only lonely

I may already have been a bore about this group but now I have the actual album. It's SO WEIRD in a bland kind of way, but amusing and even engaging too. So the first thing is this odd aspect: they were from Turku and in Finland, they were called Bogart Co. 

I was instantly entranced by this cover. It's so amateur it's incredible. The six rock balls, the weird little face on the stone, the fucked up sand... the city in the background. It's appealing.* 

But check out what I got when I ordered this album from some discogs vendor in, I suppose, Portugal since this is a Portuguese pressing. And apparently they were known by this name in a number of territories. I just want to know why. I suspect it's just because 'Bogart Co.' is such a richly terrible name, but still, I want to know why.

I am also a bit thrilled that someone spent all of six seconds getting out a texta and a bit of paper to alter the cover art (this by the way is the printed cover) of my copy to credit the album under a different name (someone later has come along and in neat ballpoint put the numbers 1, 3, 2 and 4 on it). Intriguingly though for the Swedish pressing some time was actually spent on comparatively cohesive art.

I suppose I am also intrigued about why the other territories didn't just, you know, give it a decent cover. And I mean, the guys in the band weren't horrible looking by the standards of the era so why not put them on the cover? Instead of this madness? Here they are on the inner sleeve:

You'll be stunned to hear these are stage names. I don't know which one I like the best, but I guess to be boring it's most likely Sam Eagle. Reddie aka Ressu Redford's real name was Esa Mäkelä; Sam Eagle was Sami Piiparinen; Vinnie or perhaps Winnie Lane was Veijo Mäki, Guy Stoneman was Kai Stenman and Johnny Gustafsson, inasmuch as Johnny isn't really a Finnish name, was Johnny Gustafsson. 

And look it's piss easy to joke about this stuff and I do actually like the record, either because of or despite the fact it is essentially every frickin' 1986 cliche you can imagine in a Duranesque group. If I wrote lyrics in Finnish, which I can't because I only know about three words in Finnish, they would be meaningless. These are pretty trite songs but they hold together, but of course, there is that very slight 'offness' about them, which makes them much more fun than if they were completely coherent. (I am reminded of a review in NME of one of the Lilliput albums that made fun of their Swiss German attempts at English and how I am still offended by that review thirty something years later - so - why am I inviting you to laugh at this? I'm not actually - that's on you). 

'The morning's breakin' and I'm waking up/ Cold shower an' I dress up real cool/While havin' the breakfast, the morning paper/Tells me what to do an' what to think (God dam it)'. 

'Come the midnight there are millions of lips/An' they're moving'/Come the midnight there are millions who kiss/ An' they're ooh'

'Rainbow in your heart/ Those warm sunbeams an' those tears in your eyes/ Form a rainbow/ The rainbow in your heart/ I realise, you can't stand all his lies/ And that's why/ The rainbow's inside you.' 

'Day after day we flow with the rush (ooh)/Knowing there's nothing we can do/ Step after step we watch where we go/ To avoid the slush an' the slime/For all, after all/We worship the matter/ To continue the world as it does'

Continuing as it does, the world is an amazing place. In 2021 I discovered both Martha and the Muffins (properly) and Bogart Co. Oh also the Mess Esque and Blue Divers albums are really good. I have been playing a lot of Bananarama too. Indeed, this morning I raced to a garage sale where I knew for a fact that the edition of WOW with extra LP of remixes was going to be for sale. Guess what it was only $2 as well. Also guess what: the copy of the second Bananarama album I bought a few weeks ago had two, whatever you call them, bags in it so when I discovered that one of the LPs in this edition of WOW didn't, all I had to do was transfer it across. Do call that justice. 

By the way I bought the first Bananarama album on the same day I bought the first Velvet Underground album, probably in 1983. But today I only have the first Bananarama album (and the second and third). 

March 2023 update: When we were in Finland in February Laura and I saw a lot of Bogart Co. records around - I don't know why I didn't buy any. Also we heard 'All the best girls' played in the bar at the airport. It sounded cool! 

* The cover is designed by Gerold Gerdes. Someone called Gerold Gerdes was born in 1964 and died in 2013 but I don't know if it was this Gerold Gerdes. A Gerold Gerdes designed quite a few Finnish record covers.