Pohjonen: Finnish for 'Pretentious'?

OK, so I'm slow. It took me nearly a year (and a profile piece in The Sydney Morning Herald) to work up the nerve to watch this clip of Kimmo Pohjonen after I first heard of the Finnish accordionist. Do yourself a favor and skip straight to about six minutes in, where a gibbering Pohjonen does a crazy impersonation of a homeless guy. You'll still get plenty of the pretentious, droning, "I crushed my accordion in a trash compactor" noise.



"Finland's Jimi Hendrix of the accordion" fares a little better in this KTU clip, in which the King Crimson rhythm section adds a little, well, rhythm.

I know not every Finn suffers from a complete lack of humor: Check out StSanders' parody "shreds" videos for some of the funniest music clips around. But geez. This Pohjonen guy kind of but not quite gives me the creeps. I just didn't know the accordion could be so ... joyless.