RFI: Music of Finland, Finns (Seven Deadly), Finnish Rock, Electronic, etc Music

In sixties he was arrested for obscenity, due to singing passages out of a sex education pamphlet. Other sixties songs of his featured lyrics out of a horse grooming manual and the Finnish law for obscene publications. He's also recorded old swing tunes in Finnish, as well as Baccara's "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie". Last time I saw him sing was at my faculty's semester opening party, where he sang The Faculty of Social Science's Set of Principles and Scenario for the Future.

So. Any good Finnish boybands about?

I might start a thread on INTERNATIONAL BOYBANDS.

Whenever I watch the Finnish channel at the foax it does somewhat confirm the stereotype by CONSTANTLY showing some sort of soap where people sit around the table and stare gloomily into their coffee for hours (it gets sort of addictive when you can't leave the house for a couple of hours).

(ie I haven't found any Finnish pop music programmes yet).

I think there's only been one proper Finnish boyband (in the Take That / Backstreet Boys mode), and that was a nineties band called XL5. Unfortunately I can't find their videos on Youtube, but you can enjoy this great song about Helsinki city boys instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEVuUql_yBA

So. Any good Finnish boybands about?

N Sinki?

I think these days the closest equivalent to a Finnish boyband are glam rock bands with young, good-looking guys. The most popular ones are Negative and Lovex, I think:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRel_1BEFsA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDfm2IbNpIE

As far I know, their basic fanbase is the same as that of proper boybands, i.e. (pre)teen girls who dig their looks.

Btw, lately I've been diggind old Finnish schlagers, and whaddayouknow, someone has put up a fan video for my favourite tune from the fifties. It even has an English summary of the lyrics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGZq57zEY9g

The singer, Tapio Rautavaara, also won the gold metal for javelin at the 1948 summer olympics, so he was quite the renaissance man.

Other famed Finnish scenes:

- Old-school extreme metal. Mostly death (Xysma, Demilich, Demigod, Lubricant, Amorphis), doom (Thergothon, Unholy, Skepticism) and a few black metal (Beherit, Impaled Nazarene).

- "Suomi saundi": a subgenre of psychedelic trance spearheaded by Texas Faggott, on Exogenic Records.

I think I've seen Texas Faggot live years ago, they did a fine job in turning one of the worst genres in electronic music history into something tolerable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3giCNAU_NYM

I don't normally share any Finnish music in here, but this song/video has hit me harder than anything from this country in a long time... It straddles a very fine line between eroticism and gothic death-love (the title translates to "open your hair, Medusa" - the narrator is welcoming Medusa to turn her into stone so she can enter oblivion) but never becomes corny, just amazing.