> Believe
> it or not, she is mentioned in Wikipedia - where I
> discovered she married Cornelius (Keigo Oyamada)

I can't remember adding anything there but I've fixed up some
wikipedia pages about musician friends I know better.


> and
> "Fantastic Cat" was used in Miller Beer advertisement.
> How cool is that!

I think I heard that in the U.S. It's just the melody hook repeating,
not her singing as I recall.
I wonder if it's confirmed, because without her voice verifying it
many commercials and their melodies are sound-alike knockoffs.

What I had heard was a mention she did some original Japanese
commercial music in the early 00s.

She became a parent sometime around September 2000, so she more or
less retired from a full time music career back then. Her website
mentioned as I recall some sort of remix, some TV commercial music
and a bunch of articles or columns for magazines/websites aimed at
new mothers.

Also lots of the bios don't really put her early music career into
context. Fancy Face Groovy Name was like a hobby band side project
for the two female friends of Flipper's guitar. But obviously since
Kahimi Karie also became very well known it's simply a great
factoid. L<->R had takako as a backup musician at first but then she
became a proper member for a while before she left for a solo career.
I like the album credit where rather than credit her with percussion,
her credit is "Beat Alls". Anyway they were a major professional
band. From what I can tell she clearly did not have a real outlet for
her own creativity there, though being in a successful band clearly
helped he launch her music career. On the other hand I understand she
still had to get what was to become "chat chat" recorded
professionally on her own without label backing. (remember this was
before a lot of home made music and long before posting stuff online)
I think she got it out as an indy EP then Polystar (L<->R's label)
had her work up a full album. I think that's what happened, but I'm
not 100% sure. One can also see that after she got a foothold with a
more or less conventional album she then could make much more
eccentric music.

The American commercials with Japanese made music I remember most are
Shonen Knife's Carpenters Top of the World cover for Microsoft and
Pizzicato Five for AT&T.

The now rather vintage Steve McClure book "Nippon Pop" mentions
Buffalo Daughter having made it in Japan when they did music for a
Listerine commercial.

Youtube has the rather demeaning but hopefully well paying toilet
bowl commercial with Jun Togawa as spokeswoman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkq6qNmJue8


nick
http://technopop.info