 |
| "You're my Treasure, あなた は, - ずっと わたし の Diamond" |
In 1994, I was working nights at Tower Records in the video section, and my friend Dan would come in occasionally to chat or grab a late dinner with me, as well as to shop and sometimes purchase these laserdiscs of Japanese singers. One night he came to purchase a concert called “Forever”, and told me it was the farewell concert from this Japanese girl group he liked called “CoCo”.
Now, having just recently started listening to those Tenchi Muyo music CDs, I wasn’t a complete stranger to j-pop, but didn’t immediately see the allure of watching a complete concert of girls singing songs, at least without the benefit of a tie-in to an animated series! A few nights later he dropped by again, telling me how terrific that Forever Laserdisc was. He’d bought a couple of other CoCo discs earlier: one concert disc called DEUXE EDITION as well as a disc of videos called THE COCO COLLECTION, and now told me that with Forever, this group had become his favorite j-pop group of all time!
 |
| CoCo Deluxe Edition, Forever Concert |
He invited me to come over and check out these CoCo laserdiscs, and though it didn’t really grab my interest, he padded the offer by telling me he had some anime magazines with Tenchi Muyo articles that he’d give me. WELL!! So off to Dan’s house I went that evening!
Upon getting there, Dan broke out his massive anime magazine collection. Having been a big fan of anime since Macross, Bubblegum Crisis and the like, he’d managed to acquire a pretty hefty supply, and sorting through them, pulled out a few featuring Tenchi Muyo for me. As I pored over my new treasures, Dan then brought out his CoCo CDs, and at the time, the ones he had were CoCo’s two greatest hits collections: Ichiban and Singles, as well as their last official release, Sweet and Bitter. As he played the CDs he introduced the members to me, told me how there used to be five members but had become a quartet, and of course, made a point to point out Rieko Miura, who he said was his favorite member!
 |
| Miura Rieko |
After grabbing dinner and heading back to the house, he proceeded with Attack Part Two: playing some of his favorite CoCo Concert performances and Video clips for me. I immediately recognized one of the songs I heard and liked earlier in his room, a fun song called “A Girl’s Night” and was thrilled to watch the concert performance sung by member Haneda Erika! He showed me the live performances and video clips of other songs like “Yokohama Boy Style” and what would be one of my first favorite songs from them, “Koi No Junction”. By the end of that night, I said, OK, this group IS pretty good! He made me a dub of the Forever and Deluxe Edition Concerts as well as the Video Clips and made me a cassette copy of his three albums, and we called it a night!
Now, I thought I might watch some of the songs I liked every once in a while, and thought I might take the cassette to work and listen to it on the bus ride over. What I couldn’t have imagined was that once I sat down and watched those concerts in full, and when I listened to those CDS in its entirety- I JUST COULDN’T STOP! I found myself watching the concerts over and over again, and by the end of that weekend, I was absolutely SOLD-
I. Fricking. LOVED THEM!!!!!
 |
| Mikiyo, Rieko, Makibo and Erika-chan |
I can’t quite explain just what it was that drew me to them so instantly, but I suppose it was a combination of the catchiness of the songs, the sweet dancing and performances in the concerts, and the indisputable, super-cuteness of the girls! Every song and performance was a treat to watch over and over again., and I DID, much to the puzzlement of my family members who had to hear it all night!
Another thing that was great was watching the 1993 Deluxe Edition Concert and then watching the 1994 Farewell Concert back-to-back. Together, you got a scope of how great these gals really were, and one thing that I think really cinched the deal for me was the end of the Forever Concert, as the beautiful farewell song “Kore Kara” played during the credits, and after the general producer names went by, they listed all of CoCo’s Singles, Albums, heck, the whole discography, and you said to yourself: This is a group that I NEED to know more of!
In a fan-induced haze, I called Dan that following Monday, and told him, “Okay, I GET it. That group CoCo is AWESOME!! I want more! Can you make me copies of some of your other CoCo CDs and Concerts?” Dan was pleased that I became such an instant fan, but sadly had to say that he didn’t HAVE anything else! He’d already given me everything he had! He HAD put in a special order for the rest of CoCo’s CDs and Laserdiscs through Tower, but those things took like months to arrive, and until then, we’d just have to wait! ARGH!!!!! I was SO impatient for those discs to come in! Yes, I’d become a TRUE BLUE CoCo fan!!
As we waited for the rest of those CoCo CDs and Laserdiscs to come in, in the meantime, I was playing in a rock band with another friend whom I’d known through our mutual appreciation of tokusatsu, and since it was all Japanese related and thought he might be interested, during a break in our rehearsal, I brought out my CoCo Cassette and said, Dude, you have GOT to hear this group, they are SOOOOO good! He listened patiently as I played him “Koi No Junction” and “A Girl’s Night” and such, and though it didn’t seem to win any awards with him, he did accept a copy of the cassette as well as a copy of my copies of Dan’s CoCo Laserdiscs!
Little did I expect it, but that following Monday morning, I got a call from him, saying pretty much verbatim what I’d told Dan just a few weeks earlier: “OK, I Get it! Make me copies of the rest of their stuff!” I LAUGHED out LOUD, knowing he’d become as crazy for CoCo as me and Dano!!! So the THREE of us waited for the rest of the CoCo goods to arrive!
In the meantime, Dan had found a store in town which had copies of CoCo’s Personal Best Collection, and while not a “real” CoCo release, sated us for the moment. Then a few weeks later, that fateful shipment arrived, and …
Well. Words just cannot explain.
With Albums STRAWBERRY, SNOW GARDEN, STRAIGHT, and SYLPH as well as Laserdiscs concerts HARUWA COCO KARA-LIVE AT NAKANO SUNPLAZA, THE COCO NATSU’92 CONCERT and the mighty, mighty, fricking legendary LIVE AT BUDOKAN Concerts, Our. Worlds. Were. Rocked!
 |
| Haruwa CoCo Kara'91, Budokan 1992 |
From then on, every night was spent watching those concerts and every day was spent listening to the CDS. I even remember that that first night we got the albums, Dan rigged a huge speaker system in his car, and we drove around ALL NIGHT, listening to those songs, speeding around town!!!
I’d say those few months were the most profound days for me, at least as far as j-pop and everything related to it is concerned. It was hanging out at Dan’s every night listening or watching CoCo after grabbing dinner, that I first started really watching those NGN and KIKU dramas, and It ws then that I got introduced to all the other j-music that was out there by watching both HEY HEY HEY, POPJAM and MUSIC FAIR! From there we eventually expanded our horizons to include other acts like fellow Pony-Canyon artists RIBBON as well as artists like Namie Amuro, trf, Princess Princess, Moritaka Chisato, the list goes on and on!
That was back in 1994, and here it is, now in 2007, and I’m still a HUGE fan of J-pop and J-dramas, and it doesn’t look like it’s showing any time of stopping soon! Though my shelves are now lined with CDS and singles, Laserdisc Concerts and Videos of hundreds of different J-pop artists out there, there will never be another group for me like those four (sometimes five) young girls: Azusa Senou, Haneda Erika, Miyamae Maki, Miura Rieko and Ohno Mikiyo, the awesome COCO, the j-pop group that started it all for me!
Comments from the Original Post:
Yametekudasai wrote:
[いいですね] 思い出がいっぱい . . .
MorningBerryz wrote:
CoCo is also what brought us together and made us friends back then. If my memory serves me right it was in late 1994 as their albums "Sweet & Bitter" and "Singles" had been released recently. I still have the CoCo tape that you made for me. You were such a big fan by then and I had just 2 albums. lol. We used to have cushions with that black & white stripe design on our sofas. They became CoCo sofas! lol. I remember asking my grandmother and David's girlfriend to romanize all of their songs for us. David's girlfriend wasn't all that happy about that! :P We never did finish them all though but did quite a few. Rieko our first J-Pop "anime" voice!
zdorama wrote:
You know, I think I still have all those xeroxed romanized CoCo songs in a folder somewhere!
I wish they had released the piano version of "You're My Treasure" (the one playing in the background during the "talk" segment of First and Last Video Clips.
I would love to have uploaded that here.
MorningBerryz wrote:
CoCo Convention? I never heard about that. lol. If we all sat in a room and watched a concert that would be really something amazing wouldn't it? Imagine the conversations that would go on. :)
