pere ubu terminal tower and ninni forever band uusi yhtye

 

So I was crowing a few weeks ago about how I didn't buy a copy of Modern Dance when it was offered to me by the universe but what I didn't mention was that, spare prick that I am, I did then go and buy a copy of Terminal Tower which is the 1985 compilation of most of their non-LP material up to that point. I bought this when it came out but somehow lost track of that copy. It's a pretty great album, not least because it covers the gamut of the first iteration's trajectory from rock outliers to anything goes experimentalists (and a stab at something like pop, the first of their real 'well, this could be an insane novelty hit record like Renee and Renato or something' records). 

I'm listening to it now and realise that only one of my speakers is working, so I'm getting an interesting remix of the overall and hearing things I never realised were there before, percussion/guitar overdub bits that were obviously always part of my experience of these recordings but they're now a lot more prominent and while I am not thrilled by the prospect of fixing the speaker shizzle I'm finding it an experience right now.

My other great listen during the week has been Ninni Forever Band, specifically their album Uusi Yhtye which has some absolute standout tracks on it (the big hits are 'Söin Auringon' and 'Tää Ääni'). Ninni is Ninni Luhtasaari who is also known as Dumb Pint in, yes, sorry, Pintandwefall but here the songs are in Finnish. I am very up for that. One of the songs is called 'Foliopallo' which means 'foil ball' which is hard to resist. I know you're not interested but whatever, I'm not being paid by the word here. 

'Uusi Yhtye' means 'new band' but they had been a band for ten years by the time this came out, so lol. I see their first album is available from a Finnish vendor who can also supply me with all the Bogart Co. records I could want. It's probably time for me to put the computer away for now.

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. 

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'.