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"The Appeal of MOR (Middle-of-the-road) Music" by Michiko Okabe

        The James Last Orchestra, Germany's leading pop middle-of-the-road group, MOR (Middle of the Road) for short, is coming to Japan for the first time! I mean, at long last, they are coming to Japan for the first time to give a concert. The German pop orchestras, Werner Müller and Alfred Hause, have been making regular tours of Japan for many years now, and in fact, they have been playing more active in Europe, the U.S., and Canada than the above two veterans, I have been wondering why Bert Kempfert and James Last, who are actually more active than the above two veterans in the U.S. and Canada, have not toured Japan, so this first visit to Japan seems to be very promising.

        To be honest, I didn't like James Last. He was too conventional, and there was not much that was unique to James Last. I was not a fan of James Last, because I thought he was too conventional, and no matter what he played, he could only do it dexterously and without much trouble, without any sparkling brilliance or, on the contrary, without any of the professional musicianship that he had perfected in his own way by accumulating his own ideas, I was worried that the band would be called a "mood band" forever and that it would end up being a tan-spunt with a certain usefulness and flexibility.2 All of these factors mixed together to give it a negative reputation.

        However, when I heard his latest album. I was so pleased to hear his newest album, "Well Kept Secret," that I was able to shout out "I'm so glad I listened to this album. He has taken the same great songs by Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter and George Gershwin, arranged them in a wonderfully vivid way, and put them on a fresh beat. It is no wonder that the James Last Orchestra has leaped onto the U.S. hit charts, and today's performance is a high fanfare for the second golden age of the James Last Orchestra, which has begun its full-scale flight to the world.