OOPS Ya got me!!! (insert embarrassment emoticon here)
I
did read it and forgot the reference even though I remembered your comment about leaving out your national favorites who didn't achieve international success.
But Rick didn't say they HAD to be American:
Howdy
Accepted
No - I was not thinking they had to be american - I had Ofarim - Donovan - Gilberto - Mathieu - but none of the finns that I liked those days are known outside Finland.
But music scene in sixties and even seventies was so much more interesting - in my opinion - than today. I believe that almost everybody who was in music business had their ambitions and made exactly the kind of music they loved - hoping it would succeed. That is why even so many "one hit wonders" are kind of interesting - they did it with full heart ( hope my clumsy english expressions carry through ) . Those days in Finland we had about one hour per week in radio dedicated for young peoples music - we had all mixed together ; tango, waltz, pop, rock, "humppa", choir-music - you name it. As curiosity - there was a men choir called Aikamiehet who had this song "Iltatuulen viesti" staying on top three of the list for 90 weeks -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmhTxdAOD-k - and you can imagine how some of us felt when Beatles, Rolling stones, The Who etc tried to beat them - mostly in vain. Now there is nothing wrong with the song itself - but when you are 16 and leaning to more modern sounds - that is really not your exact favorite . . .
Today - music scene seems that FIRST they look hard where to focus "to make it" - then they study how it is done it that particular genre - then tey turn out "a product" that is as sterile and interesting as a sheet of wrapping plastic. And the radio - back then we had two channels - one had speech - the other had some music, mostly old folks music. Today we have countless radiochannels - and most of them are what we call "format radio" - at worst they have a list of 30 songs that they play over and over and some bimbo seaks nonsense in between. Few channels are semidecent - but luckily we have the ON/OFF-switch and our records and youtube and spotify etc - - -
I work as roadie and last 15 years as mixing engineer for finnish group Kaseva -
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kaseva - before that I worked at most almost 250 gigs per year with finnish bands and also many american groups, that made tours here - Satan & Adam - Chain of Blues - to mention a few - I went to Helsinki airport with all gear to pick them up - they had their guitars, I provided rest, we toured a month doing 20-25 nights and I drove them back to airport.
Those hectic years are over - now I have some 20.30 gigs per year . . .