Halloween

Boo!

October 31st: Samhain, Halloween, All Hallows Eve, or whatever you want to call it, today is the day. Happy Halloween to all of you, no matter if you like it or think it´s yet another corny, all-american bullshit adopted by Europeans. Well, Halloween flirt-parties, Halloween bargain advertising, Halloween cough syrup...I hate all of that, too. But still I love Halloween and the mood it sets me in because I have a liking for things dark and gloomy.

Strange that most people think it´s an (North-!)American event because the origin is definetely European. The Mexicans celebrate their Dia de los Muertos, which has certain similarities with the Celtic Samhain. Both believe that the border between life and death is very thin today, so spirits can pass through and you can communticate with the dead. In Mexico it is a happy and colorful celebration, their culture embraces death as a part of life and you don´t have to be afraid of it, death is no taboo like in most other western cultures. The pagan European celebration had a lot to do with harvest and the change of seasons. The word Samhain (originally spelled Samuin) is Old Irish and means roughly "summer´s end". In autumn the light part of the year ends and the dark part begins. Life and death.

Around 1830 the Irish packed their culture, jack-o-lanterns and pumpkins in a bundle and left for America. That´s where it got re-packaged and commercialized to a product that most people know today. I have to admit that I like this product but I liked it so much better when it was still only available in limited quantities in Central Europe. Most people didn´t know it in Germany when I started to celebrate Halloween with a bunch of like-minded friends as a teenager. It gave me the feeling to really be into something special and secret. My link to the whole thing was again music, as almost always. The German metal band Helloween (no misprint) had (and still has) a pumpkin in their logo and I wanted to find out what their name actually meant. What I found out was cool and spooky, so I went with it. Thanks to Helloween for the impulse, although I can hardly listen to their music anymore.

Shortly after this discovery I wanted to find about another thing: What was this strange band on almost every shirt the guys from Metallica were sporting in the 80ties? When I then discovered the Misfits I was taken into another dimension and to this very day it is a love that doesn´t grow cold! I became a horror fanatic and the Misfits provided the perfect soundtrack. Punk + horror = Horrorpunk. Brilliant! I even started my own Misfits inspired punk band in 1996 to somehow fill the void they had left after their demise.

The Noctunes from Flensburg played some shows in Northern Germany, released a demo CD and were featured on a local sampler called "No limits", the second incarnation of the band in Düsseldorf recorded another demo and was part of the "This is Horrorpunk, Vol.1"  sampler on Fiend Force Records. Due to problems in the band and my venture with Black Raven I laid the Noctunes to rest in 2004. Every now and then I thought about resurrecting the dead but for quite a while now I´m 138 % sure that this sleep is an eternal one.

You wanna know why? I´m bored beyond belief with what happened to both Halloween and horror punk. What is cool about something that EVERYBODY is doing? This whole horror punk thing took off a couple of years ago and went through the roof all over the world. I could start my thing again, I still have a bag full of songs nobody has ever heard except for close friends. But when I founded the Noctunes there was no trend, no formula and at least I didn´t know any other band doing the same stuff in Germany at the time. And even if there was somebody else, that didn´t make the thing generic like it is today. We were known in only small circles in our heyday, so if I´d do the thing again everybody would think I´m just another copycat. No thanks, I rather pass and leave the field for others. By the way, I came across some lame ass band on the net that took the name. They are from the South of Germany and play some kind of college rock. I can only say that I check potential band names first and see if they are already taken before chosing one that is and trying to be original. Oh, I might want to add one more thing: Fuck you, assholes!

But let´s get back to the initial topic: Halloween. Every American will laugh at my complaints that nowadays accountants and bank clerks are celebrating it because in the US of A, really everybody from kindergarten to retirement home is doing it. I quit going to parties years ago when the trend hit Germany. The parties I went to before that were mostly organized by myself and friends. I miss the intimacy and the uniqueness of it all. Oddly enough I still get a thrill, a restless excitement every year when Halloween arrives and I gotta say that I still celebrate it each time. It´s not a big party anymore and I don´t even leave the house. It has become something personal and I´m back to what I did when I was a teenager: light some candles, spin the Misfits and watch some good old horror flics. Happy Halloween, goddamnit!

SONX FOR THE DAY:

Halloween - Misfits
Halloween - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Halloween - Rob Zombie and The Ghastly Ones

No sleep till Sunday

Was that a great weekend or what?! Sure this posts title is a bit exaggerated but with Mighty as our first guest we tried to squeeze as much as possible into the little time we had. And we did that quite successfully, so sleeping long was not on the menu. The mighty man arrived last Friday noon at Helsinki airport. After a lesson in Dos and Don´ts concerning how to use Finnish cash machines (Blue slot? Jackpot! Go and spend your money. Yellow slot? Tough luck! Stay and spend one hour in the bank.) we had a good meal to prepare for the upcoming event: The Kallio Big Night Out. The plan was to check out the cheap bars in Kallio and many of them! If you want to make your night out a big one over there you better start early because they got this unpleasant 2 a.m. curfew. I think our saldo was a total of seven bars in the end, including a karaoke session.

The poor people in that karaoke place got completely steamrolled by us. Whispering into the microphone to mellow tunes at a ridiculously low volume they were unaware of things to come. You had to fill in a little form with your name, your requested song and believe it or not: the volume you want your song to be played in. One top of that tiny bill was a scale with ballot boxes from -5 to +5 where you had to mark your desired level of noise with a cross. We decided to turn the place into CBGB´s and yell along The Ramones´ "I wanna be sedated" (somehow fitting to the place), needless to say we made our cross at +5! The bartender lady asked me in disbelief whether we were sure we wan´t the highest volume possible. I made her understand that our decision was well considered and thoroughly thought through (I´m getting a lisp here) by saying: "Of course!" And lo and behold! They really cranked it up! BOOM! Some people even did a little pogo, quite cute. For our next song I had drawn an additional box on the bill for +6, maybe to make a point, and as we screamed at the top of our lungs to "No sleep till Brooklyn" by the Beastie Boys the whole bar was shaking. Well, at least we had the feeling it was.

Karaoke attack! Old farts need glasses to read the lyrics!

Saturday surprised us with perfect weather and was packed with record store tours, sightseeing, kahvi ja korvapuusti, sauna and a nice trip to Suomenlinna. That is one of the many islands at the shore of Helsinki. You can reach Suomenlinna by a ferry that belongs to the public transportation HSL, it´s like taking a bus or tram in Helsinki. The trip takes about 20 mins and I can only recommend it. Very nice view on Helsinki´s harbor with the big ferries going to Sweden, Estonia, Germany and Russia, the city skyline and all the other small islands surrounding you there. When you arrive at the island your feet touch the ground of an UNESCO world heritage site that is popular with both tourists and locals. Suomenlinna means "Castle of Finland" and is a very important strategic defense spot for the Finnish military, protecting the mainland. 900 people are living there and many Finns frequent the island for more peaceful purposes. In the summer time it is a picturesque picnic site, buns not bombs, just the way I like it.

Susu and Mighty on Suomenlinna.

 On Sunday we went to an indoor flea market, which is said to be the biggest in whole Finland and provided Mighty with a good variety of souvenirs. I wonder what his salmiakki craving collegues thought about his collection of licorice that he brought for them. Salmiakki chocolate anyone? Certainly unique. In the afternoon it was time to say "Auf Wiedersehen" and Mighty hopped on the plane back to Germany. Thanks a lot for the visit, my friend. It was great having you here! So schön, schön war die Zeit...

Daughters lock up your mothers!

Mighty and me going mental at Wild at Heart, Berlin

The man is coming to town!
Mighty Mayer has booked some extra large space on our sofa bed for the weekend which makes him our first visitor from Germany! Trophy is gonna be in liquid aggregate state, I figure he won´t mind at all. Mighty and me go way back and we did a lot of cool stuff together, most remarkable in the public eye was maybe our band Torpedo Quintett. I´m very excited to have him here. We share the love for hot music and cold beer, now it´s time to put Helsinki to the test. Banzai! 

Make sure to check out:

www.myspace.com/torpedoquintett

I´d like to buy an Ä

Bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing-bing...There you see. No, wait. I´m not talking about these blind German retards who insisted on dolling up all by themselves for their big moment of fame on Glücksrad. I´m talking about the unique nature of suomen kieli, the Finnish language. If you are from another European or English spoken country and you stumble over finnish noums like posti, grilli, bussi, taksi, etc. you might think that a) this is rather cute, b) this sounds all pretty familiar and therefore c) learning the language is gonna be a piece of cake. Well, you are terribly wrong. Forget everything you know. It ain´t gonna help you because you are fooled by loan words and here the similarity ends abruptly. In my first post I described Finnish as close to extraterrestrial, which was maybe a bit mean (Yours truly was in for a dramatic effect as usual). But it´s fair and more friendly to call it a secret language. The term is accurate because a) it´s spoken by 0,05 % of the global population, b) even if you learn it, spoken Finnish and its many dialects might differ so much from its written form that you´re still absolutely clueless and c) to further round off the mystique Finns sometimes start to whisper at the end of a sentence. They sound as if they are exhausted from carrying the burden of a dark, well-kept secret. And they can talk while inhaling! It´s like writing with magic ink or something...just miraculous! Today the first part of my intensive language course has endend. I like to imagine that I get a glimpse of light at the end of a long tunnel but quite much still looks like this to me:

Bon appétit!

Let´s face it, it´s not the easiest language on the planet. It doesn´t belong to either the indogermanic or romanic family and that makes it so difficult for many foreigners like me. Finno-Ugric, that´s what it is. Estonia and Hungary are linguistic relatives and while you can really see some similarities between Finnish and Estonian, love letters between Helsinki and Budapest will most likely be written in English. All of the above makes Finnish highly unique and interesting. I am surrounded by that secret language every day and I wanna crack the code to become agent 00 JottEff with the licence to spell. If you like to aim high I recommend you to try it yourself. You will find that Finnish sounds very nice (listen to a sample), the grammar is in fact very logical and it is one of the world´s best languages to curse in, perkele! You will start to like these funny details that make Suomi so adorable. For instance, there are no equivalents for the words he and she. Both is hän in Finnish, that´s why Finns mix up the English personal pronouns on a regular basis. Don´t be confused when you hear someone say "I was talking to my girlfriend and he said..." That doesn´t mean that his girlfriend is still a boy about to have a sex change. The more plausible explanation is that this person has made a common mistake, Finns are just not used to distinguish between male and female personal pronouns, the context tells them if the conversation is about a woman or a man. One thing you should always keep in mind when speaking Finnish is the pronounciation. Of course this is important in every language but the Finns are pretty uptight with it. Some words look almost the same but it´s a double consonant or vowel that makes the difference. The difference though might be enormous. For example, if I say: "Minä tapaan sinut kello viisi" I tell you that I will meet you at five o´clock. If I say: "Minä tapan sinut kello viisi" it translates to "I will kill you at five o´ clock." So if you confirm a date and she starts running for her life, you know that you screwed up the pronounciation. Quite interesting somehow that the Finnish verbs "to meet" and "to kill" are so close to each other. Wonder why...has anyone done some research about this? Another curiosity is the shortage of words at first sight. Sentences can manage quite well with only one or two words: "Oletko iloinen? -Olen." ("Are you happy? -Yes, I am"). Even one word alone can be bursting with information. If someone tells you for instance that he is "talossani" you have a quite distinctive description of his whereabouts. He says "house-in-my" or "in my house" without wasting too much breath. Then there are so many other interesting things like untranslatable words and verbs, or words that even the Finns regard as sounding funny like "lämpimämpi"(comparative form of warm, = warmer). The list is long and you should really take a look at it. Needless to say that I am still making many mistakes but at least I have heard some nice compliments about the way my poor broken Finnish sounds. Sometimes I´m a bit frustrated when the grammar won´t penetrate my thick skull but giving up is not an option! The quest continues next week.

The house of horrors, I´m in torture chamber No. 17 on the 3rd floor. Just kidding, of course...

I´m attending class at Työväenopisto in Herttoniemi, that´s just three metro stops from my place. Hopefully four times a week, three hours a day will do the trick in the long run. Part 2 of the course is ahead of me and the going is about to get tough. No easy way out anymore with explanations in English which was the habit in the first part. Our (very nice and friendly) teacher told us (very nicely) that from next Monday she will speak Finnish 98% of the time and expects us to answer in Finnish, too (not so very nice but more than reasonable). I know that the day will come when I´ll be able to communicate with people over here in their mother tongue, it is just a question of time. If I just wasn´t so impatient...

Autumn leaves

My girl and me went out today to get some good old fresh air. Better to see some nature in weather like this than to rot on the couch. It´s so cool that we only need to walk ten minutes to escape the concrete jungle. Rock ´n´ Roll rampage in front of our door, hippie heaven just around the corner. Can´t get any better than this! Now I let the pictures talk, hope you enjoy the autumn´s Sunday feeling.

Bates Motel? 

Autumn in all its beauty.

Finland´s 1st president lived in Villa Kivi, the house on the left. On the right you see the Dome.

In the distance thrones the ferris wheel of Helsinki´s amusement park.

This post is dedicated to Peter Steele, who loved the autumn and died way too early. Rest in peace.

ON HEAVY ROTATION:

Not their best but the most fitting to this season

In-A-Gaga-Da-Vida

Well, eeh...oops! What was that?! Seems like I wound up working as stagehands for Lady Gaga last Thursday night at Hartwall Arena. We were quite a big bunch of local roadies but were all allowed to watch almost the entire show for free. I wouldn´t have paid for it but free of charge? Come on...of course I checked it out! It was real fun to see us bearded mid-thirty guys with Motörhead shirts, Misfits caps and Entombed patches among all these überstyled teens and twens. By now I maybe don´t have to explain anymore that this kind of music ain´t my cup of tea but I never disliked her stuff too much either. Plus I think there is something about her. In a way she´s a modern Madonna, talent combined with lots of shock-value and all. The show was BIG and explained the huge number of my collegues. Let´s see...we had a full band, five backround singers, twenty dancers, podiums, staircases and a glowing cube on stage, a giant monster fish, a catwalk into the audience, lots of neon signs, video projections, all kinds of props, a subway car replica, a real Mad Max style car and plenty of gay pride with sexual undertones (or overtones?). Ah yes, and she changed her outfit at least five times. I don´t know if you need all this but with todays kids, maybe you do. Just four musicians on stage? Boring. No glitz, no glamour? Zap to another channel. This was a video game and Lady Gaga pushed the buttons on her adoring crowd. Did a lot of propagaganda, too. She thanked her fans to an almost unbearable extent (at one point I saw her enormous face on one of the screens and wondered if I really saw tears in her eyes), she encouraged them to be proud of themselves, no matter from where they are or what they are or bla bla bla and talked a lot of unity talk. Pathetic, yes but hey! Message and attitude were thin, perhaps even calculated but alright! Rather that than some ungrateful fuck on stage who doesn´t communicate at all with the fans. Very few get away with that.

The Gagamobile leaves Hartwall Arena. 

What did the trick for me was seeing her perform a song alone, just playing piano and singing a slow ballad. Again lots of talking in between (she ridiculed and definetely eliminated rumors she would lip-sync) but that was the part of this whole extravaganza where she showed that she is a really good and talented musician. It was also the calmest part that proved she doesn´t need the circus around her to appear good. But to avoid confusing the teenagers who need explosions and five different things happening simultaneously to feed their ADHD they at least set her piano on fire. What a laugh...

CONCLUSIO: I am not a fan now but I am convinced that Lady Gaga is one of the good people. Whoever is a fan of her and/or her music has my blessing. Not that I think anybody would care...

POST SCRIPTUM: We packed and dragged her shit into the trucks until 4am.

Revelations 11:10:10

And I looked and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was the Killing Joke, and hell followed with him. I´m still in awe of their great performance on Monday, it was truly breath-taking! The band celebrates the 30th anniversary of their first album released in 1980, they are back in original line up with a new record and they convinced (I swear) everyone at Nosturi that night that they are still a force to be reckoned with. But let me start from the beginning.

I had never been in Nosturi until then but walking by that impressive crane (=nosturi) a couple of times before I always thought about how well the whole scenery fits a Killing Joke show. You get in the right techno-fearing, tribal man vs. machine mood already outside of the venue, just perfect. Nosturi has two floors, a restaurant on ground floor and they have all kinds of happenings going on there. Concerts from mainstream to extreme, art exhibitions, theatre plays, you name it. They also provide 40 (!) rehearsal spaces in the basement. I was told the building is even set up with a retractable roof, so if an event demands and the weather conditions allow it, they open that roof like a tuna can and you will literally see stars during a show or party! That wasn´t the case now but trust me, you don´t want that to happen in a Finnish autumn night. And it´s definetely getting colder now...

Zakk Wylde´s little brother? I don´t think so.

From inside Nosturi turned out to be a real cool place, too. We went up to the second floor where the show was about to start at 20.15. There is a club that is small enough to create atmosphere and intimacy, but still big enough to hold a good crowd. When support act Kotiteollisuus hit the stage at 20.15 sharp (sharp!) the place wasn´t too filled with people yet. Given the fact that the show was sold out some of those missing people must have had better things to do than watch the biggest selling rock act in Suomi play. And I bet there were better things to do. Their set of 30 minutes felt like an eternity and the music was utterly and mind-numbingly boring. They focused on their harder material only as if they had something to prove. Desperately trying to come across like bad-ass rockers the band had one big problem and it was a crucial one: No ideas to speak of. Their set was like one long song and that song just wasn´t good. Ei kiitos.

Then Killing Joke finally made it up to us for the long wait. I´m not only talking about the 45 minutes it took them to come on stage after Kotiteollisuus, which I thought was a bit nerving. KJ were supposed to play here already on April 29th, I would have seen them in Germany even before that, namely on the 23rd of April. But the whole tour was postponed due to timing problems with the release of their new album Absolute Dissent, and this meant waiting for half a year! KJ didn´t want to tour without the record being released and their show pretty much answered the question why. That brings me directly to the "downside" of their gig, so let´s get it over with because the rest is gonna be praising!

I already guessed this would happen. What songs is a band going to play that has put out 13 incredible albums but ALL members of the current line-up have only recorded two of them together, the first and the latest that is. Exactly! They played six songs from their debut and nine new ones, eight of the latter in a row! I didn´t mind the old stuff, on the contrary I enjoyed it very much. Maybe I shouldn´t whine about the many new songs, they are damn good, but I only knew three of them. My obsessive-compulsive disorder is to blame that I only buy vinyl records and Absolute Dissent is still not out on LP. I was hoping to purchase the wax at the merchandise stand only to find no records at all, which was quite a bummer. So for one part of the show I was rather listening than raising my fist and yelling to my fave tunes. And why they didn´t play Endgame, the teaser (and goddamn hit) for tour and album, will always remain a riddle to me.

BUT: They still were so fucking great, you just can´t argue with class! The quar... eeh, quintet (with keyborder Reza Uhdin) was on a great mood and you felt instantly that they had a really good time themselves, something I regard as very important. Who wants to watch bored musicians on stage? Thought so...

Jaz Coleman. Pure energy.

Coleman is maybe not for everybody´s taste with his theatrical performance, starring eyes and gestures soaking with symbolism (?) but there is no way the man leaves you cold. He has an incredible stage presence and he can sing like an angel and scream like the devil. Jaz Coleman is one of my fave singers, hands-down. The typical conspiracy-theory preaching part between songs was maybe a bit much, but...hey, I was done complaining. Kevin "Geordie" Walker is one of the most underrated guitarists in rock history. That guy is a one man orchestra, an army of one. No pretentious solo wankery but riffs to mesmerize and memorize. Absolutely no-one sounds like him. He was standing there, grooving a bit (not too much) to the music, puffing away cigarettes (an offence any other musician except Lemmy would get lynched for in Finland) and churned out riffs with ease any other string-bender would sell his or her soul for. What a cool motherfucker! You see why he´s one of my fave guitar players? The lost sons Youth (getting bald, hehe) and Big Paul Ferguson were great, too. Youth quite obviously enjoyed himself and was moving constantly all over the stage. Big Paul still has the beat and it was great to see him perform Love like blood,  the band´s biggest commercial success that is so far from sounding commercial that it´s pure joy! When they played The Wait and Pandemoneum at the end of their regular set all hell broke loose! KJ said their thank yous to a first patient and then very grateful crowd with three encores and I bet they would have played even more if there wouldn´t have been a deadline. It was truly a show to remember and I´m glad I was there! Amen.

Killing Joke killing Nosturi

Make sure to check out:

www.killingjoke.com (again!)
www.kotiteollisuus.com (to make up your own mind)
www.elmu.fi (Nosturis homepage, choose your language)

The wait

...is over by tomorrow!

They are playing at Nosturi, the show is sold out and I will see them!

At Last!

SONG FOR THE DAY:

Killing Joke - The Wait

Kahvia ja pullaa

The evil twins of temptation!

Coffee and buns - curse or blessing?
I´m not able to decide but I can´t get enough of them, that´s for sure. And you find them everywhere, because the Finns are full-blown coffee addicts. Just take a look at what the statistics say: In 2003 every Finnish resident consumed an average amount of 11,4 kilogramms of coffee. That means that each Finn gulped down 4,8 cups per day. This bare fact puts them in world wide pole position, they are the masters of mokka, the coffee champions with esprit for espresso! The Krauts in comparison are not that hot for coffee with only 2,8 cups per day and person. All of you who think that the low German consumption is a result of their constant beer drinking I will have to disappoint: according to the same statistic that hot juice made from beans makes it before beer when it comes to Deutschlands favorite beverages.

Germany has a reputation as the promised land of bakery products and rightly so, this centuries-old trade has spawn a huge variety of goodies and tidbits. But let me call out: I DON´T CARE! I found my promised land here in Suomi because cardamom is what I dig and cinnamon is what I crave! Both ingredients are used a lot in Finnish bakeries and I love it. My fellow Germans connect the taste mostly to christmas, that´s the time cinnamon usually finds its way into teutonic dough. Here you have it all year long so it´s christmas every day, ain´t that nice, kids? My absolute favorite is the Korvapuusti which means "slap in the face" or "Ohrfeige" (recipe linked below) and I must limit my gluttony if I don´t want to morph into a member of Poison Idea (R.I.P. Pig Champion).

By now I´m drinking so much coffee that a friend already told me I would be close to becoming a real Finn. I would applaud to that if my hands wouldn´t sh-sh-shake so m-m-much. As mentioned before you will find kahvia ja pullaa almost everywhere but especially in sommer time the nicest place to enjoy them is one of the many outside coffee places. This year´s summer was historic with the highest temperatures in Finland´s written history (37,2 °C, global warming anyone?). Many have hold me responsible for that, accusing me of having brought that incredible heatwave from Germany to the country, maybe in my suitcase? Or maybe I put the sunshine in a condom and swallowed it, only to give birth to the hottest summer of all time on a Finnish lavatory. But wait, I lost my train of thought...Ah yes, I was getting at this: The weather has been more than nice, also the beginning autumn was rather mild so far with lots of sunshine. I really wonder when the shit hits the fan over here and the cold comes creeping in. Many, many days were just perfect for a coffee break, sometimes at the seaside, sometimes in a park or on a terrace. Dear suomalaiset, your coffee culture rules and I´m your biggest fan!

An inviting kahvila on Pohjoisesplanadi. Who can say no to that? I can´t.

How to make korvapuusti:

www.food.com/recipe/korvapuusti-finnish-cinnamon-rolls-428065

Batman

Bar Batman. A piece of art.

Or in Finnish: Lepakkomies. So if you read this, Bruce Wayne, now you know. But the batman over here has nothing to do with a mysterious millionaire chasing villains, although it might be villains you have to encounter there. Just kidding, Lepakkomies is a bar in Helsinki´s infamous destrict Kallio, on Helsinginkatu to be exact and a stone throw away from my flat. It doesn´t only bait you with very acceptable beer prices (the Kallio area is pretty cheap compared to the rest of Helsinki, if not whole Finland) but has also bands play on a regular basis. That´s what brought me there last night, cause as posted before, Lovecoat, Bananas and Velvert were on the bill. I went there almost in a hurry not to miss the first band, only to realize that I (blockhead) had forgotten my camera at home. Translates to: I´m unfortunately not able to present any live pictures, damn it. At Lepakkomies you will find the bands play in the basement, a cosy oblong room with a bar holding what I would estimate up to 100 people. Well, yesterday approximately 10 showed up, maybe 15. I felt sorry for the bands who seemed to lose a potential audience to some other event in Bar Loose which took place simultaneously. These things happen, been there, done that.

Lovecoat didn´t lose their cool either and went on stage first. Stoner Rock was the name of the game and I was glad to notice that the trios´ approach to the genre was not the typical generic formula type of thing but rather of a more unique nature. They were a little sloppy from time to time but I think that some of their songs were real hits. Good riffs and good hooklines, that´s what it takes! My personal favorite of their show was without doubt the tune Radio, you will find it on the fellas myspace page (links below as usual).

Lovecoat in their rehearsal room. Drummer Otto and me just recently had a nice jam session there.

Next up were Bananas, and well, that´s what they were. Nomen est omen and they were anxious to prove it. They were three guys and a girl on "vocals". I was told that one of the male members used to play in Fun, another (still very much active) Finnish band who recorded with Steve Albini. Impressive despite the fact that I think that Steve Albini is...well, not my cup of tea. That seems to be the connection to Bananas because they didn´t hit it off with me. Hysterical screaming followed by incoherent mumbling over songs that sometimes made me miss some kind of structure. Sudden tempo and time changes dominated the music. They had some good ideas, though. Maybe just too many in one song. Or maybe my simple mind starts to show here, I know a few of my friends will be silently nodding their heads to their screens reading this. There definetely are fans of that kind of music so I would have listed Bananas´ URL anyways, but I did not find them on the net. Otto from Lovecoat told me that they like to change their name every now and then, wonder why...

I missed out Velvert because I felt tired and had an early wake up today. Only too bad, looks like they would have been more on the poppy side with some nice songs, a funny contrast to the other two groups. Nice when the bands do not sound exactly the same during one night.

Velvert performing at some place I haven´t seen them either.

My schedule for today included some struggles with the authorities and I had this one tune ringing in my mind all of the time. Some of you will know the feeling. It´s when a song gets stripped entirely off its lyrical context or meaning and becomes a soundtrack for a situation you´re in or a feeling you have.
So here is my

SONG FOR THE DAY:

Bad Brains - Secret 77

and here´s why:

www.nordsoc.org/fi/Suomi/Suomen-sosiaaliturva

Make sure to check out:

www.lepakkomies.fi
www.myspace.com/lovecoat
www.myspace.com/velvert

ADDENDUM October 9, 2010:
I just got word that Bananas do have a myspace page, thanks Rasmus!

www.myspace.com/atktietokone

Fish is in the air...

The traditional Baltic Herring Fair on Helsingin kauppatori

Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische, frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz...
Try to say that three times in a row after some shots of Koskenkorva! Best place to practice tongue twisters and eat delicious fish this week is the annual herring market on kauppatori (=market place). Located beautifully in the harbor area of Helsinki it still continues until the 10th of October. Fishermen from many places gather there every autumn to sell their fresh prey and all kinds of sea food from the baltic sea. If you´re not into fishy transactions you can just grab a coffee and buy some nice and useless things. I myself decided to just stroll over the market and enjoy the commotion for a while. Places like this always remind me of good old Hamburg...I will leave you for today with some impressions of the scenery, gotta recharge my batteries for tonight´s gig at Lepakkomies featuring Lovecoat, Velvert and Bananas. Yeah!

Miika counts his fish while his colleague hides his bottle of Jack Daniel´s.

Sold straight from the boat. Cool.

Standing in that orange light whole day would drive me mad.

INITIUM

Fireworks over Helsinki

Thanks, that wouldn´t have been neccesary. So there we are in the present, im Hier und Jetzt, all dressed up but where to go? Well, I´m going to establish certain categories for some of my posts. A few recurrent general topics that reflect the point of view of a resident alien living in a wonderfully weird country. My posts will be anything but the ultimate truth, just the way I understand and/or experience the Finnish customs and the modus operandi of the people living in this country. My intention is not to insult or offend.

Comments are more than welcome, may they be corrections, contributions, consolation or congratulations. We live and learn.

Other than that I can tell you that the mighty Killing Joke are coming to town. They´re gonna play next week´s Monday at Nosturi and I can´t wait! A fascinating band that manages to reinvent itself with every new album without losing touch with its roots. I hope they bring the vinyl version of their latest album Absolute Dissent to the show. So far I was only able to get the fairly limited In Excelsis 10" EP which they released as a kind of teaser for the upcoming full-length. Anyway, this is gonna be a blast!!!

ON HEAVY ROTATION:

KILLING JOKE - In Excelsis
(2010)

KILLING JOKE - Killing Joke
(2003)

www.killingjoke.com

The Raven has landed (Back to the future, final part)

Raven. Black Raven.
They are actually to blame that I wound up living in Finland. In a way. They are to blame for many additional things. Being their drummer for over four years I learned a lot about the ups and downs of the tour life, about musical work ethics and, maybe most important, I learned a thing or two about myself. I saw a good chunk of the world. We toured almost the whole of Europe and the American west coast. Tokyo and Osaka in Japan were mind-boggling experiences. Playing a lot in Scandinavia brought me to Finland where I met my girl, so Black Raven is guilty of that, too. And I want to thank them.

Black Raven in 2004.

In the course of time I realized that I had just two conflicts stirring up inside me. I liked to play drums but I missed torturing my actual instrument, the guitar. Black Raven was always in full flow, no time for hanky panky. The other thing was the music itself. I have always liked R´n´R / Rockabilly etc. and always will. But my heart beats for punk / hardcore / metal and all what comes with it. I had to follow my heart and left the band in the end of 2007, nothing personal at all. We are still friends to this day. I´m happy that the band was never forced to take a break due to my departure. We found Fritzo, showed him the ropes and when I left he just took over.

Black Raven since 2007: Torsten, Fritzo, Julian. And yes, the tattoos are real.

To end the Back to the Future - trilogy it´s a pleasure to tell you that after my first six weeks over here, Black Raven came to Suomi. A weekender in Valkeakoski was on their tour schedule and of course I was in! Promoter and long term partner-in-crime Eddie had taken good care of me. He had made sure that there´s a spare seat for me in the van transporting the band to Hotelli Waltikka and enabled me to overleap certain obstacles on site. Eddie, if you read this: kiitos paljon vielä kerran! We met at the airport and it was strange to pick the guys up at the arrivals. It was like watching a tour video filmed by a fan but this time I was a spectator and a spectator only. I don´t regret leaving the band but of course there are sometimes situations when it would be cool to still belong to the gang. Every now and then I miss playing a show with them because it was always fun. Well, rest assured: That weekend we should have fun in spades!

I will not give you too many details but it was a great party. What I value most is that us friends had a lot of time to spend together, talking serious stuff and of course tons of bullshit. I also met other old comrades like the boys in the Beetle Crushers, Lou Cifer and the Hellions as well as scensters I hadn´t seen since calling it quits. Black Raven played a good gig as usual, the Beetle Crushers were incredibly tight and hungry after a long hiatus. Plus there were some great bands I hadn´t heard of before. Rockin´ 8-Balls (FI) blew me away (great singer) and the surprise of the weekender, The Town Rebels (GER) played some great tunes by Cliff Richard, The Tornados and other stuff that you hardly ever get to hear at these weekenders ("Oh woo-pee, it´s Cast Iron Arms or Twenty Flight Rock - AGAIN!"). They had good originals for that matter, too. Pretty impressive and memorable were Fritzo´s mostly successful attempts to defy gravity by piling all kinds of glasses, pints and bottles sky-high! Try that when you are sober but he had already problems to walk properly. Respect!
After too few sleep as always on the road we left the hotel Sunday noon. The weirdest feeling was to wave my buddies goodbye at the airport, them leaving for Germany, me staying here in Suomi. I think that in this very moment I finally realized: The raven has landed.

Make sure to check out:
  
www.blackraven.de
www.myspace.com/beetlecrushers
www.myspace.com/rockin8balls
www.myspace.com/thetownrebels

Back to the future (Part 2)

One thing I treasure dearly about living in Finland is the fact that it has so much water. The coastline stretches over thousands of kilometers and there is a reason why it´s called the land of 1000 lakes. 187.888 to be exact as the Finnish Departement of the Environment claims.
Born and raised in Northern Germany I used to live directly at the Baltic Sea. I loved it.

Then I moved to Düsseldorf which had at least the river Rhein to trigger some placebo effects when I wanted to be at the water. Düsseldorf is an important chapter in my life. I made good friends there, played in a few bands and expanded my horizons. But in the long run I started to really miss the sea.
Now I´m living in Helsinki, again at the Baltic Sea. And I love it.

Maybe now you can imagine how thrilled I was when my buddy Riku rang me up and asked me to join him on a boat trip to a very small island. Hell yeah! The plan was to sail there, barbeque, go to the sauna, stay over night and sail back the next day. Sounded like a good plan to me. The whole idea got even more interesting when Riku explained that the island was practically deserted. It belongs to a yacht club and the chance to bump into someone there in the beginning of september (and that was the time) is rather small.

The island in question. Let´s go there...

We agreed to make the trip and took action. Armed with sleeping bags, warm socks, sausages and beer we drove the 150 kilometers to nearby Turku by car. A small harbor maybe 40 kilometers from Turku was our first destination. That is where Riku and his brother have a sailing boat which they share.

Land ahoy!

When we got there we quickly loaded our stuff into the boat and set sail. Soon after we had left the harbor zone behind us we had a marvelous view on nature´s beauty. Tiny islands here and there, the waves, the wind, the sun...the weather was almost too good to be true.
Roundabout one hour later we arrived at the island and made ourselves at home. Nice place, that island!

A few small huts and a clubhouse, a sand beach and the place where we stayed, a cottage with a living room, bunk beds and a sauna. It was a funny feeling to be there somehow because although you could still see the mainland in the far distance we were alone on an island. It was like literally waving goodbye to civilisation. Cool thing!

We fired up the grill at the beach and enjoyed our sausages and beer. Night set in as we went to the sauna and with the usual breaks inbetween we made it to three hours! During one of our breaks we took a look to the sky and what we saw was a-ma-zing! Uncountable stars twinkling over our heads, an amount Riku and me had never seen before. I´m originally from the countryside, so I know the night sky there is always very different to what you would see in the city, but this? Maybe it was the beer...

That was our view from where we had the BBQ

We slept like a log, no miracle after fresh air poisoning, sauna and some brews. Next day we left the island before noon and made it back to Helsinki roundabout four, somehow tired but happy. The trip had been very cool and we knew it. I was grateful for the great experience and I still am. And I would gladly do it again, you hear me, Riku?