“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’”

That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Apparently, Buono! learned how to play instruments for the beginning of a live concert earlier this year. Too bad they didn’t take it any farther than the opening gimmick and do “Nakimushi Shonen” (probably my favorite album track on Cafe Buono!) – a bit of practice, a cram session with some Stooges tunes, and, along with a fourth H!Per, they could play Micro4 in the movie version of Here Is The Wonderland!

…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.

ARTIST: Sayuri Ishikawa
SINGLE: “Dan Ryu” c/w “Aki Shinshin”
STYLE: Enka
LABEL: Nippon Columbia
SOURCE: retail single, AK-92
YEAR: 1977
DOWNLOAD: Full single (ZIP file, 256kbps mp3)

This next single that we are featuring here at the Vinyl Pagoda Project – and the first since our migration from Stuck In A Pagoda to The Groove Music Life – is a prime example of the kind of good stuff I was hoping to obtain when I got hold of that first fifty-single stack.

Dubbed “one of the truly great Enka vocalists” by the English-language enka site Barbara’s Enka Site (OK, there’s only a couple of enka pages out there in English that I know of, bear with me!), Sayuri Ishikawa is a very well established name in the enka world, having recently celebrated her 35th anniversary in show business. According to that same site, Ishikawa is adored not only by her audience but by fellow vocalists in her genre. At 50 years of age (she passed that milestone on January 30th of this year), she still looks as beautiful – maybe even more so – as she did when she recorded our featured single.

Today (September 2, 2008) as I write this, one of Ishikawa’s most recent zenkyokushu (“complete song best”) compilations (specifically, this one released in October of 2006 by Teichiku) arrived at my PO Box today, thanks to CDJapan. Having listened to the whole thing – which includes our featured single’s A-side – I can safely say that I came away from my first listen to sixteen of her hits a very big fan of Sayuri Ishikawa. Her voice reminds me very much of Barbara Streisand’s – Sayuri possesses a lot of that same passionate and pitch-perfect quality.

Sayuri debuted in 1974 on the Nippon Columbia label with a single called “Kakurenbo” (“Hide and Seek” – no connection whatsoever to the Whiteberry song of the same name from 17 years later) at age 16, looking more like a typical teenage kayokyoku singer rather than the enka sensation she would soon grow up to be:

“Dan Ryu” (“Warm Current”) is her 17th single, featuring a soaring, unforgettable melody with an almost happy, optimistic feeling. The picture sleeve still had her in Western-style clothing (she wouldn’t don a kimono on one of her picture sleeves until 20 singles later, on her 1986 release “Futari Kasa”), but the music is still pure enka.

“Dan Ryu” is only the tip of a very big and beautiful iceberg where Ishikawa’s discography is concerned – she has done over 100 singles to date (Her 102nd single, “Choito”, comes out on October 22) and more notably, she seems to have retained the master rights to her Columbia and Pony Canyon recordings (“Dan Ryu” appears on the aforementioned 2007 Nen Zenkyokushu CD on Teichiku) – another indication of the high regard she is held in.

Here’s a clip of Ishikawa-san doing “Dan Ryu” live in 1991, still sounding as good as she did back then. Unfortunately, the clip I really wanted to use, a 1987 performance where Sayuri seemed to delight in moving around while she was singing – something most enka singers don’t do by tradition, as they’re usually expected to stand still – is no longer on YouTube. Fortunately, we can embed our own video here at TGML (complete with our own logo), so we can provide you with this fine performance where Ishikawa-sama gets a much deserved mega-ovation from the audience.

I only got one Sayuri Ishikawa single in that 50-single stack, but I’ll be adding a lot more of her music to my library in the future. I’ve already pre-ordered “Choito” and I’m sure more additions will occur before and after that release date.

The scan of the picture sleeve is courtesy of Sayuri Ishikawa’s Official Site..
Please read the disclaimer if downloading the mp3 files.

One can only wonder how HaroMoni@ would have fared if the episodes had gone more along these lines: