One of my favorite discoveries as of late has been a band active in the 70's called Sugar Babe. They only released one album, appropriately titled "Songs," but for them it was definitely quality over quantity: the album went on to be a big influence on the music scene at the time. Their single "Downtown," which I've been particularly enthralled with lately, can still be heard today being covered by a number of different artists. YMCK and De De Mouse do a cover of DownTown on the YMCK song book album(which also has a number of other cool covers). A neat 8-bit PV can also been seen here, although it's a cut version of the full song.
Down Town caused me a lot of heartache at first, though. I saw it once on a Japanese program about some of the most covered songs in the history of Japanese music. The only problem with the song was that I had heard it at least once before. The melody was so familiar but no matter how many times I tried to think where I had heard it I came up dry. I'm sure everyone knows how it feels when you just can't come up with an answer to that song they heard; it happens that I'm particularly bad with stuff like this.
After being tormented for a while I eventually forgot about it until recently, when a friend of mine shared the link to Down Town and other Sugar Babe tracks. After being haunted by the tune yet again I was determined to figure it out. After traveling the rounds at youtube I finally came upon a comment that brought it back to memory:
It had been the Opening theme for Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru(And the town moves). Although I havent finished the series, I enjoyed seeing the first episodes when it had its original run a year or two ago. So that closed the case. I've been listening to Sugar Babe's album ever since.
Thankfully a simple search on youtube can yield a bunch of the tracks from their album. Here is the infamous "Downtown" and "Suteki na Melody". I love how they don't sound very tinted with age!
You can find the 30th Anniversary release, complete with bonus tracks, for sale at CDJapan: Until next time,
~hideki~
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