Thank you for everyone who visited this little blog during 2017 and thank you for all the amazing artists for creating the music that carried me through this year of horrible politics and a couple hundred hours of overtime work at the factory. The far bigger issue, politics both in Finland and USA is still an absolute shit show, but thankfully the lesser issue, my personal workload got back to acceptable levels during the last months of the year. Therefore there’s hope that this blog might survive 2018 as long as the world can too. The thought of finding a new job is still lurking in the back of my mind though, because it still feels like it went over some limit during the summer and I’m struggling to put it completely behind me. Even though it’s quite alright at the moment, I sort of lost the belief that I can be fully happy by staying there.
I was on the verge of quitting the blog several times during the year and in the darkest hour did post that great I Just Can’t Fucking Do It Anymore song by Christian Lee Hutson and stopped posting for a while. That would have been a good dramatic way to quit, but unfortunately I’ve been doing this for sixteen years and find it extremely difficult to let it go. Somehow this has become too dear and it has a hold on me. The only thing that makes any kind of sense is to quit, because I just don’t have the time or energy to do it properly and it’s not like this has any kind of significance the way I do it these days. For a long time I’ve mostly let things slide, because I can’t let them completely go. Therefore there’s a constant cloud of guilt hanging over me, because there’s always that amazing song that I haven’t posted and that kind email I haven’t answered. As for 2018, half of me wants to quit completely and the other half wants to fully commit to this and do this as well as I possibly can and see how that goes. I think I’ll start with what the other half is saying, but it’s probably only a matter of days or weeks before the reality kicks in and I will let it slide again even though it has never done me any good. But until reality bites, let’s spread some love for songs.
There’s one more end of the year list coming up within a week or so before it’s time to fully move on to 2018. It’s the Finnish songs of the year. The last entry to that list will be my current favourite song Kasevaa by Lokit (unless I go with Blades of Steel, love them both). It’s an outtake from their new seven inch single/ep. You can get it at least from Teen Wolf Records. Don’t buy them all, because I haven’t placed my order yet but plan to do so. A brilliant band and I love most of their songs that I’ve heard. At least Työttömyys, Tosi hyvä tyyppi, Blades of Steel and Kasevaa are all utterly wonderful. I can’t wait to hear their debut full-length that is hopefully out sometime in 2018. To have the possibility to feature the forthcoming Lokit album in a full excessive praising mode is a one damn good reason to continue another year. Here’s the excellent (but somewhat disturbing) music video for the new Lokit song Kasevaa.
Happy New Year’s Eve and see you in 2018!