Shozo Ise -- Tonight, Tonight

 

It's been quite a few years since I purchased singer-songwriter Shozo Ise's（伊勢正三）"Light Mellow" compilation of his AOR period, and from there, I discovered his smooth down-home City Pop sound from his "Futari no Shuuki"（二人の周期）, originally from his 1981 3rd solo album, "Smoke Glass Goshi no Keshiki"（スモークドガラス越しの景色...The Scenery Beyond The Smoked Glass）.

The third track from that compilation and a track in the above video at 12:57 is "Tonight, Tonight" which takes things into some turn-of-the-decade (70s into 80s) West Coast soft rock and City Pop. Written and composed by Ise and arranged by Jun Sato（佐藤準）, "Tonight, Tonight" seems to be about really having that night out on the town as if there were no more nights coming. Both Ise and Sato were handling the lion's share of instruments including guitar, piano, synthesizer, Fender Rhodes and glockenspiel. 

Liner notes for the "Light Mellow" compilation seem to have thrown in all of the folks who were involved on the entire source album, and in the case of "Tonight, Tonight", it had originally been recorded on Ise's 4th album "Orange" from May 1983. There were a lot of big names on the electric guitar such as Masaki Matsubara（松原正樹）, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）and Tsuyoshi Kon（今剛）so if any one of them including Ise took care of that electric guitar solo in the song, then my compliments to him. That solo had me thinking back to my teenage days listening to the radio.