19.3. Helsinki
We leave the country by ferry to Stockholm. This really is the first test on how we're going to behave on this tour. We have 7 gigs in a row and it's going to be quite heavy for my voice, so I must really behave. No booze, early "go to beds" etc... This ferry trip takes 15 hours and is known to be the animal house for people who only act when they're drunk - and basically everyone's wasted. A true madhouse.
As a surprise for us all, we find ourselves in the cabins and bed before midnight. That ferry atmosphere is just too much for all of us today. No karaoke for us, please!
20.3. Stockholm
It's the day for the 2nd longest drive on this trip. We have to drive to Bremen from Stockholm. That's over 1000 km's! At this time I better tell you that we're packed in this van with six guys and all our gear. The car is as full as it gets and very far from comfortable. With the band we have our sound man Terttu with us, and we've also hired Pentti from Turku to be the tour manager. He speaks fluent German which is very important on a journey like this.
Right away as we're leaving Stockholm we begin the "band name game" at about 9.30 in the morning. It's the legendary game where someone says a name of the band and the next person says another name, based on the letter that the previous one ends, like this; Antti says Gryphon - Kelly says Nirvana - Pentti says Anchors From The Bottom Of The Sea (or something that we've never heard of, they've always made an ep for some obscure label…) - I say American Music Club and Risto says Beastie Boys… This goes on and on until you're really bored or run out of bands. We play this for 11 hours (!) until there are no more bands left to play this game. You can imagine there are a lot of S -bands and very few Ö/Ä/X -bands.
Anyway, the trip goes well, we have about 130 CDs with us and we're grooving. A few problems almost comes across as we find the roads really icy, and we're on summer tires...
After traveling on couple of ferries, having to deal with this really drugged up guy in a restaurant and the icy roads, we decide to call it a day and just not go all the way to Bremen. We find this great motel by the autobahn and decide to stay in Hamburg for the night. It's about 1.30 in the morning.
21.3. Bremen
The club in Bremen is not very big, but very comfortable, true rock'n'roll place. The first thing that really hits us is the catering in here. There are all kinds of food everywhere, and the beer is in before the PA! In Finland we're not used to this kind of hospitality. You'll be lucky to have dinner… and all this is just an appetizer. Second surprise is that they have a table football on the backstage!!!! I love this game, even though I'm quite bad at it. This is SO much more fun than all the video games in the world together.
We really don't know what to expect from this trip, the audience or The Weakerthans, so we decide to start this tour with a mellow set. It's just the feeling we have. We're not sure if people come to see rock or blues so to speak. From the first song on the set, we know that the audience is going to be good for us, these people are obviously here to listen! All goes well, but I think we'll be much better tomorrow.
Today is also the first time we really hear The Weakerthans. They sound really good. It's looking good. Peace.
At this time I think it's also appropriate to apologize The Weakerthans for the fact that we drank most of their red wine and whiskey. Sorry, it won't happen again.
We spend the night at the most awesome hotel. It's like one big apartment with 3 huge rooms that are made to look like as if someone lived in there. Very home like - if you had a lot of money and would decorate a design home. Comfortable, though.
22.3. Bielefeld
Not a long travel to Bielefeld, but we manage to drive around the city for a while before we find the club. I guess it would make a sense to buy a map of every town we go to. Anyway, this is a great club. Kind of a youth place. And guess what, they have the football game here as well! God bless Germany. It seems that Op:l Bastards are going to play here in April as well, go to see them, they are great!
The gig is excellent. We figure out what is the best set for this tour. We want to do really tight set with not too many songs in it. It's hard enough for people to listen to 8 songs by a band most have never heard of.
After the gig we want to buy beer from the bar, but they won't let us pay! It really makes it hard for us not to drink. Blame yr drinking on everyone else!!!! We're sleeping in this same building, it's very nice and comfy. This is so convenient, after the gig you have a couple of beers and go to sleep upstairs, but before that we play some late night football. Back in our apartment we spend some quality time with The Weakerthans. Yes, it means that we drink some beer, whiskey and champagne. While doing all this, we watch some music channels from telly. Viva & MTV mainly. These Canadian boys are really nice. And most importantly, they hate the same bands we do. We all think that this so called rap-metal is really funny, hard as warm ice-cream. We all agree that they'd shit in their pants if they ever had to face Neil Young, because he's HARD. Yeah, suck my Linkin Bizket!
23.3. München
Today's the longest drive between the venues, 605 kilometers! We leave early, but not early enough cause we nearly miss the show. During this drive we find out that our van can't really pull it off on uphill. We see trucks passing us as our speedometer slowly descends to 40 km/h at the worst. Very embarrassing and dangerous. To make this trip even more worse, the weather is pure shit with rain and wind. Not to mention one crash on the way and couple of heavy traffic jams! We stop at Burger King on the way and find out that they have Ranch Fries! These are the closest thing to the greatest Waffle Fries on earth at The Texicalli Grill in Austin, Texas. Worth a drive even from a bit further, like good mustard as they say. It's also Terttu's first ever BK experience and he's thrilled. Life's great moments are so unexpected! Anyway, by the time we arrive in Munich (17.00) there is rush hour… The gig's supposed to begin at 19 so it's not looking really good. After some odd U-turns, not really understanding the instructions we're given, we finally buy a map and get to the club in 10 mins. We're there at 18, an hour before the ShowTime.
We do a quick sound check, begin the show and guess what?!?! No bass!!! This is a thing that puzzles me?!?! You do a sound check, everything's fine. You touch nothing and once you begin to play - nothing! We quit the song after about 20 secs and have a little chat with the audience. The local soundman comes and changes a cord - BOOM! - there's the bass again. A miracle. We begin the show for the second time - this time with fat bottoms.
The show is really bizarre. I guess due to the fact that the show is so early, there are only a handful of people. We decide to take an advantage of this, naturally. We ask the audience to write their names on a paper and we're going to give out two T-shirts. A competition! So, here we'd like to thank Boris, Johannes (send me yr music), Fredemann, Barbara, Turpakini hinti (you have nasty Finnish friends, I believe!), Julian, Monika, Sandra, Berne, Winni, Josef, Andreas, Diana, Steve, Alex, Mr. Bingo, Michaela, Simon, Chris, Martina, Yvonne, Dominik and Anne (thanks for coming all the way from Frankfurt) for taking part on our game. In the end the gig was really good, Circus Lemonator kind of thing, very fun. It's the best playing so far on this tour.
Tomorrow we're going to the stadium to respect Lasse Virén who won at the Olympics 1972, even though he fell 300 meters before the goal-line. True hero. We spend the night at this very strange hotel with very bad breakfast and sci-fi module toilets (sorry, I won't go into the details).
24.3. Wil
Like I said, we find ourselves at the stadium early in the morning singing our national anthem to pay our respect to the great Lasse Virén. Respect! The stadium is beautiful.
Back on the road. Compared to yesterday's drive this is really peace of cake. Like I said, most of us missed the breakfast due to it's low price/value rating. We see a Burger King on the left side of the autobahn close to Switzerland, but obviously too late. We take the next exit, and guess what…we're on our way to totally wrong direction on another autobahn. We take the first U-turn and end up circling that BK for about 30 kms never finding it in the end as we follow Terttu's "intuition". The result: Terttu's intuition got bankrupted on that detour. We try to find another BK on the border with hopes to have them ranch fries, but no luck, no more intuition - it's Mc time. I'd seriously recommend them BK people to put some signs on the sides of the road if they want more customers. This is free advice.
We get to Austria and drive through this long (6,7 kms) tunnel. We need to pick a song that Quentin Tarantino would play on this occasion - we play the Temptation's "Papa Was A Rolling Stone". It lasts just the 6 minutes it takes to drive through this never-ending tunnel. See, it's really important to choose the right music for the right occasion. Terttu meets with the Alps for the first time. It's fun to see someone experience nature's great wonders for the first time. He looks just the same as he did after eating that Whopper with cheese at BK. He's loosing virginity on so many territories on this trip. Anyway, it's quite warm in Switz and the most beautiful country ever. I've never enjoyed sitting in a fully packed, smelly, small, slow van so much as I do here. Only thing I'm wondering about is all the shit that comes out of my mouth?!?! Sitting in this doghouse on wheels makes my brains work differently, I guarantee. The testosterone, gas and bad, bad jokes make parts of the brain numb. At times, I must admit, it's quite enjoyable though. Scary.
Wil is a beautiful small Swiss town with a scenery to die for. Therefore, it's surprising that the club is covered in graffiti, right next to a mill and railway, plus has chicken on the back yard. Quite bizarre combination, but the club is great. See folks, it's not about the looks . By this time it isn't a surprise for us that the catering is great and that the drinks are served before anything else - but we're not taking this for granted, no way. Enjoying every second of it. We're off to England in couple of weeks and we hear rumors that the catering doesn't mean the same as it does over here.
Today there's also 3rd band on the bill, The Shell. They're young Swiss band with very promising musical visions, so keep yr eyes & ears open. One day they might be playing in YOUR radio! Anyway, our gigs just keep getting better. Today there's a house full of people, and I guess due to the fact that it's Saturday, everyone is really partying. Great gig for us. Part of it was like a slow motion film for me, really beautiful and strong experience. Thank you wonderful people! Especially this one girl, you better take it "varovasti".
This is also the day that I realize I've become a huge The Weakerthans fan. This is also the day that we all realize that our agency rep Komo is a great guy. We also meet the local promoter, Martin, what a nice fellow! We'll send you the T-shirts! What a day, what a club (scary), what a trip and sooooo many free beers. The backstage here is like nowhere else, a lot of couches, candles, television, beer tap, silence…. Great. Oh yes, and today I also find out that certain kind of people look the same where ever you go. Isn't that weird?
25.3. Solothurn
This morning is the first that we have any time to go around the city. City of Wil is just beautiful. Antti and I take a walk for couple of hours while the rest of the guys are sleeping. What a great feeling to walk and to listen… We also stopped in Zurich for couple of hours on our way here. What a beautiful city with all those banks, and another tunnel with a song that Tarantino would choose. This time the song we chose was "My Boy Lollipop" by Millie from Jamaica.
At the moment I'm in Switzerland, right after the show. The first place where we actually have a possibility and time to check email. It's been a wonderful trip, The Weakerthans (now playing on the background) are the nicest people, and have the best audience! Night after night we get to play to people who quite obviously are BIG music fans. (I know I'm repeating myself, but some things need to be said over & over & over again).
Anyway, the trip's been beautiful. A lot of work though. When you spend thousands of kilometers with the same guys in a small van full of instruments, it gets a bit bizarre at times. You'd be willing to pay a small fortune to spend a moment on your own and with your loved one.
Today's gig was very good for us. I think it was very settled and well played. Very strong moods and very attentive audience. The fifth gig in a row. There are a lot of good things about being tired - emotionally at least. Music gets intensive. It's Sunday, so obviously a lot of people decided to stay home instead of coming to the gig. The same thing in Finland with Sundays, so I guess it's the global way. Kind of sad, 'cause I find Sundays the best for gigs. Anyway, enough people to make it a treat for us and to have a good party afterwards…
Like I've told you, in Germany and here they seem to have table football games pretty much everywhere. This backstage also has one and it's the best exercise before and after the show. Today we play the following world league matches: Finland - Canada, Finland - Germany, Europe -Canada… It seems that the Canadians and Germans are better rehearsed than us, but we win quite a few games - or that's how I at least remember it… Oh yes, I must mention this beautiful girl with whom I have a conversation for a while. It is very refreshing to talk properly with a woman after being stuck with the male species for so long time. Peace & love.
The Weakerthans are so good.
Tonight we're staying in this hostel which is very nice, but their toilets push the stuff in the wrong direction. I wonder, should we tell them about how toilets really work?!!? Anyway, when we arrive, it's very strange feeling as we crawl into this building in the dark that looks like a bank of some sort. I have to check from Komo if this is the right place. See, he might have this plan where he robs a Swiss bank and frames us as the suspects. You never know! Seriously.
26.3. Nürnberg
Back to Germany in the safe arms of EU. It's weird that within EU you really don't need the customs. You can just drive from one country to another and no one really cares. Switzerland's better stick to customs with all of them banks and all… Besides they can have their eggs as big as they want to, no EU-directives to limit their size. This is the part I really don't understand about EU, the eggs! Why can't chicken lay eggs the size THEY want to?!? Some guy in a tie and suit with a way too fat wallet in his pocket decides that this small, white feathery god's creation up in Finland, left without the gift of flying, doesn't have the right to lay her eggs the size she wants to. I'd say these people are off limits a mile or two.
We're all thrilled that Terttu left our bag full of fruits and food to the gas station because he misheard me saying the food in the bag has gone bad when I actually told him to move the bag from the heater so it wouldn't go bad…
It seems that we're off limits as well because a police car pulls us over. Now tell me, what's so suspicious about a van full of instruments with six dirty males in it? Is it the Finnish license plates? I know we've had our troubles in the past but, I thought we'd be even by now… No worries though, we're as clean as Mr. Proper and the police let us go. Before they leave, we give them a couple of CD-singles with autographs, and these guys are really pleased. They hope to see us in TV.
Today's club is quite big and it's image is very heavy metal. There are posters of Survivor, Bonfire, Saga, Uriah Heep in the toilets and I don't know what to think. We're all sure that today we need to bring axe's and stuff on stage to please the audience. Catering is also more on the meaty side. No vegetables today - bunny food! Oh yes, Annihilator played the night before us…
Luckily all our prejudiced thoughts were proved wrong as this becomes the best show on tour. There are quite a few people for Monday night, but most importantly, the audience is absolutely amazing! I can feel them listening, and boy do we play for them! It's also Kelly's birthday today which makes it all the more worth while.
At this time we don't feel like drinking that beer anymore - well some, but red wine and whiskey seem to go down better. We also meet some extremely nice people after the show. God bless you, hope to see you soon! It seems that we're so high on the good feelings that everyone's quite drunk by the end of the evening. On our way to hotel, we stop at McDonald's that's just closing their doors but for some reason they let us in and serve us food?!?!?! This is the most amazing thing, because in Finland we'd never have gotten any food at that time. It was 1 o'clock as we arrived and that's when they where supposed to close. They do look a bit pissed, though. Thank you so much dear McPeople and sorry for the trouble.
I must admit that I hate the idea of eating in these multinational corporate things instead of some local good ol' shit hole, but the honest truth is that there rarely is time to look for anything but that big sign with the picture of hamburger or M in it, and go for it. Gastronomy and travelling with rock band don't go together quite that well, unless you're a corporate band, of course. Smoking corporate cigarettes and eating corporate pie… We're pretty fucking far from that - in good and bad.
27.3. Nürnberg/Frankfurt a.M
The hotel we stay in is the most unbelievable. They have stereos in the room and serve breakfast to the rooms. I could get used to this. Usually even the televisions in the rooms are fixed so that you can barely hear from the speakers. Here, you can crank the stereo as loud as you want. Boy, those neighbors got lucky that we were so tired last night.
It's the second time that we have any spare time to go and see the city. This is a beautiful old city with beautiful churches and other buildings. We get to go to a record store for the first time on this trip and I can tell you that it's the closest thing to human-drug-experience that I've come to in a long time. I'm such an addict to buying records, those beautiful little shining or black, round things. Come to papa! Feel like a new born man. Antti's got a BIG smile on his face as well and Pentti's like a little kid in between the shelves.
Off we go to Frankfurt and we find the club without a single U-turn or detour. This is another graffiti dressed building with good catering, stage and PA. German's been so kind to us. We're really tired and begin to film the first version of to be classic "Salt Stick" movie starring Antti Karisalmi. You don't want to know - really!
The gig goes well, my voice is really tired and I have to be careful. 7 gigs in a row in these circumstances isn't what the doctor recommended. All goes well though, people would want to buy CDs, but we're all out of them. A friend of ours, the video director Semira, was supposed to come to the show, but she and her friends got stuck in traffic for about an hour and only hear us say "thank you, we're Lemonator, goodnight". Life.
In this club they are kind enough to let us pay for the drinks, and boy do they cost! That, and general relief of the last show, makes this a really mellow evening for us. I try desperately to get drunk, but instead of drinking, I rather breathe the fresh cigarette flavored air supplied free by the club. I think we're all thinking of tomorrow's hellish trip back to Finland. It's about 1500 km's plus a ferry ride from Stockholm to Turku plus another 160 kms to Helsinki. Our asses are going to be the closest thing to pan cakes on the ferry's breakfast.
Another great show by The Weakerthans. We change T-shirts and records, all in very good spirits and it's time for good-byes. Kind of sad that we have to leave, it's been the best tour for us. On our way to hotel the police pull us over again!!!!! These guys aren't smiling at all and once again we have to find our passports like we were in a warzone or something. Again, they can't find anything to arrest us or to do the glove thing or what ever. We don't give them CDs this time. Actually, I'm wondering that maybe the guys we gave the CDs to, sent these guys after us because they didn't like what they heard. Or maybe they wanted the full album this time. I don't know - I want to sleep.
Until next time! While waiting, you can play the artist name game. You know, Terttu says Robbie Williams, Risto says Snoop Doggy Dogg, Lasse says Gloria Gaynor, Antti says Ronan Keating, Kelly says Gloria Estefan and Pentti says Nerd In A Small Van, he recorded two 7" singles for the Slow Green Devil label.
Peace.
Yours truly,
Lasse, now 4 900 kilometers older.
THE RECORDS THAT WE LISTENED TO DURING THE EUROPEAN TOUR 21.-27.3.2001
Due to the substansial amount of cds we had with us (appr. 130), no records were listened for more than one time.
1. Peter Tosh: Legalize It
2. The Story Of Jamaican Music: Dance Hall Good To We
3. The Story Of Jamaican Music: Forward March
4. Snoop Doggy Dogg: Doggystyle
5. Nick Drake: Bryter Layer
6. Liekki: Magio
7. Simon & Garfunkel: Old Friends
8. Burt Bacharach: The Look Of Love (cd2)
9. E.L.O.: The Very Best Of E.L.O. (2cd)
10. Tom Waits: Mule Variations
11. Herbie Hancock: Head Hunters
12. Cutris Mayfield: Curtis/Live!
13. Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim
14. Manu Chao: Clandestino
15. Dusty Springfield: Am I The same Girl
16. Temptations: The Best Of (2cd)
17. Topi Sorsakoski & Agents: In Beat
18. Stevie Wonder: Innervisions
19. Stone Cold Funk: Various Artists
20. Van Morrison: Moondance
21. Willie Hutch: Foxy Brown
22. Chet Baker & Strings
23. Nina Simone: Finest Hour
24. Marcos Valle: Samba '68
25. Antonio Carlos Jobim: Wave
26. Buena Vista Social Club
27. Blue Juice: Various Artists
28. Shirley Bassey: The Gold Collection
29. Cal Tjader: Soul Burst
30. Donovan: Mellow
31. John Lennon: Imagine - Soundtrack
32. Carpenters: The Singles 1969-73
33. Curtis Mayfield: Curtis
34. O'Jays: Back Stabbers
35. Kool and the Gang: Kool and the Gang
36. Marvin Gaye: Trouble Man
37. Isaac Hayes: Shaft
38. Sly & The family Stone: There's A Riot Going On
39. Buddy Miles: The Best Of
40. The Zombies: Odessey And Oracle
41. Massive Attack: Blue Lines
42. AC/DC: High voltage
43. Mamas & The Papas: Classic
44. Edu Lobo: Lobo
45. THE NWA LEGACY VOLUME 1988-1998
46. D´angelo: VOODOO
47. J.Karjalainen: Marjaniemessa
48. The Hollies At Abbey Road 1963-66
49. Gryphon: Red Queen To Gryphon Three / Raindance
50. Tobias Sammet's Avantasia - The Metal Opera
51. Phoenix: United
52. The Very Best Of Manu DiBango - Afrosouljazz
53. Black Party Grooves (2cd) (Various Artists)
54. Blue Brazil (Various Artists)
55. The Beach Boys: The Best Of... - 1970-86 The Brother Years
56. The Jimmy Castor Bunch: It's Just Begun / Phase Two
57. Herbie Hancock: Man Child
58. Byron Lee & The Dragonaires: Ska Reggae Soca Style
59. King Crimson: Red
60. The Temptations: All Directions
61. More 80's hits (8cd)
62. Astrud Gilberto: Best Of
63. Manic Street Preachers: Know Your Enemy
The following records weren't played in the van for more than a song or two, but had a spin in the headphones we all brought along.
64. Talking inside the beat.
65. Anssi Kela: Nummela
66. Sade: Lovers rock
67. Slam mix Soma.
68. Rush hour
69. Jovanotti: Lorenzo raccolta
70. The Walker Brothers: The Singles+ (2cd)
71. J.S. Bach: The French Suites (2cd) (Keith Jarrett)
72. J.S. Bach: Toccatas (Wolfgang Rübsam)
73. Messe De Tournai (XIVe siècle) (Ensemble Organum)
74. Flauto Dolce-Flauto Traverso (Loeillet, Händel etc.) (Sibelius Academy Baroque Ensemble)
75. Toto: Isolation / Fahrenheit (2cd)
76. The Stylistics: The Greatest Hits
77. Henry Mancini: Breakfast At Tiffany´s / Arabesque
78. Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band: Trout Mask Replica
79. Can-soolo: Toy Planet (Irmin Schmidt etc.)
80. Can-soolo: Phantom Band - Nowhere (Jaki Liebezeit etc.)
81. The Pretty Things: Unrepentant - The Pretty Things 1964-1995 (2cd)
82. Sergei Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 1-4 (2cd) (Ashkenazy, London Symphony Orchestra, Previn)
83. Manboy
84. Afro Cuban All-Stars:: A Toda Cuba le Gusta
85. Nat King Cole:: 20 Great Love Songs
86. Astrud Gilberto: Verve Jazz Masters 9
87. Havana Mood
88. Antonio Carlos Jobim: Jobim
89. The Wailers: Catch A Fire
90. King Tubby & Soul Syndicate: Freedom Sounds In Dub
91. Twilight Singers: Twilight
92. Classic Reggae: The Producers
93. Classic Reggae: The DeeJays
94. Air: Premiers Symptomes
95. Nick Drake: Five Leaves Left
96. PJ Harvey: Stories From the City, Stories From The Sea
97. Morphine: The Night
98. Jon Brion: Meaningless
99. That Ole Devil Called Love (2cd): Various Artists
100. Blues Brother, Soul Sister Classics: Various Artists
101. Foo Fighters: Nothing Left To Loose
102. Tindersticks: Curtains
103. Gerry & The Pacemakers: At Abbey Road 1963-66
104. Dinah Washington: Finest Hour
105. Buddy Holly:: Millennium Collection
106. Hüsker Du: Candy Apple Gray
107. Scott Walker: Scott
108. Getz/Gilberto
109. Massive Attack: Mezzanine
110. Madonna: Music
111. Don Johnson Big Band: Support de Microphones
112. Coldplay: Parachutes
113. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
114. The Soundtrack Of Our Lives: Behind the Music
115. Radiohead: The Bends
116. Beck: Mutations
117. Elvis: Collection
118. Zen Cafe: Helvetisti Jarkea
119. The Posies: Frosting On The Beater
120. Air: The Virgin Suicides -soundtrack
121. Jason Falkner: Can You Still Feel?
122. Grandaddy: The Sophtware Slump
123. Morcheeba: Big Calm
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