The recent tours of Finland's leading band, Tasavallan Presidentti, have done much to explode that myth - but even so the rock that rings around the Norwegian fjords and blares out over the Baltic from the shores of Finland and Sweden remains shrouded in mystery. It's hard to get hold of records of what's going on up there and even harder to form an overall impression from the few that filter through, but there are signs that vital happenings are getting under way and, what with the rising tide of British interests in Continental groups, it seems overdue to take a stab at saying what these happenings signify.
Where Norway's concerned the facts are thin on the ground. The leading Norwegian band is called Hole In The Wall: their reputation is high, but their records have, so far, eluded me. The only other group, from Norway to have made any sort of impression outside their country is the sub-Santana pop quartet Titantic who make their money playing high-class discos in Paris.
Apparently, Norwegian audiences favour country-and-western amongst all other forms, Buck Owens and Johnny Cash being their current fave raves - but this doesn't necessarily indicate unhipness. Birth-control has been State enforced in most Scandinavian countries for some time with the result that the average audience is consistently older than in Britain and America.
Sweden, for example, possesses an average age of 47-as opposed to 28 in the USA. This means that young musicians are in short supply and those who play professionally have to appeal to a wide age group in order to earn a living - a disconcerting state of affairs which accounts for the diluted quality of Swedish rock.
Two main influences lie heavy on the scene in this country: imported forms like jazz and blues and the national folk tradition which is based on the unique Swedish "fiddle-music" - two or more violins playing wild, skirling mountain songs with a similar drone motif to that employed in Celtic pipe music. This latter form is either played "pure" (in bands like Skaggmanslaget and Lat And Trall) or fused with lightweight rock (as in Contact). So far the development of satisfactory fusion between the folk modes and the appropriate strains of rock has progressed slowly but such a fusion would he potentially very exciting and rather more natural than the British "reel-rock" experiments.
Similarly at an embryonic stage is the Swedish blues scene, led basically by two musicians: pianist Per "Stockholm Slim" Notini and "Peps" Persson, who plays guitar and harmonica. Both have records on the Sonet label produced by blues expert Sam Charters, and "Peps" attracted attention in America when he recorded a double-album with some of Chicago's most respected bluesmen last year. Apart from the long-popular bands like Ola And The Janglers and Made In Sweden, there exists about half-a-dozen groups in the public eye, two of which, Asoka and Midsommar, I have unfortunately failed to track down. Hoola Bandoola, the most developed of the folk-orientated groups, seemed to have modelled themselves on The Band who are big favourites in the country - but they're nothing to get excited about. November are a heavy trio, a rough equivalent of Mountain, and are about as interesting or boring as any other heavy trio.
Solar Plexus, a jazz-rock quintet until recently led by George Wadenius (now with Blood Sweat and Tears), are the most intriguing thing Sweden has produced so far, playing tight-knit, sophisticated music with a light touch and a sense of humour. But, owing perhaps to the burden of having to appeal to that wide age group, they tend to be overcrisp and too smooth, wearing their professionalism with an ultrabrite smile that dazzles but which ultimately distracts attention from what they're saying.
Most of Scandinavia is served by Stockholm-based Sonet Records and Sweden also possess Roger Wallace's Music Network label, run from Vaxholm. Sweden's underground produces its own (politically based) rock albums on such labels as Silence, run by a small group of amateurs who record, sleeve, and distribute their releases privately - a project roughly analogous to the Blakey label which Back Door invented for the sole purpose of getting out a record of their live set.
In Finland another small company, Love Records, has produced a number of interesting albums - notably Jukka Tolonen's solo record and "Wicked lvory" an ambitious, if only partially successful, venture on the part of Hot Thumbs O'Riley, alias Jim Pembroke, an English organist who's been living in Helsinki for four years. Both lead groups which have taken the top two places in Finnish pop polls for as long as the scene's been going: Pembroke with Wigwam, Tolonen with, of course, Tasavallan Presidentti.
The latter are simply one of the best Continental bands playing and feature Zappaesque jazz-rock guided through high-speed convolutions by the fluent deftness of Tolonen's guitar. which is technically hard on the heels of McLaughlin and Coryell.
Wigwam show more variety of approach, courting Mother-music of the "Uncle-Meat" vintage on the one hand, straightforward driving material reminiscent of early Traffic on the other, with Pembroke's delightful songs knitting the two halves together.
Both bands are were worth investigating. In fact, Finland is more alive from the rock point of view than any other Scandinavian country, including Denmark - and the Finns know it.
"There is nothing going on in Sweden or Norway," says Tolonen, almost morosely. "Denmark I do not know."
Speaking English is evidently very difficult for him and progresses slowly, his eyes focused in concentration on the floor. "In Finland there are few gigs and they are mostly discos, so we have met problems with our equipment here that we never found before. I think we are sorting them out, but - "he sighs, heavily - "we all get easily depressed. In fact, we have decided our music isn't progressive but depressive." A brief smile concludes the effort of cracking a joke in a foreign language.
"I bought my first guitar when I was 12. I formed my first group two years later with Heikki (Virtanen) who has now replaced Mans Groundstroem on bass in Tasavallan Presidentti. He was 10 at the time. We spent our time playing dances and dreaming of better instruments.
"I never had any lessons or had any guitar-tutors. It's important to have your own feel, and you won't get that if you're taught by somebody. I learned by listening to Beatles records.
Then I joined a professional band with Eero (Raittinen), who is our vocalist now. AImost always in Finland a young musician can only break into the business by being part of a singer's backing-group. Heikki joined soon after and then Vesa (Aaltonen) on drums. It was a pretty good group but it didn't last long because Eero had to go off on a big summer tour with other singers and artistes.
"Right then the rest of us decided we'd never be a backing group again - that we'd go out as ourselves. That was unprecedented in Finland at the time.
"We called ourselves Tasavallan Presidentti, which was a risk back then. It means 'President of the Republic' and, as the Finnish president is always referred to like this, it would be equivalent to a British group calling itself Edward Heath. It was a bit cheeky and although we ran into some trouble with the authorities, it was alright in the end."
The band have moved fast since then, leaving behind both the musical influence and the irreverence of The Beatles and moving into their new, jazzier territory. They've made 3 albums, of which only the latest, "Lambertland", is representative of Tasavallan Presidentti as it is today.
As with most of the recordings of the Eurorock-movement, "Lambertland" was inexpertly recorded, but the essential qualities of the music breakthrough and show the band to be technically proficient beyond the standards of even the Danish groups or France's Gong and Magma.
If there doesn't seem to be as much happening in Scandinavia as you'd expect, bear in mind the social conditions and the fact that the combined population of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland adds up to only 20 million people. Proportionately, France and Germany should boast three times as many good bands but they come nowhere near that.
Look towards the land of the midnight sun for further developments this year.