May 5, 2013

320/917 Fredi & Friends: Pump pump (Finland 1976)

To fill a friends request, the second song in my blog is the 320th song to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest, a song that for us Finns represent the high expectations and the big disappointments that so often has plagued our entries. Apart from that it was a fun song with more good feeling and humour than all the other Finnish entries put together.


Fredi (real name Matti Siitonen) was a big singing star in Finland in the mid 1970's, famous for his beautiful love songs and well trained tenor voice. He had taken part in the Eurovision song contes already in 1967 as a new young artist in Vienna with a dramatic Varjoon suojaan.

In 1976 Fredi surprised the home audience presenting not a love song but a fast paced song of bumping the bottoms. This fun song, written by Mr Siitonen himself, was first supposed to be a duet between the composer and Marion Rung, but after the Finlands number one female singer declined, Fredi decided to form a group of "Friends" to sing the song with.

In the local selection Pump Pump was a runaway winner. After developing the stage show and translating the lyrics to English a success was almost given in the international final of Hague. With expectations like this, the resulting 11th place (of 18 countries taking part) was a big disappointment. 

However, Pump pump was certainly a song not easily forgotten by the audience. The good humour of the Finnish selections tranferred well to the Eurovision final and the show was as fun to look at as it was to listen to. Considering the overall success of Finlands entries, the final result was not bad at all.

Matti Siitonen returned once more to the Eurovision final by composing the Finnish entry of 1979, Katson sineen taivaan.

My points 3/5

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