Eurovision has largely been the domain of overly-precious folk songs and cheesy pop music. The years have brought few bona-fide hits; Abba’s “Waterloo” is one of the few Eurovision winners to remain popular outside the confines of this bizarre nationalist relic of a contest. By and large, people seem to treat Eurovision they way they would ballroom dancing in the Olympics: worth watching and cheering for the home team, but otherwise faintly embarassing at best and worthy of savage mockery at worst.

Lordi is about to make things a little more entertaining. The Finnish metal band, with over 40 percent of the national vote, was declared the winner of the Finnish Eurovision finals, and will represent the country with “Hard Rock Hallelujah,” an awesomely hilarious metal opera that sounds ripped straight out of the 80s. Lordi will do nothing to convince naysayers that Eurovision is at all a respectable contest that rewards the musically proficient—look at the crazy-ass masks they’re wearing, for chrissakes. But you can’t help but cheer for a band that has an impeccable sense of fashion and a superb command of the English language. They can conjure words like “arockalypse” and “rockening”—as in “day of”—out of thin air. How did civilization last this long without “rockening” in its vocabulary?

Aside from the obvious underdog factor and the sheer absurdity of a possible Lordi win, I want “Hard Rock Hallelujah” to take home the big prize because it’s about time a cheesy heavy metal song won Eurovision. Why should pop ingenues and folk troubadours get all the glory? If there’s room for a transsexual in Eurovision’s ranks, surely there’s room for five monster-faced, Kiss-worshipping, Finnish rock ‘n roll angels bringing that hard rock.

Hallelujah.

Every college and university has its share of student bands, ranging from the John Meyer and Ani DiFranco wannabes all the way to the crazy experimental static-feedback noise band, made up entirely of fine art sculpture students and campus radio station people. They last a very short time, and every student has a different memory of what the local scene looked like in their tenure there. My university was no different, though my memories are few; I just didn’t see all that many local bands, wasn’t really friends with the people talented enough to be in a band. I worked with someone who co-edited a magazine with Stephanie Earp, then one of the more successful musicians in that she put out an album or two. I’ve had the misfortune of seeing Bedouin Soundclash play—they had to compete with a guy spinning fire sticks, and the fire sticks guy won handily—and I knew a bunch of girls who were devout fans of a metal band called Obsidian. This was doubly hilarious because I saw the girls once just before their pilgrimmage/concert to pick up another friend on our way to see Stars. They’d transformed from sweet, unassuming college students into raccoon-eyed leather goddesses draped in black. (Okay, I’m exaggerating just a bit. Maybe more than a bit.)

The closest I came to “knowing the band” was a group called the Radical Dudez. One or two of my Film classmates may have played in the band at some point, though I never did find out exactly who was in the band. I can’t tell you just how good they are because I don’t remember seeing an actual show of theirs, but I hear they were pretty good—my loss, apparently. In any case, despite their abilities, I would never expect the Dudez to find a whole lot of exposure outside the confines of our university. That’s just the way these things go; cases like Bedouin Soundclash are exceedingly rare.

So imagine my surprise when one day, an internet acquaintance of mine sends me this track by A Day For Kites. It’s a melancholy little number, very accomplished and well produced. Kerri Carisse has a great singing voice, full of nuance and maturity that belies her relatively young age (or so I assume; I don’t actually know how old she is, but I’ve got a good guess). In fact, you could say the same about the whole production. It’s a seductive and beguiling piece of work, but the most surprising thing is that the band is made up partially of members of the Radical Dudez, and all are alums or current students of my alma mater. How my acquaintance managed to find them, I don’t know. It’s shocking in a way even the meteoric rise (and inevitable downfall) of Bedouin Soundclash can’t match; it’s like having someone you’ve never met walk up to you one day and compliment you on that short story you wrote in high school. It’s a pleasant surprise to be sure, but now you’re wondering what other hidden treasures you’ve missed out on.

If the people in A Day For Kites do happen to read this, know that someone halfway across the continent thinks you’re pretty cool. And now, so do I.

In 2000, the United States passed the National Recording Preservation Act, which was similar to the National Film Preservation Act of 1988. Both acts created a preservation board that answered to the Library of Congress, and was tasked with the collection and preservation of important recorded works. As part of that task, the National Recording Preservation Board selects 50 recordings every year for inclusion into the National Recording Registry, with an eye towards restoring old recordings, digitizing them, and putting them into the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. Works can be nominated for the registry 10 years after they’ve been published, so the collection ranges from the first mass-produced records in 1888 all the way to Nirvana’s Nevermind and Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet. Music critics bicker back and forth all the time about what albums are true classics and which ones will be forgotten in a couple of years, but somehow the opinion of the Library of Congress feels more substantial.

The additions for 2005 were announced last week, and there are a couple of weighty recordings on the list: the first broadcast of a presidential inauguration and the first transatlantic telephone call are present, as are Studs Terkel, Frank Zappa and Fats Domino. “Dancing In The Street,” by Martha and the Vandellas, is probably the most recognizable recording, though the original recording of Show Boat might compete for the title. Out in left field are “Poeme Electronique,” a recording of what was essentially a giant sound sculpture built for the 1958 Brussels Exposition, and Switched-On Bach, the pioneering 1968 record of Bach as interpreted by Wendy Carlos and the Moog synthesizer. And then there are the more recent entries, like Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, and the youngest recording on the list, Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation.

Sonic Youth may well turn out to be the Velvet Underground of the next century. As a money-making proposition, the band has earned its keep, but commercial success has been fleeting. And yet the band’s musical credentials have almost never been in doubt, not even when they make major missteps (NYC Flowers and Ghosts?) or embark on wild projects with little hope for mass appeal (Goodbye 20th Century, Silver Session for Jason Knuth—recorded as a tribute to a fan who committed suicide in 1998). And just like the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth have been frequently cited as an influence. With their place as elders of the alternative rock scene all but assured, it’s not surprising that Sonic Youth have been honoured by no less than the Library of Congress; what’s surprising is that the Library of Congress caught on so quickly.

Whither Imperial Teen? It’s been almost four years since their last album, On, and since then the world has had to survive without new infusions of keyboard-powered power pop goodness from the San Francisco group. For a band that has seen more than its fair share of failed flirtation with the big time, Imperial Teen hung on longer than most of its mid-90s compatriots, but perhaps eight years was simply too much.

Everyone has a nostalgic sweet spot when it comes to music; it’s practically guaranteed that you will consider everything you listened to in high school to be awesome, and everything five years before and five years after to be absolute shit. In fact, a good way to figure out when someone went to high school is to ask them what their favourite one-hit wonders were. Belinda Carlisle and Snap? End of the 80s. Frankie Goes To Hollywood? Earlier than that. For me, the sweet spot is mid-90s radio-friendly alternative, back when people were still grappling with the apparent meaningless of the term “alternative” instead of accepting that labels are mostly worthless, as people do now. (That lesson wouldn’t come until “electronica,” now useful only as a catch-all for late-90s jungle remixes and big beat artists like Fatboy Slim.) Some of my favourite one-hit wonders? Harvey Danger, Superdrag, Semisonic and Imperial Teen, who had a minor hit with “You’re One” in 1995. “You’re One” was an undeniably catchy pop song, and quite the change of pace for Roddy Bottum—his previous gig was keyboardist for hard rock group Faith No More.

What’s strange about a lot of those artists is that by and large, they didn’t appear out of nowhere; these bands had fairly successful indie careers before their brief day in the spotlight, and many continued to have careers afterwards. 2 Unlimited would probably find it hard to claim the same. The most obvious example is Nada Surf, who even today is attempting to claw their way back to something resembling relevance by opening for the likes of Rilo Kiley. Unfortunately, Nada Surf have also apparently forgotten to bring something new or interesting to the table, a problem Imperial Teen has never had. From 1995’s Seasick all the way to 2002’s On, Imperial Teen have been delivering the goods. No band that can deliver the laidback blissout of “Undone” or the spine-tingling dance sensation of “Ivanka” deserves the relative obscurity Imperial Teen has had. With On, the band was transitioning nicely from major label near-success on Warner to a smaller, more dedicated fan base with Merge. But then the band disappeared into the ether, making appearances here and there but remaining mum on the subject of new material.

So that was the story of Imperial Teen. Until earlier this year, anyways: turns out eight years wasn’t too much. A brief note on their website, still done up in 2002 livery, at last confirms that the band hasn’t broken up and is prepping a new album. With indie rock becoming more baroque and boring with every passing year, the return of Imperial Teen will hopefully be a breath of fresh air.