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Instrumental Invasion, 3/8/23 March 9, 2023

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Comedy, Comics, Computer, History, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Photography, Radio, Technology, TV, VHS, Video, Video Games.
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Since there’s much to discuss and many photos and videos, I’ll post the scoped aircheck up here (and below) instead of at the end:

The March 8 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded from January 14 to 16: the first hour on the 14th, the next two segments on the 15th, and the last on the 16th. Pickups were recorded that day and the next (January 17).

Due to a facility issue at the Abrams Communication Center, WCWP activity was not allowed the day this show aired. Station manager Pete Bellotti informed me the show would air at 7PM and 9PM since there couldn’t be a live edition of The Rock Show. The above scope is from the 7PM broadcast.

The playlist was created and mostly annotated on January 11. The rest of the annotations came on the 12th, followed by the talk break script draft that carried into the 13th. A timing error in the first segment meant I had to make up a 72-second surplus. I successfully made up that time without having to remix segments.

Five songs in this show have appeared in prior shows:

“Freda” was preceded by David Benoit‘s arrangement of “Frieda with the Naturally Curly Hair” from Here’s to You, Charlie Brown: 50 Great Years! I had yet to see the special that gave David’s CD its name, but watched a few days after completing production. Here it is:

A chance viewing of a video that showed the differences between the original and subsequent airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas got the ball rolling on Peanuts documentaries and specials. The first video YouTube recommended was the documentary A Boy Named Charlie Brown, not to be confused with the later film:

I challenge fellow Peanuts fans to count how many scenes foreshadow later specials and films.

The second video chronologically was the third recommended to me: Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown.

The second special I watched was It’s Your 20th Television Anniversary, Charlie Brown. (I originally omitted the “television” part, correcting the error in my January 17 pickup.)

The last special I watched on YouTube before working on this show was You Don’t Look 40, Charlie Brown. This special coincided with the unrelated CD Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown! David Benoit appears in a “Linus and Lucy” music video, concluding with his anniversary wishes to Good Ol’ Charlie Brown.

I bought a VHS copy on eBay years ago, but don’t know what I did with it.

After Here’s to You, I watched the CBS News special Good Grief, Charlie Brown: A Tribute to Charles Schulz, hosted by Walter Cronkite:

This aired February 11, 2000. Schulz died on the night of the 12th, and his last Peanuts strip ran on the 13th. The above thumbnail is of Donna Mae Wold (née Donna Mae Johnson), who inspired the Little Red-Haired Girl.

And just this Sunday, the following ran on CBS Sunday Morning:

Lee Cowan’s report featured Schulz’s widow Jean and Pearls Before Swine cartoonist Stephan Pastis (first name pronounced like Stephen Curry).

As my Facebook friends and Instagram followers know, I obsessively archived Brian Simpson‘s Closer Still CD for posterity since it’s rare for anyone to find the real thing. (You can’t even find it on eBay!) I won’t share my WAV and MP3 rips from the CD since you can buy and stream the tracks digitally from places like Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify. I will, however, share my camera photos and flatbed scans. Photos first:

The Discogs seller may have paid $2.99, but I was more than willing to pay their asking price of $39.97, plus shipping and tax. Archival!

Scans:

I used the magic wand tool in Adobe Photoshop to edit out the black background, then cropped the image.
This was also cropped after removing the white background. Each of the last two were scanned in grayscale. All the rest were RGB color.
I even scanned the CD.

“Hidden Pleasures” (track 4) was the centerpiece of my three Brians segment (two Brians, one Bryan). The talk break that followed paid homage to two video game-centric content creators: Game Dave and Metal Jesus, with a reference to Frank Cifaldi and the Video Game History Foundation for good measure. Metal Jesus occasionally posts “hidden gems” videos, highlighting overlooked video games. Here’s a marathon of six episodes he did on Wii hidden gems:

Thank you for reading to the end of this post. I’ll return to the regular show recap format next week.

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My city pop discovery (and reacquaintance with Garfield and Friends) March 5, 2023

Posted by Mike C. in Animation, City Pop, Comedy, Comics, Film, Game Shows, Health, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Phone, Pop, Radio, Technology, Travel, TV, Video, Video Games, Weather.
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NOTE 1: This is also a Garfield and Friends story with several montages among the city pop material. Those montages led me to city pop.

NOTE 2: I consulted my computer audio recordings of the Garfield and Friends DVDs to ensure the video embed caption quotes are verbatim.

NOTE 3: I even spend a paragraph on The Weather Channel tribute site TWC Classics, a simulator that re-creates the old local forecasts, and recently departed announcer Dan Chandler who lent his narration to the sim.

Nearly 50 years ago, Japan’s economy was booming and a new leisure class developed. That leisure class begat a new Japanese pop music genre, borrowing elements of various Western music genres. They called it city pop. What began in the 1970s, peaked in popularity in the ’80s, then fell out of the Japanese mainstream.

City pop found a new Western audience in the 2010s thanks to blog posts like mine (but earlier), Japanese reissues of the genre’s albums, and YouTube uploads of the albums’ tracks. From a 2023 perspective, I give YouTube most of the credit. Today, it is the best city pop recruitment tool.

The rest of this post is about how I discovered city pop and recounts my first nine days as a fan. If you want to read more about the genre and its resurgence, I recommend Cat Zhang’s 2021 Pitchfork article and Wikipedia’s city pop entry.

On February 19, YouTube recommended a video with random clips from my favorite cartoon series, Garfield and Friends:

Jim Davis created the Garfield comic strip and CBS TV specials, but Mark Evanier (with Sharman DiVono for three seasons) spun comedy gold on CBS Saturday mornings from 1988 to 1994 (the last rerun aired in ’95). I can quote parts of episodes or even whole episodes. So, when watching the above clips, I knew what happened next.

The next Garfield and Friends clip in my recommendations came on February 20:

The evening of February 21 was my city pop entry point, but we’re not there yet. The prelude to the entry was this:

“Today [Monday], Garfield, we’re going to eat nothing but raisins!”

Full disclosure: I met Jim Davis at a signing in March 1995, but I was too shy and just had him sign a sketch. And I interviewed Jon Arbuckle voice actor Thom Huge (HUE-ghee) three times for The Mike Chimeri Show. (In retrospect, I would have held off on the first interview until his voice was back to normal.)

The Jon Arbuckle montage led YouTube to recommend this:

According to Know Your Meme, the video originated in the 1991 CBS TV special, Garfield Gets a Life, where it was set to “Shake Your Paw,” performed by The Temptations. The score and three songs (including “Shake Your Paw”) were written by David Benoit (music) and Desirée Goyette (lyrics).

Whoa! What is that song that sounds vaguely like “Burnin’ Up the Carnival” by Joe Sample (from Voices in the Rain)? I scrolled down and saw the song was “4:00 A.M.” by Taeko Onuki (or Ohnuki). I searched Google on my iPhone and the Taeko’s Wikipedia entry (linked in the previous sentence) and found the song. That prompted the YouTube app where I heard the whole thing:

Whoa again, it appeared on an album with the last name of a few of my friends, but with an extra N. Lyrics are here.

1:30 PM UPDATE: A member of the My Life in Gaming Discord server told me the album title was part of Taeko’s fascination with French media, which I confirmed after a Google Search yielded this 2017 interview. Still, Mignonne is one letter off from my friends of Italian descent.

3:10 PM UPDATE: I just finished reading the interview linked in the prior update. It was an interesting read, but I was disappointed to learn Taeko did not like Mignonne because of what transpired during production. The resulting disenchantment, and poor sales, made her take a two-year hiatus from the music industry. Anyway, back to the good stuff.

Taeko’s Wikipedia entry led me to the one on city pop. That’s what I heard and I wanted more.

I could not stop listening to “4:00 A.M.” Ironically, it kept me up past midnight, but not as late as 4AM. I was up at 4AM on March 4 when I drafted this blog post thanks to a period of strong easterly winds that buffeted my bedroom window. The song’s refrain may sound vaguely like the later “Burnin’ Up the Carnival,” but the song otherwise had more in common with the works of Bob James and Grover Washington Jr. The line “ima o” was phrased like “that’s the time” in “Feel Like Makin’ Love” by Roberta Flack, which Bob played on and then covered. The guitar solo on the ending breakdown sounded like it came from Eric Gale‘s hands. (It was from Tsunehide Matsuki‘s hands.) I have repeatedly imagined Grover Washington himself covering “4:00 A.M.” on alto saxophone, soloing (improvising) from the last refrain, through the breakdown, all the way to the end.

I should probably acknowledge that I am on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, formerly known as Asperger Syndrome. That probably explains my intense focus on one thing or another, and attention to detail.

I was busy with radio show production on February 22, but “4:00 A.M.” was in the back of my mind and I was intent on extracting the audio and assigning the WAV file to a vintage Weather Channel local forecast flavor in my WeatherStar 4000 simulator. Now, I could hear all but the last 36 seconds with the current conditions and forecast, peppered with Dan Chandler’s re-created narrations. (I was in touch with Dan for a few weeks midway through my tenure at WGBB, and he even called in while I was playing a song. I didn’t put him on, but relayed what we talked about, including “reading the sports pages” as he listened to the live stream. After writing that sentence, I’m sorry to learn that he passed away on February 7 [obituary].) The simulator was already populated by music cues from The Price is Right and adjacent Goodson–Todman game shows. See the February 15 Instrumental Invasion recap for more on that obsession.

While my “4:00 A.M.” obsession continued, YouTube had more city pop recommendations, including a modern music video for Mariya Takeuchi‘s “Plastic Love“:

Mariya only appears audibly through the original 1984 song. In ’82, she married the king of city pop, Tatsuro Yamashita. I was impressed that her English vocals were English, not transliterations.

Oh, and another Jon Arbuckle montage:

As the “Plastic Love” video wound down, I pretended to be Dan Ingram back-selling the song, quipping that it was better than polyurethane love.

My vocal city pop discoveries halted for the next few days when I found a city pop creation befitting my love of instrumental music: jazz fusion supergroup Casiopea!

First, I found “Midnight Rendezvous“:

Then, “Eyes of the Mind” before the “the” was added:

Groups like Casiopea and T-Square (formerly The Square) have influenced generations of video game music composers.

I woke up on February 23 after a full night’s sleep and was greeted with two more Jon Arbuckle videos:

“He can’t cook! He can’t get a date! He’s Jon Arbuckle, and we’re giving him away absolutely free! In fact, we’ll pay you to take him!”
“Let’s not ask questions. Let’s just get out of here.”

As I listened to my radio show aircheck from the night before, I began extracting audio from whatever Casiopea albums were on YouTube (mostly via their “topics” channel), provided the cover art available online was clear and at least 1500×1500 pixels. If AI upscaling in Adobe Photoshop yielded poor results, I’d buy the CD myself and scan the artwork. That’s what I did for Flowers (1996), but I bought Euphony (1988) because it wasn’t on YouTube. I will eventually buy the actual CDs, but given the inflated import prices, collection take a while. Here’s what I do have:

I’m still working my way through the albums chronologically in my spare time. Flowers is gradually on its way from a Japan Discogs markeplace seller, so I jumped from Freshness to Light and Shadows. That’s where I am as of publication on March 5. (I got in eight hours of sleep the night before.)

The last item in this post’s Casiopea segment is T2norway‘s video profile of them, preceded by his city pop story:

Thanks to my college friend Phil Federico for bringing this to my attention. I can overlook T2’s mispronunciations of Harvey Mason and Lee Ritenour, who also appeared on Casiopea albums. In fact, they, Bob James, and Nathan East – future members of Fourplay – all appeared on Casiopea studio recordings.

The night of February 23, YouTube recommended two more Garfield and Friends videos. One was yet another montage:

And the other was a series review by Nostalgia Critic, played by Doug Walker (who was born the same day as me!):

I was let down by his critiques of certain characters and the animation style, not to mention his disdain for U.S. Acres. Nonetheless, I respect his dissent.

My city pop discoveries resumed on the night of February 25, related to “Plastic Love.” Leading off, a Super Famicom/Nintendo rendition:

That was followed by the infamous long version of the Mariya Takeuchi original (lyrics):

(As of 3/13/23, the video was taken down. In the long version, one verse repeated and the ending chorus was extended, exemplified below.)

Since I was watching in a web browser, I saw recommendations on the right side of the tab. The one that caught me eye was an English version of “Plastic Love”:

The singer-songwriter was Caitlin Myers, also a voice actress with a focus in anime and video games. She has two YouTube channels: one in her name and one called Interlunium. I was unaware of the scope of her work as I watched this first video.

More city pop discoveries came way on February 26. Figuratively waiting at the door to this new day was “Mayonaka no Door* (Stay with Me)” by the late Miki Matsubara, recorded when she was just 19 (lyrics):

*”Door” is lyrically transliterated “doa.” The full term means “midnight’s door (literally, door of midnight).” In another ironic twist, there were nights after discovering this song when I’d be awake around midnight as the refrain bounced around in my head. Sometimes, I imagined a fast tempo, “Spain“-esque Chick Corea version with a Minimoog solo. Others, I thought of McCoy Tyner.

Sure enough, Caitlin Myers wrote an English version of this, too:

The anime artwork is based on a 1980 photo of Miki.

Incidentally, I added both versions of “Plastic Love” and “Mayonaka no Door (Stay with Me)” to the WS4000 simulator, again using the five-minute local forecast flavor.

Knocking on afternoon’s door was the biggest discovery yet: Caitlin covered “4:00 A.M.”!

Caitlin and her two backing vocalists came closer to the gospel choir sound for the line “Lord, give me one more chance!”

My city pop journey had seemingly come full circle. Now, I had English versions of the first three vocal city pop songs I discovered to complement the originals.

The Garfield and Friends video journey definitely came to end on the morning of February 28 with this video showing one second of each episode from show (or rather from each cartoon in each episode):

However, there was more city pop to be had that afternoon. Other Caitlin Myers English adaptations were in my YouTube feed, and I felt I had to hear the originals before listening to hers.

“Do You Remember Love?” was adapted from its directly-translated Japanese title, “Ai Oboete Imasu ka.” Sung by Mari Iijima, it underscored the intense climax to the 1984 film, Macross: Do You Remember Love? I foolishly watched that sequence on YouTube instead of a straight recording of the song, unable to unsee or unhear any of it. (And I thought Disney villain deaths were rough.)

Lucky for you, the reader, I found a straight recording (lyrics):

And the Caitlin Myers version:

3/13/23 UPDATE: “Do You Remember Love?” was J-pop rather than city pop, illustrating how songs from the subgenre led me to ones from the main genre.

“Dance in the Memories” was next, written and performed by Meiko Nakahara (lyrics):

It was the third closing theme (tema) to Kimagura Orange Road, which I assume was a lighter anime series.

Caitlin’s turn:

She even matched the quirky “mem-morries” pronunciation.

Closing out my first week in city pop, “Telephone Number” by Junko Ohashi (lyrics):

Magical was a 1984 compilation. “Telephone Number” originated on Tea for Tears in ’81, co-written by her husband Ken Sato.

I had to make a 3-minute, 30-second local forecast flavor to accommodate the song’s 3:58 run time (3:59 for Caitlin).

As a suburban New Yorker, I like Magical‘s cover art of Lower Manhattan featuring the original World Trade Center. I passed by One World Trade Center in 2014 while running the Tunnel to Towers 5K.

The hook – “ah-uu, 5-6-7-oh-9” – brought two things to mind:

Musically, Caitlin did a masterful job replicating the sound of each song she adapted into English. On behalf of city pop fans everywhere, thank you, Caitlin, for your efforts.

Thank you to the many city pop artists whose works inspired by our (the West’s) music have boomeranged back to us.

And thank you, the reader, for making it to the end of this post. Wish me luck on the rest of my city pop journey. Be sure to catch Instrumental Invasion April 26 at 9PM Eastern (April 27 at 11AM in Japan) on WCWP. It’ll be the first show with music by Casiopea, and about ten minutes into the last segment, I allude to some of what I laid out in this post because I play Scott Wilkie‘s cover of “Burnin’ Up the Carnival.”

I’ll leave you with Caitlin Myers’ Japanese versions (lyrics by Datenkou) of “Never Gonna Give You Up“…

…and “September“:

Instrumental Invasion, 4/27/22 April 28, 2022

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Audio, Comics, Film, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Video.
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The April 27 Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded on March 8 (two segments) and 9 (four segments). A pickup was recorded on the 11th.

The playlist was created on March 5 and annotated on the 7th. The talk break script was drafted on the 8th, but I recorded the first segment after scripting its talk breaks.

The second and third talk breaks of the first segment were speed compressed, one more talk break than last February 3. I didn’t want to withhold anymore tidbits that I removed and wasn’t up to rerecording the breaks faster. I moved some of those tidbits to the first talk break of the second segment. The third and fourth segments had the opposite problem, which meant padding with extra liners and not having songs start underneath the talk-up.

The adamantium claws reference (with sound effect) after “Get Out Claws” by Oli SIlk was a nod to Wolverine from the X-Men.

This is the last show with the “no relation to” running gag. I employed it in some upcoming shows, but edited out all instances.

Here’s the Bob James Trio performance of “Feel Like Making Love/Night Crawler” that was extracted for use in Feel Like Making LIVE!:

If you want to see Scott Wilkie‘s “live” band perform “Fruit Sandwich,” you’ll have to buy the DVD.

As for last night’s show, click to download the aircheck MP3 or listen below:

Instrumental Invasion, 3/3/21 March 4, 2021

Posted by Mike C. in Airchecks, Animation, Audio, Comics, Internet, Jazz, Media, Music, Personal, Radio, Technology, TV, Video.
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The February 24, 2021, Instrumental Invasion on WCWP was recorded one hour per day on January 28 and 29, a day earlier than planned.

The playlist was created on January 27 with annotations carrying into the 28th. Talk breaks were scripted as segments were recorded.

In the predawn hours on the 26th, I began reaching out to musicians to record liners – or drops, as I learned from Gerald Albright – for the show. Bob James contributed his within an hour of contacting him. Tom Schuman recorded his later in the day. Armed with those liners, I worked in their songs. More liners came afterward, which played a role in remixing a segment each of the last two weeks.

One pickup line was recorded on the 30th for the first segment of hour 2 because I didn’t realize I referenced Cindy Bradley in Paula Atherton‘s song and Patrick Bradley before that. That segment was remixed on February 16 after Patrick e-mailed his liner. Meanwhile, I learned there really is a Funkulator. It wasn’t a nonsense word for the sake of Paula’s song. It’s a bass pedal.

Another pickup line was recorded on the 31st when I noticed Eric Gale did play guitar on Stanley Turrentine‘s cover of “Don’t Mess with Mister T.,” and not just on the faster-paced demo. That cover is one of many discoveries I’ve had listening to SiriusXM‘s jazz channels. In this case, I heard it on Real Jazz last January. Within days, I had that album and Chet Baker‘s She Was Too Good to Me, which I discovered earlier that January after Real Jazz played “It’s You or No One.” Bob James’s presence on both albums was key to my interest and subsequent purchases.

A week before recording this show, I watched A Charlie Brown Valentine, a 2002 TV special adapted from various Peanuts comic strips, including this one. I chose “Morning, Noon & Night” as my Bob James song just so I could reference that strip. A Charlie Brown Valentine was the first Peanuts special to premiere on TV since You’re in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown eight years earlier, which I watched on VHS (via my digitized AVI file) days before recording this show.

“Pinky’s Groove” by Dan Reynolds allowed me to reference Pinky and the Brain, a show that ran while I was in high school and I love to this day. I wasn’t acquainted with Animaniacs, the show it spun off from, until 2013, but I grew to love that, as well. Heck, I love many 1990s Warner Bros. animated series. When I have time to devote to Hulu, I’ll watch the Animaniacs revival.

Click here to download this show’s aircheck MP3 or listen below: