Showapop's blog

Showa Pop! Futari No Ginza is the Greatest Film I Never saw!
By Leonardo Flores

It all started off when I doing research on a record that I just received. The song, "Young Echo" was a duet with Ken Yamauchi. While researching Ken I came across this film clip:

Needless to say I was blown away! Especially with his costar Masako Izumi. Her charm just captivated me and after some searching I was able to locate the original 45rpm on Toshiba Records which was I was to later to find out was called Futari No Ginza, which translates at Two People In Ginza. It's Romanji title is Ginza Lights. The record, on glorious Toshiba red vinyl is a duet sung by both Masako Izumi and Ken Yamauchi.

So after over 20 years I finally found out what her name was: Priscilla Chan.

Back in 1988 my family moved up to Watsonville CA near Santa Cruz. There I was enrolled into an International High School / Jr High. I was 14 and this was during the height of my Japanimation phase. I will truthful say I was at the height of the only time I was truely an Otaku. Everything I said, did, eat and breath had to be about Japan. I was most likely very annoying!

We had many Asian students from Honk Kong and one had a nickname that everybody called Disney. Well Hong Kong was close to Japan in my mind so I was always bugging the kid.

One nice thing he did was give me a couple of cassettes of Chinese Pop, or Cantopop, to borrow and copy. Lacking the equipment to do it correctly I put one player on another and pressed record. I made a cover from a Animage Z-Gundam cassette cover that were given inside the magazine at the time.

Last Saturday Uptown Whittier had one of its street fairs. Being a collector of Militaria I always take my time to look through photographs to locate Military photos from WWI and WWII.

It was when I was looking through the photographs that I came across this original photo of a young Japanese girl in a Kimono that most likely originated in the 1920's or 1930's.

The photo was taken at the Yeghi Photo Studios in Shimbashi Tokyo. The main Yeghi Photo Studio was located in Ginza with the Shimbashi studio being just a branch from the main studio. The Yeghi studio's heyday was during the Meiji and Taisho era with many of the photographers retiring in the late 1930's. After nearly 70 years of service Yeghi studios finally closed its doors during WWII in 1943.

I will be DJing a set of original 6T's Japanese Group Sounds vinyl records at Psychotonic Thursday August 27 2009 at the BigFoot Lodge 3172 Los Feliz Blvd LA CA at 10pm.

The set will include Classic GS and Hitomi GS such as Jun Mayzumi, The Tigers, The Spiders, Blue Comets, The Bunnies and The Dynamites.

Come on out for a pint and lets talk all things Nihon! Hope to see you there!

I just can't enough of Jun Mayuzumi! Not only is she extremely beautiful but this woman knows how to sing and nearly every one of her Capital Records Japan releases is just mindblowing! Not only that she has super sexy legs! I have about 30 Group Sounds, mod and Soul 45rpm coming from japan later this month, and I was quite happy to get finally get a copy of the song below.

I'm in heaven!

On a recent trip from Japan my friend from work was kind enough to bring back this Group Sound CD for me. Luckily the CD that he brought back was one of the biggest Japanese bands of the genre, The Tigers. This CD is a nice comp of all their a-side singles that were released on Japan Polydor from the mid-sixties to when they reformed in the 1980's.

There are some great tracks here worth picking up on vinyl such as My Mary, Seaside Bound and C-C-C, with some I've already manage to located and purchase. For some the CD might be a bit heavy on the sentimental ballads that the Japanese are so good at recording, and since I love those types of songs Its not a problem with me.

The Tigers are one of the seminal GS groups and considering you get all the A-side singles this is a great entry level pick up for the GS sound.

©2009 Leonardo Flores