Bob McGrath – from Showa-dori to Sesame Street

Lots of singers and other performers end up in Japan one way or another, and it’s not that uncommon for them to achieve a measure of success here that outweighs what they were able to generate in their home countries. For most of the ones that start out here, “Big in Japan” is as far as they ever get, but some manage to parlay it into a springboard to fame back home and worldwide.

One example I discovered recently was Bob McGrath, an American-born tenor who performed with the Mitch Miller Orchestra in the early 1960s before traveling to Japan as soloist, where he found success singing Irish ballads and other tunes in English and Japanese. In this clip, with stills of his albums and from his performances, he sings Koji no Tsuki (“荒城の月) in Japanese:

If he looks at all familiar, you may recognize him from the TV show he joined in 1969, soon after returning from Japan, and where he is still performing today, over 40 years later:

Yes, that’s the same Bob we grew up watching on Sesame Street. I purchased a set of the early-season DVDs for my own son a little while back, and while thumbing through the booklet that came with it, there was a trivia note saying that Bob had been a “pop star” in Japan before joining the show. My older in-laws didn’t recognize the name, so I did a bit of searching on YouTube and found these:

Bob singing a variation of  “Jingle Bells” in English and Japanese”

Kaze no Yureteru Oka ni (風のゆれてる丘に） / On the Windy Hill

Koi no Sasurai (恋のさすらい) / Love’s Wanderings

During his time in Japan, Bob came back to appear on To Tell The Truth, where the contestants had to guess which of the three panelists was the real Bob McGrath. It doesn’t seem that the other two had done much preparation, since they could hardly answer any of the questions about Japan or Irish ballads. Some of the contestants also seemed to know a fair bit about Tokyo (I’ve been here over 15 years and I don’t know what’s in Kami-Meguro).  They guess correctly, and he rewards them with one of his songs.

They mention in the opening that he’d performed at the Copa Cabana and the Latin Quarter in Tokyo. After reading about some of the things that went on in those clubs in Robert Whiting’s Tokyo Underworld, Bob’s gentle demeanor seems like an odd fit.

He also appeared on I’ve Got a Secret, where the contestants have to guess that Bob has been performing in Japan (they must not have seen the To Tell The Truth episode). I love his rendition of “Home on the Range” in enka style.

Unfortunately, Bob didn’t appear in the 1988  Sesame Street TV movie “Big Bird in Japan”. That would have made an interesting addition to the show.

Music of the Day: Akuma no you na Aitsu, by the Inoue Takayuki Band

Another piece of music I found surfing around YouTube, this is from by the Inoue Takayuki Band, from the soundtrack album for the 1975 Japanese TV series, Akuma no You na Aitsu (悪魔のようなあいつ, or, roughly translated, An Evil Guy). The series was based on a manga of the same name, and used the 1968 “300 Million Yen Incident” unsolved crime as a major motif. It starred pop singer and actor Kenji Sawada, and 70s TV idol Seiko Miki.

I don’t have the name of this particular track, but it features jazz piano against a funk-rock backdrop that’s really ear-catching.

Music of the Day: Awa Odori, by Stomu Yamash’ta

Surfing around YouTube, I came across Stomu Yamash’ta (Yamashita Tsutomu)’s Awa Odori, from Ongaku 70, a compilation album of Japanese psychedelia.

Enjoy.

Braun Tube Jazz Band Videos

I just recently found this video of Ei Wada, of Braun Tube Jazz Band, from a 2010 performance at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. Using old CRT-style TVs, he creates an audio-visual feedback loop that he can play like a giant synthesizer by running his hands across the screens. Toward the end, he brings up a member of the audience to place his hand on one of the screens, and then begins ‘playing’ him.

 

and a more melodic piece performed in Zurich in 2011:

 

 

Squarepusher Music Video Set in Osaka Mental Hospital

I recently came across this wonderfully creepy video for “Come on My Selector” by UK-based electronic artist Squarepusher. Directed by Chris Cunnigham, it takes place in the “Osaka Home for Mentally Disturbed Children” and features a little girl making her escape with advice from her dog.

I realize my ‘discovery’ is way behind the times, as the video came out over ten years ago. Still, I thought it was interesting.

While the Japanese voice-overs seem accurate for the most part, it’s pretty obvious that the actors are all speaking English. But what really happened to catch my attention is the similarity with the currently popular Fuji TV series, “Marumo no Okite”. The show is about a company worker trying to take care of two orphaned children, and along the way he ends up with a dog (similar to the one on the video) that periodically talks to him, though he never seems sure if it’s not just a stress-induced hallucination.

Obviously, the dogs and shows are very different, but finding this video right when another work using the ‘dog talks to mentally fragile people’-concept is the rage just struck me as amusing.

The main characters (including the talking dog) are all in the first 30 seconds, but feel free to watch the whole episode. The rest of the series (this is episode 5) so far has been uploaded to Youtube.

HD Earthrise Set to Yuko Tsuchiya’s “Furusato”

I came across this video on JAXA’s YouTube channel. HD footage of Earthrise taken by the Kaguya lunar orbiter, set to Yuko Tsuchiya’s “Furusato” (Hometown). They go together beautifully, in my opinion. I recommend watching it at full screen.

The actual name of the orbiter was SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer), but it was given the nickname Kaguya after the Moon Princess of Japanese legend. The craft reached the moon in late 2007, where it orbited for just over a year and a half, gathering some incredible HD footage of the moon’s surface from an altitude of 100km. In June 2009, the mission completed, the craft was guided down to a controlled impact with the lunar surface.

New Handsome Ken’ya Videos by Kosuke Sugimoto

Once again, I’m putting up videos by Kosuke Sugimoto, of whom I’m a huge fan.

 

Recently, Sugimoto has been producing music videos for Handsome Ken’ya, a Kyoto-based (and evidently very modest) pop-rock artist who goes beyond the standard guitar-bass-keyboard-drum style set.

The first was “Kore Kurai de Utau (Sing in My Own Way)”, a fully-drawn animated work based around the different outcomes that arise as the singer makes different choices. Like “The TV Show” this one contains dozens of tiny background details that Sugimoto manages to consistently develop through the video.

 

The next was “Mushi no Tameiki” (Sigh of the Insects), which uses cut-out animation to show Ken’ya as an unwitting king of the ants in an insect war.

 

Most recent is “Kesshin Sokudo” (Speed of Decision), which combines stylized live action and typography into a high-energy portrayal of the singer’s thoughts and anxieties.

 

I look forward to more from both of them.

Cool Music Video: Full Moon Party

A while back I posted “The TV Show“, a video by animator Kousuke Sugimoto and musician Takayuki Manabe. Here’s another of Sugimoto’s early videos, also with music by Manabe.

Three apes encounter a musical note from space that sends them rocking to the end of the earth (literally).

 

Update: Portal 2 Soundtrack Volume 2 Available for Free Download

I posted about a month back that Valve was making the soundtrack for Portal 2 available for free download from their site. Volume 1 had just been released, with hints at a volume 2 available in the near future.

Well, the wait is over and a new block of 18 tracks is available for free download at the link above. The dark electronica themes continue into this volume, and I’m looking forward to giving them a thorough listening-to (been rather busy at work).

 

Not included for download is the extremely catchy ending song, “Want You Gone” by Jonathan Coulton. He wrote and composed “Still Alive” for the previous game, and his dark humor and ability to craft diabolically infectious earworms is still in strong form.

Animated Eco-warfare Electronica in Nobukazu Takemura’s “Sign”

Osaka-born musician and composer Nobukazu Takemura has been producing works since 1993 that defy easy categorization. Covering a range that extends from jazz to chamber music to electronica, his creative style and many collaborative efforts have made him an influential figure in the Japanese experimental music world.

“Sign”, released on a 2000 EP of the same name, came packaged with the video below, animated by Katsura Moshino. It features a robot who, after discovering nature, goes on the attack after a greedy factory owner poisons and guns down the people of the local village, all set to very melodic glitch electronica.