吉田光のポスト
“A 'good band' had to have at least three saxophones in it (one of which had to
be a baritone), two guitar players, bass and drums. It was
regarded as a more serious band if everybody wore a pink flannel, one-button roll
sport coat. It was really good if they had pants to match -- and it was superb if
all the guys in the front row knew the same steps, and if they went
'up and down' at the same time on the fast songs.”
The Real Frank Zappa Book
These words are first that come to my mind when watching recordings of Hikaru Yoshida’s debut band, “Be-Bops”. True, they didn't have 3 saxophones, but pink outfits of some members fully made up for that, automatically putting them into the said class of “good bands”.
What strikes next is the urge to dig out what path led this person to rockabilly in the first place and, from there, to his own band.
And here comes the problem, because among all scanned materials, there isn’t much on Hikaru’s bio, except for a very detailed chronology of Der Zibet published in Fool’s Mate 9/94, snippets from which Morgianasama kindly narrated in this post a long while ago. So it was only logical to look up our guitarist in the same article. In the end I found it so interesting, that I decided to translate it. It’s always been so that fans’ attention was mostly drawn to Issay, so I think it’ll be only fair to talk about the person who is responsible for the entire massif of band’s music.
So, here you go:
Yoshida Hikaru was born February 22, 1960 in Kyoto. Blood type - АВ. In the middle school he gets carried away by Led Zeppelin and starts playing the guitar. In the senior school he continues, already in a rock band. He creates an independant 8mm movie [1]; becomes a winner of NHK festival “Young Guitar” [2] for three years in a row . In spite of the obvious talent for filming he already had set his mind on pursuing musical career in younger days, so he moves to Tokyo where diligently studies jazz-guitar following a path common for young guitarists of that time: hardrock > progressive rock > fusion. In 1982, via an audition, he joins rockabilly band Be-Bops [3]. Having released 3 albums on Columbia label the band breakes up. In 1984 Der Zibet appears.
As Hikaru is highly valued for his musical skills, further the range of his activities only expands: in 1988/89 he joins the tour of Yoshiyuki Ohsawa as support member. In 1989 he works with:
Chiwaki Mayumi - as composer, participates in recording and tour;
Sawada Kenji - as composer; participates in recording;
Tokyo Shōnen - participates in recording;
BAKU - as sound-producer;
佐久間学 - as producer.
In 1990:
SION - participates in recording and tour.
In 1990/91:
Koji Kikkawa - participates in recording and tour.
In 1991:
Hitonari Tsuji - participates in recording.
In 1992:
樋口沙絵子 (Hinaga Saeko) - as sound producer and composer, participates in recording.
In 1993 he works with Hanaga Saeko again as sound producer and composer; participates in recording and etc in various fields, showing prominent feel for music and versatile musical skills. In October 1991 he sets up a musical project PIPES OF WATER DREAM together with DAIJIRO (keybord) [5] and DARTS (bass); Alongside the project he appears on Victor’s “omnibus” DANCE TO NOISE2 [6], works on arrangements for Hinaga Saeko etc., produces a lot of music for movies, including direct-to-video 大激突 [4] and 大間交差点. Aside of all that he joins new musical project - Hoppy Kamiyama’s [7] band PUGS [8] with Hajime Okano (bass) and Steve Eto (percussion) which announces the release of album, single (both on God Mountain label) as well as some episodic concerts.
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[1] Unfortunately, I can’t provide any details on this movie like year or title. This is the first time I’ve come across it;
[2] This might have taken place between 1977-1981, but so far I have no idea where to look up for more accurate data. Several sources state 1980 to be the year Hikaru started his professional carrier;
[3] This band was meant to be (and actually was) a tribute to Gene Vincent. You even can find their videos on YouTube (and more audios on NicoNico):
Be-Bop-A-Lula
ミチコ・フロム・トーキョー
In the second video Hikaru is the one all in pink.
[4] 大激突 movie appeared on YouTube back in spring due to courtesy of some kind people and had been there until recently. I believe everyone must have seen it, as the video was over almost all fan communities. If anyone wants it, I can reupload it. This was first Hikaru’s work as movie composer, so it seems he decided that extensive advertising would do the project well, and at the same time would help promoting the band.
[5] Daijiro (D.I.E) Nozawa was a support keybordist at DZ lives along with Mahito and even made guest appearence on some DZ albums, POP MANIA for example;
[6] It seems the Japanese coined their own term for Western “V.A.” and it’s used over there more often, so I left it as it was in the text.
[7] PUGS existed from 1993 to 1999; during this period they released 8 albums - 7 original and a kind of “best of” in USA. The project visited USA in 1997 and made it to the second stage of Lollapalooza where stirred a vivid interest among audience. They deserve an individual post, which I hope I’ll make later but not today.
[8] Hoppy’s OHP where you can look up the projects he was involved with this or that way.
[9] Hikaru’s collaboration with Sawada Kenji can be traced to as far as the beginning of 00s; All in all Hikaru wrote for him about 20 songs; some of them lasted in Julie’s tour set lists for several years. By the moment Hikaru started writing music for Julie, he was only 29. He managed to work with several artists and at the same time with his own band where he was a composer of almost all the music for rare exception. The music in all his projects was absolutely different.
P.S. If you want to share this material elsewhere I'd be very grateful if you remember to provide it with a link to this entry^^ Thank you very much in advance^^