Mayumi Asaka -- Hold On Me

 

Just for the curious, the above is a shot of Mito Station at night. I stayed at the hotel right by the station after heading out of Oarai, the anime pilgrimage town for all things "Girls und Panzer".

One of the strange things about my two postings regarding actress-singer Mayumi Asaka（朝加真由美）is assuming that I first wrote them years and years ago. But crazily enough, the two of them that I've written about her so far only date back as far as 2023. In fact, my more recent article up to now was her "Sasowarete..."（誘われて...）from this May. Well, the mind does go a bit hinky after a certain age, but the excuse I'll use in my defense is that the music of Asaka is simply so nostalgic that my memories played a trick on me.

In any case, we have the country-blues of "Sasowarete..." and the City Pop of "My Endless Scene", both from Asaka's one-and-only album "Yasashii Kankei ~ Mayumi I"（優しい関係...A Gentle Relationship）, from October 1981. "Hold On Me" is also from that album but it was also the B-side of the singer's seventh and final single from January 1981, "Yasashii Kankei". "Hold On Me", not to be confused with one of Kahoru Kohiruimaki's（小比類巻かほる）classics, is an intrepid nocturnal City Pop entry with a boffo bass bopping away to Kazushi Inamura's（稲村一志）melody (and I'm assuming that it is him who is providing the background vocals) along with some spicy electric guitar. Asaka herself wrote the lyrics.