Wednesday, August 26, 2020

GRUPPKORSBANDET - Hör och häpna (no label, 1976)

Swedish vocals
International relevance: *
The liner notes read:

This isn't an ordinary record. We're neither skilled nor commercial - you have to be that to get an album released by an established label. That's why we've made this record ourselves. /.../ We can't allow the music being taken over completely by a flock of professional musicians while the rest of us hardly dare play to ourselves, let alone to others. MUSIC BELONGS TO ALL OF US!

How cute. Too bad it's all progg baloney. It sounds just like something those nine members of Gruppkorsbandet had repeated like a mantra to get it right like a quote from Mao's little red book, probably in front of the mirror so that they could strike the perfect progg pose while parroting the tired old progg credo to any old person unlucky enough to be around to hear. It's all nonsense, because nobody stopped anyone from playing anything. Not even in the 70's.

Take a look at the cover. The typeface looks like something off an information brochure from the official Don't Have Fun Institute saying Eat Brown Rice And Be Boring. Look at the nine regular people and their regular people postures. Look at the dull, washed out greyness of it all. Take the record out, put it on. It sounds exactly like you'd expect from the yummy-yummy brown rice munchers with regular people postures pictured in forty shades of grey. Nothing wrong with regular people or brown rice or even the colour grey, but hey...

It's all acoustic folk styled songs with a typical political bent (needless to say, there's an Eisler/Brecht track, mandatory to albums like this). Several members sing simultaneously, Vietnam-solidarity-action-group-with-righteous-placards style. If you want to sing along yourself, a lyric sheet is included. Just yell away.

And, the final nail in the coffin of a stillborn album: a Fria Proteatern cover.

Music belongs to everybody. Fine and dandy, but please keep me out of this.

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