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FG Music League Season 2

Some side notes:

View: https://open.spotify.com/track/0ho3qODKqmNU0XGHbbklXA?si=56b490f8a25148e7
Alternate pick for round 1: I have no clue why the owner of my small home town's reform food store had a rockabilly band. I also don't know why it was so good. But this very tongue in cheek album showing up when I was a metalhead teen opened a new universe of slapped bass to me. Next record I bought was Reverend Horton Heat, and it was only downward from there.


View: https://open.spotify.com/track/50dpeks48j0zMECIKVAGUG?si=b6099eb1ab1e4d7b
Alternate pick for round 2: While technically still black metal, Alcest's "blackgaze" approach has turned them into so much more, building aural dreamscapes. It's part of a whole new world of extreme music my wife opened up to me.
 
Dr_Grip said:
Some side notes:

View: https://open.spotify.com/track/0ho3qODKqmNU0XGHbbklXA?si=56b490f8a25148e7
Alternate pick for round 1: I have no clue why the owner of my small home town's reform food store had a rockabilly band. I also don't know why it was so good. But this very tongue in cheek album showing up when I was a metalhead teen opened a new universe of slapped bass to me. Next record I bought was Reverend Horton Heat, and it was only downward from there.


View: https://open.spotify.com/track/50dpeks48j0zMECIKVAGUG?si=b6099eb1ab1e4d7b
Alternate pick for round 2: While technically still black metal, Alcest's "blackgaze" approach has turned them into so much more, building aural dreamscapes. It's part of a whole new world of extreme music my wife opened up to me.
Click to expand...

Alcest is amazing. I often start my music listening for the day with Kodama and Sur l'océan couleur de fer.
 
Wow this was complete garbage… I felt like 2/3 of entries completely missed the theme. Struggled to give 12 points. Did not enjoy.

If points are given despite completely missing the category, I don’t know what we’re even doing here, honestly…
 
eizbaer said:
Wow this was complete garbage… I felt like 2/3 of entries completely missed the theme. Struggled to give 12 points. Did not enjoy.

If points are given despite completely missing the category, I don’t know what we’re even doing here, honestly…
Click to expand...

I followed what was written on the tin.
 
I think both your entries are covered by the task definition. Yes I know for sure what you both submitted, but I only have a strong suspicion which way around. :D
I haven't looked at the other countries' entries in depth, though.
 
For the Finnish entries I'd say they all are spot on.
-Bomfunk MC, Finland's prime rap export
-Eläkeläiset, legendary masters of Humppa
-Hanoi Rocks, arguably the most influential Finnish band of all time
-Wintersun, a band that has spawned a bunch of legendary careers (ok, this is a bit of a stretch).

Edit: For Germany, I'd have gone with one of the big four of Teutonic Thrash Metal: Kreator, Sodom, Destruction, or Tankard.
 
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Since @Davetouch in the comments pointed out how far metal has come since the days of Hair Metal, I just wanted to point out how backwards and in a way harmless the "L.A. scene" sound was even back in the day.
When Girls Girls Girls by Mötley Crüe got released, just off Sunset Strip in South Central, metal sounded like this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnRZhLRv6eM

And only 400 miles North in the Bay Area, you got:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bW2DMOeDEM

Sweden was up to this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woe_4gkS4XU

In the deindustrialized mining districts of Germany, kids of Italian immigrants were up to no good:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQsy0bJhZ0M

While in Northern Germany, fun was had:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmhN2l2pizk

Oh, and the Brits also were doing something...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg9aQvjMS60
(all linked songs were released in the same year or before Girls Girls Girls)
 
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Very interesting playlist!

My next step - from longlist to shortlist, so to speak - is usually to bring it down to one song per artist. But I understand that you skipped that and went straight to choosing one at random. :D
 
It wasn't exactly random, I wanted to focus on Blues or Jazz as being essentially American and a root to later styles. From that I wanted to look at an artist who innovated and influenced following artists. Even then, there's a lot of choices.
 
Speaking of Nirvana, it's been 30 years to the day today that Kurt killed himself.
 

View: https://open.spotify.com/track/1jUqIXSmVvCENzz8CdC3Nh?si=5760818035524378
Alternate Pick for Round 1 or 3: Amorphis clearly are the biggest band in town. Their "Elegy" album, marking a shift from death metal to mostly clean vocal and folk elements, came out when I as a teen was just forming my metal taste, and it had a huge impression due to it's amazing songwriting and lyrics taken from medieval Finnish poems. Without wanting to take anything away from Beherit or Reverend Bizarre, but Amorphis is where the "All Finland is in Metal Bands" meme starts from.
The version I picked is a re-recording of the song with current vocalist Tommy Joutsen cause he has the most beautiful growl in metal.


View: https://open.spotify.com/track/3IOTNKbDiyk8OpVrQZq838?si=8f5f07a189364ccd
Alternate Pick for Round 3: HIM came to the scene and charismatic frontman Ville Valo broke all the girl's hearts in the late 90s. I was dating one of three goth sisters back in the day. MTV was running on mute in the background 24/7, and as soon as a HIM video would come on, the girls would shout "VILLE IS ON TV" and congregate in front of the screen.
Also, Bam Margera blames his drug problems on Ville Valo.
As of "legend" status, Helsinki's most important live club Tavastia's main lightning rig is shaped like HIM's heartagram symbol.

And for @IceBone here's a German punk song about butterflies.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RQFHqnIfTc
 
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eizbaer said:
Wow this was complete garbage… I felt like 2/3 of entries completely missed the theme. Struggled to give 12 points. Did not enjoy.

If points are given despite completely missing the category, I don’t know what we’re even doing here, honestly…
Click to expand...

Well, legendary and (chart) recognition are not necessarily the same thing. To me at least.

Getting to an internationally legendary status with wider recognition would've been quite a challenge to start with, as Finland had little to no music export industry before the late 90s metal boom. And yet, Eläkeläiset, which was my submission, did their first German tour in 1996. That actually got me thinking, I wonder if they actually are internationally the biggest band performing in Finnish..? :unsure: There's Ieavan Polkka of course, but that's a single song, rather than the band being actually better known. Anyway, I find it rather impressive that they made a (limited) international success story with (objectively) badly played cover songs sung in Finnish.

Also, their stage antics have been quite legendary. Like, on their first German tour they got told that the locals are a bit touchy about nazis/Hitler and such, so naturally they started the gig with "Hello, you homo Hitlers!". :mrgreen: I did learn they've been at minor festival called Wacken as well. Excellent comment from those live recordings "Do humppa versions in Finnish of metal songs at world's biggest heavy metal festival while sitting behind a table, and occasionally speak in high school German".

Edit:
Also also, while I was pondering for more options for that round, I realised I could've done the whole season with bands from my town. I shall post such set, once the season is over.
 
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The brief was vague enough not to even require international recognition. :D
 
They'll be in Münster on 27th of April and Bochum on 28th. Go have a look what the hype is about. :cool:
 
eizbaer said:
Wow this was complete garbage… I felt like 2/3 of entries completely missed the theme. Struggled to give 12 points. Did not enjoy.
Click to expand...
Getting back to this a bit more... how do we measure what is legendary? Or rather, how would you?

As mentioned, my first pick for Finland would have been Eläkeläiset ("The Pensioners") as well. That metal songs covered in the style of a Finnish old people foxtrot, with the result working neither as one or the other, can become a global phenomenon, touring worldwide and playing the main stage in Wacken, definitely is the stuff of legend.

Of course, one can go to the top of the pile like @Andeh - Probably all professional and most amateur pop/rock critics and historians will put "Gimme Shelter" among the five best songs ever recorded. Legendary. But so are The UK Subs, whose lead singer Charlie Harper is celebrating his 80th birthday this year - while still touring, working as a full-time punk rock singer for 48 years now. Both completely valid picks for Britain.
B.B. King goes somewhere in the middle - a legend in his own right, but never a major success outside blues fan circles, except for The Blues Brothers (which was designed by Akroyd and Belushi to celebrate undervalued blues and soul artists).

As also mentioned, my pick for Germany would probably have been Kreator or Sodom, both bands far away from the mainstream, but "musician's musicians" that have had a global influence within their community and beyond. That's as fair as @DanRoM picking Die Ärzte, who have shaped German-language music and teen culture since the 80s. Or even fucking Wind of Change, showing how far has-been hard rockers can come with political opportunism and pandering to the Zeitgeist. It's all legendary in it's own way.

Edit: Putting personal taste like my justified and fully objective hatred of Wind of Change aside, I think Wintersun and Dr. Bombay are the only artists that were off-brief for the category.
 
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I chose 99 Luftballons purely because i thought it was legendary. First song i know of that made it to the US in recent-ish history of german language that was super popular. I figured that made it legendary, whether or not i think its my personal favorite means nothing.
 
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Every time i read of hear if the band Hanoi Rocks, i have an imagine in my head of Drew Carey singing Cleveland Rocks while standing in the back of a pickup truck
 
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