Back to Chikara Ueda and the requested Bos and Boz from 1979

 

Definitely a lovely cover painting of the kind we shall likely never see again, for various reasons.

I've posted a lot of Chikara Ueda's stuff before, and I really liked the work called Cara de Piedra.  To rewind a bit, his profile here.  This little LP came quite early in his oeuvre and is criminally short, it has 6 tracks all of the order of 4-5 minutes long (I guess because it's a 12 inch 45 promo).   The Boz in the title is of course Scaggs who composed half of it.  Not sure who is the Bos.  Note that the guitarist is Sadanori Nakamure.

As usual the music is beautifully and professionally played smooth fusion instrumentalese, with occasional wispy female vocals expressing wordless singing, like the old cinematic porno movies (something youngsters today will never grow up to witness) RIP.

Somehow he makes everything sound like a samba or bossa nova, even the composition called Hollywood.  For those who have been there and have witnessed how supremely disappointing Hollywood is in real life or in person, with innumerable strip malls lining long boring Boulevards clogged with heavy traffic and honking Escalades punctuated by El Pollo Loco grilled chicken franchises, liquor stores, taco stands and burger joints and places to get your paychecks cashed, billboards by the road advertising endless lawyers for personal injuries, a surprisingly large number of lawyers among the wannabe stars, plus the very occasional quasi-interesting scene such as the Stars' Walk of Fame, it seems surprising that Hollywood is depicted this way on Chikara's record.  I can honestly say there is nothing tropical about the place except the constant carcinogenic blue sky.  And if you sometimes come across a store, as you are likely to, that sells liquor and guns and maybe tacos and cashes your paycheck, you have everything you need to survive in Lala land: cash your paycheck to buy a gun then steal the whiskey and take all the store's cash: another happy California customer, satisfaction guaranteed...

Island Cuckoo is a more appropriately equatorial-sounding instrumental:

Not only does this track give you an idea of the contents of this vinyl, every track is so similar you virtually don't have to bother with the rest...

By the way as expected the beautiful harmonica sound is Toots Thielemans's--I mean, who else?