2.12.04 Rose Garden, Helsinki

Acoustic set! For a band like us, who usually rely on multilayered, technicoloured & fullranged electronic sounds, it was a fun trip playing good ol' country heehaw-style. Our man with the machines, VESA, was chilling out in Cuba, so the stripped down versions of songs were rehearsed once with mr. Abdissa Assefa a.k.a Mamba playing all kinds of great percussive thingies. Including a wooden box that sounds like a big drumset. A WOODEN BOX THAT SOUNDS LIKE A BIG DRUMSET! And we thank and thank and thank him for happily playing with us, It's always amazing to work with REAL musicians. Although Arttu kind of falls in that category of REAL musicians, except he plays in our band "full time", so there must be SOMETHING WRONG with him and his relation to real musicianship. Anyway, It was a fun half an hour in Rose Garden, the new "in" place of Helsinki Rock City. We started off with a crazy twisting and hollering version of "Headless Rooster", just to show the audience that it was not going to be all quiet easy listening. Ville's microphone did not work, but the moronic loud shouting was semi-audible anyway. MORONIC AND LOUD! AND SEMI-AUDIBLE! YEAH! Then we proceeded to the ballady stuff, and the ballady stuff was good. Antti played his old Noso -guitar like "Tapsa Rautavaara possessed by Ali Farka Toures good voodoo" and Arttu was his usual "Billy Gibbons meets Marc Ribot meets Steely Dan meets Bad ains meets Blind Lemon Jefferson in a Kaurismäki movie starring the 80's Sylvester Stallone" -self with his banjo and baritone guitar stylings. Mamba's rhythm patterns took it to a different level. Ville kind of sucked, but the musatorstai audience was so nice it did not matter. The party crowd was a nice crowd. And the musatorstai-deejays kept the mood good with some Madonna-tracks til the wee hours of the morning. Extra special thanks for Jussi Karjalainen for being the super-great guy he is. JUSSI! YEAH!

16.10.04 Saunabar, Helsinki

A semi-private bithday party for our Indian "tour manager". A functioning little Pa-system! Fantastic Indian food! With the real taste of food! Hot Best! Lots of beer backstage and Arttu as a hard rock DJ on the radio. Moustaches and mental and/or fysical cowbells! Johnny Winter! Deep Purple! James Gang! Mahavishnu Orchestra! ZZ TOP! The Nuge! If you can't lick 'em, LICK 'EM! After the delicious meal we went on stage at 21.00. We were pretty good. People listened good. Some danced good. According to Peter Lerche Arttu played "seamless banjo". There were a couple of short moments where Ville sang almost like a person capable of singing. Vesa made no mistakes. If Antti made them, they were all the lucky kind. We are dangerously close to becoming a tight band. We must do something about this.

Chicks dig Black Audio. Happy Birhtday Schubert.

30.09.04 Klubi, Tampere

Thursday night, lots of empty space in Tulliklubi. But also enough people to make the gig a worthwhile and happy experience. And a decent PA-system with good monitoring and all. Again we could hear what we were playing. Great! I can hear my voice! And of course they have the good food, sandwiches and potato chips for musicians at the Tampere's Klubi. Nice! POTATO CHIPS! That's a hint for all you people organizing gigs here in Finland. Potato chips, the good old kind. Mm-mm. Yummy. POTATO CHIPS! PO-TA-TO! And the gig was ok. People sat down through the slow numbers, and a nice bunch of them proceeded into dancing towards the end, as we proceeded to the rockers. All around nice feeling. Guitarists played with a nice and rough Crazy Horse-distortion style. Good going, guitarists! Ville jumped up and hanged from a pole for a few seconds, just like the last time we played at Klubi, and again this was the trick that captured the hearts of the audience. "Hey, that guy hangs from a pole!". "Let's clap our hands in extatic joy as a token of our appreciation!". Cruel facts about shrews (the cruelest animal in the world), and the timeline between Blind Jeffersons" See that my grave is kept clean" and the new Megadeth album were presented to the audience. They didn't get it. We didn't either. We walked away with a bag full of lemonade.

26.08.04 Dubrovnik, Helsinki Helsinki city, art goes kapakka night. Lots of people in a very nice club. Good stage monitoring, which we seldom have. Great! It's a nice feature on a gig if you can hear what you're playing. We played two sets and most of the audience seemed to like it a lot. New Black Sabbath style version of Ghost Arcade played for the first, but certainly not for the last time. Heavy Metal Thunder. Two cd's sold! Whoo-pee- eee! Now we can quit our day jobs. Many nice members of the nice audience came thanking us for the music. Thank you. Your encouraging words give us the strength to carry on. Really. We also managed to record some lame ass vocals and kick ass guitar for the next album (will be released in 2005 or 2006 or something) during this Helsinki session. It was a session of magic. A happy present from the earth. Electric shepherd. The only gay guys from Forssa. I think I'd better stop now.

18.07.04 Club Kasettiasema, Kerubi, Joensuu

Oh Yes, Club Kasettiasema and good old Kerubi (although all new & nice cafeteria style Kerubi) meet for the first time. It was a good meeting. Excellent live shows from such household names as Sakari Usva, Herra Lehtolan Monet Tähdet, L'go Pistooli, Anssi Kasitonni Ja Kovat Piipussa kept the good Kasettiasema atmosphere up through the whole Ilosaarirock weekend. We had the headlining slot on Sunday night. And what a night it was. It was a night of magic. Maaginen Munuaiskone rolled over the astonished audience like a stampede of rabies-infected cows. It was a tough act to follow but the lovely audience (including those Kotiteollisuus boys from TV's late night chat show) emaced our stuff right from the start and the rest of the night was all happy dancing, handclapping and partying like good people do. We had some technical difficulties but did that slow us down? Well, it kinda did, but were pretty sure nobody noticed. It was all good fun and great plans were made to repeat everything next summer. Let's see how it turns out. Extra special thanks to Kerubi's ever-so-nice staff and The Lehtinen Family for sauna, grill and having a sense of humour. And people, you gotta ask yourselves this question: A video - what is it?

03.07.04 Hälläpyörä, Hämeenlinna

Hämeenlinna’s Hälläpyörä is always a nice place in the afternoon. There’s always some serious drinkers giving you free advice during the soundcheck. "Hey boys, play some Rauli Badding Somerjoki!". It’s either too loud or not loud enough. Middle-aged people with alcohol addictions are a tough crowd. But late in the evening the place was packed with Ämy Rock posse. Music lovers of various lifestyles, shapes and sizes. And they are the nicest audience. So our extra long set featuring several all new, "never before played live" -type of songs was met with eager dancing and handclapping. Wonderful people. You make it worthwhile. Heavy Ilcca dominated. We also have to mention that the DJ in Hälläpyörä club was excellent. And a nice guy, too. Earlier at the Ämy festival area Ville stood in the pouring rain just to see Deep Turtle’s gig. Which was simply amazing. Deep Turtle is THE MAN. Also we got to experience various nice things like swimming in the middle of the night in icy water and reading old Suosikki magazines in a summer cabin. And the worst weather of this summer on Saturday. It rained, man. It rained cows and horses. It rained old people. Man, it rained like a motherfucker.

17.04.04 Meduusa Festival, Kouvola

A big art student happening in a big indoor sport arena. Lots of people jammed into a small cafeteria area, where you can buy and drink beer. Some people in the big hall where you can watch and listen to the band but you can’t drink beer. But that didn’t matter. Enough people listening and dancing anyway. The Kouvola student posse filmed and recorded the event and sent us a and spanking new DVD of our own gig. Good going, Kouvola! The DVD proves that we did not suck. We were ok. Arttu had a nasty fuzz sound. Rock’n’roll. Antti rocked like a master of fine arts should. Like a hurricane. Vesa placed his equipment on a table. Yeah, ing the noise! Rock like hell! Ville did some Axl Rose moves. Axl Rose - a very sad guy. Kouvola is a place where the trains stop and turn. Like a hurricane. Most of the evening was spent pondering over things like “is our record ever going to be released by our record company?”, Miljonääri-Jussi, “what’s taking so long with the pizza delivery?” and why roadmaster Ilkka is so damn clever making up names for fictitious Japanese noise artists.

24.03.04 Stella Star Club, Helsinki

Wednesday night. A big club. We as the headliners. A handful of people. Which was ok because they were interested in what we were doing. And we sounded fine. Antti travelled 8 million miles just to play like the hard rockin' daddy he is, and then travelled 8 million miles back home again. Good work ethics. Ville did a handstand. Arttu soloed like a man possessed. Vesa kept it all more or less under control. The organizers of the event were young. We are old. Music is our motorized wheelchair.

20.03.2004 Pikku-Torre, Turku (w/ L'Go Pistooli)

Kääntö Records birthday party at Pikku-Torre restaurant. With the 3€ ticket everyone got a compilation CD which has our "Switched Dub" and 8 other fine pieces of music on it. L'go Pistooli played a great gig. Fättii beissii. And nice melodies and beats too. There's no monitoring in Pikku-Torre so we did not really hear what we were doing on stage but with the lovely audience, it did not matter. Ville pretty much screwed up the first song, but the rest was all good. Very nice and intimate home-party feeling, bad abstract jokes and nice versions of our new stuff. And a refreshing tempo-changing Kalshnikov. And of course mr. Alanko and Kääntö Hostel provided us with everything we could ever need. Arttu bought a Zero Nine cd as a present for roadmaster Ilkka. The joke backfired drastically as the cd was actually placed in the cd player on the way back home. Very sad material.

19.03.04 Club Promo, Tampere

We played in a very small bar section of the night club. Which was good because it seemed like the house was full of people. And the people who filled the bar seemed to dig our gig, so it was good fun. We played a lot of songs from our new "A Million Stars Are Burning" album and with Arttu on banjo etc. the old songs sound new too. Backstage had a bad smell. A oken sewer or something. And a lot of tomato juice. That funny Alivaltiosihteeri guy from the radio was in the audience. A big discusion about Pete Leppämäki dancesteps. A very young dude behind the mixing desk. Not too humble. Nicest audience of all our Tampere gigs and propably the best Tampere gig we've played. Cozy and fun.

23.01.2004 Kipsari, Helsinki (w/ The Verticals)

Kipsari is a nice place. Very good veggie baked goods and free lemonade for the musicians. Great. DJ Mike D Snider and his cohorts who were the organizing force behind the wonderful happening had advertised properly and the place was jam-packed with music lovers. Mike D's DJ selections were uplifting and the Verticals played a deeply groovy set. The mood was good. We set up our gear feeling self confident because we had actually rehearsed properly in an actual rehearsal place for this gig. First time in our band history. So it was going to be an all hits, no misses kind of gig. But then the local PA system just said NO. There was an hour long frustrated waiting period as we, Mixmaster Mikko and the Kipsari sound engineer tried to find out what the hell had happened to the sound system. About 5 seconds before we were about to announce that "sorry folks, the PA is busted and we just can't play without it", something magical happened and it started working again.

Gladly most of the audience stayed and waited for the show because despite of some technical difficulties it proved to be a good one. We played good, properly arranged versions of our new songs and people seemed to dig it. And the rocking numbers and the end of the set got the girls dancing. Both Antti and Arttu got to do some wild soloing. Extra extended version of Kalashnikov as an encore was enjoyed by us and at least 78% of the audience. It was good fun and we are anxious to release the new album and play more shows like this with our new extra rocking line-up. Arttu on banjo, harmonica and baritone guitar. Antti on guitar and vocals. Vesa at the controls of all kinds of digital equipment and Ville on vocals and abstract stand up comedy. And of course, Mixmaster Mikko handling the sound system. So, rock clubs, festivals, concert halls and arenas of all sizes, keep those offers pouring in. Please.