As less of newer music seems to interest me, I’ve found myself going backwards, digging back into the 80’s and early 90’s J-pop of yesteryear. I originally got into J-pop in mid-1995 and though I did get into the older music then, there was still SO MUCH MORE to discover!
Right now my favorite J-pop artist must be Shizuka Kudoh, a singer I’ve always liked but now am getting into 100%, doing my best to acquire all of her music and listening to at least one of her albums every day!
I first fell in love with Shizuka with her song “Kuchibiru Kara Biyaku” after seeing a clip of her singing it on the classic “Hey Hey Hey Music Champ”. What a cool freaking song!!! I ordered a copy of the single immediately!, and when I got it I loved not only the single’s A side but the beautiful and sweet B side “Serenade”.I was interested enough with her enough to pick up her (then) latest single “Blue Velvet” and it was through an appearance of Utaban promoting this song where they showed clips of her singing her debut singles like “Mugon Iroppoi” and Fu-Ji-Tsu” and I had to get those, too!
The first Kohaku I ever saw was the 1995 Year show, but through local Japan Video rental shops and old copies my friend had recorded, I was able to see show from 1994, 1993 , 1992 and even earlier! And it was on the 1993 Kohaku that I first saw her wonderful performance of “Doukoku” which would go on to become yet another HUGE fave of mine!
Next my friend Dan-O burned me a copy of his Twin-Best Shizuka Kudoh Collection “SHE~ Best of Best”...This was back when burning a CD for your friends was an art and he even printed pictures on the CDs as you can see here…what a pal!
I was grateful for the discs and wasted no time throwing it onto my latest ‘cruising mix tape”, and there was ONE SONG that stood out for me. I always knew Shizuka’s music was a bit on the more rock style (though she had a lot of ballads) than her counterparts like Miho Nakayama and Kyoko Koizumi, but there was one track on side one of SHE Best of Best that simply ROCKED the HOUSE! Such a masterpiece of a song: pounding drums, blaring horns and a dense bass track growling underneath, this was one song that begged to be BLASTED on FULL VOLUME!
Sadly, the track was written in a kanji i couldn’t read, and without the immediate help of the internet (ah we were so innocent back then!) I just called it ‘That Rockin’ Song”, and it became my reason to pop in the disc!
Fast forward to early this year and I come across an 80’s-themed J-pop forum featuring those classic artists and albums of the late 80’s early 90s…and saw they had an album up by Shizuka called “Trinity”.
I’d picked up a few of Shizuka’s earlier CDs from Book Off and Nippon Shoten over the years, such as "Shizuka", "Mysterious","Harvest", and "Karelia", but I’d never heard this album before. I downloaded it right away, and when I loaded it up and played it in my car the following evening, I was hit with one of the most gripping and interesting albums I’d heard in a awhile: full of catchy New-wave infused hits, Sentimental “Big band” pop tracks, smoky ballads as well as a few hard-rockers...INCLUDING that rockin’ song from SHE Best of Best!
Now with the internet at my disposal I did some googling and FINALLY found out the song was called “Kiri No Kanata E" (Beyond The Mist)! and it was this cherry on top that drove Trinity to become my favorite album to listen to so far this year!
With Trinity completely winning me over, I had to hear more, and I began collecting whatever albums I could find of hers that I'd missed out on, Rosette, Mind Universe, Expose, etc, and with each new album I acquired, the more BLOWN AWAY I was by this woman as each CD became a new favorite to listen to! Right now I am trying to get all her Live Concerts but the one I was MOST trying to acquire was her 1992 “Koe wo Kikasete” Concert Tour as this is the one where she performed Kiri No Kanata E LIVE!
So far I've only been able to get digital rips of the concerts (which some kind soul uploaded onto a forum), but it will definitely suffice to satiate my Shizuka hunger!!!! And o0f course the first one I checked out was Koe Wa Kikasete and gotta say- this was one totally KICK-BUTT concert! Oh MAN, Shizuka was as FIERCE and SULTRY as I expected her to be and it was a THRILL to see so many of my (new) favorite songs from her being done live for the first time! So many faves but of course the BIG performance for me was getting to see her belt out Kiri No Kanata E...so, sooooo AWESOME!
This seems to be the ONLY clip of Shizuka doing this song. Going onto Youtube I was hoping to see more, but all I could find was this (actually pretty great) video of a Japanese fan belting it out in a Karaoke room. Even in this clip you can feel the energy of the song, and in the video’s description, the girl writes: “Because this was an album-only song, probably only Shizuka fans would know it? ^^…My favorite Shizuka song!”
Indeed, this song wasn’t a single, and in fact, the liner notes of She Best Of Best CD says that the reason the song was included in the Twin Best Collection in the first place was because Shizuka herself loved it so much and always regretted that it wasn’t released as a proper single. Even SHIZUKA knows how awesome this song is! Speaking of which, Book Off once again came to my rescue when I visited it one evening and found they had a perfect copy of SHE Best of Best for sale! I grabbed that one up right away and now finally own a copy of my very own in my meager (but still growing) Shizuka Kudoh Collection!
For the moment, I am still enjoying discovering the wonder of her album back-catalogue. There are still so much more I need to get- they are all so damn GOOD! For someone whom I once only casually liked, Shizuka Kudoh has moved into my Top Ten FAVE Jpop artists of all time!
Posted by zdorama @ zdoramaagain.blogspot.com