Happy Monday! Well, the big event has come and gone. About 40 minutes ago, Toronto just got dark to the extent of dusk becoming full-blown night for a couple of minutes as the eclipse arrived. I'm assuming that Niagara Falls ended up looking like midnight for a few minutes.
Anyways, back to kayo kyoku business. I found out about this song, "Fjord no Shojo" (Fjord Girl), when I was doing the weekly Yutaka Kimura Speaks article on Shigeru Suzuki's（鈴木茂）"Sobakasu no Aru Shojo"（ソバカスのある少女）exactly a month ago. Kimura referred to those two songs (including "Saraba Siberia Tetsudo" [さらばシベリア鉄道]） and brought in "Fjord no Shojo" as tunes regarding young women fleeing a bad situation, often going far off into the northern territories of Earth. Maybe the cold is good for removing sad memories...I don't know.
I'd never heard of "Fjord no Shojo" and coming across the referral, I was curious by this song by the late great Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）. And sure enough, it is what I usually expect of an Ohtaki opus: his crooning vocals, the jangly guitar and the air of heading out bravely into the great unknown. According to the J-Wiki article regarding the song, Matti Luhtala of the Finnish band The Mustangs kindly contributed his guitar-playing prowess to Ohtaki's 11th single of November 1985.
Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）once again partnered with composer/arranger Ohtaki with his lyrics of a woman who has gotten tired of society and the poor protagonist and has probably escaped to Finland for a long respite. The single, officially titled "Fjord no Shojo/Bachelor Girl"（フィヨルドの少女/バチェラー・ガール）and the final analog single to be released under the Niagara label, reached No. 31 on Oricon. It also found a home on Ohtaki's album "Complete EACH TIME" which came out in June 1986 and peaked at No. 14.
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