RBI's "empty bases" music in the movie Swing Girls

[RotJ]

I watched the movie Swing Girls last week.  During a scene in which a high school brass band is boarding a bus to their school's baseball game, they start singing the RBI music interspersed with a school chant.  I was confused about whether the song was some traditional Japanese baseball ditty that Tengen put into the game or whether it became a baseball ditty after everyone in Japan who played RBI Baseball had the song pounded into their heads.  It's probably the latter.  I made an mp3 of the beginning of it here.

The movie also showed someone playing Space Channel 5 Part 2, and then later had the swing band play the "Mexican Flyer" song from that game.

[JoeDirt]

Quality initial post.

[GDavis]

This blows my fucking mind

[TbT]

and now to anger the masses...didnt bases loaded 1 have the same exact music as rbi did?  he may very well be right and its a japan thing.

[nomaaa]

it's pretty damn close, and the one part is identical.

[BeeJay]

Can you imagine seeing a group of high school girls singing the rbi song?  Talk about boner town.

[Stock]

and now to anger the masses...didnt bases loaded 1 have the same exact music as rbi did?  he may very well be right and its a japan thing.

I believe baseball stars had an RBI sound to their music as well.

[Gantry]

I guess we need to research the name of this tradition Japanese baseball sound.  Rotj - thanks for th excellent first post and mp3!  I copied the mp3 to the Media Page to preserve it in case that site goes down.  Also made a preliminary database page:

http://dee-nee.com/wiki/index.php/Swing_Girls

Feel free to correct my shitty grammar or add facts.  Thanks to beef and Atezz for their corrections on the Hernandez page I put up yesterday.

[Attezz]

Thanks to Beef and Atezz for their corrections on the Martinez page I put up yesterday.

No problem.

[Gantry]

Looks like I'll have to give you guys modify access to my forum posts as well...

[Flood]

I've never met a cat I didn't like...

[Big Hath]

So where did the RBI song come from Gantry? You usually have this stuff figured out within a half day or so.

[Gantry]

I dunno, haven't tried to research it.  Lets see how good my google fu is when I don't have any words to search for...

[BeefMaster]

Track listing, from this page:

1.     TAKE A TRAIN RIDE
2.    TAKE THE A TRAIN
3.    THROUGH THE WINDOW
4.    FALLING IN BLUE
5.    PLATANUS GARDEN
6.    KEEP ON GOING,GIRLS!
7.    STAY AWAY FROM ME
8.    SWING TALK 1
9.    COMIN THROUGH THE RYE
10.    MAKE HER MINE
11.    IN THE MOOD
12.    THAT'S WHAT IT IS!
13.    REMINDING SORROWS
14.    TAKE THE A TRAIN(SNOWY VER.)
15.    SWING TALK 2
16.    MOONLIGHT SERENADE
17.    MEXICAN FLYER
18.    SING SING SING
19.    SWING TALK 3
20.    WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD
21.    SWING TALK 4[BONUS TRACKS]
22.

22 was blank on the original page; not sure whether that is a typo.  I recognize most of those as jazz standards, and I doubt the RBI song made the soundtrack... worth a shot, though.

[Gantry]

Nice call beef, didn't think about looking up the soundtrack.  From the composer list (all american), I don't think that song is one there though.  Also, it was only chanted breifely in the movie so it probably didn't get a full song.  Still worth researching those names though, thanks!

[RotJ]

After hearing that Baseball Stars and Bases Loaded may have had the same music, I tried to find the source.  Doing Internet detective work in a foreign language is kind of frustrating (though I've had some experience hunting down Beatmania song files from Japanese sites).  Googling for 'japanese baseball music/songs/cheers' in English gets you some information on oendan (cheering squad) culture, but doens't help with tracking down specific songs.  Looking for 'japanese baseball midi' didn't help much, but I did find some Hanshin Tigers songs.  And most personal Japanese sites have shorter longevities than the average Geocities site.  So I gave up on it for a week.  Today, I had the idea of translating terms into Japanese first, and searching for those.  "Baseball" is "野球".  The first result for '野球 midi' led me to http://vitaltrack.hp.infoseek.co.jp/midi/midi.htm, which seems to have every single song you'd ever hear at a professional baseball game in Japan.  I went through the Giants, Tigers, Dragons, and half the Carp before striking gold (or should I use a baseball metaphor there?  hitting a homer?).  It probably tells you I don't get out much when I say that I got a rush of adrenaline after hearing that opening fanfare, anticipating what it would turn into.

(╯≧▽≦)╯carp_combat.mid

Found at http://vitaltrack.hp.infoseek.co.jp/midi/carps/midi_carps.htm

It's one of the songs of the Hiroshima Carp.

From the description:
♪ コンバットマーチ
○○倒せ　○○倒せ　○○倒せ　かっとばせよ　かっとばせよ　勝つぞ勝つぞカープ
（『○○』には敵チーム名が入る）

I think those are the lyrics.  Google translates it to:
♪ combat march
00 push down 00 push down 00 push down the っ fly the っ  fly, it wins, it wins, the carp (' 00 ' opponent team name enters)


The ending's a bit different, but the song is definitely related.  It even starts out similar to the RBI intro music.

I haven't gone through the rest of the midi's yet, but I'd bet the runners on base song is somewhere in there.  Maybe alternate versions of the theme too.

(This post might look wacky if you don't have Japanese encoding.)

[Gantry]

Excellent work RotJ!  I first listened to it and the song sounded nothing alike, but I think it was linked to an incorrect song (carp_gaijin) - now however it's definitely the RBI song...

My searches too were coming up empty, even after delving into oendan searches.  Trying to search on the kanji was a great idea, your google fu is quite strong. 

Did that Swing Girls scene take place in Hiroshima? 

Next is to find a full version...

[RotJ]

Yep, had the wrong link at first.  Swing Girls takes place in Yamagata, which is pretty far from Hiroshima.  The director was born in Kanagawa, which has the Yokohama Baystars.  So I guess there's no obvious connection.

Strange thing was, I found the movie after looking in the Wikipedia entry for the Yamagata dialect of Japanese, which I was looking up because I had been reading a copy of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language that I picked up from a library book sale for $4.

[Attezz]

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

[Baines]

I salute the quality effort from the newbies lately.