Gringos Locos

Gringos Locos is a southern boogie-influenced finnish hard rock band formed in 1986. They were the first finnish band since Hanoi Rocks to sign a worldwide record deal with a major label as Polygram signed them for a seven album deal after the release of their debut album Gringos Locos in 1987. British rock magazine Kerrang! awarded the album a 5 K-rating. The deal with Polygram fell through soon afterwards, but they managed to impress Atlantic enough to release their second, Tom Dowd-produced album Punch Drunk in 1989. Despite major label deals the band was met with little interest outside Finland and by the time their third album Raw Deal hit the record stores in 1991 Atlantic had dropped them too. The album was met with indifference, leading the band to call it quits in 1992. After the split guitarist Ben Granfelt joined Leningrad Cowboys before leaving to concentrate on his then side-project Guitar Slingers in 1996. Granfelt also joined british veteran rockers Wishbone Ash for a three-year spell in 2001. He was replaced in Wishbone Ash by his fellow Gringos Locos guitarist Muddy Manninen. Singer Richard Johnson also joined Leningrad Cowboys in 1997. In 2009 the original line-up (Johnson, Manninen, bassist Masa Maijanen and drummer Miri Miettinen) minus Granfelt reformed and released the album Second Coming of Age. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.