Players with Colgen: Galaxy,1979, Wonderful Guys, 1980, etc. (7 albums)

Recall Hiromasa Suzuki with his Colgen Band?  It turns out this collective made a string of 7 fusion albums starting in 1979.  In fact the album from 1981 I posted from him earlier this year borrowed three tracks from the Players first release, possibly more.  I once again find myself in the position of having to thank the perceptive commenter who drew my attention to this fact in the earlier post.  Today, we can all thank him.  Especially since there is quite a riches of wonderful fusion to go through in these, overall, and unlike the previous post the quality does not decline precipitously.  Looking at what I've liked on my personal device (ipod classic number 6 so far in this lifetime, more in the afterlife) I can see that starting right out of the gate with 7-8 great tracks in the first 2 albums, we are only reduced to 4-5 great tracks by the end which came in the mid-eighties with the live album that basically just rehashed earlier hits.  And that's quite remarkable, as per the LPDP (Law of Post-70s Declining Progressiveness).  A very slow downslope for this artist.

Incidentally, I guess I didn't quote the Japanese wiki for mastermind keyboardist Suzuki's bio earlier.  In those days of course, so long long ago (last April) we didn't know about the wonders of machine learning and AI and the miracle of The Great Google's translation capabilities, which are such a miracle of software development-- Great God, please bless those blessed billionaires who rule us today, those four of them, blessed, blessed billionaires:

Hiromasa Suzuki (Hiromasa Suzuki, 1940 May 26 - 2001 May 21 ), the Tokyo Metropolitan born jazz pianist - composer - arranger . Since the nickname is "Korgen", the nickname is "Korgen".

And that's for sure.  Plus later the very interesting:

Dental born as the son of a physician , Keio University to go to, but the jazz piano and committed to, Masahiko Sato , Yuji Ono wins the name as "Keio trio" with. The nickname `` Korgen '' was originally from Sato, but Suzuki, who was called `` Second generation Colgen '' in a group that Sato came to the United States and participated in after that, was nicknamed `` Colgen '' one day it became established.

You know inevitably, I almost pray that 'deep learning' doesn't progress much beyond this point, where you can expect a combination of humour, poetry, and entertainment out of every translation: "was nicknamed colgen one day it became established."

Computer has no humour, however, at the end:

Although suffering from cancer, he once performed a “survival live” after surgery, but died on May 21, 2001. 
60 years old died.

Tragic.
Moving on to the music, the track called Unsweetened absolutely, again, rips it outta the ballpark for me (in the immortal words of my wife, "sometimes you never even make it inside that ballpark"):





And indeed we are outta the ballpark again for the second track of the second album called Wonderful Guys, lucky for me there's a hot dog stand right outside it, too bad no beer though:





I would really, really like to get inside the stands again, dying for a beer, but outta the ballpark for the intro to 8:30 off the Madagascar Lady collection:





And I will honestly say, the title of the album was so unpromising I was pretty sure I would hit disappointment avenue, which happens to be a dead end street, with a multitude of afro-rhythms and simple fuzak, but this was not meant to be.  The entire album is convincingly compelling, and it was released in 1981!  As if in a Kafka story, I find myself unable to find the entrance to the ballpark, although as I move on to the Space Travel album from 1982 with its unfortunate big band aspects and fuzak plus vocals, I'm back to sitting in the highest stands with cheap popcorn and some idiot just knocked over my plastic cup:

Eberhard Schoener's Time Square, 1981

So I once again find myself in the position of thanking a requester or commenter.

I would never have bothered to listen to this because of the other earlier seventies works I've heard from Schoener, which were in the drony electronic style I find so dull.  Usual comments about how they don't bother to change keys, one whole side of an album will stay in C minor and never stray, almost like the musician fell asleep at his synthesizer out of boredom and omitted to press the button for the next chord.  I mean, you could move to F minor for just a few seconds, it wouldn't kill you.

I didn't even know he went on to make more albums following the initial stages.  You can see his discography here.  Anyways, the commercial impulse I think pushed him into better territory with shorter, more composed songs, and he hit gold here.  I think it's appropriate to describe this and the later ones as art rock melded with electronic, sometimes in the minimalist style that was prevalent in the early eighties, but often he strives to create really beautiful visions, musically, and this album in particular is just full of those.  I didn't think the other one (that precedes this), Events, or the later ones are in the same league though.

As usual, take a look first at the cover art, I mean it's just superb.  The dart going through the window, with the woman, her shadow reflected repeatedly on the back wall, and the small autumnal tree, either nonchalantly unaware, or uncaring, just tell a whole movie's worth of story.  It's so beautiful, because it's so evocative, and mysterious.  (You can see on that release page the artwork credits.)  Much of the music is woman-centred, as if the whole thing was dedicated to someone he knew and loved.  Compositions and lyrics are by Schoener, with one exception.

The stunning, standout track is The Nine Lives of A Cat which tells the story of a (young) woman's life in stages, as if she had 9 lives.  It's a somewhat trite concept but the language used is pure poetry.  The song ends when she is looking in the mirror at the age of 30, very much aware that there are still lives ahead of her:




This kind of songwriting, with subtlety, great beauty, and nuanced emotions, is as I always say the kind of thing that's totally missing today.

One final note, I wanted to see who was the operatic singer for this song.  Would you believe it's someone we all know already: the girl who sang the gorgeous wordless vocals on The Great Gig in the Sky from Dark Side of the Moon!
Her name is Clare Torry.   Note that she never got to release a full length album in that period, just singles.

I include the lyrics to the song, with the repetitions omitted:

Watching in a mirror she saw a child
gay, in despair, or bored...
and thankful to be loved
There were lives she still didn't know
because a cat has nine lives

Watching in a mirror she saw a young girl
first love changed her, she learned to take care
but thankful to be loved
There were lives she still didn't know
because a cat has nine lives

Watching in a mirror she saw a loved one
sensitive, self-conscious, and full of doubt
but still, thankful to be loved
There were lives she still didn't know
because a cat has nine lives

Watching in a mirror she saw a wife
lonely, happy, possessive,
still thankful to be loved
etc.

Watching in a mirror she saw a mother
taking care, aggressive, tender
still thankful to be loved
etc.

Now I'm thirty years old
watching in the mirror
all that belongs to me is mine
mine alone, and yet I believe
there are still lives I don't know
because a cat has nine lives

Hard to believe he wrote that. It's tragic to me that such beautiful music is completely lost to humanity.

Interior with ST, 1982 and Design, 1987

I don't normally like anything electronic and it's quite absent from this blog as you might have noted, but this band, discography and info here, seems just a little bit more inventive than the average from this bin selection, though this is definitely the genre we are dealing with here.

First album was disappointing to me, being the typical 'minimal synth' style of minimal effort at composition.  A typical song, this one called Luft:






So despite the previous reductio ad absurdum one-note simplicity, it turns out the band was capable of much more creative composition, as seen from the track called NY 1908 with its etude-like character roving over various chords, descending into the Terry Riley-like minimalist ethos at the end:





On the other hand the album closes with synthesizer chords that just absolutely take me on an iditarod sleigh ride to heaven on the track that is Out of Tokyo:

Sophia (Japan, 1984)

You'll get a distinct Rush feeling on the first track, called Celebration (compare, YYZ):

And throughout this great little 12-inch proggy hard rock 'mini-album'.  Information here.  Vocals appear on the second track.  The whole has a very DIY feel.  Unfortunately, their follow-up CD called Defiance from 1986 became more straightforward, with conventional chord changes, and is therefore of a lot less interest.

Tatsuro Yamashita in 7 albums (Add Some Music, Circus Town, Spacey, Pacific etc.)

These are some of the worst covers (apart from the first and Spacy) we've seen lately on this blog. (Not at all aided by the inclusion of the artist's image.)  Musically we have here a case where a very inauspicious beginning in the first album of cover versions of Beach Boys songs led to some very nice funky but simple fusion pop in Circus and his masterpiece Spacy, then a total sell-out into commercial funky Japa-pop that deteriorated so quickly that by the not so late year of 1979 and the ridiculous Poppin' album there is already not one single interesting track or song, in fact, I couldn't even listen through completely to one song without fast forwarding, or worse in fact, I couldn't even listen to more than 10 seconds of each song without jumping to the next.  So it's similar to Paul Dirac's famous delta function that starts at zero, is able to jump to infinity at the unity point and then drop to zero again in all subsequent numerical inputs.  (This mathematical function found its place to everyone's surprise in quantum physics.)  To be honest we've seen this kind of thing before, one masterpiece standing shoulders-high in a large field of garbage or perhaps more appropriately a swirling oceanic pacific patch of plastic refuse.  But I'm being a bit too unkind to this artist.

I think the album Circus (1976) has some really fun compositions reminiscent of the best of Godiego, albeit quite a bit simpler, and worse, and Spacy (1977) of course in addition to the magnificent and masterful art, is good from beginning to end.  A true delight.  His discography is here.  The bio states the following:

Singer-songwriter and producer, born 4 February 1953. Husband of Mariya Takeuchi. Heavily influenced by American jazz, soul & big band music, his first album, Add Some Music To Your Day, containing cover versions of songs by the Beach Boys and other golden age American songs, is now extremely rare & sought-after. His major debut came in 1976 with Circus Town, which was recorded in New York and Los Angeles, the former with the participation of famed conductor & arranger Charlie Calello.

His popular breakthrough came in 1980 with the release of Ride On Time, whose title track peaked at #3 on the Oricon singles chart and was used in a TV ad for Maxell audio cassettes featuring Yamashita. He is probably best-known for composing & performing his 1983 song "Christmas Eve", which appeared on his album Melodies that year and was notably covered by Pentatonix for the Japanese release of their That's Christmas To Me album.

He is also famous as record collector and the DJ of Japan's most famous oldies radio show called "Tatsuro Yamashita's Sunday Songbook" (TOKYO FM). This program started on October 3, 1992 as a Saturday Songbook, but changed to the Sunday Songbook on April 3, 1994. And it is a long run program that continues to date.

Clearly he is popular as witnessed by the fact wikipedia English lists him (not the wonderful Japanese version with its AI-artful poetic translations), and when I listen to a great song like Minnie, I can see why-- here on youtube, not sure why not removed due to copyright.  (In which case, you can try the general search function with links here.)

From the 'masterpiece' Spacy (check out again the boy with the X-ray jet-killing vision) the seventh track, viz. (言えなかった言葉を):