Review Summary: If you like calm and catchy accordion (rock) music then you should check this out.
I guess almost every country in this world has artists that are only famous within the country they come from. Sweden had one such artist and that was a man called
Eddie Meduza. His real name was Errol Leonard Norstedt and
Eddie Meudza was his performance name. He was born in Sweden 1948 and he died in 2002, during his lifetime he became one of Sweden’s most loved and most hated man and that was because of his music.
Eddie Meduza’s music is best described as humorous rock music, most of his material was inspired by rock ‘n’ roll from the 50’s or 60’s and forward. But his music also had influences from other types of music too, some songs have strong country influences, blues and rockabilly were also mixed in his rock music.
Eddie Meduza was most of all famous within the country of Sweden but he also wanted to be famous outside Sweden. He usually sung in Swedish but if he wanted do be famous outside Sweden then he had to sing in English. You can see a clear contrast in he Swedish and his English material since the Swedish stuff was often very offending and nasty while the English stuff was the total opposite. Since I come from Sweden myself I love all of his music, if I see an
Eddie Meduza album I will buy immediately. And now I will describe an album that I found a few months ago while I was visiting a local market.
Dragspels Rock or
Accordion Rock which is the English translation is what the title says. Rock played with an accordion, simple! This album was released in 2005 by some record company and it has lots of beautiful tracks and most of them has accordion in them. But the album doesn’t tell you that there actually are some tracks here that don’t have any accordion in them.
Ingen Plockar En Maskros,
Tillbaks Till Hawaii and
Evert are three tracks that doesn’t have any accordion. Instead there are some country and acoustic guitars in them plus some keyboards. But the rest has lots of it though; there is a good song variety here. Most songs are pretty slow but all of them have a nice and catchy flow, we also have three calm and relaxing instrumental tracks to,
Svennes Lilla Hus,
Ronnebyån and
Evert’s Schottis.
Usually when I listen to music I often want instrumental perfection and speed and I usually don’t bother the lyrics most of the time. When I listen to
Eddie’s music I always think that the lyrics are the important stuff, and that is because it is easier for me to sing-along with the music. I admit that this man had some real garbage lyrics, especially when it comes to detailed themes like sex and stuff like that. But
Eddie was a master when it came to write lyrics because he could sing about almost anything and then I mean anything. He sang about stuff that you do every day, stuff that occurs at certain times, party, politics, violence, cars, women, motor cycles, pleasures in life etc. One song could have a strong politic opinion and the next song could be about drinking coffee or harvesting potatoes.
Accordion Rock has day-to-day lyrics, here he sings about old times in tracks like
En Gammeldags Auktion and
Gamla Glada Fyrtiotal for example. He also mentions some persons here and there personality’s in tracks like
Här Kommer En Svensk Sjöman,
Masen,
Har Ni Sett Herr Knut and
Evert.
Spårvagnschauffören has some offending lyrics, the track is about a masturbating tram conductor. Other than that the lyrics are pretty funny and harmless, the only drawback is that all the lyrics are sung in Swedish, which is very bad if you don’t know how to speak the Swedish language.
The overall album material in
Accordion Rock is very calm, catchy and relaxing, plus that it has a very ‘’folky’’ overall sound/structure. The overall sound quality in this album is pretty flawless, most instruments have a clear sound and the accordion really stands out. And
Eddie actually sings really good in some of the tracks, usually it sounds like he is ‘’speak singing’’. This is in my opinion one of the best ‘’unique’’ albums from this man, he may have made lots of albums, tapes and other stuff but this was really special. I liked everything in this album but there were a couple of things that didn’t really work out for me. It says ‘’Accordion Rock’’ but why add three non-accordion tracks? I do like those songs but I can’t see why that the record company has added them. A second thing I didn’t like was just a few songs that I had already heard before I got this album.
Dunder Å Snus,
Spårvagnschauffören and
Evert seems to be in almost every album be some weird reason. Nonetheless, this album is real music enjoyment and especially for those who love or like accordion music.
Track Translation List In English, from track 1 to 17
• Give Me A Snus (Snus = Swedish tobacco drug)
• The Tram Conductor
• We’re The Worlds Greatest Orchestra
• Here Comes A Swedish Sailor
• Good Old’ Forties
• Rumble And Snus
• An Old-Fashion Auction
• Masen (slang for a certain group of people in Sweden)
• Svennes Little House
• A Tango With You
• Have You Seen Mr. Knut
• The Ronneby Lake
• Åskefällalund (name on a little place somewhere in Sweden)
• No-one Picks A Dandelion
• Evert’s Schottis (probably a dance of some sort)
• Back To Hawaii
• Evert (a male name)
Positives
+ Great sound quality
+ Funny lyrics most of the times
+ Lots of accordions
+ Very good song variety
Negatives
- People who can’t speak Swedish will have major problems to understand the lyrics
- Some tracks can be a bit tedious
Recommended Favourites
-- Tillbaks Till Hawaii
-- En Gammeldags Auktion
-- Evert
-- Svennes Schottis
This album will be given a 4/5.
