“Maybe you do want to claim that, but then there wouldn’t be anything Juice-specific about your criticism (if I’m allowed to call your kvetching that).”

No. Hell no. You are NOT ALLOWED to call F***pundits whining CRITISISM. .

But seriously, CRITISISM should involve some insight. That is NOT the poor pundits strongest feature.

Well, excuse moi, but I stopped listening to him after he made “Jyrki boy”. It just wasn’t up to the “early works”, like Coitus int, and not only beacuse Musa – or was it Soundi already – said so.

Now I sound old …

Oh, he made at least six different versions of the same tune. They can be found on the _Singlet 1974-76_ compilation, as they were originally released as B-sides. Aside from the songs about Napoleon’s moped and Tarzan’s underwear, “Einarin polkupyörä”, “Seminoloogie boogie woogie”, “Vaimoni on Frankenstein”, and “Alright alright” employ the same melody.

Yes, I evaluate what you wrote based on what words mean. I’m strict like that.

Okay, copycat might be a bit strong of a word.

Whenever you admit you messed up, you’re just strengthening the enemy.

Imitation might be a better term, and concept.

Who did he imitate? Be specific. “He played Aglo-American rawk music!” doesn’t establish him as an imitator unless you want to claim that people who play rock music are in general imitators. Maybe you do want to claim that, but then there wouldn’t be anything Juice-specific about your criticism (if I’m allowed to call your kvetching that).

and here we could go off on a tangent on why so many things innovated in America have become universal throughout the world…

Oh, this one is easy: it’s because foreigners are awed by the manly strength of American innovators like Bill Gates, Little Richard, and George W. Bush.

you seem to forget that Finnish culture is disappearing and, eventually, will be dead.

It’s true; Finnish culture would become so much stronger if Finnish musicians eschewed global music styles. Take all forms of classical music, for example. Typically Finns want to give Sibelius a break even though he was clearly imitating foreign classical composers, what with writing music for orchestras and all that. I mean, the dude employed _strings_. Hello? Is the cello a Finnish instrument now? Hell no! …

Uh, to get back on track, Finnish culture is the culture of the Finnish. We can’t get away from it even if we wanted to – which we mostly don’t.

So if a group like Värttinä re-invents some old Finnish folk music as a distinctive art form

“Art form”? You’re such a congenital overstater.

well, that’s innovation.

That’s not the part of your argument I criticized. The point was that the originality or lack of it of an individual artist can’t be judged based on whether his chosen genre is foreign or domestic in origin. I mean, you don’t have to be Greek to write an original tragedy, right? (Next up: al-Pundy argues that “Macbeth” shows Shakespeare to have been a thorough copycat.)

Which brings to mind songs like “Kaksoiselämää”. It’s pure “Slavic” melancholy, as many Finnish iskelmäs tend to be. And not only “iskelmäs”. For example HIM, which just sold gold in the USA, plays pretty Finnish songs in this respect: “Joiiin meee in death”.

Every now and then Juice did, indeed, copy black American tradition. He made, for example, two songs whose melody goes pretty much the same way as “Johnny B. Goode” (and the like). But first one of them told about Napoleon’s motorbike and the other about Tarzan. Not something Chuck Berry would have done, I guess. The lyrics are pretty pure rillumarei, something Helismaa could have written. That is: absurdism as a rebellion agains the authorities and their culture.

Finnpundit, the guest blogger, again doesn’t have a clue. Is somebody surprised?

And why not? That model was already a proven popular hit in the United States. The fact that it worked in Finland, too, only showed that it was transportable across cultural boundaries, making it universal (and here we could go off on a tangent on why so many things innovated in America have become universal throughout the world…).

As to your comment on Värttinä, you seem to forget that Finnish culture is disappearing and, eventually, will be dead. So if a group like Värttinä re-invents some old Finnish folk music as a distinctive art form for worldwide, popular consumption… well, that’s innovation.

For goodness’s sake, you just got done arguing that Juice was a “copycat, thoroughly”, yet you’re already making concessions about how there are “distinctions” that “can be explained by personality”. Yeah, those thorough copycats are known for making their work distinctive by putting their own personality into it.

Also, I know the ridiculous Zappa claim is difficult to defend, but if you can’t show resolve any better than this, you’re just going to embolden your enemies. Why don’t you try to explain the obvious similarities between, say, “Olipa kerran” and any Zappa lyric you want to choose?

Now some band like Värttinä is a truly Finnish innovation. True, it’s not appealing to everyone, but it doesn’t seem to be derivative at all from a dominant Anglo-American musical influence.

Apparently to al-Pundy, a Finnish artist is derivative if he’s influenced by Anglo-American popular music, but innovative if he’s influenced by Finnish folk music. Go figure. I think he secretly views music, like everything else, as a cultural steel cage match to death and therefore distains anyone who doesn’t take sides.