The Groove Music Life

…and where I probably show my age yet again, but so what?

With Morning Musume’s cover version of Pink Lady’s first single about to drop, I figured it was a good as an excuse as any to look for and post a clip of my very first sight of Mei and Kei. It was May of 1979, I would be turning 12 in two months, and my listening habits at that time included Kiss, Cheap Trick, the Who, and a bit of what I knew back then as “new wave” (The Clash wouldn’t put out London Calling until the end of the year – I think I only had the US version of their first album at this point). I was home on a Friday night, about to sit down and watch The Incredible Hulk when the usual CBS Special Presentation animation comes up, indicating that something other than Bill Bixby morphing into a green-painted Lou Ferrigno was going to fill up the next 60 minutes of airtime on the “Tiffany Network”.

That something was Leif Garrett’s only network television special. I had a tape of his first album somewhere in my home, as well as a 45 of his then-current single “I Was Made For Dancing” (still a pretty decent song despite its disco’ed origins), so I sat and watched it. Outside of seeing him lipsync some of the songs from his first album (which was all covers of 50′s and 60′s songs – whoever was handling Leif at the time must have been taking a cue from Shawn Cassidy’s first album) and a skit where him and one of his guests couldn’t get away from different musical takes (punk, tango, polka) on “I Was Made For Dancing” no matter where they went, the most memorable moment of the special didn’t even belong to the then-former Odd Couple cast member and then-future celebrity convict, but to two beautiful, leggy Asian girls:

My mother happened to come into the room at that point, see Mei and Kei on the screen, and thought their dancing was “nothing special”. “Maybe,” I said, “but what about their singing?” She didn’t have an answer for me, but I had it for myself – they were pretty damn good.

The next time I was at the record store at the mall, I looked for, and located, the 45 of “Kiss In The Dark” (b-side: a cover of The Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee”), complete with picture sleeve. I still have it somewhere but haven’t located it yet. Why I never bought the album is a mystery to me, although I could easily rectify that either by going on CDJapan for the Japanese CD reissue on their longtime label Victor, or hitting eBay for a copy of the original Elektra pressing of their only American album. I didn’t remember their outfits since the only time I saw that broadcast until I located this YouTube clip, but I still remembered that silly sketch they did with Leif at the end of the segment since then.

A simple story, but that was where the seeds of my J-Fandom were first planted, although I obviously wouldn’t realize this until 2002 or so. Not counting Mai and Kei’s later foray on American television, my next taste of J-Music would come five or six years later, but that’s another story for another post.