A huge name in Finnish rock music, he is also a very prolific singer-songwriter that has covered rock, blues, country
and other genres with success. Some of the most memorably tunes in Finnish music have come from his inventive mind. He
has a very recognizable singing voice and deals with all kinds of different themes in his songs. Personally I enjoy the
big variety of his discography and his signature harmonica sound, which can be heard in many songs.
EDIT 2015-11-17: I decided to split these up to different posts for easier referencing and easier updating later.
See the tag music-i-like to view them all.
Since this is a blog about stuff I want to tell people, I thought I'd make a series of posts about something I love: music.
These posts will also serve as a reference for the odd occasion that I tell someone what I like to listen to. My taste in
music is somewhat varied and my music library has a lot of stuff in it. That's why I will only cover some of the the artists I like
listening to most. One could kind of approximate it from my last.fm statistics, but I tend
to listen using "Shuffle All" nearly all the time, so the stats will be skewed in favor of artists with lots of tracks
(such as 植松伸夫). For each artist I will tell
something about them and then add a couple of examples from YouTube. The artists I post about are not in any particular
order.
Leevi and the Leavings (1978–2003)
This may be somewhat strange for the international crowd. A very prolific Finnish rock/pop band that released album
after another. They were pretty popular in Finland and many of their songs are still very popular in the radio, even
though they disbanded after the death of the band's lead, Gösta Sundqvist, in 2003. A couple of noteworthy facts: every single one of
their songs was composed, written and arranged by Gösta, and the band never officially did a single live concert. Their
songs are very Finnish in their content, usually dealing with the daily struggles of ordinary "little people".
Personally I like Gösta's lyrics that often highlight things you don't think about in a tragicomic way, and his catchy
melodies in many songs.
For some reason, while browsing the Interwebs, I stumbled upon
Carolina Eyck, a German
theremin player. The theremin is a fascinating electronic instrument played
by moving hands in front of the instrument, without touching it. It has a very unique space-y kind of sound. Even though
I am not musical in any way, after seeing a few videos, I suddenly had a great urge to get myself one and learn to play
it. To save everyone's ears, I won't be doing that, but will just settle for listing some fun videos.
I love listening to music. I carry my music collection wherever I go (in the form of an MP3 player), be it work, school
or vacation. My last.fm profile logs tens of tracks every day and can probably creepily
accurately pinpoint when I'm at work, alone at home or travelling from place to place. With this said, listening to
music at home has earlier been somewhat of a chore – or at least I feel like it now.
Since I'm pretty often on the move with my laptop, I grew tired of having to pull the audio cord from the living room
stereo receiver every time I wanted to listen to something. And when I did listen to something, I often alternated
between the living room and the kitchen, where nothing was playing. Sometimes I resorted to putting the receiver in the
living room at full blast to kind of hear it everywhere in the apartment – sorry neighbors.