Friday, December 3

All over the world bands exist who identify themselves as hard living and hard rocking, and see themselves as carrying on a grand tradition that began in the late sixties with bands like Blue Cheer and Iron Butterfly.

Not heavy metal per se, but something more or less parallel; the something that Mötörhead embodied.

In the UK and the USA these kind of brands have moved into merchandising themselves. Mötörhead launched a brand of whisky and followed this up with cans of supermarket-ready premixed drinks.

Finland has a number of such bands including Apulanta who released 60 uutta ongelmaa about a year ago. You can see the official video for it here. (Sixty New Problems, in English, pop fans.)

Imagine my joy when I found myself in Prisma looking at a shelf of half price advent calendars, and arriving at a sudden understanding how Apulanta had solved the merchandising problem for themselves. They have a 3D pop-up calendar of their own!

If only Lemmy had lived to see this…