ame"(みずいろの雨), an old favourite of mine and one of the first songs that I had written about on the blog. Furthermore, I am also reminded of Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" which I believe came out at around the same time.

It may have that Latin spice but instead of the bright lights of Rio, "Tasogare Matsuri" is such that I can only envision the streets of Tokyo as Momoe tackles this one with aplomb. Cherry blossom season is upon the metropolis right now so this would be a nice accompanying track to all of the drunken hilarity in Ueno Park.

One reason that I had never heard of this one before is that the song was never released as a single and except for one album, I don't have anything of a Momoe collection outside of her BEST collections. Instead it made its debut deep within one of Momoe's other BEST compilations (her 8th to be exact), which I don't have, called "The Best: Playback"(THE BEST プレイバック)which came out in June 1978. The original LP peaked at No. 8 on Oricon while the tape cassette did even better by placing at No. 3.

1 comment:

  1. Here is another nice little lesser known song by Momoe - クラブサンドウィッチはいかが.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE0c7emVMCw

    ReplyDelete

Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.