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GROOVES MAGAZINE: November 1979 REVIEW OF PINK LADY'S ALBUM Mie and Kei, the Japanese answer to the Bee Gees, prove that boogie can be performed endlessly and mindlessly by persons of any race, creed or color. The two 22-year old ladies, who parade around under the name Pink Lady, smile blankly on the cover of their first American release. Behind those blank smiles it's easy to imagine someone saying, "If we can't sell these two, what can we sell?" There they are, all sweetness and light. Two cute female voices doing cute, sanitized versions of "disco music." Here is the perfect album that a discophobe can use to argue the intrinsic worthlessness of disco. Shaun Cassidy's producer, Michael Lloyd, has unashamedly lifted the disco conventions of any solid disco success to appropriate for this disc. Lloyd shows how easy it is to take soaring strings, a thumping beat, a wailing cry and a back-up chorus, and with very little effort, produce a contrivance like this album, particularly with tunes like "Kiss In The Dark." But, in light of Pink Lady's career, aural wothlessness is status quo. In Japan, they are the epitome of Japanese M.O.R., so it's no wonder they were matched with Lloyd, the America king of pop-kitsch. Hopefully, though, a less cynical and more musically educated audience will not accept Pink Lady's frothy dose of disco doldrums. BILLBOARD MAGAZINE: December 14, 1979 NBC-TV SIGNS PINK LADY DUO LOS ANGELES: NBC-TV chief Fred SIlverman is getting fast action from Pink Lady, the twosome from Tokyo who have sold more records in Japan than any other act of the late 1970's. Silverman has contracted with Pink Lady's U.S. manager, Paul Drew, for exclusive televsion rights to the two beauteous young women, who spent all last week in Burbank toiling on a program which will be telecast in one of two ways. Silverman will either give Pink Lady its only weekly show starting in February, in prime time, or beam the duo's efforts as a one-hour special. The special would be the first of several to be produced in 1980, Drew reports. "The fee the girls are getting," Drew adds, "is the highest ever paid to an unknown imported act." PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS: February 29, 1980 JAPANESE ROCK STARS TURN TO COMEDY HOLLYWOOD: Pink Lady is to Japanese pop music lovers what the young Elvis Presley was to American rock fans, the ultimate star. Pink Lady is the name of a pair of 21 year old Japanese girls named Mie Nemoto and Kei Masuda who sell more records than anyone else in Asia. A press release says they are the Number One selling record stars in the world today. Be that as it may, the important thing is that Mie (pronounced "Me") and Kei (pronounced "Kay") will star for six consecutive weeks beginning tonight on Channel 3 in NBC-TV's new musical comedy series, "Pink Lady Starring Jeff Altman." It's a dumb title for a show. But it does account for the presence of Altman in the series. No Japanese born performers have starred in American television. The language barrier alone is an almost insumountable problem. But Pink Lady, who sing rock song such as "Kiss In The Dark" in English could change that. In addition to beautiful harmonizing, Mie and Kei are a visual delight. Friends since they were 14-year old schoolgirls in Shizuoka City, Mie and Kei entered a singing contest four years ago sponsored by a TV station. They won easily and became instant stars in Japan. They were named Pink Lady after the fussy pink cocktail of the same name. Their first record, "Peppa Keibu" (Pepper Police Inspector) was a runaway hit for Japan's Victor Records and they were on their way. Pink Lady's Japanese promoters say their success is unprecedented in Asian music history. They claim Pink Lady has grossed $100 million with 14 consecutive hit records and more than $20 million in concert appearances in Japanese baseball stadiums where they;ve drawn as many as 200,000 fans. They made their movie debut two years ago in the Japanese produced "Pink Lady's Great Motion Picture," a science fiction-western adventure. One would assume that Mie and Kei would have amassed enormous personal wealth, a large entourage, a private jet and other appearances favored by other international rock star. Such is not the case. Mie and Kei are thoroughly Japanese women and, as such, are still light years behind liberated western women. They are under contract to T and C (Trust and Confidence) Music and, admittedly, they do what they are told by the corporation. They were ordered to accept NBC's offer for six one-hour shows. While tradition prevents them from complaining or even showing displeasure, Pink Lady is not ecstatic about moving to Hollywood for three or four months it will take to produce their shows. The beautiful, slender young women tried to smile while eating the unfamiliar fare at a health food restaurant not far from the studio. They were accompanied by a Japanese woman translator and a Japanese photographer. Both young singers are homesick, both for the same reason, boyfriends. Mie and Kei have separate apartments in a fancy Westwood complex but they are having difficulty adjusting to American food, customs and people. Clothes are a problem, too. Although Mie and Kei are tall by Japanese standards, they are so slender that most garments are too big for them. They are also horrified by the prices in Beverly Hills boutiques. Pink Lady has appeared only once previously on American TV, as guests on the Leif Garrett special, filmed in England, more than a year ago. They also starred in a couple of concerts in Las Vegas two years ago. VARIETY MAGAZINE: MARCH 5, 1980 Jeff Altman is a bland, good natured comic whose stock-in-trade seems to be bad impressions of constantly imitated celebrities (Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson, Howard Cosell, Humphrey Bogart, Richard Nixon) and of character types (a punchdrunk prizefighter, a hardsell TV pitchman, a Billy Graham like evangelist). That NBC-TV would put Altman in charge of a new six-episode primetime variety series is a somehwat melancholy commentary on the state of a form that once thrived on the networks' schedules but that now seems to have been abandoned. The nominal stars of the Altman show are two female Japanese singers, Mie Nemoto and Kei Masuda, who perform under the title Pink Lady. For about five minutes, Pink Lady is a refreshing novelty because the two are sleek and beautiful and somewhat out of the ordinary. (And they're delicately, definably Japanese---unlike say, the Kim Sisters who come off as Oriental parodies of Las vegas showgirls.) But the novelty quickly wore off on the pilot as Pink Lady managed to make every one of the half dozen or so songs they performed sound alike. And the badinage between Altman and Pink Lady, much of which centered on Mie and Kei's hesitancy with the English language was painful. Altman detonated a lot of pseudo-humble jokes about the fact that he's not well known to a mass audience. But the jokes were on the level of "My mother and father are not here in the studio----they're next door at the Merv Griffin Show taping, watching Merv interview his suit." The guests on the pilot seemed computer selected by NBC's research department: Blondie to get the young demographics, Bert Parks for the older folk and Sherman Hemsley for black audiences. Parks and Hemsley were left in the lurch by the show's writers, and Blondie did one of its earbending numbers while being photgraphed with repeated overlapping dissolves, Chromakey visual efforts and tilted camera angles. (Ed. note: That wasn't even a live performance by Blondie. It was taped.) ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: NOVEMBER 23, 1990 (Ed. note: It would appear this this review of PL & J was part of an EW piece on the ten worst turkeys of movies and television) The buildup: After springing Supertrain on the American public, NBC president Fred Silverman needed a hit for his new network in early 1980. Working with bright, young Brandon Tartikoff, the newly promoted president NBC Entertainment, the TV whizzes developed a show around Pink Lady, a Japanese superstar singing duo of two young ladies named Mie and Kei. The turkey tale: Not only were the singers virtually unknown to Americans, they didn't speak much English. To solve the langauge barrier, Jeff Altman----another unknown at the time----was called in to play interpreter and wear a tuxedo. Dolled up in fishnet stockings, hot pants and halter tops, Mie and Kei sang and joined Jeff in witty repartee. Trouble was, only the laugh-track operator could understand it. "It could've been funny had we been a little sarcastic about ourselves and not taken the girls so seriously," Altman now says. Pink Lady and Jeff was canceled in a month and Mie and Kei bid sayonara to the States. But altman eventually emerged as a popular comic. His second Showtime special aired in May, and now he's developing his own sitcom for NBC. SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: October 24, 2001 BAD TV IS THE THE 'PINK' Bad TV never dies. It just finds new revenue venues. Our latest example is "Pink Lady," a 1980 disaster with a unique place in the hearts of all who value network blunders. "Pink Lady" was released this month in a special three-disc DVD collector's set from the sick folks at Rhino Home Video, for $39.95. If you're searching for it in a store, use your nose. It found its way to me along with a press release touting "Pink Lady" as "a monument to bad television." The quote is from one of the show's own producers, Sid Krofft. "Pink Lady" was a comedy variety show that aired on NBC from March 1980 all the way to April 1980. Some would say that NBC was a mite slow on the trigger finger back then. It starred two Japanese showstoppers, Mitsuyo Nemoto and Keiko Masuda, also known as Mie and Kei. Also known as Pink Lady. Mie and Kei had a problem. They couldn't speak English. In NBC's haste to put the show on the air, it seems that no one thought to ask. Fred Silverman, the NBC president who was laboring to lift his network from the bottom of the TV fish tank in 1980, knew only that Mie and Kei were recording superstars in Japan. And cute, sort of. NBC added a rising young comedian, Jeff Altman, to the show as Pink Lady's interlocutor and lead sketch comedy player. Altman did the grunt work. It was a little like working with two potted plants. Mie and Kei said "Yes," and "No," and "Jeff, you so handsome" in heavy Japanese accents, while Altman fought for laughs. Then, at the end of each show, they all jumped in a hot tub together. Critics hated "Pink Lady" with a fury usually reserved for uncatered press events. The public, for once, concurred. It lasted five weeks. All the shows are in the DVD set, along with a sixth installment that never aired. Yes, even "Pink Lady" has a "lost" episode. Having watched the first two episodes, I can fairly say that "Pink Lady" withstands the test of time. Which is to say, it's not one whit more palatable today than it was 21 years ago. In fact, the old story that Mie and Kei couldn't speak English doesn't do the stars justice. They also couldn't dance. And they had no comic timing. To tell the truth, they really couldn't sing, either. This much, Altman says in a new videotaped interview accompanying the discs, was a tad unfair. Altman says Mie and Kei could sing quite well, in Japanese. But NBC forced them into phonetic renderings of American pop songs. They had little idea what they were saying, or singing. TV legend has it that "Pink Lady" reached the airwaves because of Silverman's desperation. He'd come to NBC in 1978 with a statesmanlike pledge of quality television. By 1980, he'd have happily put "Caligula" in prime time. Altman's theory is a little different. He thinks RCA, which owned its record label as well as NBC, pressured Silverman into "Pink Lady" as a platform to sell the duo's records in the United States. I guess they hadn't caught Mie and Kei swaying and snapping their fingers through "Boogie Wonderland." It's an experience. When it was over, Mie and Kei returned to Japan. Altman never stayed in touch. It would have been tough, since they'd done most of their off-camera communicating in hand signals. And while the public was able to dispatch "Pink Lady" in five weeks, it has never stamped out bad TV shows altogether. Coming from Rhino Video in about 2021, no doubt: the special collector's set of "Emeril," starring the cook with egg on his face. TV GUIDE: November 10-16, 2001 ONE PINK LADY, PLEASE "What happens when Japan's hottest singers meet America's hottest comic?" asked a 1980 NBC promo. Answer: Pink Lady and Jeff, a legendarily awful variety show now on DVD (Rhino). "The girls were not as fluent (in English) as they'd been pitched," says Jeff Altman. The show's failure didn't shock him----perhaps because of the robotic versions of disco hits. "You looked into the girls' eyes and it was like all sevens had come up on a slot machine." PULP MAGAZINE: January 2002 Dear Pulpsters, I can't tell you how tickled pink (pardon the pun) I was to have read the excellent feature on Pink Lady in the October 2001 issue of your magazine. Having Mie and Kei (wearing their silver space outfits from "UFO") on the cover was an added treat. I'm a 42 year African-American man who's been madly in love with Pink Lady ever since the very first time I saw them a quarter century ago. I was in the Navy at the time and my ship transferred to Yokosuka in August of 1977. It was there that I discovered Pink Lady and was instantly mesmerized by them. I don't know what it was about them that attracted me, how pretty they were, their cool costumes, or their incredible song and dance act, but I was quickly hooked on the Ladies, plain and simple. From there I bought pictures, books, even cassette tapes of their music, even though I didn't understand a lick of Japanese. I didn't care, I was fascinated by Mie and Kei and couldn't get enough of them. I was fortunate to have been in Japan at the height of Pink Lady mania when Mie and Kei were insanely popular. You literally couldn't turn around with seeing them on TV, in books, newspapers, magazines and billboards, their concerts drew unbelievable numbers, hell, they even had their own animated biographical series. The closest thing that equates to the fandom Japanese people had for Pink Lady was Beatlemania back in the 60's. Young, old, male, female, even foreigners like me, it didn't matter, the Ladies attracted legions of fans like no other pop stars could. Pink Lady's high energy song and dance act predated Madonna and Paula Abdul, and every time I see Britney or Christina shaking their tails on MTV, I can't help but think: Mie and Kei were doing that before they were born! And they did it better! From what I've learned, Pink Lady's act was unlike anything fans of J-Pop had ever seen before, the catchy songs (my favorite is "Wanted"), the wild costumes, the mind blowing choreography, Mie and Kei were nothing short of a phenomenon. Is it any wonder that the Ladies became idol singers of the highest order? While Pink Lady didn't invent the concept of the Japanese idol singer, in my rather biased opinion, they are perhaps most associated with the genre than any performer who came before them, or any who's followed since. In some ways, and this is highly debatable, Mie and Kei were the genre, lock, stock and microphone stand. When you stop to think about it, the Ladies were, in their own way, pioneers, paving the way for future girl groups like Puffy, Morning Masume and Speed to follow in their footsteps and became famous, just like J-Pop's grand divas. Perhaps the truest barometer of a performer's popularity is how he or she survives the test of time. Even though it's been twenty years since Pink Lady broke up, Mie and Kei are just as popular now as they were in their heyday, as evidenced by all the webpages and websites in Japan devoted to them. And, that popularity has stretched abroad to the States as well. In December 1998, I decided on a whim to put up a Pink Lady webpage of my own, never figuring to get much, if anything in the way of traffic. As of mid-September, my site amassed a surprising 20,000 hits! Most of the people I've heard from here in the U.S. told me they discovered Mie and Kei thanks to the infamous Pink Lady & Jeff. So, who says something good can't come from something bad? I've corresponded several times with Akihiro Seki and the good folks over at PL-NET (which my site is part of by the way!), in fact, it was they who told me about the PL feature in your magazine! I too have heard from PL fans from abroad, including one person from Poland of all places! I jokingly call my tiny clique of stateside Pink Lady fans "The Chameleon Army of America". As for the PL feature itself, it was well done and entertaining. The interviews with Marty Krofft and Jeff Altman were informative and interesting, revealing facets about the show that I never knew about. And from all the things Jeff mentioned, it's a miracle the show even got off the drawing board, never mind into the studio. Jeff hit the nail on the head when he called PL & J an "ugly classic", one that's been vilified for two decades, yet, people seem to be inexplicably drawn to the show, so I won't be a bit surprised if the video release does well in the stores. Oh, and before I forget, congratulations to your guinea pigs for surviving the PL & J torturethon. That was hilarious! It was like reading an 'R' rated script to an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000! They were definitely brave and hardy souls, braver than I ever could have been! I couldn't handle more than two episodes back to back before my sanity began to fray. I'll be the first to admit PL & J wasn't top quality (though compared to the trash on prime-time these days, it's a masterpiece!), but, for me, it was more than worth it, just to see Mie and Kei on American TV. Once again, many thanks for the excellent piece on Japan's original dream queens. It was a most worthy effort, but then, Pink Lady was worthy of it! Jeffrey C. Branch |
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