Finland Rocks

If you noticed in the “Other Media” column (conveniently located to your right), I recently watched the Bam Margera movie “Where the #$&% Is Santa?” There’s a good chance this flick will never become a classic of the road comedy genre, but there are some hilarious moments and I’m not going to say I didn’t like it.

The basic plot, if you’re interested, involves Bam Margera and his buddies taking a spur-of-the moment trip to Finland in an effort to locate Santa Claus and bring him back to Pennsylvania in time for Christmas. The group lands in Helsinki and travels north into the Lapland Region, where Santa supposedly lives (not the North Pole as most believe). I won’t spoil the movie for you by telling you whom they find.

An interesting subplot involves Bam going out of his way to visit, drink with, and listen to various Finnish rock bands, particularly the not-so-elegantly wasted Andy McCoy of Hanoi Rocks fame. Several Finnish bands – some known, some not-so-known – provide a lot of the soundtrack for the movie, which rocks like you’d expect if you’re familiar with Radio Bam on SiriusXM.

So it was “Where the #$&% Is Santa?” that got me on the Internet this morning, looking for Finnish rock bands. I managed to dig up some pretty decent information (there is a Wikipedia entry and at least one Website dedicated to Finnish rock music), and then managed to turn that information into actually locating some of the music and deciding to share it.

In keeping with the theme of “Where the #$&% Is Santa?”, I narrowed down to just a few bands, including a couple featured in the movie: Bullet Treatment and Turbonegro. The songs here by those two bands were both in the movie. I also dug out the Suicide Twins, which featured Andy McCoy, along with Nasty Suicide. The 69 Eyes and Children of Bodom are both Finnish rock bands, and although neither were in the movie (as far as I remember), they have been featured on various Viva La Bands compilations that Bam has assembled. And no mention of Finnish rock would be complete without Hanoi Rocks. The two songs here come from their 1984 live album All Those Wasted Years.

Coke Nose.mp3 ~ Bullet Treatment
What is Rock!.mp3 ~ Turbonegro
TV Eye (Iggy Pop cover).mp3 ~ The 69 Eyes
Blooddrunk.mp3 ~ Children of Bodom
Countrified Inner-City Blues.mp3 ~ the Suicide Twins
Lightnin’ Bar Blues (live).mp3 ~ Hanoi Rocks
Under My Wheels (live-Alice Cooper cover).mp3 ~ Hanoi Rocks

Labels: covers, glam, live albums, metal, punk, rock

posted by aikin @ 3:55 PM