POP-LIISA 1

Although prog music had at least little popularity in Finland at the seventies, prog music or not even rock music wasn't commonly played in the Finnish radio. Also there really weren't many places where bands could play their music live. So when Finnish state radio channel YLE decided to start live music broadcasts from the Liisankatu Studio in Helsinki, it was a big step to Finnish prog music. Those broadcastings started in 1972 and lasted 1977. They were at first in tuesday's but changed to wednesday. Every other tuesday there were pop theme and every other jazz, although there were quite many same musicians in both themes and as we know, Finnish prog was highly influenced by jazz. These broadcasts were really live, so if guitar string broke and there were no second guitar, the host had to make some improvisation talking to avoid ankward silence in the program. Although these broadcasts were in the YLE, they could have remain into unknown history without Svart records. They went into YLE archives and decided to release some of those broadcastings. Unfortunately all the broadcasts hadn't survived, for example Haikara was too in the Liisankadun studio, but I quess there wasn't enough survived material to an album. There are two series in Svart Records: Pop Liisa & Jazz Liisa.

Tasavallan Presidentti was in the Pop Liisa at autumn 1973. M'ns Groundstroem was the latest change in a line-up, Heikki Virtanen took his place. TP had just returned from UK, where they played at the Reading Festival and Marquee Club. Also they have started to record 'Milky Way Moses' album.They played 56 minutes at the Liisankatu broadcastings, but sadly there were technical problems, so only two pieces are included in this release (really would have liked to hear their live version from 'Milky Way Moses'). First piece here is 'Lennosta Kii', which is origally composed by Eero Koivistoinen. TP made an studio version of this as 'Caught From the Air' to forthcoming album. Although this version is in Finnish, it has a lots in common to studio version. The main difference is, that in the middle there is the end part of 'How to start a day', that I have started recently love a lot as the whole B-side of 'Milky Way Moses'. The another piece 'Dance' has a lot more improvisational parts as the studio version, also it has even greater tempo. All the way both long pieces are really great, I believe in this recording moment TP was musically at it's best!

This record is from the time when TP was both musically and also with it's success going high! Sadly the members anyway didn't feel then their career going forward, also I think there had been personal problems already many years. So really great 'Milky Way Moses'-album became their last album in the seventies. I know there are fans of 1990/2000 Finnish prog outside Finland (for example bands Kingston Wall, Uzva, Hidria Spacefolk). I really hope they will check out this live album as also live albums from Wigwam, because my honest opion is those modern Finnish prog artists just haven't ever achieved the same magic as there is in these old live recordings. There were really reason, why Wigwam and TP were the cream of the Finnish prog in the seventies, although I of course really love Haikara, Kalevala, Nova & Nimbus too!