Ann Lewis -- Koi no Boogie-Woogie Train （恋のブギ・ウギ・トレイン）

(karaoke version)

Disco, baby, disco!! That's the feeling I get from listening to Ann Lewis'（アン・ルイス） "Koi no Boogie-Woogie Train"(Boogie-Woogie Love Train) and I guess the title pretty much says it all. Time to shed the inhibitions and get on the dance floor and party like it was 1979.

Lewis' 17th single comes in smack dab between the two musical personae that I had recognized the singer as: her initial appearance as the sweet innocent aidoru in the early 1970s and then her rock queen of the early 1980s....from Patsy Cline to Pat Benatar in about a decade. With "Koi no Boogie-Woogie Train", she's in disco queen mode, dancing to a beat that brings to mind a lot of the fun and excess (perhaps for a lot of you, the previous conjunction might actually be an "or") of partying in the big city at that time....Tokyo or New York..

Minako Yoshida/吉田美奈子 (lyrics) and Tatsuro Yamashita/山下達郎 (music) were behind the making of this example of disco kayo, and although I don't think it's quite on the same level as Yoshida's amazing "Town" that nikala talked about on her own Best 80s list, "Koi no Boogie-Woogie Train"is a fun bit of musical nostalgia.

While the original version was released on Xmas Day 1979, an English version of the song with lyrics by Chris Mosdell came out six months later as her 18th single. If there had been a Japanese version of the US dance show, "Soul Train", at the time, I think the producers would have known who to have turned to for its theme song.