A few years ago I got into Japanese City Pop thanks to vaporwave and future funk sampling City Pop songs. While I was doing my master’s degree, I was listening to a lot of vaporwave and future funk and it was great music to write my thesis to. My interest was piqued and naturally as a music nerd I wanted to know where this music is coming from because I love knowing music history and I want to hear the source material. If you watch any TikToks or short form videos about Japan, there’s no doubt that you’ll have heard Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love” or Miki Matsubara’s “Stay With Me”.
Some people aren’t fans of sampling, but I think it’s a great way to revive interest in music of years past. City Pop is Japanese pop music from the 70s and 80s heavily inspired by Black American music, particularly R&B, funk, and disco. If you want an idea of what American music City Pop sounds most like, I’d say the best example would be Michael Jackson’s 1979 album Off The Wall, especially the song “Working Day And Night”. Spoiler alert, but a relevant one, the beginning of this song and the beginning of Masayoshi Takanaka’s “Ready To Fly” remind me of each other. I’d also say if you’re a fan of Prince, you’ll love City Pop!
Why Classic Rock Fans Will Love Masayoshi Takanaka:
Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about the best world music genres for classic rock fans and I listed both City Pop and Japanese Jazz Fusion. If you’re a classic rock fan looking for a starting point, Masayoshi Takanaka is a good shout! Don’t just take my word for it. Masayoshi Takanaka has played on stage with Carlos Santana, recorded an album with Little Richard, and when his band The Sadistic Mika Band toured the UK in the 70s, they opened for Roxy Music. Recently Phil Manzanera met up with Takanaka and the two got a picture together.
Masayoshi Takanaka is very influenced by classic rock, not surprising since he’s part of the boomer generation. He’s said his influences include The Beatles, The Ventures, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Alvin Lee. He also takes a lot of inspiration from Latin and Brazilian music.
In my opinion, if you’re a fan of The Ventures, The Shadows, The Allman Brothers Band, Santana, Yes, George Benson, Steely Dan, and Jeff Beck you’ll absolutely adore Masayoshi Takanaka. If you don’t already listen to jazz music, let Takanaka be your gateway! You really can’t go wrong putting his music on shuffle, but if you want an idea of where to start, I have a bunch of his albums listed on my “Perfect Albums” page. I’d say the best place to start is the compilation All Of Me, with that iconic photo of him skydiving, while giving a thumbs up to the camera. I especially love the songs “Tokyo Reggie”, “Brazilian Skies”, “ESP”, “Sexy Dance”, and “Ready To Fly”.
If you’re a gamer, like many of my friends are, you’ll love Takanaka if you love the music of Mario Kart and Persona 5.
Buying The Tickets For City Pop Waves
In March, Masayoshi Takanaka played in the UK for the first time in 50 years as part of a Super Takanaka world tour spanning Japan, the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. My husband and I were planning a trip to Japan (visiting Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyushu) during that time so we’d miss it. Darn it! Why do the coolest concerts always have to happen when I’m travelling? I felt like I’d never get a chance to see Takanaka live.
Well, good things come to those who wait. Not long after, the City Pop Waves festival was announced with Masayoshi Takanaka as the headliner, and right around my birthday and my husband’s birthday. What a way to celebrate! I’m usually not one for music festivals since I’m often not interested in most of the acts and I hate standing around in a park, but city pop and jazz fusion are genres were every song is a banger, so I’d certainly like the opening acts too! As the date drew closer, the opening acts were announced: Ginger Root doing a City Pop DJ set, Himiko Kikuchi playing songs from her album Flying Beagle, and Junko Yagami of “Bay City” fame doing a 30 minute set. And then to cap off the way an extended 2 hour Masayoshi Takanaka set! Can’t beat that! Usually music festival sets for each musician are so short and that’s another reason I don’t really care for music festivals, but this was really special and if they hold this again, I’d totally buy tickets!
Concert Review: City Pop Waves: Masayoshi Takanaka, Himiko Kikuchi, Junko Yagami, and Ginger Root DJ Set
You can see the setlists for Ginger Root’s DJ set, Himiko Kikuchi, Junko Yagami, and Masayoshi Takanaka on setlist.fm.
Ginger Root is an excellent modern day city pop artist and he has excellent taste in music and great energy DJing. He showed the sleeves of the different artists he was playing and the crowd were going wild. I know I had my Shazam going the entire time, sorry not sorry, these songs are definitely ones I’m gonna listen to again! My favourite songs from the DJ set were EPO’s “Girl In Me”, Minako Yoshida’s “Light’n Up”, EPO’s “Down Town”, Makoto Matsushita’s “Business Man Part 1”, Taeko Onuki’s Les Adventures of Tin Tin”, and EPO’s “U Fu Fu Fu”.
Admittedly I haven’t listened to Himiko Kikuchi’s Flying Beagle, but in general I love jazz fusion and I’ve been listening to a lot of Casiopea and The Square/T-Square (side note, if you haven’t listened to Casiopea vs The Square, drop everything and listen to it now, it’ll be the best three hours of your life, or at the very least, listen to “Fightman”). Himiko Kikuchi’s set was amazing from start to finish and I love everyone’s matching Flying Beagle shirts. Fans were enthusiastic shouting “I love you!”.
As for Junko Yagami, I only knew “Bay City”, but I really liked her set. Since one of the songs was quite long there weren’t that many songs, but it was also great from start to finish. She played her famous 80s songs “Imagination” and “Bay City” and the crowd went wild for those songs. Before she performed “Terra”, she talked about the inspirations behind the song, which she wrote during the pandemic as a pro-environment, anti-war song. Very wholesome message and a necessary one for these times.
Finally the moment we’ve all been waiting for, Masayoshi Takanaka took the stage while there was still daylight but the sun set during the set, which made it even more magical. The fans as you can imagine were incredibly passionate and chanting “TAKANAKA” throughout. Many fans cosplayed as Takanaka, wearing that iconic red suit on the cover of his 1977 sophomore album Takanaka. I saw a couple of people wearing the skydiving suit and a lot of people holding signs and towels with Takanaka on it.
Masayoshi Takanaka’s music is predominantly instrumental, so you’d think it doesn’t lend well to singalongs, so you thought! People were singing along to the iconic guitar riffs throughout and the setlist was banger after banger, no notes. Occasionally there are words and the fans went wild for “Seven Goblins” which has someone saying “goblin” over and over again in this high pitched voice, great song with a lot of energy and The Rainbow Goblins is an excellent album, especially if you’re a big fan of prog rock. I often listen to Takanaka at bedtime to relax, but “Seven Goblins” is a jumpscare lol.
Thanks to social media people had a taste of what’s to come and during the encore, everyone started to chant “surfboard” over and over again. For the uninitiated, Masayoshi Takanaka has a couple of iconic guitars: the train guitar and the surfboard guitar, which is huge and unwieldy so he understandably only brings it out for one song: the iconic “Jumping Take Off”, one of my favourites! How does he do it? I guess that’s why one of my friends calls him the GOAT!
It was an all killer, no filler set and easily the best concert experience I’ve ever had. I was pretty close to the centre of the stage and Takanaka’s music is some of the most cheerful music you’ll ever hear. The energy is uplifting like a praise break in a black church! A guitarist friend of mine said his music is some of the happiest music he’s ever heard and such a joy to play on guitar. I haven’t felt so happy in ages! If you’re ever down in the dumps, put on Takanaka and it’ll turn that frown upside down!
If I had to pick my favourite songs from the show, well it’s gonna be a long list but here we go: “Brazilian Skies”, “Mambo No. 5 (Disco Dango)”, “Oh Tengo Suerte”, “Tokyo Reggie”, “Blue Lagoon”, “Finger Dancin’”, “Taj Mahal” (Jorge Ben cover, Rod Stewart ripped off that song to make “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”), “Ready To Fly”, and “Jumping Take Off”.
Masayoshi Takanaka made one big announcement at the end of the show: See you at Wembley in 2027! So if you missed out on seeing Takanaka in London this year, there’s another chance next year!
What else we did in London
Since there are no trains back home so late at night, we stayed overnight at a friend’s house and the following day we got vegan Korean/Italian fusion cuisine at my favourite restaurant Vegan Yes. I got the kimchi pasta like I usually do and I got a chocolate onigiri for dessert and it was amazing!
After that, Eoin wanted to go to an MC Escher exhibition that was on at Somerset House. It was amazing and there were a couple of rooms that kind of reminded me of TeamLab, although not as large as the rooms there. My favourite part was the blacklight posters. One of the cool things is that the hippies took older art and made it more colourful and psychedelic and there’s really something trippy about MC Escher’s tessellations and perspective art and that was art made before psychedelic rock.
We also stopped by the Gibson Garage to see the paintings of Ray and Dave Davies.
Liked this blog post and want to support independent classic rock journalism? Donate to The Diversity of Classic Rock on Patreon or Paypal or follow me on Facebook, Bluesky, or Instagram, buy my book Crime of the Century, click the follow button on my website, leave a nice comment, send your music or classic rock related books for review, or donate your art and writing talents to the blog.
If you donate any amount to my Patreon or PayPal, you’ll get a Crime of the Century ebook, so it’s pay what you can! The best deal you’ll get on the book and you won’t find this deal anywhere else! I just want to give back to my readers and say thank you for your support.
Leave a Reply