29.08.03 Semifinal, Helsinki (w/ Jolly Jumpers)

Semifinal full of people. Arttu T on banjo, harmonica and baritone guitar. Everything seemed great and but we still put on a lame show. A new song called "Ghost Arcade" did not rock. Or the song did, but the band did not. Still, people liked it. Strange people. But strange in a good way. And of course Arttu's banjo and other instruments took our sound to the extra-bonus level. Yeah. Bogart co. joke did not warm the hearts of the audience. A nice guy from New York spoke nice things about our music's relations to the Southern Gothic thing they have in America. Jolly Jumpers ruled and played a beautiful version of our song "When I Get Old". We were very pleased.

16.05.03 Club Kasettiasema, Grammari, Lappeenranta

Good Kasettiasema feeling. Nice music, nice people. We did ok. The audience liked it. We got into the free improv playing in India so some of that happened also in Lappeenranta. Good for us, Maybe good for the listeners. We're not exactly sure. Great manual lightshow by Ville Koho and Mr. Roboto. Yeah. Don't Let It End.

The India Tour 26.04.-10.05.03

So, we got a chance to go and do some shows in Southern India as a part of Indo-Finnish cultural exchange program. Black Audio, the finest that Finnish culture has to offer, the cultural ambassadors, the hottest rock band, the big time professional European entertainers, a band so amazing that it would certainly ing South India to it's knees. YEAH, RIGHT.

And boy, we most humbly thank mr. Schubert Daniel and all the people in Indo-Finnish exchange posse for taking us there because it was a fun trip. Coming from Finland, it takes a couple of days to adjust yourself cause it's literally A DIFFERENT WORLD out there. Good thing we had a few days just to lay low and get adjusted to the Indian style of doing things in Mahabalipuram, a small seashore town before we had any shows. Those crazy Indians play their great music loud, really dig 3-D fonts (every street sign is handpainted in ight colors and dynamic 3-D action fonts are used), make the best food, drive their mopeds like insane, want to sell you postcards, garments and stone carvings and are generally very interested in who you are, what you do, where you come from and what's your country like if you stand out from the crowd as white skin westerners are sure to do in South India.

And the time of year we were there was HOT. HOT! EXTREMELY HOT! In the night time the temperature was like 36 degrees Celsius and at high noon the sun and the heat was just too much. Even for the locals. For us every smallest thing was like really interesting and usually a bit odd. Everyone used to the Aki Kaurismäki way of film-making will find Southern Indian entertainment (music, TV, movies…) very fast and experimental. These guys just won't stay in the same mood or style more than fifteen seconds at a time. Every fifteen seconds every song or plotline takes a U-turn and turns into something completely different. It's like UNIDENTIFIED SOUND OBJECTS would have made a remix of everything there. Sami of U.S.O., we urge you to go to India, you'll be an instant success.

Since South India seldom gets any western rock bands, we were treated like international rock'n'roll figures. The National TV News frequently reported about "Black Audio, the hottest band from Finland" to 300 – 500 million people as did the Southern Indian Music TV channels and local newspapers. And because of the temperature being way up there, supposedly we were the HOTTEST band from Finland during our stay in India. We felt really hot. And sweaty. Just a bit too hot. We got to watch the sunset with monkeys, eat home made dosai, saw crocodiles, and had good conversations with many wonderful individuals. It was great.

30.04.03 Lucky Inn, Mahabalipuram

This was not an actual gig, but a sort of semi-public rehearsal happening in a bamboo roof restaurant on the top of our motel in Mahabalipuram. The day before had Schubert (Out tour manager) fixed some local guy to ing us an Indian sound system so we could practise in our motel room. So these two guys ing a bunch of junk with their mopeds and set up a system where you just stick two copper wires in the electrical sockets and have a funny little Indian amplifier and two speakers which have the name NATHAN hand painted on them. We played a short set to a small group of Mahabalipuramians and a few Western travellers with this gear and the sound was THE CRAPPIEST EVER. And this time we mean it. But still it was fun and the vocals had a great "this is your captain speaking, please fasten your seatbelts" –kind of middle range distortion sound. As did everything else, too.

02.05.03 Vineyard Centre, Chennai

A youth centre that has a music school for kids and raises funds to help street kids with drug habits and etc. The soundcheck was the greatest we have ever done because at he same time we were setting up they had some kind of summer school thing for little children who were training some Indian dance routines. That was very different compared to the rather sinister mood of Finnish rock clubs and soundchecks. Little people dancing around and having fun. YEAH. And the gig was quite absurd also. Since it is a youth centre, it was very much like band nights in Finnish Youth centres. Before us played a music school band called ASTEROID. A group of Indian teenagers doing Judas Priest covers! FANTASTIC! It's an universal thing that teenage boys everywhere play bad heavy metal. Asteroid did absolutely the best version of "eaking The Law" you'll ever hear. Then it was our turn and we played like we usually do. Only the audience consisted of Chennai teens and their parents. But they seemed to like it and the more we rocked, the better they liked it. Ville doing a handstand captured the youngsters hearts and was granted with big applause. GOODY GOODY. And another strange thing was that two TV channels had come to a youth centre to film our gig and do interviews. You'd never see that at a Finnish Youth Centre. If we played in Finnish Youth Centres. But since there are no actual rock clubs in Chennai, the Vineyard centre is the place where rock bands play when they happen to play in Chennai. STRANGE BUT GOOD.

02.05.03 The Leather Bar, Chennai

After the Youth Centre show we rushed to Park Hotel where we stayed in Chennai. The place was a five star hotel with all the ridiculous five star things like servants who want to shine your shoes and ing you complimentary baskets of exotic fruits and all kinds of crazy rich people shit. Next to Park Hotel's lobby was "the-in-place" of Chennai, the rather funnily named LEATHER BAR. A very modern and quite small designer bar where everything costs like ten times more than in other places in India (and is still cheaper than in Finland). We played two sets and it was fun and the sound really good. Antti got to play with an original 1963 Fender Twin Reverb amp. Lucky Antti. The crowd was mostly very upper class, highly educated middle aged Indian business people and some western hotel guests. People that would go screaming out of our shows in Finland. But here they really dug our groove. The harder we rock the more they like it. Total freak out guitar battle versions of "Kalashnikov" and "Louisiana" really sunk in. People clapping hands and dancing in a sophisticated manner. GREAT. "It was very illiant", says a middle aged business guy with a big moustache. And a Norwegian guy asks if we've heard of 22- Pistepirkko.

03.05.03 The Leather Bar, Chennai

Same place, same kind of mood. We played three sets. And again the harder we rock etc. This time we freak out even more. "Louisiana" lasts like fifteen minutes and we see adults rocking to a free rock version of Suicide's "Ghost Rider". And we end the night with an insane guitar-bashing version of "Kalashnikov" and people come thanking us with phrases like "especially the last song was absolutely illiant". It's all good and we amuse ourselves with the five star luxury dinners and exotic eight course eakfasts and of course 65 channels of Indian craziness on television. This is how we European entertainers live on our tours of Asia. YEAH, RIGHT.

08.05.03 Planet M, Bangalore

Again we have a couple of days to rest in Mahabalipuram. GOODY GOODY. We take the night train from Chennai to Bangalore. It is less than 400 kilometres but it takes almost 9 hours for the Indian train. It's nice and adventurous. We don't get much sleep. It's a bumpy ride. Bangalore seems very nice from a taxi window but when we get to the hotel we are too tired to go looking around so we just rest and then go to a big record store called Planet M to play a showcase gig. They have a stage in the center of the record store and there's a guy who announces to the customers every 5 minutes that "please come to see the extraordinary alternative musical experience from Finland. The band Black Audio will be enthralling us here on Planet M's center stage with their unusual form of music with a raprockbluesjazz feel." We are amused. And the gig is silly. Playing in the day time in a record store is silly. Wide-eyed people watching the crazy westerners twitching strangely on stage. But they like it and after the show we meet some great people. Young boys come asking how they can go on with their music careers because they have a rock band. Like we know anything about careers. There's also a guy with a Kenny Rogers cassette who wants to know if we like country music because he heard some country influences in our songs. We tell him that we like country music a lot. And Kenny Rogers, he's THE MAN. And many other nice people who want to know about Finnish music scene and stuff like that. But then we have to hurry to our hotel, THE CLUB, where we have a show also. Sad thing because it would have been nice to check out the record store properly.

08.05.03 The Club, Bangalore

It's a big club in a big hotel. There's also a big outside stage by the pool and a theatre in the same hotel. Not too many but enough people so that there's sense in playing the gig. We play very long versions again. They seem to like it. We are told to start at 9 p.m. because the disco thing has to get started at eleven. Then when we stop at eleven we are told that "you guys should play at half past one again because that's the time when the disco-crowd is coming". We say no thanks since we haven't slept a wink the last night and have to get up at 4 a.m. the next morning. The hotel manager tells us stories of Boyzone, Deep Purple, Elton John, The Rolling Stones and Slash playing or just hanging around at The Club.

So the next day is spend on the train back to Chennai. Then we get to experience the overwhelming hospitality of mr. Vasudevan Varma as he takes us to his home to freshen up and rest, drives us around to do some last minute shopping and eating. We also get to eat dosai made by his mother. Another universal thing: Mothers everywhere urge you to eat some more when you are already full. "You eat nothing. You take more." And the fresh coffee from their own farm tastes better than any coffee we have ever tasted. Thanks, Vasu. Then it's a night flight to Frankfurt and from there to Helsinki. After two weeks of constant bombardment on all our senses in India (it's a place full of smells, sounds, colours, mopeds & people) The Helsinki Railway station seems like the most quiet place on Earth. It's good to be back in SWEET HOME SUOMI.

08.03.03 Pikku-Torre, Turku (w/ L'Go Pistooli DJ's)

A nice little place. Great food. Great audience. Nice intimate feeling. Long versions of our songs. Rock´n´Roll Egos "single-remix-midnight rub-version" played live for the first time. People bought t-shirts. Good people! We didn't really hear what we were playing due to lack of monitoring but that didn't slow things down. It was all fine because people were in such a good mood and actually seemed to like our music and dumbass inside jokes. Go, Turku, go! Extra special thanks and apologies to Alanko/Suomela for accommodation and AC/DC dvd with funny subtitles. Seppo Taalasmaa has a posse. Heavy-Ilcca sung some hardcore punk lyrics in a hardcore punk voice. It caused fear and loathing among a few innocent Turku nightlifers.

06.03.03 YO-talo, Tampere (w/ The Blossoms)

Film festival happening. Lots of people. Lots of food. Lots of snacks. We did ok. Probably 15 % of the audience were interested in our show and the rest were there to see friends, drink a few drinks and dance to the dj´s hits. And that´s ok. Some people bought our and new t-shirts and some even danced. We drove away with a large chunk of cheese.

01.03.03 Nosturi, Helsinki (w/ Quintessence)

We sounded good. Thanks to mr. Arttu Tolonen who played banjo & harmonica and took our sound to a whole new level. To an extra bonus level. A few people witnessed and some of them seemed to like it. Sort of. Nosturi is a nice venue. Excellent stage sound, real food and beautiful wallpaper backstage. And some jälkiuuniead. Rock yeah. The singer of the American band Godsmack was on TV and told us about their video. "It was shot in the same prison where they filmed some footage for Tango & Cash. That's a Sylvester Stallone movie." We were not impressed.

01.02.03 Hälläpyörä, Hämeenlinna (w/ Likeminded)

Intimate, cozy setting jam packed with good Hämeenlinna people and loyal friends of Räkärodeo, the greatest radio show ever. Feeling very good. We like our audience. Our audience likes us. People dancing, clapping hands and even singing along. Absolutely fan-tas-tic. A lot of people voted for Billy Idol in the "who's inside Chewbacca" question, but Heavy-Ilcca's strong vote for Chris Holmes was the one that counted. Since the crowd was eager to party we proceeded to our more rocking material after just a couple of slower grooves and ended our set with a happier version of "Kalashnikov" called "Räkhäroudiou". The lyrics: "It's all around the world, all the boys and girls, yeah the young and the old, everybody knows the sound of Räkärodeo. Räkärodeo! For the encore we played ZZ Top's "Sleeping Bag" with Ville mostly singing about laying it on down. Yeah. Special thanks to Likeminded for the guitar amp, Vesa's parents for accommodation and maximum food services.

19.01.03 Riemufestivaali, Semifinal, Helsinki (w/ Selfish Shellfish, The Rollstons)

Riemu festival ending partee! Selfish Shellfish good! The Rollstons good! We good! DJ Asko good! DJ Japa good! Audience good! All good! Our profit: a million bucks and hearts full of sweet memories. Extra thanks to the Rollstons for guitar amps and to dynamic duo Putro / Salminen for that little piece of paper that said: "Hesan gurkot. Must die." (It doesn't translate well.) The Närsäkkälä zen attitude was presented to the audience. Theo Huxtable has a posse. And Onni Partanen as well.

15.01.03 Riemufestivaali, Lutakko, Jyväskylä (w/ The Sounds)

In Lutakko they care about you. Potato chips (the good old kind), sweet sweet candy, refreshments and good food. And plastic plates just like in elementary school. We played a good gig. A few people witnessed. Lutakko was half empty but we felt nice. A hilarious body building magazine kept us amused backstage. The ride home was the scariest ever. Icy road made all attempts to steer the car useless. But: back in one piece. It's 6 a.m. No stick on the road. Chris Holmes is inside all things.

14.01.03 Riemufestivaali, YO-talo, Tampere (w/ The Sounds)

Worst weather ever. Maximum respect to Heavy-Ilkka, the driver. Showtime 22.00. People still coming in. Major difficulties in "Wish I Was Your Soul Man". Good sandwiches. Pepsi in those good ol' bottles. Gig ok. A humorous anecdote involving Mr. Toppo Koponen heard from mr. Riemufestivaali. The Coca-Cola / Aspirin dilemma was presented to the audience. A couple of records sold. Whoo-peee! The Sounds are funny.

08.01.03 Kopiklubi, Tavastia, Helsinki (w/ 22-Pistepirkko, Verzillos, Adult Nuthouse + lots of others)

Yoga, punk rock '82 style, Jim Pembroke + a hell of a lot more. We played three songs, first two ok. The third not. Still everyone seemed to like. Jim said: "Hyvä meininki". DJ Kopi ruled. 22-Pistepirkko also played three songs. All of them ok. The Chewbacca / Chris Holmes dilemma was presented to the audience. One record sold!