DJ Limpun Musiikkipläjäys

Unfortunately she doesn't appear on DJ Limppu's mix

You can find here the most peculiar musical performances of YLE Elävä Arkisto (the video/audio clip archive of Finnish Broadcasting Company), lovingly compiled by DJ Limppu.

Instruments feature among all cowbell, typewriter, thinking machine and icehockey legend Raipe Helminen's air guitar. With such legendary performances as 'NMKY' by Gregorius, a male choir rendition by Aikamiehet of Maukka Perusjätkä's punk anthem 'Säpinää', an aria inspired by ex-Foreign Minister Ike Kanerva's amorous SNS messages, Finnish news anchors rocking, and more.

Topralli (1966)

Performances from Topralli:


Irwin Goodman: 'Aurinko, tähdet ja kuu' (1966)


Irwin Goodman: 'Kalteritango' (1966)


Eero & Jussi: 'Balladi kanuunasta' (1966)


Carola: 'Mä tahdon pojan' (1966)


Katri Helena: 'Lui' (1966)


Katri Helena: 'Polkkis' (1966)


The Renegades: 'Girls, Girls, Girls' (1966)

Topralli (1966) might be one of the strangest Finnish film turkeys ever made. Filmed entirely without a script on a shoestring budget and being more often than not technically insipid, it's a loose collection of musical performances from some of the day's hottest pop artists in Finland (and as international guest stars, The Renegades from England; totally unknown in their own country but extremely popular here), tied together with clumsy slapstick comedy ("Hot mjölk", anyone?) of a geekish record company executive's (played by the film's director Yrjö Tähtelä) efforts to organise a big musical show extravaganza in order to celebrate the record company's anniversary. Or something like that. Though offering countless embarrassing moments to make a dumbfounded spectator just cringe, there's also something undeniably charming in the overall innocent stupidity and apparent do-it-yourself amateur spirit of the film in these more calculated and cynical times of the music business overkill; many of these performances also remaining as rare visual documents from the pre-music video days.

Especially hilarious is the performance of the up-and-coming starlet Katri-Helena (now an elder stateswoman in Finnish iskelmä scene) doing with the late Irwin Goodman some dance steps to 'Polkkis' in the wintry landscape, apparently emulating the nervous movements of a person with a full bladder anxiously waiting behind the door of an occupied bathroom. Or maybe being just two lunatics awaiting their institutionalisation. Polkkis was obviously meant as a rivalling dance craze to the extremely popular Letkajenkka (or "Letkiss", as it was internationally known). Only in the 60s Finland...

Introduction in English @ Rokumentti

Finnhits

A Finnhits TV commercial from the 1970s

There's a new blog dedicated to Finnhits, popular Finnish iskelmä compilations in the 1970s and early 80s, today campy retro-pop nostalgia. Some Finnhits artists: Fredi, Danny & Armi (also responsible for the worst music video of all time), Freeman, Katri Helena, Frederik, Kirka, Irwin Goodman...

Music of Finland @ Wikipedia

A nice video clips collection of the 60s/70s (and earlier decades) Finnish pop -- "Finnhits" and more -- from TV and movie performances of the era

Maila "Vampira" Nurmi R.I.P.

Maila Nurmi interview

Maila Nurmi (1921-2008) a.k.a. Vampira has passed away. Best known from Ed Wood Jr.'s Plan Nine From Outer Space, reputedly the worst film of all time, the Finnish-born Nurmi became a Gothic icon.

Gregorius: 'NMKY' (1979)

Gregorius: 'NMKY' (1979)

More Gregorius search results @ YouTube

Now when the world has just barely recovered from Danny & Armi's 'I Wanna Love You Tender', more disco horrors from the 70s Finland are offered by Gregorius, whose 1979 Finnish rendition of Village People's 'YMCA' (originally from TV's comedy show Hepskukkuu) has gathered nearly half a million downloads at YouTube. Featuring on synth the band leader Olli Ahvenlahti (whose 'Grandma's Rocking Chair' was a surprise acid jazz hit in the early 90s), on bass Pekka Pohjola(!), on guitar Heikki Laurila, one of the most employed studio musicians in Finland and on drums Tapani "Nappi" Ikonen.

Aamulehti reports Gregorius is one Esko Nick, who these days is a literature expert working as a librarian in Espoo, also having as a side project his own dance band called Redago (who consider switching their name to Gregorius now). Esko Nick tells the idea of doing 'YMCA' in Finnish came from Pentti Järvinen, the producer of Hepskukkuu. Järvinen had been especially impressed with Esko Nick's peculiar dance movements during one of his gigs, which prompted the producer to take on Nick as a vocalist for the 'YMCA'/'NMKY' sketch featuring Olli Ahvenlahti's band and Jari Samulin's dancers (Samulin is also responsible for the choreography of the infamous Danny and Armi video). Despite Mr. Järvinen's enthusiasm, this performance only remained a one-off, since Finnish TV audiences didn't exactly warm up to the gymnastics of Gregorius, so it took nearly 30 years and the magic of YouTube for this lost "gem" to be discovered.

(The Gregorius video is originally taken from YLE Elävä Arkisto.)

All Hepskukkuu clips @ YLE Elävä Arkisto

Lordi and Finnish Musical Madness

Lordi from Finland: this is what harsh weather conditions and light deprivation do to our complexion (the axe is reserved for such little late-night snacks as music critics).

I'm not a fan of Lordi's Kiss-inspired hardrock myself, but I think it was a great prank to send this pizza-faced heavy metal devil with his plastic armour and battleaxe and his similarly-attired cohorts to the Eurovision Song Contest, this traditionally sad campy Pan-European fest of plastic starlets and lame disco anthems. And lo and behold: the scam worked out even bigger than anyone could expect, Lordi winning with 292 points, the highest total in the whole Eurovision history.

This could only lead to the inevitable conclusion that maybe it's time people, record company executives and media, understood that international audiences find interest in Finnish music only with those local artists who are something else than mere copycats of current musical trends and fashions. Think for example about such people as Pan sonic, Jimi Tenor, Kemialliset Ystävät (and all that "New Weird of Finland" stuff, even though I just expressed being less than enamoured about all of it), Cleaning Women, Eläkeläiset or Mieskuoro Huutajat: whether you were into them or not, they are all personal and different acts with their own idiosyncratic styles positively representing that unique Finnish madness.

Of course Lordi's success is connected to that of Finnish metal in general (HIM, Nightwish, Children of Bodom, Stratovarius, Amorphis, etc.): that's not my cup of tea either, but maybe another indication of Finnish music being more on its own when we are not trying send abroad any lame Madonna/Britney/Shakira/Christina/R&B clones or bloodless Britpop copyist bands as it has happened in the past. Our neighbouring Swedes understand better than us the secrets on how to produce and internationally market slick and easily digested pop acts (such as Abba or Roxette), so I think music-wise we'd better concentrate on our unique world-champions-of-sitting-in-the-piss-ants'-nest madness instead.

Milinkito's Index of 80s Videos @ YouTube

A kinky sex ritual in Finnish way? No, it's an Armi & Danny video from the 80s!

It's the mullet hour! Milinkito.com has created an index of 1980s music videos on YouTube, with lots of interesting clips included. Finland is also represented there -- by Armi (RIP) & Danny's "immortal" 'I Wanna Love You Tender' (which has already sent out shockwaves of horror to Net surfers around the world). Lordi and Eurovision, eat your heart out -- this is the real Suomi horrorpop!

And if this was not enough FinnCheese for you, you masochists may also check out Bogart Company's (a chart-busting pop act from Turku, Finland) 'Princess' (ca. 1985).


[Earlier]

(Sorry, I never got to made that 1990s-the present YouTube list I promised. Blame it on lazyitis and my disillusion with the whole thing...)

Worst Finnish Translation Songs

While we are on the "Worst of" subject, here's another list: of the worst cover versions of international hits translated into Finnish. Especially in the 1970s "golden years" of Finnhits these translated versions sung by local artists were popular, but here are included some "gems" all the way from 1960s to the present day. For example, how about some classics by The Beatles in Finnish? You'll be amazed by how they had nerve to translate just everything: Lou Reed, David Bowie, King Crimson... and of course the biggest disco hits of the 70s! With commentaries in Finnish.

http://www.turkku.com/music/fin_karmeat.phtml

Bad Album Art Galleries

http://www.zonicweb.net/badalbmcvrs/

http://diegeekdie.net/gallery/

http://porktornado.diaryland.com/albumcover.html

http://www.cenedella.com/stone/archives/2003/10/worst_album_cov.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/0,8542,1343471,00.html

But where's the cover gallery of worst Finnish album covers? I think for example some of the yesteryear works of Poko Records would have their rightful place there...

Superdickery

The silliest comic book covers and frames from the Golden and Silver Ages of DC Comics, Archie Comics, et. all; with Superman, Batman & co.:

http://www.superdickery.com/

See also:

pHinnWeb's Comics Links

Another Album Covers Gallery

http://www.showandtellmusic.com:

"A fine assortment of album covers, sound clips, and often acerbic blurbs. Perhaps particularly amusing are the pop-cultural SFnal motifs, sort of the musical/illustration analog of MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED futurism from the perspective of we 'timebinders'. [...] Another record cover art site, but it features reviews of the music as well. VERY eclectic and odd stuff from a novice collector out in the San Francisco Bay area."

More album cover art links

R.I.P. Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag, the author, activist and self-defined "zealot of seriousness" whose voracious mind and provocative prose made her a leading intellectual of the past half century, died Tuesday 28 December, 2004. She was 71.

Sontag died at 7:10 a.m. Tuesday, said Esther Carver, a spokeswoman for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

The hospital declined to release a cause of death. Sontag had been treated for breast cancer in the 1970s.

Sontag called herself a "besotted aesthete," an "obsessed moralist" and a "zealot of seriousness." Tall and commanding, her very presence suggested grand, passionate drama: eyes the richest brown; thick, black hair accented by a bolt of white; the voice deep and assured; her expression a severe stare or a wry smile, as if amused by a joke only she could tell.

She wrote a best-selling historical novel, "The Volcano Lover," and in 2000 won the National Book Award for the historical novel "In America." But her greatest literary impact was as an essayist.

The 1964 piece "Notes on Camp," which established her as a major new writer, popularized the "so bad it's good" attitude toward popular culture, applicable to everything from "Swan Lake" to feather boas. In "Against Interpretation," this most analytical of writers worried that critical analysis interfered with art's "incantatory, magical" power.

She also wrote such influential works as "Illness as Metaphor," in which she examined how disease had been alternately romanticized and demonized, and "On Photography," in which she argued pictures sometimes distance viewers from the subject matter. "On Photography" received a National Book Critics Circle award in 1978. "Regarding the Pain of Others," a partial refutation of "On Photography," was an NBCC finalist in 2004.

She read authors from all over the world and is credited with introducing such European intellectuals as Roland Barthes and Elias Canetti to American readers.

"I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate," Carlos Fuentes, the Mexican novelist, once said. "She is unique."

Unlike many American writers, she was deeply involved in politics, even after the 1960s. From 1987-89, Sontag served as president of American chapter of the writers organization PEN. When the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Salman Rushdie's death because of the alleged blasphemy of "The Satanic Verses," she helped lead protests in the literary community.

Sontag campaigned relentlessly for human rights and throughout the 1990s traveled to the region of Yugoslavia, calling for international action against the growing civil war. In 1993, she visited Sarajevo and staged a production of "Waiting for Godot."

Reading and writing

The daughter of a fur trader, she was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York in 1933, and also spent her early years in Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles. Her mother was an alcoholic; her father died when she was 5. Her mother later married an Army officer, Capt. Nathan Sontag.

Susan Sontag remembered her childhood as "one long prison sentence." She skipped three grades and graduated from high school at 15; the principal told her she was wasting her time there. Her mother, meanwhile, warned if she did not stop reading she would never marry.

Her mother was wrong. At the University of Chicago, she attended a lecture by Philip Rieff, a social psychologist and historian. They were married 10 days later. She was 17, he 28. "He was passionate, he was bookish, he was pure," she later said of him.

By the mid-1960s, she and Rieff were divorced (they had a son, David, born in 1952), and Sontag had emerged in New York's literary society. She was known for her essays, but also wrote fiction, although not so successfully at first. "Death Kit" and "The Benefactor" were experimental novels few found worth getting through.

"Unfortunately, Miss Sontag's intelligence is still greater than her talent," Gore Vidal wrote in a 1967 review of "Death Kit."

"Yet ... once she has freed herself of literature, she will have the power to make it, and there are not many American writers one can say that of."

Her fiction became more accessible. She wrote an acclaimed short story about AIDS, "The Way We Live Now," and a best-selling novel, "The Volcano Lover," about Lord Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton.

In 2000, her novel "In America," about the 19th-century Polish actress Helena Modjeska, was a commercial disappointment and was criticized for the uncredited use of material from fiction and nonfiction sources. Nonetheless, Sontag won the National Book Award.

Unrestrained

Sontag's work also included making the films "Duet For Cannibals" and "Brother Carl" and writing the play "Alice in Bed," based on the life of Alice James, the ailing sister of Henry and William James. Sontag appeared as herself in Woody Allen's mock documentary, "Zelig."

In 1999 she wrote an essay for "Women," a compilation of portraits by her longtime companion, photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Sontag did not practice the art of restrained discourse. Writing in the 1960s about the Vietnam War she declared "the white race is the cancer of human history." Days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she criticized U.S. foreign policy and offered backhanded praise for the hijackers.

"Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" she wrote in The New Yorker.

"In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards."

Even among sympathetic souls, she found reason to contend. At a 1998 dinner, she was one of three given a Writers For Writers Award for contributions to others in the field. Sontag spoke after fellow guest of honor E.L. Doctorow, who urged writers to treat each other as "colleagues" and worried about the isolation of what he called "print culture."

"I agree with Mr. Doctorow that we are all colleagues, but there are perhaps too many of us," Sontag stated.

"Nobody has to be a writer. Print culture may be under siege, but there has been an enormous inflation in the number of books printed, and very few of these could be considered part of literature. ... Unlike what has been said here before, for me the primary obligation is human solidarity."


Susan Sontag obituary @ BBC

VH-1 UK All-Time Worst No.1s

VH-1 UK All-Time Worst No.1s

1 - Cliff Richard 'Millennium Prayer'
2 - Mr Blobby 'Mr Blobby'
3 - Teletubbies 'Teletubbies Say Eh-oh!'
4 - Aqua 'Barbie Girl'
5 - Eamon 'F**k It (I Don't Want You Back)'
6 - Las Ketchup 'The Ketchup Song (Asereje)'
7 - Blazin' Squad 'Crossroads'
8 - Bob The Builder 'Can We Fix It'
9 - Frankee 'F.U.R.B (F U Right Back)'
10 - Peter Andre 'Mysterious Girl'
11 - Gareth Gates 'Unchained Melody'
12 - Will Young & Gareth Gates 'The Long And Winding Road / Suspicious Minds'
13 - Joe Dolce Music Theatre 'Shuddap You Face'
14 - DJ Otzi 'Hey Baby'
15 - Afroman 'Because I Got High'
16 - Will Young 'Light My Fire'
17 - Mariah Carey & Westlife 'Against All Odds'
18 - Bombalurina 'Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini'
19 - DJ Casper 'Cha Cha Slide'
20 - Busted 'Who's David'
21 - Manchester United 1994 Football Squad 'Come On You Reds'
22 - St Winifred's School Choir 'There's No-one Quite Like Grandma'
23 - Hear'Say 'Pure And Simple'
24 - Vanilla Ice 'Ice Ice Baby'
25 - Vengaboys 'We're Going To Ibiza'
26 - Hanson 'Mmmbop'
27 - Michelle McManus 'All This Time'
28 - Whigfield 'Saturday Night'
29 - Spitting Image 'The Chicken Song'
30 - B*Witched 'C'est La Vie'
31 - Billie 'Because We Want To'
32 - Chris de Burgh 'The Lady In Red'
33 - Kylie Minogue I Should Be So Lucky'
34 - Baz Luhrmann 'Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)'
35 - McFly 'Five Colours In Her Hair'
36 - Vengaboys 'Boom Boom Boom Boom'
37 - 2 Unlimited 'No Limit'
38 - Sam & Mark 'With A Little Help From My Friends /
Measure Of A Man'
39 - So Solid Crew '21 Seconds'
40 - Cliff Richard 'Mistletoe & Wine'
41 - The Firm 'Star Trekkin'
42 - Gary Barlow 'Forever Love'
43 - Geri Halliwell 'It's Raining Men'
44 - A1 'Take On Me'
45 - Mr Oizo 'Flat Beat'
46 - Bob The Builder 'Mambo No 5'
47 - Eiffel 65 'Blue (Da Ba Dee)'
48 - Five and Queen 'We Will Rock You'
49 - Girls Aloud 'Sound Of The Underground'
50 - Nick Berry 'Every Loser Wins'
51 - Rednex 'Cotton Eye Joe'
52 - Spice Girls 'Holler'
53 - Steps Tragedy'
54 - Aqua 'Doctor Jones'
55 - Glenn Medeiros 'Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You'
56 - Doop 'Doop'
57 - Geri Halliwell 'Bag It Up'
58 - Robson Green & Jerome Flynn 'Unchained Melody'
59 - Babylon Zoo 'Spaceman'
60 - Lionel Richie 'Hello'
61 - A1 'Same Old Brand New You'
62 - Simpsons 'Do The Bartman'
63 - LMC V U2 'Take Me To The Clouds Above'
64 - Take That featuring Lulu 'Relight my Fire'
65 - Chef 'Chocolate Salty Balls (PS I Love You)'
66 - Cliff Richard 'Saviour's Day'
67 - DJ Pied Piper 'Do You Really Like It'
68 - Europe 'The Final Countdown'
69 - Gina G 'Ooh Aah... Just A Little Bit'
70 - Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan 'Especially For
You'
71 - Barbra Streisand 'Woman In Love'
72 - Color Me Badd 'I Wanna Sex You Up'
73 - Hale & Pace 'The Stonk'
74 - Martine McCutcheon 'Perfect Moment'
75 - Goombay Dance Band 'Seven Tears'
76 - Shaggy 'Oh Carolina'
77 - Tight Fit 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'
78 - Billie 'Girlfriend'
79 - Bluebells 'Young At Heart'
80 - Emma Bunton 'What Took You So Long'
81 - Nena '99 Red Balloons'
82 - Right Said Fred 'Deeply Dippy'
83 - Steps 'Stomp'
84 - Wamdue Project 'King Of My Castle'
85 - Ace Of Base 'All That She Wants'
86 - David Bowie & Mick Jagger 'Dancing in the Streets'
87 - Enya 'Orinoco Flow'
88 - New Kids On The Block 'You Got It (The Right Stuff)'
89 - Outhere Brothers 'Boom Boom Boom'
90 - O1ide & Neutrino 'Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty)'
91 - Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder 'Ebony And Ivory'
92 - Spacedust 'Gym & Tonic'
93 - B*Witched 'Blame It On The Weatherman'
94 - Bucks Fizz 'Making Your Mind Up'
95 - Cliff Richard & The Young Ones 'Living Doll'
96 - Falco 'Rock Me Amadeus'
97 - B*Witched 'Rollercoaster'
98 - Tiffany 'I Think We're Alone Now'
99 - Jason Donovan 'Too Many Broken Hearts'
100 - Hear'Say 'The Way To Your Love'