Ayumi Ishida -- Mild Night

 

To the kayo-listening audience at large actress-singer Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）has been immortalized thanks to her "Blue Light Yokohama"（ブルーライト・ヨコハマ） from 1968 which will reach its 55th anniversary since release in a few days on Christmas Day. But from the late 1970s going into the early 1980s, she also sipped from the wine glass of City Pop with some initial encouragement from Tin Pan Alley via "Roppongi Lullaby"（六本木ララバイ）.

In June 1979, Ishida released her 53rd single titled "Mild Night". A story of an urban love affair, "Mild Night" might be ironically titled since it sounds more like a wild night via a rumba. Also to my ears, it's not just a City Pop tune but also something in the amorphous New Adult Music realm of mixed genres. Usually New Adult Music would be a blend of pop and enka but over here, the song has that Latin, City Pop and maybe even something from either a tokusatsu or a cop show theme tune, so some dynamic kayo kyoku. I wonder if the horns were supplied by the band Spectrum.

The lyrics were provided by Takashi Nakahata（仲畑貴志）while the melody was created by Ryudo Uzaki（宇崎竜童）. "Mild Night" only got as high as No. 86 on Oricon and it was never put onto an original album by Ishida, so indeed it could be one of the rarest of the rare.