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What’s up Sorry Staters?
After writing about the excellent new Modem record in last week’s newsletter, I guess I’m sticking with Finland this week as well. But rather than contemporary beep-boop music, I’m throwing it way back to one of the earliest examples of Finnish punk rock.
I’m not sure exactly where my journey of discovery with early Finnish punk began. At a certain point, I think I started to notice Daniel accumulating lots and lots of cool Finnish punk records all of a sudden. And when I say that, I mean specifically showing interest in bands from that initial late 70s punk wave, and not necessarily 80s hardcore stuff. I would walk into work some days, and he would just bring in a stack of cool European punk records to listen to, some of which I’d never seen before. I’d react like, “Uuuh, holy shit dude, when did you get all of these?” So maybe the Sorry State bossman spear-headed a bit of motivation and inspiration for me to check more of these records out.
Many, many years ago, I randomly stumbled into hearing the first Ratsia LP through the channels of the mysterious internet blogosphere. I think at the time, my young, short-sighted takeaway upon hearing Ratsia was: “Wow, they cover Stiff Little Fingers in a different language!” And it would take me until much later in life to discover how brilliant and ingrained in my memory songs like “Lontoon Skidit” would become. I wasn’t ready yet, I guess. And it would be even many years after that realization before I’d actually get a chance to visit Finland and try to find those records in person, to varying degrees of success. It’s funny that it would take me until my 30s to finally grab a physical copy of that Ratsia LP. Then all of a sudden, it became all about learning more about bands like Ypö-Viis, Pelle Miljoona, Kollaa Kestää, and all the rest.
Now it’s time to talk about another band that’s on par with the bands I mentioned above: As some of you readers know, the fine people over at Svart Records recently reissued the first two albums by seminal Finnish punk band Eppu Normaali. Now, what’s funny is that I only recently learned the information, while reading some random internet article, that Eppu Normaali is like literally Finland’s biggest selling band—like, EVER. Record sales, singles in the charts… Which is crazy, because I had no idea. What I do know is that I heard an Eppu Normaali album from 1990, and let’s just say I was not a fan. A bit too tepid and soft for me. That’s not to say they don’t have other records from their 80s heyday that I might enjoy, but for the purposes of this newsletter, I’ll stick with the first two albums from the late 70s. Both of which, just to be clear, are incredible.
Eppu Normaali’s first LP Aknepop was originally released in 1978. If you think about it, that’s pretty early on as far as punk emerging and infecting other places beyond the US and England. Eppu Normaali and bands like The Clash and Generation X were basically contemporaries. This first record is killer. Kinda raw, high-energy rock’n’roll with great riffy guitar playing. A lot of the super frantic, rockin’ sounding guitar stuff reminds a lot of like Johnny Moped and the like. And I don’t know what it is about Finnish bands, like if it’s something in the culture, but they just leaned so heavy into incredibly hooky, almost folk-esque melodicism. A lot of the bands have such a gift for melody. I remember the first time I heard the song “Poliisi Pamputtaa Taas” off this record. It’s the first song on the B-side, which I accidentally played for the first time thinking it was the A-side haha. That song is just so damn catchy, I thought this must be like the pop hit off the record. Lo and behold, “Poliisi Pamputtaa Taas” was released as a single in 1978 preceding the release of the album. The recording on the single version is different, so naturally my record fiending brain was like I MUST FIND ONE. And of course, it’s expensive haha.
Over the last few years, I’ve spent so much time with Aknepop that I think my attention was diverted away from Eppu Normaali’s 2nd album Maximum Jee & Jee. Lately, I think I might even prefer the band’s sophomore album. They were great musicians from the beginning, but something about the performances, production and songwriting feels more refined on Maximum Jee & Jee. Even by the second track “Njet Njet,” the band incorporates a feeling of melancholy and a sense of longing with washy, jangly guitars you didn’t hear as much on the first album.
I feel like I could write a paragraph on just about every song on this record. I’ll try to refrain as much as I can. As a direct contrast to the melancholy I just mentioned, a song like “Lainelautailevan Lehmänmaha Rock N’ Roll” almost feels like Eppu’s take on Plastic Bertrand-esqu punksploitation with goofy sing-along boogie woogie doo-wop background vocals and stuff. One of my favorite songs on the record, “Pidetään Ikävää,” starts with this Teenage Head “Picture My Face”-paced groove, but then has a super hooky tongue-twisting, multi-syllabic vocal hook with a woman doing backup vocals—which THEN launches into this minor key section with eerie violin accompaniment. Might sound strange, but it’s fucking awesome. The track “Science Fiction” is a gem as well, starting with these pseudo-futuristic atonal synthesizers but then bursting out into one of the most up-tempo, catchy songs on the whole record. Okay, one more: The song “Jee Jee,” from where I assume the title of the album is derived, is also a favorite. Apparently “jee” is how the Finns spell “yeah”, so one of the big hooks in the song is them just singing, “yeah, yeah yeaaah.” It fucking rules. Call me crazy, but methinks Tiikerri might have borrowed this motif for some of their songwriting hehe. I just love how Maximum Jee & Jee pushes boundaries and experiments with songs in a way that feels light-hearted and playful rather than snobby or pretentious. Such a great record.
So maybe me deciding to write about Eppu Normaali from the perspective of a Finnish person would be like deciding to write about Green Day or something. But it must be undeniable even amongst Finnish people that these first 2 albums are all-time classics, right? Seems like the band had some records in the mid-80s into the 90s where they had a much higher level of mainstream success. And honestly, I don’t know much about those records. The Finnish rock/pop genre known as Suomi-rock is a rabbit hole that I’m not prepared to dive into. But it seems like Eppu Normaali’s appeal is something very insularly relevant to Finnish culture rather than the band having success as a big international musical export. Maybe I’m wrong? Interestingly, I find a parallel between the story of Eppu Normaali and the popularity of the band Ebba Grön in Sweden, whom I wrote about in a previous newsletter many moons ago. Or maybe that’s a weird comparison to make? I’m writing about all this stuff like I actually know what I’m talking about. I’m just a humble punk enthusiast trying to draft interesting tidbits for all you readers to enjoy. Or ignore. Either way. There’s always so much more cool stuff to discover.
We’ve still got a bunch of copies of Aknepop and Maximum Jee & Jee in stock. Don’t sleep on these, ya dummies!! If you’ve been hesitating to dive deeper into international punk that you’re unfamiliar with, now is the time to correct that. Don’t make the same mistake I did. These records are no-brainer purchases if you like good, catchy, badass punk rock.
Welp, that’s all I’ve got for you guys. As always, thanks for reading.
‘Til next week,
-Jeff