Or: An Essay of Unmitigated Irritation!
Though I do like some of the newer J-pop music coming out, most of my recent favorite music have been older acts that I’m only discovering now, like Eriko Tamura, Yukiko Okada, Yuki Saito, etc, and among them, one of my HUGE faves has become Iyo Matsumoto!
I’ve been fortunate enough to have found wonderful J-pop forums who share their MP3 recordings so newbies like me can check them out and find out which artists really suit us, but sadly when you really dig an act, you usually find that when you want to actually go out and BUY their CDs, they are all out of print! And so it was with Iyo Matsumoto.
I got into Iyo sometime around 2018, and by 2019 I was already a hardcore fan of her music- So much that I desired to own some of her music on real, physical CDs! Call me old-fashioned, but when I really love an artist or work of music, mere MP3s just won't cut it- I need to be able to HOLD the album in my hands to CHERISH!
But even then, It was SO HARD finding stuff of any 80's artists, much less any of Iyo’s original CDs. And when I DID find one, it was very, very expensive indeed. I’d had the luck of getting a few of them over the years, but there were still more albums in her catalog I needed! Longtime readers of this blog know my struggles!
There were other reasons to want these discs besides pride of ownership. Among the MP3 files I had downloaded, several of the files I’d acquired had minor issues with them- Both “Sugar Rain” and “Tenshi No Baka” had corrupted tracks (the latter still playable but the former so corrupted I couldn’t even hear the song!) and there was a strange issue with “Only Seventeen” in that every song was mislabeled, and though I was mostly able to “match” the song to the title, some were just guesses. I REALLY wanted to get the “real” CDs and get decent rips from them!
In my searches I was to discover that Victor had released a box set called the “Iyo Matsumoto Sweet 16 Box”, which included ALL of Iyo's albums and all her singles and B-sides as well! WHAT! MAN, for a burgeoning Iyo fan, this was JUST the ticket!
My first stop whenever I’m looking for older 80s and 90’s CDs is the usually reliable OTOKICHI PREMIUM (who have saved me time and time again!), but sadly they didn’t have the Sweet 16 Box Set in stock, and I had to try elsewhere…
Going on to Amazon Japan (where I recently was able to purchase my long-coveted Ribbon Singles Complete discs) I did find 4 sellers selling the Iyo Box Set, starting from 500 dollars to 800 dollars and up! That was a staggering amount, but it was all moot as (usual for these sellers) the sellers would not ship to USA! Then a thought occurred to me: I wonder if there are any international sellers on the DOMESTIC Amazon page selling the Iyo Box Set?
I continued to scroll through the sellers pages and then…BINGO!!! YES! There was someone selling the Sweet 16 Box Set!!! Selling the Box Set at the whopping price of $542.00, I was relieved to find that this seller, though based in Japan, WOULD ship to my humble home here in Hawaii and I wasted NO TIME grabbing my credit card and PURCHASING the Iyo Box Set from the vendor!! Almost immediately, I was informed that my package was on its way!
And I waited.
And I WAITED.
FINALLY, after two whole MONTHS (!) I emailed the seller notifying them that I had seen neither hide nor hair of my order, to which the seller then refunded my purchase price with no questions or explanation. MAN, was I BUMMED!
After all that time invested in waiting, I wasn’t thrilled to get back on the waiting train, but when I saw another seller selling the Iyo Box Set (this time for an even higher purchase price of $613.64), I couldn't resist the urge to try again.
You have to understand how much I wanted this Box Set!!! I reluctantly put in my order with this new vendor and crossed my fingers!
I waited.
And I waited.
And I WAITED.
After TWO MONTHS, I emailed the seller explaining how I had not received my order, and once again was then refunded my purchase price with no explanation. Though I was relieved to get my money back, I HAD to wonder, what the HECK was going ON??? Was there some raging Iyo Matsumoto postal worker FANATIC crawling through all the Japan imports coming through the parcel post? Were ALL Japan sellers used to 50% of their shipment disappearing all the time? Somehow I felt like I was part of some elaborate scam!
Sigh. It was time to give up.
As you can see, this was back in 2019, and I’d since given up on trying to purchase ANYTHING through the Japan vendors on Amazon. It was only with my recent great successes with Surugu-ya that I’ve become comfortable ordering stuff from Japan again with any regularity. And wouldn’t you know it, just this past month, WHAT should come up on the Surugu-ya page listings, but the IYO MATSUMOTO SWEET 16 Box SET!!!
Not only were they selling the set (or, at least, working proxy for the seller), but it was at a very reasonable (relatively speaking) price of 438.00, FAR cheaper than the aforementioned orders, so cheap that even with shipping and Surugu-ya’s commision, still only came out to 462. USD!!!
It was time to take a CHANCE again, and so I went ahead and put in that order! Because it was such an expensive item, I got an email from Surugaya, asking to confirm that YES, I wanted to purchase this 400+ dollar item!
Giving the go ahead, they quickly processed my order and in days, was sent a confirmation that they had acquired the item and it was ON ITS WAY! I waited with bated breath for what ended up being a mere 3 days, and PRAISE the GODS and HALLELUJAH, my Iyo Matsumoto package came in and it is SO FREAKING BEAUTIFUL!!
Like the amazing Yukiko Okada remastered releases (which I gushed about here), each album has the associated singles and B sides from each release, and in the case of Iyo, these went from 2-3 bonus tracks to an AMAZING 6 extra songs, WOOWWWW!
Ahhhhhh~ Been spending the weekend going through each album song by song (and re-ripping them for my Iphone) and it has simply been a JOY to hear! Such wonderful, amazing music from one of my FAVE 80’s discoveries! As I went thru the catalog, I noted some things:
I had mentioned that there were a couple of albums I’d only ever had MP3 copies of
Now that I actually own the CDs of them, I am shocked to find that besides the aforementioned “Only Seventeen” album, at least one other album has track orders completely different from he ones I’d downloaded years ago. I don’t know WHY the Mp3s I had before were in such discombobulated order, but I have to say that since those were the ones I learned the albums from, they are, in my mind, still the SUPERIOR VERSIONS! It’s VERY maddening to listen to the REAL CDs and have the songs in such mixed-up playing order!!! But at least they SOUND great!
Probably one of the BIGGEST joys is the bonus disc “For Fans Only!”, a collection featuring one side of what sounds like fan messages, but the other side had 5 songs I’d heretofore never heard, a TREASURE in this day and age where I’ve basically played every song I have of her’s to death!!!
Going online, I guess this collection has been available before, but i've never seen it.
gentle song from 2009 which I’m hearing for the first time!
And one more interesting aside - I never realized that Iyo’s “Believe” was a compilation album until I saw the title song listed as one of the bonus tracks on the Sentimental Dance Club CD. It was only then that I saw that Believe wasn’t part of this CD set, and that the album was in fact made up of various Iyo singles and B-sides, all of which were presented as extra tracks here! Funny it never occured to me that it was a comp album even though her single “Sentimental Journey” was on it! At the time I just thought they threw it on as a bonus, LOL
