"Shellistä!" Finnish Shell TV commercials of the 1960s and 70s featured the immemorable voiceovers by Kaj Gahnström, in his ultra-masculine growling bass, which used to scare the TV-watching children all over the country. Also the top model Seija Tyni appeared as the "Shell Super Girl" in these stylish clips (created by the advertising agency SEK with Crea-Filmi), which can these days seen as a sort of pop art typical of its era: pre-energy crisis and less "politically correct" (using women as sexist props in commercials, the subsequent boycotts against Shell).
Seija Tyni, as the "Supergirl", soon became associated with Shell as a product personalization, being presented as a modern action character influenced by James Bond and Modesty Blaise, and was seen in different roles in each spot: being a boxer, a soldier, a rally driver, a karate player, etc. In the 1967 Shell sunglasses campaign Tyni's Supergirl appeared as
"a teacher, sitting behind the teacher's desk and looking down at the watch she wears on a chain around her neck. The loud tick-tock of an old grandfather's clock is heard in the background. Then suddenly the school bell rings. The unmistakable, very low bass voice of the narrator [Gahnström] (voice-over was an organic element in Shell Finland's commercials until the 1990s and was imitated in numerous contemporary commercials): 'Suddenly it is 3 p.m. Polarized sunglasses. Now for 12:80. They change your whole world. For a special price. At Shell.' [This sort of "clipped" telegram style was typical of Shell's advertisement lingo. -pH] During the speak, the Supergirl removes her spectacles and puts the sunglasses on. At that same instant her hair falls down and the topknot hairdo changes into a glamorous coiffure. The last scene shows a race car curving away on an icy road."
(Visa Heinonen, Jukka Kortti & Mika Pantzar: "How Lifestyle Products Became Rooted in the Finnish Consumer Market - Domestication of Jeans, Chewing Gum, Sunglasses and Cigarettes", 2003, PDF)
Paying tribute, Ilppo Pohjola used Gahnström's growling voice (and also some female models fashioned after these old TV commercials) in his experimental short film Asphalto (1998).
Today is the 75th birthday of Finnish film director Risto Jarva (15 July 1934 - 16 December 1977). You can read more about him here. In many ways Jarva was a product of his own time, whose works reflected the political ideas, social trends, fashions and general Zeitgeist of what was Finland in the 1960s and 1970s, and watching his often-topical films today, they might feel dated and even flawed in many ways, but for me Risto Jarva remains one of the most interesting directors this country has ever spawned, nevertheless.
Blindpassasjer ("Stowaway") was a Norwegian science fiction TV miniseries of three episodes, made in 1978. It was written by Jon Bing and Tor Åge Bringsværd and directed by Stein Roger Bull for NRK, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Egil Monn-Iversen was responsible for the eerie film score. The series, which many consider the finest piece of filmed science fiction in Norway, was also shown in Sweden and Finland (with the title Salamatkustaja). It's interesting how some scenes reminisce Ridley Scott's Alien, which had its film premiere only a year later.
A plot summary from IMBD entry: "The spaceship Marco Polo is returning from a mission at the newly discovered planet Rossum. While the five members of the crew are in deep sleep a mysterious shape is captured on one of the surveillance monitors. Awakened the crew soon discover that one of their number has been killed, and something is living among them in the shape of a crewmate. But who is it?"
Blindpassasjer has been released on DVD in Norway.
McCloud was an American TV show that lasted from 1970 to 1977, starring Dennis Weaver (who many remember from Steven Spielberg's 1971 debut, Duel) as a country marshal transferred to the crime-infested New York City; the basic premises of the series taken from Clint Eastwood's 1968 Coogan's Bluff. 'Ain't That Just The Way' by Barbi Benton (Hugh Hefner's former girlfriend) was heard in the 1975 episode 'Park Avenue Pirates'. Sheriffi McCloud being a popular show in Finland too, Benton's performance in the episode caught the attention of some local music biz people; with the subsequent translation version 'Näinkö meille täällä aina käy' by Virve Rosti becoming a big domestic hit in 1976.
And while we are still at the topic, here is another gem from the era, 'Sinua sinua rakastan' ("You, you I love") from 1968, composed and sung by Kaj Chydenius, with lyrics by Aulikki Oksanen; from Mikko Niskanen's film Asfalttilampaat ("Asphalt lambs"), starring Eero Melasniemi and Kirsti Wallasvaara, with whom Niskanen had already worked with for Käpy selän alla.
Kaj Chydenius (b. 1939) was probably the best-known composer for the late-60s/early-to-mid-70s Finnish political song movement, whose timeless sense of melody has guaranteed the evergreen status of his works even to our own apolitical/right-wing politics days.
The lyrics in this one are nearly psychedelic, I think: "Miten huutaa minulle avaruus / Miten kirkuvat tähdet ohimoni läpi / Miten itkevät lapset maailman rannoilla / Ja merien yllä savuavat sydämet" (As a quickie translation: "How space yells to me / how the stars scream through my temples / How the children cry on the shores of the world / And over the seas smoulder the hearts").
After a typically rainy summer season, everything seems still quiet on Finnish electronic dance music front, so pHinnWeb goes on its nostalgia trip of yesteryear's domestic popular culture. Enjoy, or at least, bear with me.
Käpy selän alla, directed by Mikko Niskanen in 1966 created a sensation in Finland. (The title literally translates as "A pinecone under one's back", though the official English film title for some reason is Skin, Skin, also known as Under Your Skin, probably trying to cash off the boom of "erotic" European art films of the time, though by today's standards eroticism here seems extremely tame.) A simple, slightly comical story about two young couples' camping trip to countryside (climaxing in a drunken sojourn to see the Creatures playing at a forest dancehall) and reflecting the typical problems of baby-boomer generation, the film (largely improvised from the original script of Marja-Leena Mikkola) was a huge success and was widely received as a new beginning for Finnish cinema, forgetting the old conventions of traditional theatrical "Suomi-Filmi" style and representing a new generation of Finnish film-makers, with Niskanen's contemporaries such as Risto Jarva; taking its cues from influences such as French New Wave and international auteurs like Ingmar Bergman. Starring Kristiina Halkola, Kirsti Wallasvaara, Pekka Autiovuori and Eero Melasniemi, who were at the time of the film still fresh-faced and unknown actor students but would subsequently become household names familiar from TV and film.
Mikko Niskanen (1929 - 1990) was a film director and actor, who had studied film-making in the Soviet Union, debuting in 1962 with Pojat ("Boys"), a film both comical and tragic about the relations of young boys, their elders and German soldiers during Finnish Continuation War of the early 40s, starring young Vesa-Matti Loiri in his memorable first role. With his late-60s films Käpy selän alla, Lapualaismorsian and Asfalttilampaat Niskanen took on the urbane themes of young baby-boomer adults, though nowadays it's the naturalistic rural tragedy Kahdeksan surmanluotia ("Eight Deadly Shots") of 1972, which is considered his most lasting masterpiece.
The singing actress Kristiina Halkola (b. 1945), with her beautiful dark looks and memorable pout, would also be seen in many other films of this era, such as Niskanen's Lapualaismorsian and Jörn Donner's Mustaa valkoisella (she would later sue Donner, who had infamously used a body double for her in the film's erotic scenes) and participate in Finnish leftist political song movement (in the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill cabaret song tradition, with such lyricist-vocalists as Aulikki Oksanen, singing groups called with names such as Agit Prop or heavily wailing chanteuses like Kaisa Korhonen and her then-husband Kaj Chydenius, perhaps the movement's best known composer), recording for Love Records an album Täytyy uskaltaa ("One has to dare") in 1971. Halkola's singing performances for the late-60s TV shows in the style of the political Orvokki-Kabaree stirred controversy, with then-provocative songs concerning such subjects as mocking the twenty richest families of Finland or interpreting an old church hymn as a go-go version. Kristiina Halkola also participated in leftist politics as a member of Finnish Communist Party and its later incarnation Demokraattinen Vaihtoehto. Her children with Eero Melasniemi have continued as actors and musicians. Nowadays Kristiina Halkola is considered an icon of the heavily politicized "Taistolaisuus" era of the late 1960s and 1970s. The politics may not have stood the test of time but the best songs created through it well have; like their more capitalist contemporaries, Finnhitsiskelmäs, enjoying a huge nostalgia movement in the 21st century Finland.
It's pHinnWeb's Couch Potato Time again! Nelonen, Finland's channel 4, has now shown almost the entire run of The Streets of San Francisco, an American cop show made from 1972 to 1977, based on the characters in Carolyn Weston's detective novel Poor, Poor Ophelia. Starring the old potato-nose Karl Malden as a no-nonsense, hard-driving but humane old-school cop called Mike Stone, and then-a-newcomer Michael Douglas as his youthful, more hip and educated partner and apprentice Steve Keller, this generation-joining combination was a sure-fire hit for TV ratings, and only flopped when Douglas, who wanted to concentrate on his career as a movie producer and film actor, was replaced in the last season by Richard Hatch (best known these days from Battlestar Galactica).
A lot of the series' charm lies in nostalgia, of course, from the rapid-fire-edit opening credits with its groovy blaxploitation wah-wah guitar-laden jazzy theme music and the pompous voiceovers (an emphatically masculine narrator announcing "A Quinn Martin Production!" and presenting the dramatis personæ and tonight's guest stars) you just don't hear any more these days; to the Zeitgeist and styles of the post-hippie Bay Area when even the "squares" had decided to let their hair down a bit: bushy haircuts, thick sideburns, flared trousers, wide ties and tight shirts, afros, belated hippie chicks, garish colours and naturally some unforgettable ocean liner-size pre-oil crisis Yankee cars. Not to mention the memorable San Fran scenery with its steep hills (ideal for car chase scenes, as we already learned from Steve McQueen's Bullitt in 1968) and Victorian architecture.
Part of the fun was spotting in the show many familiar faces of silver screen and TV, both past or future: Leslie "The Naked Gun" Nielsen, James Woods, Nick Nolte, Mark "Star Wars" Hamill, Sam Jaffe, Stefanie Powers, Martin Sheen, Tom "Happy Days" Bosley, Tom "Magnum P.I." Selleck, Larry "Dallas" Hagman, Paul Michael "Starsky & Hutch" Glaser, Joe Spano and James B. Sikking (both Hill Street Blues), Bill "Hulk" Bixby, Meg Foster... even pre-fame Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Though the years passed might have added some unintentional humor as to the show's looks, the tone of the series was far from camp. The detective pair Stone & Keller of Patrol Car 81 solved week after week crime cases involving the whole gamut of social scene: from the derelict areas of winos, youth gangs, prostitutes, runaway kids and drug dealers to the secluded world of the well-to-do, the rich, the celebrities and your usual bunch of greedy businessmen getting rid of their rivals by way of murder. Social agenda was high on the list when several storylines (many of them quite well-written in comparison to the more fluffy cop show fare) concentrated on the hapless murderers who ended up killing not by their innate evil but by some unfortunate circumstances caused by poverty and other social injustices.
Rather than being simply happy blowing the bad guy away in the climax, Stone and Keller always understood they had to deal with far more complicated causes and effects inevitably leading to tragedy; even though in most epilogues (adding to the series' charming old-fashioned style, each episode was divided into four "acts" and an epilogue) they left for home cracking ham-fisted jokes after having solved the case; Stone probably heading afterwards for a well-deserved snack of junk food and Keller to a football match with another foxy girlfriend of his. Vintage!
For the fans of Finnish sensationalist magazine Hymy which had its heyday in the 1960s and 70s (featuring such notorious writers as Veikko Ennala), the magazine has now archived some of the most (in)famous articles from this era as PDF files and with brief introductions in Finnish [also featuring a section of erotic short stories especially commissioned for the magazine from some well-known authors of the day, such as Hannu Salama and Kaari Utrio(!)]:
[Other episodes -- #10: Kiire ("A Hurry"), #11: Apua ("Help!"), #12: Ystävyys ("Friendship"), #13: Persoonallisuus ("Personality").]
Käytöskukka ("Behaviour Blossom") was a Finnish 13-part series of didactic short animations made with cutout technique; created by Heikki Partanen (1942-1990) in 1966 and 1967, intending to teach good manners to children. The series, which was like "Seven Deadly Sins for Infants", had every episode starring a domestic piglet called Hinku and a wild piglet called Vinku, encountering such surreal creatures as the angry Suursyömäri (might be translated as "Gargantuan Eater") who devours everything coming its way, and other characters behaving, for example, in a lazy or vain way but learning some valuable lesson in each episode's end. South Park this was not. And the theme music is a classic, too!
Olliver Hawk, born as Olavi Hakasalo (1930-1988), was a self-learned and controversial Finnish show hypnotist who created a sensation in the 1960s and 70s with his stage shows. This 1968 ad is for one of his teach-yourself-hypnosis guidebooks.
Space: 1999 ("Avaruusasema Alfa" here in Finland) was the most lavish British science fiction TV show in the 70s, produced in between 1973 and 1976. Starring Martin Landau (later also an Academy Award winner) and Barbara Bain, both known from TV's original Mission: Impossible series, the show featured also such guest stars as Christopher Lee (known from countless horror movies and also Star Wars and Lord of the Rings franchises), Joan Collins (of Dynasty) and Ian McShane (of Lovejoy and Deadwood). The producer was Gerry Anderson with his wife at the time, Sylvia Anderson: the Andersons had already been responsible for the popular 60s sci-fi puppet shows such as Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlet and others. Space: 1999 was preceded by another sci-fi live action series, U.F.O. (1970).
Each Space: 1999 episode had in its opening credits a rapidly edited intro sequence of all key events. Now a fan called Trekkiedane has edited all the intro sequences of the series' Season One into one clip of 7:37, which you can see by clicking here.
Finnish TV channel MTV3 has listed under its Kaikkien aikojen parhaat sekunnit ("The best seconds of all time") a series of video clips of Finnish TV commercials from the 1950s to the present day. The slick Shell commercials (see also this) with their cool fashion models and the baritone voiceover from Kaj Gahnström are still well remembered, and I wonder if the unabashed eroticism of Vivante shampoo commercial would pass the censorship today...? Tupla-City was a light-hearted Western film pastiche for Tupla chocolate bars. Helsinki's Ajatar store represented the height of 70s Finnish fashion (with now politically uncorrect fur hats, too). Finnhits was the massive phenomenon of iskelmä light pop collections of the 70s and the late pop star Irwin Goodman advertised Jenkki bubblegum. Väinö Purje advertising the meat selections of the K-kauppa grocery store chain surprisingly became a big star in the Soviet Estonia (where ordinary citizens didn't exactly eat wienerschnitzel every day), where Finnish TV broadcasts could also be seen.
Today it's been exactly forty years since 'Strawberry Fields Forever', the most adventurous single of The Beatles, written by John Lennon (and also being my own personal favourite in the band's all recorded works), was published in the UK (in America it came out a couple of days later, 17 February 1967).
Backed by Paul McCartney's 'Penny Lane', this "double A-side" single gave some foretaste of what was to come with the band's June 1967 album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band, which is considered a landmark in the development of pop music in general, though many Beatles fans still argue whether as complete albums Rubber Soul (1965) or Revolver (1966) are even better ones. (Personally, I think none of these albums are totally immaculate works, each having their uneven parts and maybe some not-that-memorable songs alongside some undeniably classic tunes, so instead of naming just one album over the others, I'd just vaguely choose the band's general creative output somewhere in between 1965 and 1967 their best, of representing their "Golden Era".)
An important musical reference to The Beatles in these days was musique concrète; especially Paul McCartney was interested in the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1968 Lennon would create, with assistance from Yoko Ono and George Harrison, his own (in)famous concrète piece 'Revolution No. 9' for the band's White Album. ('Carnival of Light', another experimental piece from the band still remains unpublished.) The Beatles and their producer George Martin had already experimented with the possibilities of "tape music" when creating for Revolver'Tomorrow Never Knows' (my second favourite Beatles track, probably), a baffling but also rhythmically grooving piece based on the adaptation of "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" in a psychedelic tripping guide by Timothy Leary et al. The sonic achievements of the band and Martin were not less remarkable when remembering Abbey Road's studio still used four-track recording techniques, already primitive in comparison to Stateside studios having 16-track recording consoles at their use.
Starting with an an eerie flute-like mellotron phrase intro on the left channel and Lennon launching his drowsy-sounding reading, 'Strawberry Fields Forever' is sound-wise like a whole symphony condensed into four minutes. Accompanied by Ringo Starr's concise martial drumming breaks, a mêlée of pseudo-Indian music played with such instruments as swarmandel, trumpets, sawing cellos, guitars and bass stereo-panning in between the channels, this is rather a collage of sounds and music carefully assembled together in studio than any straightforward band "song". The eerie atmosphere in Lennon's vocals is not lessened by the fact that the released version of 'SFF' is put together from two different takes of the song, both in different tempos and keys, carefully joined as one by George Martin and recording engineer Geoff Emerick with elaborate tape playback speed changes, also pitch-shifting the vocals in the process.
The song which John Lennon wrote in Almeria, Spain -- while filming How I Won The War in late 1966 -- is lyrically as if a kaleidoscopic Zen riddle, full of psychedelic non sequiturs; a sort of existential search for an elusive identity, when reality is just a game through which we wander with our eyes closed, no one sharing exactly the same wavelength (or in Lennon's words, "my tree"), and all we see being but an illusion, though in the end it may all turn out well, with all "working out" -- so why worry? As Hassan-i-Sabah allegedly put it in 1124: "Nothing is real, everything is permitted". All said, your own interpretation of this song is as good as mine.
What makes this particular piece of music -- probably ancient history for today's hipper-than-thou clubbers, fanboys and DJs chasing after those latest rare pieces of vinyl of dubstep, grime and [here the name of any other fashionable here-today-gone-tomorrow genre of dance music] -- still relevant for the jaded "heard-it-all" ears of 2007, then? Technically, 'SFF' is one of the prime examples of pop's early era of "studio-as-an-instrument", paving way for all the later innovations in the techniques of electronic music and sampling; for such genres as dub reggae, disco, hip-hop, electro, techno/house, you-name-it, and the whole remixing culture. Of course, The Beatles were not the originators of these techniques but when popularizing these with their works, they influenced just through the sheer volume of their international mass appeal countless musicians and record producers around the world. It's an old cliché that if The Beatles had come into existence in our own days, they would have eagerly embraced the possibilities of synthesizers (they did include the Moog synth on their Abbey Road album of 1969), samplers and modern music software. Instead, creating their works in technically far less advanced 60s, they had to rely on the studio techniques of their own day, still very primitive from our post-Pro Tools perspective, and invent their own ways as they went along.
As to the band's cultural influence for the younger generation, today it's easy to deride The Beatles. When the nihilist mindset of such genres as goth, industrial and metal have made such dark subject matters as suicide, (mass) murder and self-mutilation appear "cool" and even appealing, the band and their naive era of flower power and universal love just appear laughable for today's "faster-harder-louder-darker" kids. And while The Beatles still keep making regular appearances on the covers of such "dadrock" magazines as Mojo and Uncut, assuring sales among the members of older pop generations getting nearer their pension days, it's just totally uncool to confess even any distant admiration for the band; a fact further confirmed by the band's record label EMI and their milking The Beatles' output to death with such cynical compilations as The Beatles 1 of 2000. (Love, the recent "mash-up" album of the band's songs -- "remixed" by combining together elements from different Beatles songs originally having nothing to do with each other -- could at its best called just "interesting", thinly disguising the fact of it being basically only another "Best of" record. Momus, a cult artist and an avid cultural commentator in his own right, was not as merciful as your present writer, though, instantly dismissing Love in his blog as "remasturbation".)
Anyway, even if we discount all that cultural burden created both by the nostalgia market and the drastically changed tastes and values in music and culture since the 60s, it's still hard to assess The Beatles as "just another" band or musical artist than as a wide cross-cultural "phenomenon"; the approach which probably does gross injustice to everyone involved.
It seems the 1960s were very different times compared to ours: the times when people still honestly believed in utopias, actually thinking that such things as the "world revolution" (or for those less politically inclined, not less than "heaven on Earth") were on their way. Despite the war in Vietnam, racial struggles or the threat of imminent nuclear war, for a lot of people everything just seemed to point to that direction: music, fashion, politics and the prevalence of mind-altering chemicals, opening new and unforeseen vistas. Experimentalism was considered a virtue everywhere. It all faded away very soon as the general disillusion set in and the world turned from day-glo to something even darker and grimmer than it had been in the monochrome pre-halcyon days of the 1950s and early 60s. Post-9/11, and it seems we are returning all the time closer to the dark ages of the medieval world of bigotry, zealotism, political and economical feudalism, even torture. More than ever, we must rediscover the seeds of hope, humanity and spiritual rebirth. Examine such works as 'Strawberry Fields Forever' -- really in some sphere of its own; outside of time, any time -- and you will constantly find those there.
Let me take you down, cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields Nothing is real And nothing to get hung about Strawberry Fields forever
Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It's getting hard to be someone, but it all works out It doesn't matter much to me
Let me take you down, cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields Nothing is real And nothing to get hung about Strawberry Fields forever
No one, I think, is in my tree I mean, it must be high or low That is, you can't, you know, tune in, but it's alright That is, I think it's not too bad
Let me take you down, cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields Nothing is real And nothing to get hung about Strawberry Fields forever
Always, no, sometimes, think it's me But, you know, I know when it's a dream I think, er, no, I mean, er, yes, but it's all wrong That is, I think I disagree
Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields Nothing is real And nothing to get hung about Strawberry Fields forever Strawberry Fields forever Strawberry Fields forever
Living in Tampere, it has been depressing to witness how traditional old movie theatres here have gradually vanished and been replaced by bland multiplexes running mostly mindless American popcorn blockbusters. I often wax nostalgic for such local yesteryear cinemas as Adams, Hällä, Häme, Ilves, Olympia, Petit, Pirkka and Royal, which formed an important part of my own cinematic education. These places have all now been closed and turned into nightclubs or even traditional theatres. (At the time of writing this, the demolition of the house of Petit at Hämeenkatu has begun; another office building coming to its place.)
One of these important movie theatres of my formative years was also Kino-Palatsi of Tampere, built in 1928, one of the oldest cinemas in Finland which so far has retained its original style with lavish interiors. Kino-Palatsi actually ceased its activities as cinema in 1991 but has even since worked as one of the important venues for the annual Tampere Short Film Festivals. Now Kino-Palatsi faces the threat of being transformed into another nightclub owned by club entrepreneur Sedu Koskinen. Sign the petition at http://www.adressit.com/kinopalatsi to save Kino-Palatsi and an indispensable piece of Tampere's cultural history.
One of the nude figurines by Väinö Rautalin surrounding Kino-Palatsi's silver screen. Though probably intended to give a very artistic impression, at least to this youngster with a vivid imagination (and probably to many other people, too), these naked couples frolicking in various different positions always curiously looked like some scenes from Kama Sutra...