“Tankeros Love” (1975) – Kivikasvot * Written by Ismo Sajakorpi * FIN 45: “Tankeros Love” / “Hoi Laari Lii” * Label: Rondo
Seventies Finland went crazy for garbled English, and a catalyst for this was Foreign Minister Ahti Karjalainen. A career politician, he held the post three separate times in the sixties and seventies, with his final stint happening between 1972 and 1975. He was famous for botching his English utterances. At a visit to a Kenyan zoo, where a sign said “all animals are dangerous,” he reported to his colleagues that all of the animals were of the “dangerou” family, pronounced with his strong Finnish accent as “tankero.” A torrent of Finnish jokes about the mysterious “tankero” animal burst forth and the term still survives in the Finnish lexicon in reference to mishandled English. A 1975 single by the group Kivikasvot (stone faces), who were a TV comedy/vocal troupe comprised of men with otherwise separate careers (including the hit maker known as Fredi), capitalized on the tankero craze and some of its accompanying jokes (“If you love me too, then I love you three, four, five”). Equally funny are the record’s self-deprecating tourist plugs (“sauna in Finland!”). Its Russian inflections likely nod to Karjalainen’s political preoccupation with Finland’s eastern neighbor.