Summer Record Hauls

I have had some work trips lately. Each time I have tried to hit the local Hard Off. It has been very fruitful, if a little bit expensive. My vinyl collection is up to around 225 albums. (Some are not listed in the Rate Your Music listing because they were simply too hard to search in the database; the artists had a billion albums, or the title was too common to be searchable, or both. Classical especially.) I have a tremendous collection going, in my opinion.

Below are the records hauled. You will see that I have been into City Pop pretty heavily lately. And let me tell you why: It is the musical record of a people who were on top of the world. The Bubble Era of Japan is well known. The music that it produced is of course far broader in style than the already-vague genre of City Pop, but in any case, the sound of people enjoying the absolute hell out of life hits pleasantly for me in the current era. The album that I have listened to most this summer:

I love the sound of this. Yes, it starts out heavy on disco, so that will be a big plus for me. The song “Maui” haunts me with its calm and summer peace. But also if you look at the personnel, it is clear that they hired the yacht rock people to devastatingly delicious effect: Nathan East, Don Grusin, Ernie Watts, Jerry Hey, Paulinho Da Costa, on and on. Just a murderer’s row of elite musicians. It seems that the album was recorded in LA, though I first thought they flew all those people over to Japan.

Legendary cover, and the photos inside the gatefold continue that excellence. The brothers are depicted engaging in, and, yes, winning, many sports. It is a lot of fun.

This is all over the place stylistically and Yumi shows her talent in a lot of ways. The song “Downtown Boy” caught my fancy for about a month this summer. I love it. I read that she wrote it as a reply, from the girl’s perspective, to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.”

S. Kiyotaka & Omega Tribe—*First Finale*

Like most of the City Pop albums in this blog post, it is full of great audio atmosphere, and the album art also gives such a pleasant vibe. City Pop album art influenced me to visit the beach this year more than usual, without a doubt.

Kenny Clarke—*Bohemia After Dark featuring Julian "Cannonball" Adderley*

*Breakin' 2 is Electric Boogaloo Original Motion Picture Soundtrack*

I bought this mostly for the conversation piece, and because you can’t not acquire the original source of the many take-offs ending in “Electric Boogaloo.”

George Benson—*While The City Sleeps...*

Julian "Cannonball" Adderley—*Presenting Julian "Cannonball" Adderley*

Tatsuro Yamashita—*Big Wave Music From the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack*

I did not know this existed. One side of the album is covers of Beach Boys songs, which sounds like a terrible idea, but Yamashita is very good at making the songs his own while honoring them beautifully. The original songs are also great. His albums all have a lot of craft and charm, even through much cheesiness.

I gave up a few months ago on ever finding Steely Dan albums in Hard Off stores. It seemed impossible. So I purchased two of my favorite Steely Dan albums, Aja and Gaucho, online, as 2023 reissues. I didn’t like the idea of having remastered versions (give me what the people heard at the time the album came out!), but it was still nice to listen to them on my turntable and amp on vinyl. Then I found this original Japan release of Aja in a Hard Off. Haha. It is missing the obi, but still wonderful.

Autumn Day

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