Another fantastic single introduced to me via those groovy J-pop mixes my friend at work would make for me, this time the dramatic HURT TO HEART by Nakayama Miho!
Whenever I’m talking about these J-pop Mixes, I say that Dave “made the j-pop mix for me”, but I should clarify that he was actually making the tape for HIMSELF… As j-pop buyer, he would get a whole lot of new j-pop singles each month, and he’d make tapes of the ones he liked to get to know them better, and since he knew I also loved j-music, he’d simply make a duplicate copy of the mix for me!
He would come into my section and hand me a brand new cassette and offhandedly say, “Hey, I got a new J-pop mix for you.” YATTA!!!
The only problem is that while he knew who and what was going on the mix, I had no idea at all since what he gave me was always a bare cassette with no labels. Only when he had time would he go home and copy down all the names and titles for me, a BIG headache for him, so sometimes I’d wait for weeks without knowing who or what I was listening to!
Anyway, so it had been a week or so of listening to the latest j-pop mix with this melancholy Nakayama Miho song, and I was really liking it, pretty soon I’d find myself singing the chorus to myself as I worked. So one day Dave’s walking by and hears me singing, “Heart…To…Hearttttt!” He came into my section and said, “Ehhhh…It’s actually HURT to Heart… I’ll write down the titles tonight, okay?” HAHAHAHA! D’OH!
Nakayama Miho was a very frequent guest on Hey Hey Hey back in the day, and I was thrilled to see her performing this beautiful song one evening!
