Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Last Hurrah!!


Drone guitar? At least that´s what the Bergen based artist and producer HP Gundersen calls his guitar, after tuning it like Stephen Stills did on "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes".
Hey, I am only citing other people here, blame them if I´m wrong. It´s supposed to be tuned like ddddad - according to Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen.

Anyway, Rune Grammofon released The Last Hurrah!!: "Spiritual non-believers", where HP Gundersen plays his drone music.
This is definitively not the Sunn O))) type of droning, but more like country-folk! Bergen artists are well known for their knowledge and skills in the fields of country and folk, and HP Gundersen is a fan of guitar player Rune Walle (also from Bergen), who played in Flying Norwegians and even Ozark Mountain Daredevils in the old days.
One of Walle´s first bands was  Oriental Sunshine, and The Last Hurrah!! cover their hippie tune "Mother Nature" from 1969 (the original here). The two other songs on the album are the long and strange "The Ballad of Billy and Lilly" (makes me want to play Bob Dylan´s "The ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest") and the party tune "Melodi Grand Prix 63"!
I will tell you a secret, "Melodi Grand Prix" is what we call the Eurovision Song Contest over here.

I admit that the talk of drone guitar - country style, sounded a bit ridiculous before I heard the music, but I was wrong. Cool album!

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