International music

Blue

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Tonight’s love affair is Blue. I noticed a bunch of their records at the front page of notlame.com with some extremely monstrously high praises from Bruce Brodeen. As usual, Bruce was right and this is truly wonderful scottish pop music from the seventies. Pure melodic bliss and vocal heaven in the vein of Badfinger. I don’t know how have I managed to miss them before, but thankfully I now did notice them. Unfortunately the debut is already out of stock at Not Lame and the store at NB music doesn’t seem to work either at the moment. Therefore I have to settle for these youtube videos like these below for the time being.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AneujjCHjTA]
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uL1VbigpZQ]

Other than that, I today bought The Munsons album from 8raita and I’m really loving it. They’ve really recorded a killer version of ZZ TOP’s Rough Boy. You’ve got to love that one. But it’s not just that one song, the record is full of fabulous rootsy music. Anyway, I’ll get back to them later. If you are impatient, you’ll find their myspace here. However, a word of warning is in order. After visiting that link, you also might need to visit a record store.

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Finnish music

Big White Monkees: Stockholm

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It’s time for a nostalgic trip to Stockholm. Farkkujanne has done a good deed by adding some Big White Monkees classics to youtube. My favourite song by them was always Stockholm. Maybe it’s just a nice little tune, but I’ve always loved it and it still recalls lots of good memories like audiences trying to force Saku to play Stockholm as an encore (thankfully he usually did end up playing it).

Anyway, back then I was always excited about my trips to Turku and several times a year I travelled to Turku just to see bands like Big White Monkees, Bridget, Ben’s Diapers, Since November, Hundred Million Martians, Boomhauer play live. A lot has happened since and nowadays I live in Turku and often find myself pondering whether I have the energy to walk 15 minutes to Dynamo to see a good pop band play a concert. Listening to Stockholm now and recalling all those fine moments I spent at various places in Turku makes me want to shout to myself that “get a grip man/boy/whatever and drag your lazy ass to those concerts that fine people organize. It’s what you love and it’s what you want to support. Heck, you used to travel 7 hours in a train to see one great pop concert and now you can’t walk 15 bloody minutes”. Anyway. Here it is. Big White Monkees and Stockholm. A song that would definitely make the list, if I had to choose ten songs that are dearest to me.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z43blJjrOzw]

There’s also other great Big White Monkees songs at youtube:

Wherever
Travellin’
Falling From The Ride

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International music

Cheap Star

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cheapstar

I’ve known this french band Cheap Star for some years, because of their The Posies connections, but only found out today that they’ve released an album a couple of months ago. It’s called Speaking Like an Elephant and half of it was produced by Jon Auer and the other half was produced by Ken Stringfellow. So The Posies connections are still there and it’s certainly not a bad thing, because for me The Posies is the greatest band ever. Still just the fact it was produced by Ken & Jon wouldn’t make one love  them if the songs weren’t as great as they are. Okay, so far I’ve only heard these four songs that are on their myspace, but based on those I really like them and will order the album tonight.

This is definitely my kind of music and brings back the golden age of music. Because for me this dearest era and golden age of music is the 90’s power pop, guitar pop, indie rock etc. The stuff finnish indie freaks heard on Räkärodeo and fell in love with it. There’s a lot of that The Lemonheads, TFC, The Posies thing going on in here. Wonderful melodic guitar pop with  beautiful mellow harmonies. The title track on the other hand sounds almost exactly like the great Guided By Voices.  I’m definitely hooked and convinced enough to order the album.

http://www.myspace.com/cheapstar

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