bogart co

 

I am a bit into Bogart Co who were a Turku new romantic pop band from the 1980s who had six albums in six years (83-89) and really took on every trope of the period. I won't link to the videos because links aren't forever but I recommend you find them. 'Princess' might be the best, the video in particular, with all the great themes: people disappearing into thin air, the photo booth, the ballerina. Look, it resonated for me.  

Someone could do an incredible analysis of the terror in the eyes of everyone who made these records and everyone who bought them, particularly the sort of garish aryanness of Bogart Co. But for all that I reckon they actually did pop pretty well on what was probably a fairly small budget. I'll give them kudos for doing it in English too - which at least didn't restrict them from the Anglosphere although I don't think they had any records released (t)here, but you know, they probably sold some records in Latvia or Poland or something (who knows. Maybe the politics of the period, and I don't just mean the iron curtain politics, made that unlikely). 

The debut album cover (first image at the top) really says it all, I mean it is so dinky - so obviously dinky - that it's kind of saying 'ok, we're Finnish, we have the population of a medium sized city in our whole country, it's all going to be small' (also I bet there was a lot of pushback against a 'Finnish Duran Duran' or whatever from the real musicians)... but it didn't mean they couldn't have fun and get into the conversation. 

I'm going to project that they were probably a bit like Indecent Obsession, they just wanted to get a foothold in the industry, show their chops, make a bit of money/have some pop star sex (that was probably not the easiest thing to do with impunity in a small world like Finland but also, people in Finland were and are open minded about such things) and then move on into production or real estate. Good time not a long time.

'It's all good'.