Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe: Single Vacation (1984) [70001-58]I have mentioned elsewhere about my fondness for 1980's Japanese 'city pop' and 'city jazz' music. If you're a fan of 'proper anime' (I can already see feathers being ruffled), ergo anything made in the 1980's up to the latter 1990's, then you'll probably be familiar with such music. Think of the background music in an elevator, complete with kitsch vocals, esoteric jangly guitars and cool synths. Or perhaps in an anime when the hero/heroine wakes up in the morning and the animators go to great lengths to show the character making coffee, breakfast, drawing back the curtains and reading a newspaper.
Ωmega Tribe fit rather nicely in to this genre. In fact they would probably be one of the go-to bands on any top 10 list at the mere utterance of great 'city pop' artists. Sure enough, one of their albums was even entitled Aqua City (sadly nothing to do with Big Blue from F Zero). They were around a good while too, before City Pop and City Jazz exploded in the earlier half of the 1980's. They formed in 1978 and since then have had more line-up's than Ronnie Wood and as of 2021 they are still active. In fact only recently in July the band announced a new remix project to commemorate their Aqua City album and also have a special project in the works to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Kiyotaka Sugiya & Ωmega Tribe. If you want to get in to their music, I strongly recommend the track
Crystal Night which is under the band name 1986 Ωmega Tribe.
I'm not 100% around the history of this Single Vacation Laserdisc. From what my research shows, it appears to be a greatest hits video collection of hits spanning three of Ωmega Tribe's albums;
Aqua City,
River's Island and
Never Ending Summer, released in September 1983 and March and December of 1984 respectively. There was a follow-up to the latter album,
Another Summer released in July of 1985 though none of those songs appear here.
The premise for the collection filled me with a lot of hope. I mentioned in another post that I had hopes for pure 80's sensory overload. Tragic-looking cliche staged poses, fingerless gloves, aviator sunglasses, neon signs, beach sunsets through horizontal window blinds, martini's and pretty people in pastel attire. And for the most part that checklist is pretty much present. For the first three or four songs I was not disappointed at all. It appears that the majority of the videos were shot on location in Hawaii, I would imagine between 1983 and 1984. A lot of the opening scenery reminded me of the Shakatak 'Da Makani' Laserdisc. The gorgeous scenery, palm trees, yachts and achingly beautiful people sipping cocktails at exclusive bars and resorts. Yet you also get a stupendously heavy dose of tragic moody posing and modelling. It's all quite brilliant and toe-curlingly cringey!
The problem is that the videos change tact. What starts out as some sort of premise about a man chasing after a beautiful lady in some sort of long-lost Summer love nostalgia sequence quickly changes to standard 'band playing in a studio' setup before upping the ante a little with more location fodder towards the end of the disc. I imagine the band and/or label (VAP) probably spent all of their budget on their holiday in Hawaii and had to resort to boring studio fare to get the rest of the videos completed. It may also explain why there is a change of model in the latter videos, with the part of the nostalgic Summer vacation lady being played by a totally different model. It's a shame neither of them are credited at all as I'd be keen to see how their careers worked out and if they had been in anything else I may had seen.
In terms of presentation the disc itself is innocent enough. You get what appears to be shot on video footage presented in 4:3 and an analogue audio track. The picture quality varies a little between razor sharp and a little softer as you play it through. One thing I did notice is that scenes shot in low light appeared to have a lot more grain and a slight green tint to them. Perhaps that's down to the equipment used to shoot the videos. It doesn't look terrible by any means, it's just an interesting quirk I noticed. It looks like the kind of filter that would perhaps be used on a Tia Maria advert. Audio is fairly weak on this disc, meaning you will need to crank up the volume a little. It also felt a little flat. I found that by using Music mode on my Yamaha soundbar and setting it to Jazz Club mode that it sounded a lot better. If you do get this disc then be aware that it will require a little tinkering on the equalization to get the sound just how you want it. Once set up it does sound great, particularly when you kick the bass channel up just a little. It's nothing super serious to worry about, possibly more due to differences in audio equipment in 1983/84 and today?
Overall, this is a nice little disc. I think I perhaps expected a bit too much from it. I do wish that all of the videos followed the opening narrative of the first 3 videos though as it really was on a role. Resorting to terminally dull 'band in the studio' videos is a bit of a cop out when they could have gotten really creative. I guess though for the label it was not just about a lack of time and perhaps money but about getting the albums out in to shops to rake the money in before the band's popularity waned, such is the way of the music industry (especially back in the 1980's). I would suggest that if you are curious enough to want to hear more then by all means pick up this Laserdisc and give it a try, just don't expect the world from it, which is what I did and ended up feeling ever so slightly let down.