Make Believe Mailer 27: SKYE Blue SKYE
Some Album Recommendations!
When I talk to an artist for the first time, I always try to listen to as much as their discography as possible ahead of the chat, to get a sense of their history / store away a few obscure releases I can bring up to get them engaged. This proved near impossible with SKYE. The members — Shigeru Suzuki, Ray Ohara, Tatsuo Hayashi and Masataka Matsutoya — have simply been involved with too much Japanese music, whether as solo acts, songwriters or session players. To dig into their combined output would really be taking the scenic route through the entire history of Japanese rock and pop.
Which is why I was so excited to have the chance to talk with the group, which just put out its debut album (above), for The Japan Times. Part of the resulting article looks at what it’s like for four legit Japanese rock legends to get together and revisit a high school project half a century later, but it’s also a chance to continue exploring the newfound interest in older Japanese music playing out online…and talk to the people responsible for it.
While going through their entire collective Discogs existence in three weeks would have been borderline impossible, I did spend as much time in the days leading up to this interview listening to the various projects the quartet had been involved with. I largely ignored the major ones because I’ve listened to them plenty — Suzuki is a founding member of Happy End, the band that literally invented Japanese rock1, while Hayashi has seemingly drummed on every celebrated album of the last half century and Matsutoya has written a karaoke-catalog-worth of hits (and is married to Yuming). Instead, I gravitated towards the stuff I wasn’t as familiar with…and came out with a lot of new or reinvigorated faves.
So, because I’m very happy with how the article turned out and the whole experience in general…and because my original plan of uploading the transcript of the whole interview seemed too daunting this week2… I wanted to shine a light on some of my faves from the four members of SKYE. I think all of these are largely under the radar, even during the recent boom in Bubble-era music, and you can also hear echoes of each in SKYE’s proper debut, which makes for a neat little compact history.
Tin Pan Alley — Caramel Mama (1975)
SKYE drummer Hayashi was so excited to talk about how he branched out of his comfort zone to sing on the group’s debut album…and the other members busted his balls, reminding him “you know, you sang on Caramel Mama, right?” To be fair, that came out nearly half a century ago. But it’s an important recording for fans of…pretty much all Japanese music emerging post 1970, both because of who appears on it (everyone! Tatsuro Yamashita just pops up to do choruses!) and what it hints at (“Yellow Magic Carnival” is Haruomi Hosono calling Yellow Magic Orchestra’s shot several years early). And yeah, one of the most prolific session drummers in Japanese history sings Listen above.
Shigeru Suzuki — Lagoon (1976)
Falling smack dab in the middle of the “new music” wave of the 1970s, Lagoon feels like a perfect representation of the odd atmosphere of the Tokyo scene during the decade. At this point, the movement remained on the fringes of what was actually popular in Japan (link to Taeko Onuki telling me about a concert from this period where fans hurled bottles at her and Tatsuro Yamashita) but records from this time now look like fantasy rock lineups based on who played on them. Lagoon is no exception — Haruomi Hosono stops by to play bass on most of these recordings, as does prominent jazz artist and author Mark Levine. Ohara and Hayashi are also fixtures, as is often the case with Suzuki’s solo efforts.
What really shines through is how different it sounds from what Suzuki and company were up to before it…and after. For the majority of these songs, everyone decamped to Hawaii to record, and the island attitude radiates clearly in a set flirting with bossa nova and finding Suzuki proudly embracing the ukulele. Lagoon is partially Pacific in lei-adorned cocoon, but it’s also snapshot of an odd moment in Japanese music history — creators given enough space to explore whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted…without any commercial expectations. That’s the dream. Listen above.
Masataka Matsutoya — Yoru No Tabibito = Endless Flight (1977)
Masataka Matsutoya is an odd artist to pin down. While he’s released solo material — most notably, as one-third of Seaside Lovers — his legacy will be defined as a behind-the-scenes figure, writing…like, countless hits, to the point his Japanese Wikipedia of notable singles is alphabetized. He’s just not someone who likes being in the spotlight, and he’s pretty dismissive of his first (and, technically, only) solo album, Yoru No Tabibito = Endless Flight. Which is sorta of a shame, because it’s a fascinating offering. Like many ‘70s works, it’s basically an all-star team of acts — Hosono, Suzuki, Onuki, Hayashi — but also doubles as, if you are willing to crane your neck at the right angle, a lost Yumi Matsutoya (nee Yuming) full-length, as she wrote the bulk of lyrics and drew the cover art.
Unlike other albums from the ‘70s, it’s a pastiche of everything “new music” promised, from Van Dyke Parks-esque avant pop to Hosono-indebted exotica explorations to skeletons of Matsutoya’s eventual hit songwriting on display. Also, it’s Yuming at her peak doing Yuming things…just away from the mic. Listen above.
Aragon — Aragon (1985)
While everyone featured here stayed active during the ‘80s, nobody went as far left field at times as drummer Hayashi. At a certain point of success, you can just do what you want, and for Hayashi his pinnacle of freedom came with Aragon, the only group to come out of the SKYE circle that could safely be classified as “ambient.” Unlike other albums on this list, Aragon went into regular rotation much earlier this year in an effort to find music to help me chill a little. Also unlike other albums featured here, it’s a stab at experimentation and otherworldliness unlike any other, with Hayashi’s percussion being more understated and focused on building mood (impressive, as six years earlier he had released a vanity drum album) without ever feeling like a Muji BGM piece. Listen above.
Ray Ohara — Picaresque (1987)
When chatting with SKYE, Ray Ohara came off as the most worldly, having spent significant time in Los Angeles and coming off as the first person in this room to know that people were emptying bank accounts for Mariya Takeuchi singles. Makes sense, then, that his only solo album is a batshit Huey Lewis And The News-type affair with every song helmed by South African singer (seriously) Blondie Chaplin. Bonnie Raitt stops over for one song, while Ryuichi Sakamoto, Akiko Yano and Shigeru Suzuki do their thing in the background. The sound of ‘70s stalwarts trying to get hip to the times and…sorta succeeding? At the very least, they made a fun curio. Listen above.
Sunset Hills Hotel — Sunset Light Cocktail (1987)
Shigeru Suzuki got a bunch of his music pals together to create a series of instrumental AOR albums in the late ‘80s under the name Sunset Hills Hotel. All of these compilations are worth your time thanks to the music and the novelty of seeing superstars / liner-notes legends pen tunes apt for an Ehime resort, but it’s Sunset Light Cocktail that stuck around the most for me. Part of that is for the biggest pull of all — Seiko Matsuda, arguably the biggest idol of all time in Japanese music history, contributes a reflective song called “Sunset Tear Drops,” instantly making this a valuable in modern Japanese pop history. Beyond that though, it’s just a fun chance for familiar names — including legendary saxophonist Jake H. Concepcion — to come together, fiddle with the latest technology, and create a late-Bubble bit of bliss. Listen above.
Toshi — Made In Heaven (1992)
OK, this one has no real connection to anything I’ve been talking about…but Ray Ohara played bass on three songs (including the above) from the X JAPAN lead singer Toshi’s solo album from 1992. Getting that sentence down is enough, but it’s also a reminder of just how embedded these guys are in Japanese music.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
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Did you know the 50th anniversary of Kazemachi Roman happens in late November? Do you want your publication to have a meandering essay on what is seen by Japanese critics as the most important album of all time in the country? Respond right away, I lost my fastball when it comes to pitching!
Bit of a fourth wall break here to ask…would stuff like that be interesting to you, dear subscriber / reader? I go back and forth…on the one hand, they are long and I don’t actually think interviews attract that much attention, but on the other it might be good for readers seeing as how much of what I write is behind the necessary bummer of a paywall and also lolz who cares, I’m not charging anyone for this.