In 1979, Petri Pettersson and a posthumous Pablo Neruda collaborated on progressive rock -- with Finnforest members!!

Please observe the transformation of the book into sand... From 1979, the album title: "Ehkä meille vielä jää aikaa" signifies Maybe We still have Time Left...

Nobel prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904 to 1973) was not just a formidable writer, among the greatest in the history of humanity, but also politically active.  I will refer you to the Wikipedia entry, but I beg you to read some of his poetry below.  He and Garcia Lorca were always my favourite writers in the Spanish language...



On this second album I will feature, the music was written by Pekka Tegelman (Finnforest) and Ilkka (Petri) Pettersson.

First of all observe the backing band that was collected here:
Pekka Tegelman is on guitar, Otto Donner and Juhani Aaltonen were two jazz luminaries in Finland who collaborated on the insanely gorgeous Strings album which Jorma Ylönen also arranged or conducted.

This is absolutely a stunning album of great beauty and surprisingly progressive composition.  I'm pretty sure most will agree with me, despite the usual occasional dissenters who will feel obliged to express their disappointment.   An incredible find, to think that it is so unknown -- even among the progressive cognoscenti -- utterly amazes me.  And it's clear by now this is my purpose here: to make people aware of some of these lost treasures of creativity so they have a fighting chance of surviving into the future.

Lyrics authors + Title translations into English:

 a1 Pentti Saaritsa / Maybe We still have time left
a2 Unknown / You got Your life to the Theatre play
a3 Vuokko Tikka / Night commanded day to come
a4 Mika Waltari / Secret
a5 Pablo Neruda / Faces in the Stone
b1 Bertold Brecht / To the memory of Marie A
b2 Aaro Hellaakoski / Stranger
b3 Nâzim Hikmet / Let give the Globe to Children
b4 Pablo Neruda / Tonight I can write My saddest verses
b5 Tommy Taberman / Kiss me Wings


"then once, on a night of storms,
with snow spreading
a smooth cloak on the mountains,
on horseback, there, far off,
I looked and there was my friend -
his face was formed in stone,
his profile defied the wild weather,
in his nose the wind was muffling
the moaning of the persecuted.
There the exile came to ground.
Changed into stone, he lives in his own country."

--Pablo Neruda, Portrait in the Rock




I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.       

--Pablo Neruda, Tonight I can write the saddest lines




From my favourite old Garcia Lorca poem:


It's filled with light,
my heart of silk,
and with bells that are lost
with bees and lilies,
and I will go far,
behind those hills there,
close to the starlight,
to ask of the Christ my Lord,
to return to me
my soul of a child, ancient,
ripened with legends, 
with a cap of feathers
and a sword of wood.

Federico Garcia Lorca, Ballad of the Small Plaza (1919)