Kim Kuusi feat. Maarit, Arja Tiesmaa & Kari Rydman: 1978 - Kim Kuusen Lauluja (Songwriter/Ballad) (FIN)

Note that there is an alternate record cover, as seen by the discogs entry:

Which cover is the more beautiful?  It's difficult to say.  Given the melancholy atmosphere that pervades, as so often in Scandinavian music I've mentioned before, the bottom is perhaps more fitting.  But I love the out of focus photo of the top cover, with its highly evocative impression of childhood memories.

From my friend, and thanks to his immense generosity for sharing this with us:

"Kim Kuusi is a Finnish composer best known for his advertising jingles.

Kuusi studied at the Helsinki School of Economics, also teaching there in 1975. Studying alongside Kuusi had been involved in the creation of Ryhmäteatteri a composer and musician, he worked as 1969-73. At the same time, he also performed in Pihasoittajat, for whom he wrote, among other things, the Finnish Eurovision entry in 1975, Old man fiddle.  Pihasoittajat (1969 to 1975) were a folk music band with modern popular music influences.  In 1975 they represented Finland in the Eurovision song contest placing 7th in a field of 19. Members of the band for the contest were Arja Karlsson, Hannu Karlsson, Seppo Sillanpää, Harry Lindahl, Kim Kuusi and Hendrik Bergendahl.

Pihasoittajat reformed after a 20 years break in 1995. After several concerts the second revival for the band ended with Hannu Karlsson's death in December 2000.

Pihasoittajat's hit was this (in English) or here (in Finnish, much better arranged). "


For my part, I love this kind of music, recalling sometimes Carita Holmstrom and sometimes the great Petri Petterssen as posted earlier in this blog:

http://progressreview.blogspot.ca/2014/01/carita-holmstrom-we-are-what-we-do.html
http://progressreview.blogspot.ca/2014/02/carita-holmstroms-second-album-which.html
http://progressreview.blogspot.ca/2014/05/carita-holmstrom-teppo-hauta-aho-two.html
http://progressreview.blogspot.ca/2013/11/petri-petterssons-first-album-nuoruus.html
http://progressreview.blogspot.ca/2013/11/in-1979-petri-pettersson-and-posthumous.html

Incidentally, I reuploaded all the albums on the above links that were deleted due to inactivity, those netkups ended very quickly.

One of the best tracks is the following very heartbreaking item, A5's Unilaulu:





Notice that it starts relatively simplistically in A minor, with added 7th and minor 6th notes in the verse, but for the chorus we get this mind-blowing elegant complexity or sound of fullness by going into Bflat major7, then Eflat, Aflat, F7, which introduces us back to G minor 7 down to D minor and the E sus 7 takes you back to the A minor.  Really brilliant progression, which particularly reminds me of Carita's songs.  And what adds a lot of fullness or umami is that each of those major chords has a major 7th added.  This track would otherwise have been relatively ordinary and easy on the ears.  Note also how the depth of the trombone soloing in the middle of the song adds that note of melancholy pathos, much like the depth of a cello does so often.  It recalls in particular that gorgeous song on the second Carita album with the beautiful poem, which is worth replaying here:





(From her second album here, not this post.)

Waikiki's Surf West and Kalakaua Boulevard by Kanzaki on the Road... from 1981

These guys did three smooth fusion albums in that very light Japanese style, all of which are relatively average for the genre but I couldn't resist posting this when I saw the first two songs on the second side: Waikiki Surf West, and Kalakaua Shuffle (the name of the main boulevard in Waikiki).  This was recorded at "Commercial Recording" of Hawai'i  way back in 1981, presumably in Honolulu.

Track A3 called Suite 246 - Aoyama Road is a highway in Japan.

Here's the song about Waikiki Beach's fabulous surf:





Not quite as composed as Jukka Linkola's opus on Hawai'i, but still real nice to hear for those like me who miss those beautiful garden islands...

I'm a bit puzzled by the title since the surf in general is better towards the east, closer to Diamond Head Crater, the west side features the family-friendly lagoon of the Hilton Hawaiian Village, favoured by my wife for maternal reasons.

Affirmation's Second Album 'Identity Crisis' from 1985

I'm back with the second album from this nice light but inventive fusion outfit from the early 80s.  Most of the music was written by Thom Teresi, keyboardist, and Joe Gaeta the guitarist.  Gotta love the 'Hall and Oates' style sleeveless shirts they are all wearing, combined with proto-mullets and 'staches.  Oh those glory days of long-in-the-back hair!  Is it just me who finds it amazing how truly revolutionary and iconoclastic it would be for someone to prance about in a mullet and 'stache today?  Surely we can agree they will have a difficult time if they ever enter the local bank.  It would be almost as bad as a young attractive woman with completely unshaved armpits and a tanktop, though, to be honest, that is witnessed slightly more commonly on the streets than the former style, at least, in certain buskers festivals perhaps, not necessarily in polite company.  I read with a great deal of amusement recently that in the "China Times" fully 75 percent of young women in China who were surveyed were in favour of shaving their armpits.  While the rest declared it a waste of time.  I don't think there is any hope of diverting fashionable conduct for the female sex in the direction of universal (for all) complete and total removal of all body hair, perhaps within about 20 years.  Will it then make a comeback after that, like that mullet might?  I doubt it, because part of the reason for this odd insistence on depilation is the work involved, which is what it makes it culturally desirable.  I think men's beards exist for the same reason (as hair on women's legs for example), because it became culturally important for men to shave to be part of the same group.  A group that evolved without facial hair would be a problem, not a solution, in this sense.  To insist instead on a lazy do-nothing nonchalance for female beauty simply doesn't accord with evolution: the very work women perform on their own beauty being what is being favoured here.  As I've said before, every time I drive to work in the morning and I see a woman applying makeup in the rear view mirror whilst driving and endangering her life convinces me how important evolution has made this for our species. One can argue that this state of affairs is deplorable for them altogether, but I don't think anyone actually makes the case for this anymore, certainly not on the side of the men, who only care about whether their girlfriends, wives, or the objects of their desire, are taking care of their attractiveness to their eventual approbation.  In any case the pressure on men is equally severe but entirely different in this race for acceptance by the opposite sex.  If anything the stress on men is worse since as we all know, men spend half their time on things they think will somehow make them attractive to some woman or another.  Where does progressive rock fit in this calculus?  Well, nowhere obviously, prog is not only not attractive to females, it is distinctly repulsive to the vast majority of them as I've noted time and time again.  On the other hand, I can still impress the odd young open-minded female by talking about my strange penchant for collecting ancient vinyl and playing LPs on a turntable, though, not having the enormous beard to make me a 'young cool guy', probably detracts, as is the fact I'm old enough that I collected vinyl as a kid, unlike those cool bearded guys who grew up with mp3 players...

Anyhow, a representative track, A1's "Amber Autumn:"




This band reminds me a lot of another US band, "The Fents"-- which see.

Patrice Meyer 1982 and 1986 by request

From prognotfrog, May 2010:

Of these two, the first album Racines Croises (1982) is slightly less stellar and features more solo guitar songs. Quality and sound are very similar to Philip Catherine's best work. Even the augmented chords and patterns of open arpeggios remind a lot of the belgian. There are hard and fast quasi-atonal electric songs a la shylock, insanely chilling imaginative progressive tracks like "escalier" which has some smokin fuzzy sustained guitar effects, gorgeous acoustic self-duets (Mystere en diminue)-- no question two patrice meyers are better than one. I think for the apprentice guitarist this album could pretty much teach you everything about progressive guitar music. Listen, and weep! you pale imitators! The final track is reminiscent of the best vintage Alain Markusfeld, piano and guitar duet. But I can pretty much guarantee that, like the best prog out there, you have never heard melodies or chords like these, no 1-4-5 here, no circle of fifths.

The bona-fide masterpiece is Dromadaire Viennois (1986) which was private pressed-- I guess in the days of MTV even in France it was difficult to put out an album with incredible, conservatory-level composition with mixed zeuhl, jazz, rock, and classical elements. Far from a hodge-podge, it is as cohesive as for example Transit Express or Speed Limit from years earlier. Check out the musicians first of all: Hugh Hopper on bass, Pip Pyle on drums, Didier Malherbe, Henri Texier, Jean-Paul Céléa, etc. How can you go wrong? Well, sometimes even those guys went wrong in the eighties... I wish I had known then, when I was trying to shut out Poison and Twisted Sister, that there was something as beautiful as this out there in the world. But that's the great tragedy of life, appreciation comes long after opportunity. And the other tragedy is to be so completely out of tune with reality. Hey, how many of you fans tell everyone at work about your love for 60-70s prog? Oh, the sad shaking of the head... It's almost as bad as when I tell people I don't eat meat because of climate change. This album would really have to wait 20 years to get a truly adoring audience, like the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins. Although I'm jumping the gun here, since everyone might hate it.  The cover seems to be the only condescension to eighties fashion, showing an odd banana-like cocktail, with the pink lettering and black background, you could've been tricked into thinking this was just another new wave album. Ah what a great trick that would've been!

Side A is called "the quartet". Amusante Clementine opens with some drumming intro and a repeated 4 note bass riff and moves into some really nice energetic jazzy rock instrumental. Dromadaire Viennios is very much Jacques Thollot, I think clearly Meyer too had a classical musical education. An operatic soprano sings an obbligato over almost baroque chords and flute. But be patient-- like Thollot's stuff, the song quickly slips into progressive chords and some badass electric jamming.

In Rasoir our genius combines a Holst Mars drumming and martial bass rhythm with an incredibly dramatic chord progression moving up in minor seconds and then back down again... the impression is of a huge army marching in the night, an army of robots maybe, or zombies with mullets armed with electric guitars that transform into assault rifles, and with armored shoulder pads, with which to blow away the "new kids on the block" fans... before stopping for some super big gulps at 7-11. Pay attention to the electric guitar solo, which is as far from a standard blues rock solo as you can get, pretty much atonal, give Arnie Schoenberg an axe and let him wail away! I would have loved to have been there in 1986 to play this for people. Although let's not forget even in those days there was a huge fan base of jazz and fusion who could have enjoyed this (less so now probably).
To close we have a side-long composition "Cinq Bucoliques":
a) Les Flocons D'Avoine
b) La Valse Lydienne
c) L'Ecole Buissonniere
d) La Retenue
e) La Recreation
A (very brief) acoustic and soprano intro leads to an acoustic guitar solo with some eerie cello sustained notes. As usual with french music a flute plays atop, feeling very left out but trying to push its way in with some very interesting melodies. We get a middle passage that is very Patrick Gauthier-post-zeuhl, french singing on top of a zeuhl pattern played, believe it or not, by strings! Presumably this is Lécole. Of course the track closes out on a faster note, oddly discordant is a 40s jazz doo-wop passage near the end.
So I present to you some more lost masterpieces, please keep these alive until a better day comes for us.

A 1980 Aloha from Tim Eyermann and the East Coast Offering!! [+ some requested reups]

As we all know, fusion went into a very light direction towards the end of the seventies-- I guess 'Bitches Brew' was by then a distant memory for the musicians who crafted some quasi-atonal sounds to spice up the jazz-rock sound.  And this is a perfect example of that sad tendency, or degeneration, alleviated slightly by some crafty songwriting from the team.  In terms of the compositional credits you can check on the back scan that Phil McCusker the guitarist, Wade Matthews the bassist, and Tim himself wrote most of the music with some help from keyboardists Bruce Harrison and Louis Scherr.

Surprisingly the track entitled 'Acapulco Harvest' (by Wade Matthews) isn't some silly mariachi-styled 1-4-5 guantanamara-like bitterly emetic syrup, but a soft and laid-back almost tender ballad with some interesting modulation and changes:





From the blissfully soft sounds I am surprised this was not given a Hawai'ian name in fact, to me it recalls the sunrise behind Diamond Head in Waikiki-- something I recommend everyone witness, much more beautiful than the acclaimed sunset over the waters...  Speaking of which, I was highly relieved to hear that 'Aloha' (by Phil McCusker and Bruce Harrison) wasn't commercialized and candied up with gratuitous silliness in the form of ukuleles, etc. So thankfully the musicians decided to at least maintain their respectability, although without the fusionastic crux of energy and insanity we are so addicted to, like my children are to nutella, or like the nutella co. is to destroying indonesian forests for palm oil for their product:





As for the subject of Hawai'i, I discussed it at length in an earlier post...  in a couple of months our family will be back for our yearly wintering there, and we all can't wait to smell that beautiful tropical air of orchids and feel the warm balmy dark breeze at HNL the Honolulu airport...  seeing the 'na pali' (high cliffs) diving into the ocean from a white sand beach...

We are now past Labour Day, another obscure and quite troubling holiday involving, as I understand it, gratitude to heaven or perhaps our positive spirit for being a proletariat worker dying to win the lottery and thus join the god-blessed 0.1%  rich billionaires who are able to jetset about their cities to order twenty dollar croissants shipped directly from the Champs-Elysees-- puzzling and in fact quite disconcerting as this day appears to be, it is not so much so maybe as Boxing Day, Hallowe'en, Easter, Mothers Day, and Fathers Day.  Yet we always get the faintest suggestion, as we humbly accept our day free of forced labour, that we are manufacturing consent (in Chomsky's words) in addition to manufacturing another order of burritos within 4 minutes, when we celebrate these, being told to accept our place as lowly hoi polloi suitable for employment in minimum wage jobs to ensure the continuing success of enormous abstract corporations that are free to plunder the earth like galactic sharks to make their bald, golfcart carried executives and stockholders fabulously wealthy, more wealthy than even Louis XIV could have even imagined, in order to provide us with more useless tools to waste away the interminable boredom of modern life... a very very puzzling state of affairs...