[Breezy & relaxing]
No.244 "Dream again" by Shōko Minami
Hi. The honourable last song of the year from our site is, "Dream again" by "Shōko Minami".
A breezy & relaxing pop tune "Dream again" is a song of a singer "Shōko Minami", and included in her debut album "SHOKO fæntəzi" released in 1984.
Contrasting to a warm and sunny melody of the song, the hero image of this page does not seem to be so happy.
Because the love of the heroine is in an adjustment phase in the lyrics. Then, she has been debating over whether or not give him a call now in front of a public phone box.
Wish you could understand.
One fact we need to mention here is, "Shōko Minami" is another typical example of certain pop singers who are in the waiting list of reissuing his, her, or their past albums.
Actually,, the most of "Shōko Minami"'s albums released in the '80s & the '90s, (except for the latest one.), have not been reissued in any format of media until now.
So, used LPs, or CDs are only sources of her albums. the availability is not high, and the price remains high.
Under the circumstances, Youtube.com might be virtually the only source of the sample of this song at the moment.
Then, we would like to talk about this point more clearly later in "Video clip" section, so, please have a look.
Separately, we have found a second-hand CD shop offering a sample of this song. Please go to the "Music sample" section, and check the site by clicking the link in there.
Links to the music shops, offering song samples, are located on the bottom of this page.
Some contents have been put away in tabs with "▶" mark in each section, so please click it to see.
We are now working on improving appearances of our posts.
If you find anything odd, please kindly let us know.
Finally, this will be the last post for this year.
We are planning to begin posting for the new year from the 13th January 2024. If you like please have look.
Thank you for your support in the year 2023.
We wish you a happy new year!
Cover art today
Song data
| Title | Dream again |
|---|---|
| Artist | Shōko Minami |
| Album Title | SHOKO fæntəzi |
| Catalog Number | H33K-20065 |
| Track No. | 3 |
| Duration | 3:38 |
| Released | 1987 |
| Publisher | Kitty Records |
| Lyricist | Kyōko Matsumiya |
| Composer | Kyōko Matsumiya |
| Arranger | Kimio Mizutani |
About the creators
Kyōko Matsumiya Lyricist & Composer
"Kyōko Matsumiya" is a lyricist, and composer of popular song, or school song active since around 1978.
She has written many pop songs mainly for young female idol stars in the '80s and '90s.
"Matsumiya" originally attracted attention as a singer-songwriter in 1975, when she came in at the 10th Yamaha Popular song contest.
However, she eventually did not debuted as a singer, but started as a professional songwriter later.
References
For more details on "Kyōko Matsumiya", please have a look at the references linked below.
Kimio Mizutani Arranger
"Kimio Mizutani" is a guitarist, composer, arranger, music producer, and a former member of a "Group Sounds" band "Outcast" active since 1960.
"Mizutani" is a well known, in a sense a legendary guitarist, since he had taken part in huge number of main stream pop songs from the 60s to the '80s. And played very impressive phrases in the big hit songs of various singers.
So, people often say that almost all cool guitar phrases you can remember on "Shōwa Kayō" (Kayō-kyoku in Shōwa era) might be "Mizutani"'s.
References
For more details on "Kimio Mizutani", please have a look at the references linked below.
Song image & Lyrics
Open
Link to the lyrics
Some notes on the lyrics link
Sound impression
Breezy & Elegant
This songs seems to be a romantic, fancy, and breezy pop song in a comfortable middle tempo.
Warm & Relaxing
The drums, bass, electric guitar, electric piano, synthesizer, Bar chimes, and backing chorus begin a elegant, breezy, and relaxing introduction, and main part starts.
In the main section, the acoustic piano also joins, and accompanies "Shōko Minami" singing in pure, moist, and unconstrained voice.
In the ending, impressive sound of the alto saxophone appears, and performs a beautiful solo play.
Musicians
The musicians participated in this track are as follows.
- Electric Guitar
- Kimio Mizutani
- Electric Bass
- Chiharu Mikuzuki
- Drums
- Nobuyuki Takahashi
- Acoustic & Electric piano
- Jun Satō
- Synthesizer
- Yasuhiko Fukuda
- Latin Percussion
- Kōtaro Ishii
- Alt saxophone
- Kiyoshi Saitō
- Back ground vocal
- Kanji Chōshi
Reference
About Google translate
About the artist
Shōko MinamiShine of thoroughbred
"Shōko Minami" is a pop singer, and (possibly) an idol star who were most active from 1984 to the mid '90s.
Her 3rd single, "Tono-gata Gomen-asobase" ('Excuse me gentlemen', or 'Excuse me please, gentlemen'.) was selected as an opening theme for the last season of a very popular TV anime series, "Urusei Yatsura". Then, it is widely known.
Perhaps because she was grown in a music family, "Minami" has some native shine on her singing, and we imagined you guys might feel so too.
That is why we added the phrase like "Shine of thoroughbred" as a subtitle for the singer.
Shōko Minami debuted in 1984 with a single, "Koi-ha Yukue Fumei" (Missing my love). Since then, 8 singles, and 4 original albums have been released until now.
(Ref: Wikipedia-en, Shōko Minami)
Early times
As mentioned in "Greeting" section, the information about "Shōko Minami" is scarce on the internet.
So, we would like to just introduce a broad outline about the singer this time, and update the article anytime when we found new information.
According to some references on the internet, "Shōko Minami" was born to a music family lived in the town near Tokyo in 1966.
Specifically, her grand father was a Jazz pianist, and her mother was a popular song singer, "Teruko Chiyoda" who was known with her hit song "Tokyo Waltz" (1954).
And her eldest brother was "Shigeki Watanabe" who was a member of super popular "Group Sounds" band "The Wild Ones", and "Shigeki" himself also earned an idol star like popularity as "Chappy" in the late '60s.
Then, her other elder brother was "Naoki Watanabe" who was once a member (B, Vo) of a wildly popular 8-piece Jazz-Fusion, Brass-rock band "Spectrum", and still active as a bassist, and solo artist.
Interestingly, "Minami" was telling in an interview,saying she did not know the fact that her brothers were such super stars, until she became an elementary school kid.
Because, her elder brothers were older than her at least 10 years, then she was too small in their glory days.
It seems that "Minami" begun to think to be a singer when she was three.
There aren't much information about her music activity in school days, but she went on to a music high school, like her eldest brother also did.
Debut
In early '80s, a powerful rock & crossover guitarist "Fujimaru Yoshino", who had known her brother "Naoki Watanabe" well, and a colleague member at their 4-piece rock band "AB'S", suggested her to debut as a singer if she was interested in.
Actually, "Yoshino" had known "Shōko Minami" for sometime, and had noticed, and been interested in her potential for being a singer.
To be a singer was a long time wish of "Minami", and there seems to be no reason for her to say No.
"Yoshino" did a bout of work to organise her debut, and at the same time, wrote few songs for planned her debut album.
And finally in October 1984, "Shōko Minami" debuted from "Kitty record" with her first album "Shōko fantasy" which we are introducing today.
Before too long, "Minami"'s debut single "Koi-ha Yukue Fumei" (Missing my love), which was a lovely, and pretty well refined pop tune, was also launched in November 1984.
Gorgeously, the song was written by a top singer-songwriter "Amii Ozaki", and it was obviously a high quality pops, and had strong character of "Ozaki" music.
Actually, the song was accepted well. Then, "Ozaki" herself also covered this song pretty quickly in 1986 on her cover album "Point-2", since it was only two years later from the original release by "Minami".
Urusei Yatsura
In July 1985, "Shōko Minami" released her third single, titled "Tono-gata Gomen-asobase" (Excuse me, gentlemen).
The EP contained the title song on the A-side, and the coupling songs "Good luck, Eien yori ai-wo komete" (Good luck, a telepathy from forever with love) was recorded on the B-side.
Interestingly, both songs had already been broadcasted on TV since some six months earlier. Because they had been an opening theme & ending theme respectively, of a very popular TV SF comedy Amime series, "Urusei Yatsura" (The obnoxious aliens).
So, it was a follow-up release in a sense. But the EP was accepted well, and marked the best sales among the series of her single records.
And luckily, "Shōko Minami" succeeded to establish her name with this song.
On this TV series, an excellent romantic ballad, "HalfMoon ha tokimeki-iro" (The Halfmoon in romantic colour) was also used as an incidental music.
Those three songs used in this TV anime series were released together as a songs in "Minami"'s second studio album "Shangri-La" (1985).
Perhaps partly because of it, "Shangri-La" still seems to be popular among the music fans.
In fact, it was a very fortunate happening for "Minami".
Even singing an opening theme for a TV Anime series, is already a rare opportunity for singers. And on top of it, the blockbuster of the Anime series is totally an unpredictable kind of fortune.
In this sense, "Minami" was a lucky singer because she participated in such a historic TV anime series.
"Sophisticated"
In November 1986, after a regular interval of one year, "Minami" released her 3rd album "Sophisticated" consistently from "Kitty records".
To tell you the truth, our writer "Satsuma" first came across to "Minami"'s music through this album in 1987, and he became interested in her.
Obviously, he was fascinated in the album title, and an attractive cover art.
However, there weren't any other albums of her in his living space in the late '80s.
So, his impression of "Minami" was formed only from this album, then he had understood "Minami" as a pop singer performed a stylish and advanced type of music until recent.
Therefore, he was excited when he found earlier, and later albums of "Minami" on Youtube, and understood the different mood of songs of "Minami"'s.
Personally, we think this is the most well balanced pop album among the titles of her albums, and it looks the album is also popular in the used market at the moment.
But having said that, every individual should have own preference, and that should be the answer for each person.
Anyway, please listen to if you have a chance, or if you like.
"Feena" & game music
After the release of the last album, "Shōko Minami" temporarily paused the release of new albums, but began to sing theme music for computer games as one of the pioneer in this area.
In the late '80s, the dawn of the personal computer came to its end, and it was gradually entering into a spreading stage among the potential users of PCs (Personal computers) even they were still reasonably expensive.
Thanks to the rapid performance improvement (particularly sound & graphic), and price down, those early adopters began to use PCs not just for business, or academic purpose, but also for more advanced PC games, like XANADU, Metal gear. etc.
On those PC games, a many pieces of incidental music are composed exclusively for individual games, and some of them are quite high quality even musically.
A video game developer, "Nihon Falcom Corporation", who was once actively marketing popular PC Role playing games like "Ys" [iːsɯ], "Dragon Slayer" or "Sorcerian" etc, were also keen to utilize those incidental music in the early '90s.
More specifically, they rearrange the pieces of music to pop songs, then ask to the professional singers to perform, then launch those performances of the singers as a special compilation CD, or CD-box series.
And at least 30 volumes seem to have been released so far.
From late '80s to the early '90s, "Shōko Minami" was often requested from them to be one of the singers for this project.
As a result, "Minami" participated in 7 albums (or boxes) and performed 11 songs in total.
These songs were further rearranged, and newly recorded to make them as songs of "Minami"'s.'
And in 1992, the songs were released as "Feena", the 4th studio album of "Shōko Minami" from King-Falcom label.
Recent
There is no much information about more recent activity of "Minami".
We would like to update this section if we found any information on this.
References
For more details about "Shōko Minami", please have a look at the references linked below.
Video clip
As referred in "Greeting" section, the albums of "Shōko Minami", particularly the ones released from "Kitty" label. have never been reissued, then they are only available in the second hand market, and not possible to buy a new one.
Then, "Youtube.com" seems to be the last resort for most of us to listen to the samples of her songs.
We suppose you might be able to find the music video of today's song "Dream again" on "Youtube", by searching the words like "Shoko Minami Dream again", or "Shoko Minami Fantasy" on their site.
If you find, please listen to.
But due to copyright concerns, we would like to suppress putting links to those videos on this page.
Hope you could understand.
Instead of today's song, we would like to introduce a mellow pop tune, "Tears of Love (Sorcerian - Sigh and Tear)" from "Minami"'s 1992 album "Feena".
The backing music is slightly loudish, and excessive perhaps because of its game music nature. But the song is still a lovely mellow tune, and the voice of "Shōko Minami" is tender, moist, and charming.
On this album, "Until We Can Meet Again (Ys II - A Still Time)" on track No.9 might also meet with your preference, we suppose.
If you like, please listen to.
Music Samples
The sample seems to be available only from the website linked below.
Please go to the linked page of the site, and just play, or click track No.3.
(試聴する)
AD: Listening samples (Free)
hiptankrecords.com
Japanese Letters
| Song Title | ドリーム・アゲイン(Dream again) |
|---|---|
| Artist | 南翔子(Shōko Minami) |
| Album Title | 翔子ファンタジー(SHOKO fæntəzi) |
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