News entries for the year 2001
31.12.2001 Happy New Year! (Insert that cheery Abba-tune here, please) I've been so wrapped
up in rehearsing for this New Year's Eve gig that I'm doing with the Sugarrush that most things Graceskull
have been left aside but I've managed to get the lyrics I promised in shape. The song is thus far called
"This easy life" and the lyrics are to be found in the songs-section, I guess it was about time to get
something new in there already. I'm hoping to get a demo of that tune done also some time in the near future,
if it comes out right I might be posting that one also in here. Maybe. But concerning tonight's happenings
also a minor Graceskull event is in store for people in DOM bar in Vaasa as I'm doing a couple of acoustic
numbers with the Sugarrush in there and we might be playing one ol' 'Skull tune too. But the main event is
still in Amarillo where the 'Rush will rock in the New Year in err...well, rocking fashion. Let's make
this a good year, children.
28.12.2001 So I finally got rid of the cast on my arm yesterday, hooray. The crack in the bone hadn't still healed properly so I had to haggle myself out of another month of castbound life. After some 24 hours without the cast, the doctor called me up and told that they'd had another look at the X-rays and I had to come down so they'd put the cast back for another 6 weeks. And that they did. I just hope it will heal properly now. I wrote lyrics to an older song yesterday, I just have to pick which verses to keep, some were pretty good and some had their ups and downs. I guess the song could be called "This easy life" or "Holes", I'll put the lyrics up here once I get the fucker in shape. Aaaand then we are honored to have a couple entries on the great Finnish pop site One Chord to Another's end of the year lists, check 'em out here.
27.12.2001 Filled with heaps of chocolate and other goodies we're back from X-mas holidays. It wasn't all spent on ramming down another bon-bon down though as we got some studiowork done yesterday. We recorded some guitar for "Push" and "Not that fast" plus we recorded everything for "Snowflake part 2". This doesn't mean as much work as it sounds since part 2 is just guitar and that good ol' suitcase organ of Julius'. To backtrack a little on X-mas eve Ilkka had himself a special (to say the least) solo-gig lined up which of course me and Julius attended. He was dressed up as Josef (that's the "father" of Jesus for those not in the know) and sung a Finnish version of "Amazing Grace" on the altar of Vaasa's biggest church that was packed with people. A strange number it was but it did sound fine, I just kept thinking of how nice it would be to record in an old church like Buffalo Tom did for their best work "Let me come over".
21.12.2001 Hot off the press we have a review of "First Time Again" for you from Rumba magazine, click here to read it, it's quite a nice one. I'm glad of the fact that all the reviews we've had have been positive and critique has been aimed directly to the same things we've been unhappy about the record.
19.12.2001 I'm going to be featured in Firevision's liveset for one song's duration on March 16th in Vaasa's Amarillo. It should be interesting, I will be singing on their/Alkalyne's remix of "Lover".
18.12.2001 I just have a couple of things for you to click on today. First off you can click here to read the excerpt from Pohjalainen's story of Saturday's gig. And then head over here to check out my new records.
17.12.2001 After a quick run through the set with El Tero-Teró on Friday night we headed over to Vaasa's Amarillo to check out "Lover" remixer Mikko Tamminen's new project Firevision after which I had to rush home since my flu was taking over. On Saturday I must've drunk 5 litres of water to keep my voice from disappearing and luckily it held up pretty nicely. After getting off stage we all apparently felt like it hadn't gone that good at all but after receiving kind words from a strangely big number of people, I guess it had sounded nice after all. Our setlist was the same as on Thursday's gig, we're lazy, us. And oh yeah on a sidenote, our fresh record company comrades Leopold Delloria really played a fantastic gig. Rawk! There seemed to be a line or two in the local newspaper about the gig also, I might squeeze them in here in tomorrow if I get my hands on the paper. On the remix front news are that Panu Savinainen previewed his sketches for "Uneasy" and it did sound wonderful, he thinks it's too cheerful and happy but I don't mind it at all at least. Circum's Ilari is also going somewhere with "Demons". Somewhere in this case meaning it's going to be a dub version, go figure. Alkalyne also implied that he'd like to make another remix for the album and giving an ear to how the first one came out, who could say no? A gig "confirmation" also on today's news as we're playing some sort of set in Varjoprovinssi which will be held coinciding with Provinssirock in a secret location somewhere in Seinäjoki. I guess this one's "invitation-only-around-the-campfire" type of affair with possible other acts being at least the Sugarrush and Velvetcut. That's going to be big fun, I tell ya.
14.12.2001 Yay. After all the nervousness and whatnot, our first gig was performed
last night. And boy was it good. Sure a few odd notes we're played here and there and
stupid introductions were made but all in all it couldn't have gone better. Besides a
salute to the audience we have to give props to the peeps of Klubi, Tampere who arranged the
gig. They even had chocolate mints backstage! Also respekk for the other bands for letting us borrow
their equipment. The possibly coolest thing was that both us and Harry Hunks delivered an Iron
Maiden cover unknowing of the other's intentions. Harry Hunks rocked thru "Fear of the Dark" which
was a great, great version. I was really hoping that Kevin would have coughed out "Trooper" or something to
close the evening but I guess they hadn't counted on the evening turning into a Maiden-cover night. Our
setlist for last night was:
1. I Wish I Was Drunk
2. Not That Fast
3. Outside
4. Lover
5. Uneasy
6. Beautifullest Lie
7. Push
8. Wasted Years
9. Night Falls
----------------------
10. Trains Pass By
13.12.2001 Having spent a couple of days in Helsinki now, I've managed to acquire some sort of flu to top the fact that my hand is in a cast. Paati is also having some sort of flu so we're about half a band tonight but come see us anyway at Klubi in Tampere. Now I'm off to the car!
10.12.2001 Tonight we're having the final rehearsals before our first ever gig since I will be spending Tuesday and Wednesday in Helsinki Rock City. Scary. I guess we'll be seeing in Tampere on Thursday then, wish us luck.
07.12.2001 We checked out a charity event on Thursday where our residing bassplayers both performed, El Tero-Teró doing an acoustic number with his brother and Andy J. rocking out Egotrippi's "Koivuniemen herra". Besides these two and an odd tune, the show didn't do much for me at least, maybe it was just excess in Finnish rock which I'm not that fond of. Then yesterday night was spent in rehearsals which went fine and made me feel already better about the upcoming gigs. Ilkka made up this cool guitar thingy to "Lover" which I liked very much and we also managed to jam a bit on this tune I had scratched together earlier that day. I had no lyrics for it but it sounded nice enough even with my mumbling. The one thing that did disturb me on it was that Ilkka noticed that the chords were exactly like the ones I have on "Uneasy's" C-part but I guess it's not that serious since the melody isn't that similar. There are only so many chords out there, ya know. Wink wink.
05.12.2001 I got two things for ya today; first off it's the flyer/poster for our gig in Vaasa, click here if you'd like to see it. Then Ilkka's record page has been updated with a hefty pile of records. That's all for now, bye.
04.12.2001 "So I went to the doctor, see what he could give me" said Ozzy and in my case the doctor gave me a new cast. Damnit. This one's even tighter than the last so no hope in improving my playing for the gigs then. And to top this off its color is the lovely fresh hooker's-underwear-shade of purple. I'm going to get this shit off by the end of the year, hopefully then I don't have to do the operation-thingy. On professional front Julius had been tangling with the drums on "Push" yesterday and also fine-tuning his Rhodes.
03.12.2001 I made some acquisitions in the instrument department on Friday, I got some odd percussive instruments and yes, a glockenspiel. It's a fun instrument although it was kinda hard to play, I keep missing the intended blocks all the time. Later on that night we did the deejay thing at Club25 with Ilkka, played a pretty wide range of music again, you can check the list for yourself here. Of the bands playing there that night I liked Sara better although Maj Karman kauniit kuvat's drummer was extremely great to watch, tight playing and he banged them babies like a madman. In the haze of the next two days' slacking I maybe got myself a couple of new tunes, a lot of work on them needed though. On Sunday night we had a rehearsal and it went far better than the rehearsal we had on Wednesday. We just went through the set a couple of times because Paati had to haul himself off to work in the middle of the night so no jammin' this time.
30.11.2001 Went to the movies yesterday with Ilkka and a motley crew and saw the revamped version of Apocalypse...Now. It was as damn good as I remembered it but the new scenes (or the ones I thought were new, it's been a year or two since I last saw the film) lightened the mood too much I think, so as usual the original was better. Okay, movie critic shit aside, it's Andy J. who'll be playing bass on stage in Tampere and El Tero-Teró will be doing Vaasa so we have exciting times ahead with our rehearsals. And according to news just handed to me, we're doing a bit of deejaying with Ilkka tonight at Club25 where Sara and Maj Karman kauniit kuvat are taking the stage.
29.11.2001 Tired after yesterday's rehearsals. It was the kind of rehearsal after which one is really not up for a gig. Apparently El Tero-Teró's future commitments to the band are decreasing due to increase in commitments towards la famiglia and so we had Andy J. fill in for him. Tero's at least doing the gig in Vaasa but Tampere is a bit unsure which also made me a bit unsure. Or maybe even a bit more unsure. After the rehearsals I managed to even rant to Ilkka about his part and, there's that word again, commitment in the whole gig process. I guess we should rehearse more. Luckily the day wasn't all spent messing with that shit, we managed to get a very good beat going on "The kid with fiery eyes" in the studio, kinda old school hiphop-ish and hella phat.
28.11.2001 Julius has been working mostly on the sengs we added tracks to during the weekend. Since we had to speed up a couple of songs like "Push" he's been forced to redo some bass and whatnot. I'm eagerly awaiting next Tuesday when I'll find out if I can get rid of this cast or not. It would be nice since I'd be eager to lay down some guitar for the songs already. Some tracks I guess are possible to do with the cast but there are a couple of ditties which are just impossible. So hoping for the best.
26.11.2001 First off to correct a misunderstanding, it's Harry Hunks who's playing with us in Tampere instead of Montevideo. Sorry folks. We've spent the weekend in most productive of moods, me and Julius spent both Saturday and Sunday underground recording heaps of stuff like organs, Rhodes and guitar on ton of songs. I even played some drumtracks to "The kid with fiery eyes", "Push" and "Trains pass by", maybe to some others too but those are the ones I remember doing. Again some songs like "The kid..." sounded surprisingly good because I hadn't heard them in a while, it was like someone else's songs basically. Now we're just lacking the acoustic guitar and vocal tracks and thereon it's all about mixing and finishing etc. Well of course it's never that simple, I guess we're going to end up messing with some new tunes in the last minute and so on but anyway we're in a pretty nice state of things now. And things aren't at all bad in the remix-front either, we've had yet another addition to the list, that's Martti Lindholm (Design 19, ex-Creamstar, etc.) and on Saturday we received one final mix that came from Circum's Heikki (or Fat Kaimo as he insists on being called) and not Ilari who we thought would be doing the remix (he might do his take later on though). And let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, this Fat Kaimo Entertainment System Mix is one damn fine piece of music. The song, which is "You could be the one", is totally fucked up in the most perfect of ways, mainly props are due to the weird stuff Heikki's been doing with our vocals, they're cut up and manipulated to sound like mice singing backwards or something. Great stuff. Oh yeah and I almost forgot I fiddled on a new tune a bit on Sunday evening on which I hopefully have time to work on a bit more today, mainly on the lyrics-department.
23.11.2001 It's indeed very rare that dates move up in the music business but this time they have. Our debut gig is now going to happen in Tampere's Klubi venue on December 13th. On location should also be Kevin and Montevideo. I have to admit to being a bit shaky about this, it is our first gig, you know. Luckily we had a very good rehearsal yesterday which did good things to my and I guess also everyone else's insecurities about the whole ordeal. We had Paati make a setlist which we we're quite happy with once having played through it although there was some confusion about including "Lover" in the set. And to wrap shit up for today even more names on the remix roster now; Vaasa's hip-hop pioneer Panu Savinainen (I'm not exactly under which alias he operates currently) is remixing "Uneasy" and Benjamin Antell is apparently doing "You could be the one".
22.11.2001 Some info from the remix front; TKK is doing "Try again", Myyrä tries a modern r'n'b take on "Demons", Ilari from Circum is rehashing "You could be the one", E-12 throws some beats on "Silence makes us strong" and Atyd rocks out "Beautifullest lie". Or that's the current on-production list we've received from the remixers. Updated Julius' record page at last. Tesla anyone?
21.11.2001 Listening to a Sparklehorse album yesterday I got a sudden urge to go look at some glockenspiels (or xylophones, whatevs). Actually I'd decided earlier on that at least "Trains pass by" needs some glockenspiel on it so actually it wasn't that sudden but anyway I found a cheap one in a local musical equipment store (owned by the father of our very own El Tero-Teró, mind you) that still had a beautiful sound to it. So that's added to the top of the purchase list at least. Julius has apparently spent last night doing backups of our recordings since we're supposed to move the recording equipment to our rehearsal facility this weekend to get some drums and organs and misc shit on tape and it's always a risk to move that crap around. Or maybe I'm just paranoid about it. Then one more thing, Ilkka is presenting one of his many talents today at Club25 in Vaasa where is going to give a lecture on Finnish rock to a group of foreign students. A professor title in the works maybe?
20.11.2001 I've been giving the eyeball to our list of songs in production and tried to get them in some order of preference or I dunno what to call it. An imaginary tracklist for the album maybe. I came up with one of those which did sound quite good in my head but of course in the real world it always sounds different.
19.11.2001 What? No updates in three days? Oh shut up, we've been gathering experiences for new songs, living our lives, you know (The Fancy Way of Saying We've Done Fuck-All™). And largely so in a poison-of-one's-choice-fuelled haze since the latter part of last week was spent on our behalves in various VIP-parties and the likes. In between I've been getting stressed over the first gig we're going to have in 4 weeks time mostly because my acoustic guitar playing skills are not on the level I'd like them to be on. And also because apparently there are people really expecting that gig. But I guess mostly that's just unnecessary bollocks, things have their way of working out in the end, haven't they.
15.11.2001 Alkalyne had finished the remix of "Lover" and we got to hear it the first time yesterday. The remix is called "Gay dancer remix" which is exactly what it sounds like, it's a song you could mix right into some Pet Shop Boys classic, perfect. With some updated sounds au naturelle. Anyway I don't know if I have made any mention of it here but we're going to release a minialbum of remixes of songs from "First time again" sometime in the near future, probably in the springtime. Alkalyne is the first to get his shit together and since the mix sounds so good I guess it'll be the leadtrack. Other remixers are Atyd, E-12, TKK from Vapaapudotus and Ilari from Circum. We're also hoping PolarSoul and Vapaapudotus' Myyrä to make their versions but I guess they haven't even heard about it yet so we'll get back to you about that. We also talked with Julius about doing some remix/remake to that album ourselves but let's see.
14.11.2001 Just added a couple of records to my record collection page. Now listening to the new Kings of Convenience remix album, it's a nice disc. I think I've got a cold, let's hope it goes away though, should get back to the studio.
13.11.2001 As you might have noticed, I've added a gig column right there on the left hand side of the screen. That's right we have managed to get ourselves a debut gig opening for Office Building on December 15th. Also on the bill are Leopold Delloria. To celebrate this yesterday we headed down to our cave which some people would call a rehearse facility and played some nice songs. This was the first time I rehearsed with the new guitar. I must say it's going to be a while before I get the hang of it since my sausage fingers are quite clumsy and they had gotten used to the nylon strings I've had before. Well I guess it just needs some practising. Anyway it didn't even go that bad, it sounded occasionally really good. On Ilkka's request we went through the newer songs which most of the crew hadn't heard at all, the all new "Trains pass by" seemed to go well with them and it sounded great too, far better than the version I'd had playing in my head. We tried it a couple of times and on the final try Ilkka got his hands on a harmonica and upon the first notes he hit, it sounded just fantastic! I've never been a big fan of the instrument but it just fit in there so gawddamn good. So I guess that one must be added to the seemingly endless production list also.
12.11.2001 Fruitful weekend as I got two new songs done (well the other one still lacks a bit of something but anywho). They're called "Trains pass by" and "Make way", I think I have to come up with a better title for "Make way" though, it doesn't sound like a song title. The lyrics can be found in the songs-section as you may well have guessed. I'm pretty happy with the way the "Trains" lyrics turned out, well at least they're not boy-girl-etc lyrics, that must be some improvement? Also got some more records updated on my record collection page.
09.11.2001 Pleasantly it seems that we're getting even international radio airplay now since this great (judging by their playlists at least) radio show Popscene from the Netherlands has featured our "Lover" on their program this week. Check out their website and as mentioned the suberb playlists at www.popscene.nl, you can find the playlists by clicking yourself to the Radio-section. Ilkka has been busy setting up his new venture, a management co called Nature Sucks Anyway Management. Today also the webpages for the said company are open for the public for the first time, you better check 'em out at nsam.vaasa.net. While he's been busy with business, I've been busy acquiring new records of which the results can be seen here as usual.
07.11.2001 I've been thinking of a suitable name for the future album recently and after listening through to the works in progress with Julius yesterday a working title was decided on. The working title is "Happiness" and I think it suits just fine since most of the tracks are really downbeat and we have to have a little contrast in there. Ilkka had been over to Alkalyne's studio yesterday to record some vocals for a possible future release. According to reports the sessions had gone according to plan and not only did Ilkka compliment that song but also the remix of our "Lover" Alkalyne has been working on. Can't wait to hear it. We also have a couple of other people working on remixes which we might put out someday.
06.11.2001 Further studiowork with "Last of the secrets", mainly on the strings again but also some basslines. It's sounding just dandy. Julius had come up with this cool piano thingie which we also worked on, it's called "Snowflake" and I don't really know yet if it's going to be a real full length (what does that mean?) song or a smaller ditty, time will tell. Anyway the riff itself is quite monumental, to use grand scale words. On my way home I managed to produce another little ditty which definitely is just a tiny song but a song nevertheless, this one's called "Sleepwalker" and you can find the lyrics to it from the songs-section.
05.11.2001 A totally hysterical weekend. I must've lengthened my lifespan with at least a couple of years because the laughter just didn't stop at any point of the trip with the Sugarrush (but of course the yin & yang effect of eating total crap evened that extension out). First off was the gig in Joensuu's Kerubi which went fine, the crowd wasn't in the thousands but surely the gig was fun to play, I think it had much to do with the newly acquired Christmas lights we had brought with us that were installed on our amps and the drums. One of the most hilarious points of the gig was when some drunken fan fell on the stage and me and Coma used him for a human monitor, you know, foot-on-the-breastplate type of stuff in true heavy metal style. And I can guarantee the stupid ideas didn't stop there as once we got ourselves hauled across Finland over to Turku after about two and a half hours of sleep, we improved on the heavy metal aspect as halfway through the set we had Slayer blasting through the speakers while we had ourselves a breather streching our muscles and stuff. Amazingly the popscenic crowd seemed to appreciate it and hollered us back on stage two times after the whole set had ended. For the second encore we played a classic by Klamydia (a Ramonesian Vaasa punkrock outfit), "Vaasalaiset on homeperseitä". I won't bother with a translation of that title. After the show we proceeded to Mikko Lappalainen's (head of Rhythm Barrel records) house to listen to some good music. I got a bit tired at this point and fell asleep on the floor only to wake up a couple of minutes later to some extreme banging noises Mikko's neighbor apparently produced. The sound he made was liking to someone running their head into the wall, if so his headache must now be more annoying than the noise we had made. Maybe the music and the drunken screaming had gotten a bit too loud but what the hell, I had still managed to sleep. Anyway, lots of nice people around on both gigs, my thanks go out to them. After reaching home sweet home pretty late on Sunday I still went to check out what Julius had been up to and it just was a great finale to the weekend as the new stuff he had done was just great. He had speeded up and reconstructed the whole of "No replacement" and it's now sounding like a good addition to the record since it's really upbeat compared to most of the other stuff. Even though tired off my head we worked on the strings for "Last of the secrets" some more and boy did they do good for the song. Not to leave Ilkka out of the story completely, I can inform you that he had spent the weekend in the world of free alcohol, so many interesting stories but none we could share over the Internet. Sorry, baby.
02.11.2001 So today I'm heading for Joensuu to rock some with the Sugarrush in Kerubi club and tomorrow we'll be in Turku's Säätämö with more of the same so those in the nearby regions, come by and bear witness.
01.11.2001 Julius had added some strings to "Last of the secrets" either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, he had apparently lost track of time or had been abducted by aliens. Possibly both. Today we're proud to present you the gear list for "First time again", that's every piece of equipment we used to make the record (unless something was forgotten). You can find it on Julius' page or directly by clicking this link.
31.10.2001 Fitter, happier, more productive...well more productive at least. Although Julius and I were both really tired yesterday after Monday's recording sessions had streched into the night we checked the remaining songs for missing bits and sketched out something for the new-ish "Last of the secrets". It really seemed to come alive once we started jamming some guitar and organ parts in there, I'm really looking forward to working on that tune. The version was a bit too fast, I think, it might need some slowing down but we'll see about that.
30.10.2001 As promised, we worked on a whole lot of tunes yesterday. Mostly it was making lists about what was needed in particular songs and mixing too. There are three songs that stuck out as very very nearly done; "Night falls", "Not that fast" and "Outside". "Not that fast" sounded more perfect than it ever has when Julius did some stuff on it with this mastering tool he had, it sounds like nothing we've done before. It's very raw and almost everything except the main vocals are first take, I'm very happy with that one. Ilkka was doing some stuff with his other "employer" Atyd, I guess they have a gig coming up in a month or so, can't remember where it was though.
29.10.2001 It's my birthday today so I'm older again. I have to admit I have a pretty bad phobia when it comes to aging but luckily I don't feel as old as the numbers suggest. But enough with the sinister aging bullshit, let's recap the weekend's events. On Friday me and Ilkka deejayed at Club25 in Vaasa where Absoluuttinen Nollapiste played a gig, you can check out our setlist here. Nollapiste had themselves one heck of a drummer, that much I can tell you, he really blew my mind. On Saturday I had an extremely fun rehearsal with the Sugarrush, we're rehearsing for gigs in Joensuu next Friday and Turku on Saturday. When the clock stroke 22 me, Ilkka and Sugarrush's Coma headed over to Papin Nenä to deejay some more and daaamn did it turn out to be one helluva party! The place was packed and we kept the crowd moving their asses through some pretty good shit like Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" and au naturelle Kylie's "Can't get you outta my head". Check out the entire set of songs right here. Julius has been spending even more time mixing and whatnot and it seems a couple of songs are just about done, most of all "Night falls". We're planning on doing some more work on some new and not-so-finished songs today and tomorrow. I've updated some pages that had old info on them and also added some text to info page and Julius' page.
26.10.2001 While I've been up to my neck in my 9 to 5 crap Julius has been busy with new material. At least he had jammed some bass into "Kid with the fiery eyes" which we'll be working on more today I hope. And a warning might be in place if you're planning to wander around Vaasa's nightclubs this weekend since Graceskull DJ's tour de force is in effect both on Friday and Saturday. Tonight we're jockeying discs at Club 25 and tomorrow we're hitting Papin Nenä with Coma from the Sugarrush. So mighty tunes abound, boys and girls, come hear for yourselves.
24.10.2001 Julius had done even more mixing and some songs are already on the verge of being finished. We tried out my new guitar also yesterday but I just can't play that good with this cast that it would be worth recording. The snowboarding vid in which we had a song featured arrived in the mail yesterday, it's called "Third time" and is released by Northlight Pictures. The song featured is "Before the curtain arrives" and it's in the slam-section of the flick which should be pretty appropriate.
22.10.2001 I finally got myself a new guitar on Friday. It's a fairly pretty acoustic guitar with built-in pickups and whatnot. I haven't had the chance to try it out in practise yet, the amplified sound I mean, but it has fairly many sliders and switches so it looks promising to me since my instrument-related knowledge is nothing to write home about. Now I have a lot of practising to do cause the guitar I used before was nylon stringed and this one's not and that means the stringspan is a bit smaller so my clumsy fingers are finding it hard to find their way onto the preferred whereabouts on the fretboard. Besides guitar shopping we did some work on a couple of songs with Julius on Friday, mostly just little things. We have quite a few songs just lacking the darned guitar parts which I'm not capable of playing with the cast on my wrist. Later on we caught Ilkka deejaying with TKK from Vapaapudotus in Papin Nenä club where he managed to end his set playing Skid Row's "18 and life" and the Scorpions' "Still loving you". I don't know if it was sick or magnificent but the confused people just went on dancing anyway so I guess there was some hidden genius in it, hurhur. Another accomplishment I gotta give Ilkka credit for is that he played Kylie Minogue's new single two times in a row and about fives times total that evening, it's one heck of a song. You just can't but love Kylie, huh? Julius had proceeded work with some basslines and mixing on Sunday while me and Ilkka spent the better part of the day getting out of bed. And no, we don't sleep together, smartass.
19.10.2001 Rehearsals yesterday went okay though the mood was a bit uneasy I guess due to some tiredness abound. "Beautifullest lie" and "Uneasy" went very good, especially the latter has had its fair share of difficulties working like it should. The coolest moment though was when we started jamming on the main tune from John Carpenter classic Assault on Precinct 13. El Tero-Teró's cop-show basslines were amazing and the whole shit sounded cool so I guess we might be rockin' that on stage sometime although some of the boys we're not so sure about it. Assault on precinct 13 is one of drummerboy Paati's favourite films, mind you. Earlier that day I played around with a new song again not getting it completely done. I got the first verse done and maybe some chorus, the verse's lyrics I was pretty pleased with, it's always nice when you get the contents of your thoughts into a song and not just some gibberish. And to finish off today's entry I can inform you that another set of 5" silver discs have been added to Ilkka's record collection.
18.10.2001 Still stuck with that aforementioned song. I got the idea and the lyrics (kinda) for the chorus but the verse is still absent. It might be called "Held back" or "The only thing" but we'll see. We did a bit of promo-stuff yesterday with Ilkka, that being the fancy way to tell you we were basically licking stamps. Lo and behold the wonders of being in a band. Julius also told me he had gotten down to some hi-tech shit on his computer and that it's now recording properly again. Maybe we'll get something done this weekend then.
17.10.2001 I do say 'nice' a lot, don't I? Because on this page alone I've said it 25 times which either means that my vocabulary needs some improvement or things have been quite nice recently. I guess both reasons are valid. Anyway, apparently some song of ours is featured on a new snowboarding video from Northlight Pictures. They've promised to send me a copy but it hasn't arrived yet so info on which song etc. is not yet available. I'll get back on this subject when I receive the tape. There's also been some negotiations of our song ending up in some skate flick but it's a bit uncertain as of yet because of the ol' copyrights. Ilkka's record collection got an update too.
16.10.2001 More vocals yesterday. The results weren't as good as the ones from Sunday but I think we got some decent takes on "Not that fast" at least. We also tried "Promise" but I think I'm coming down with flu or something, it just didn't come out right with something icky in my throat. Explanations-a-plenty, I know. Julius had started mixing "Breed" completely anew, so there's a bit more work on that to be done than I thought but at least now all sounds can be heard.
15.10.2001 Another Monday then, ho-hum. I tested out my hand on an electric guitar while rehearsing with the Sugarrush on Friday. It worked okay I guess all things considered but it's just damn clumsy, you just can't get that finesse, ya know. On Saturday I played around with a new tune but couldn't get a melody for the verse going, otherwise it would be quite ready, I think. On Sunday we recorded some vocals for "Night falls" and "Breed" which seemed to go okay. Julius had set up the vocal recording space in a new way which was kind of inspirational as its window cast a view over our beautiful city and the nice autumn sun. I must've looked stupid singing in the window for the passers by to laugh at. One thing that wasn't okay however was Julius' computer. We spent the better part of the sessions getting the preferences and other adjustments right for the new hardware he had gotten a while back and still didn't get it just right. It was still nice to record something since it's been quite a while since the last sessions. And it was also nice to notice that those two songs are almost completely finished now that we have vocals in there as well.
12.10.2001 Newsflash! There seems to be a word or two about our little split single in the latest issue of Sue music magazine. The columnist made some interesting comparisons to some 4AD stuff which one can't be but happy about. But check it out for yourself, there are free copies of the magazine hovering about in almost every darn record shop in Finland. There's also a review of the single on their website and it seems they've kinda liked it. To read the review in Finnish click here.
11.10.2001 Made some minor adjustments and additions to the lyrics of "Last of the secrets". Julius was out doing a little promoing in Tampere where he also checked out Office Building's record release gig. Apparently (he called me in the middle of the night in a heavily intoxicated condition, whether it was the music or the alcohol I'm not sure) it was the opening act that he'd really enjoyed, a band called Spokane. And I have to agree with Julius there, just check out the soundclips on their site.
10.10.2001 Fun rehearsal yesterday even though it got a bit chaotic from time to time but I guess that was part of the fun. We had the Sugarrush's Andy J. filling in on the bass for El Tero-Teró who had a gigantic headache and couldn't make it. Playing with him went just dandy and we reckoned we'll start using two men on the four string so that someone is nearly always available when needed. We played through the usual set of songs plus a few odd oldies like "A perfect smile" and "Wait" (which actually worked quite good). We closed the rehearsal with a 15 minute jam of this cool jazzy song of which we have no idea of the title or the performer. During this jam Julius literally beat the shit out of his Rhodes leaving him with sore fists and warwounds to go. I just wish my hand wasn't jacked like this, the urge to get on a stage right now is pretty massive I guess in all of us.
09.10.2001 Julius had worked on "I should know by now" and had an arrangement of sorts already just waiting for me to get my vocals on it and what do ya know, the computer crashed. Apparently he had then built the version up again but naturally it wasn't 100% the same, let's hope we'll get it sorted to the sound just right again. We had a new shipment of shirts arrive yesterday so the ones waiting for their shirts in the mail, they'll be arriving this week probably. We also got new girls' sizes (128cm) both colors. And to wrap this off for today I added some new records to my record collection, I suggest you buy the Eels album and listen to "Woman driving, man sleeping" twenty times in a row like I've done on a couple of occasions now. Gotta love that song.
08.10.2001 It feels like it's been such a long while since last update although I've only been away for a couple of days. Well, it's a long while in rock-biz, I guess, hurhur. I spent the better part of last week on a boat to Stockholm, Sweden and back. I really like the city even though the loss of money if a bit extravagant every damn time I visit there. The boat trips are nearly always as boring though so I made the time to use and wrote a ton of lyrics. I think there's something like three complete songs' worth not including the bits and pieces which didn't fit in with other bits and pieces. Now all I need is some tunes for them. One that I got about finished (I think it still lacks a couple of lines) is "Last of the secrets" and the lyrics are to be found handily in the songs-section. Julius and Ilkka meanwhile had a much more glamorous weekend as they rocked the crowd on the catwalk at a fashion show in Vaasa on Sunday. Apparently they'd done their turn to the tune of Twisted Sister's "I wanna rock" and the people had loved them. I have to stress that this was their side of the story, who knows what the reality holds. Well anyway, it's good that at least they have an alternate career as male models lined up if this music stuff won't start to pay off... We got offered a gig in Vaasa's Club25 sometime in November but it's pretty unlikely that I can go through a gig with this damn cast in my wrist, but we'll see if I'll get the technique in check. So back on that subject later on then.
02.10.2001 Despite my fucked wrist we rehearsed yesterday. It was really difficult to play with this thing but I guess I just have to try and get used to it since the cast is going to be present at least two months. A couple of songs still managed to sound quite nice, especially new-ish "Push" which really proved to be a live song.
01.10.2001 According to studies, one of the most significant parts of what is considered as beautiful is symmetry. Well if that's true then I'm now one step closer to not being ugly as I went and broke the scaphoid bone in my right hand's wrist. I broke the exact same bone in my left hand about a year ago, also skateboarding as I did this time. I haven't been able to test if I can play the guitar with this cast on but at least this typing isn't that much fun so I'm going to lay off it right now.
28.09.2001 Completely different type of studiowork yesterday as I was a guest DJ on Ilkka's Puistikoita ja puuta heinää radio show. Lots of stupid babble went down and we played some nice music again, setlist here. The show is airing tomorrow, that's September 29th for ya, at 22.00 sharp on Radio Vaasa's frequency.
27.09.2001 A bit more studiowork yesterday. Recorded mostly acoustic guitar for "Promise" and "Outside". We also recorded some strange noises we got from playing around with a FX-pedal that Julius has that's called Bass Balls (no, really). "Outside" is very near completion and once again, it sounds nothing like I had pictured it to sound but good anyway. It has a somewhat eighties sound, dreamy Jan Hammer strings or something. Some additions to my record collection too, the new Slayer album is hella rockin'!
26.09.2001 Ilkka has caught himself a cold so our intended rehearsals haven't been happening. Instead Julius and me headed to our rehearsal facility to fix some malfunctioning equipment and Julius also tried out some of his new gadgets. We also jammed a bit on this tune Julius had had playing in his car stereo on the way over there, quite a gas-station band tune. Maybe it reflects Graceskull's future career...well I'd like to think not, luckily we don't play that well. Also interesting was experimenting with this microphone that was mainly meant for acoustic guitars, cellos and whatnot that we tried on the drums. Especially the cymbals were sounding eerily good, I think we'll have to return to record that stuff. Since stocks were running a bit short on our T-shits, I ordered some new ones which should be arriving late this week or in the beginning of next. Then we'll have even smaller sizes and also navy blue shirts in all sizes available. A lot of the word "also" in today's entry, maybe I need a thesaurus.
24.09.2001 We had a decent gig in Pietarsaari on Friday, the Sugarrush featuring me that is. Although technically it was shitty as ever, the performance side of things kind of made it up so no real harm done. On Saturday me and Julius got together at the studio once again and made something really important, in fact so important that I have no friggin' idea now what it might have been. I think we did some piano stuff at least for "Push" and oh yeah, we scraped together a demoversion of "I wish I was drunk". Even though I woke up to a superwindy and hypercold Sunday, we had decided to close our streetgolf season, so gametime it was. The wind was really tricky and frozen fingers did do much good either so Team Graceskull finished 5th and 6th among the six of us. I really sucked, that much is to be admitted. Later on after a celebratory pizza session we proceeded to our rehearsal quarters this time without El Tero-Teró again since he couldn't make it. The rehearsal was performed in very high spirits and nearly everything sounded good ("You could be the one" didn't but it never has and probably never will so no real dissappointment there). We tried out a couple of them new ones also which seemed to be pretty easily adopted by the rest of the gang. Especially Ilkka's little guitar thingie he added to "Promise" fitted in perfectly.
21.09.2001 Julius had received the components he had ordered and spent the day installing them. It seems to have helped a lot of the problems we had had with the recording system as Julius was basically ecstatic about the way he had it working. Ilkka had himself a DJ gig with Vapaapudotus' TKK at DOM bar but as of yet I have no info on how it went. It was a part of some drinking festival they had going on, I hope he hasn't pulled much that crowd because at least when I wandered through the city it was so full of 100 proof morons that it was unbelievable. I spent better part of the time I should've spent sleeping with the Sugarrush ("sleeping with the Sugarrush", hurhur), rehearsing for the gig they have tonight in Pietarsaari's After Eight. Come by if you're in the proximity, also playing is another fine Vaasa-band Leopold Delloria.
20.09.2001 Not much went on yesterday, Ilkka was in Helsinki checking out Depeche Mode live and Julius did some couch potatoing. Not used to this kind of a stagnant situation, I tried to push out some songs and lyrics but it really didn't work. One thing I managed to do was to finish this one song I had begun work on like two months ago or something. Well actually I finished this other one too but I guess it will remain in the drawer for the time being since it really wasn't that good. Maybe I should present it to Julius anyway, he has really made some not-so-special songs into good ones. The Midas touch it's called I've heard, hurhur. Well anyway the new decent one is called "Wither". Still digging in the crates, I was dead bored at a meeting today and it made me go through my notes and I made a discovery. I found this song I had totally forgot about which had kinda nice melody and lyrics too. Besides the dusting, it needed a name so it's now called "The three legged dog". I don't know if that's a good name or not but if you come up with a better one, let me know. You can find both these songs' lyrics in the songs-section as you probably guessed already.
19.09.2001 Ya want T-shirts? We got T-shirts, baby. The tees arrived yesterday and I quite quickly relieved myself of a load of them so get ordering while we still have them, especially the smaller sizes are going fast. For more info take a detour to the products page. We continued studiowork with Julius yesterday, mainly working with basic arrangement ideas and guiding drumtracks. First time on the toolbench was "I should know by now" which Julius had plenty of ideas for, we also laid some basslines to that one.
18.09.2001 Julius apparently felt like he was in for phat royalty checks for the album yesterday because he had ordered a load of computer components to rehash the whole machine of his. Late in the evening I checked out some shit he had done to "Push" and "Surrender" and as usual, it sounded very good. He had added his self-made electronic-ish beat on top of the original beat on "Surrender" which especially sounded great although he warned me before listening that I would not like it. Also the piano stuff on "Push" worked good at least on the idea level, some notes need to be kicked to a different position maybe. At the moment it seems that the next album will be more acoustic, more electronic and more distorted. Does that make any sense? Well one day you'll see what I meant. Maybe. And to top all this I added the records we obtained in Stockholm to our recordlists.
17.09.2001 One more try with the acoustic guitar mic from Julius on Friday and it seemed to work although I guess it too has its own troubles eventually. I guess this solution is called a contact microphone or something. We'll see how it works in practise next time we rehearse. On Sunday we got going with studio work once again, it had been a long while. It was nice to notice that we had so many songs well on their way in production, a couple of them needed mainly only some mixing. We did mostly little things, added some drumtracks to "Push" and New Order style bass and loads of keyboards to "Surrender" etc. I already started to get the next album together in my head which is funny since the first one is out today. I'm hoping the next one will have a couple of more tracks on it, I'm planning on 14 but we'll see how the songs fit together and how they'll sound in the end.
14.09.2001 I got the T-shirt biz in check so the shirts are on their way and we should have them in our possession sometime next week. According to the original plan we would have made them pink but since shirts that color weren't available the shirts will now be baby blue and a couple navy blue ones will also be made. You can peep the way they look here. We'll get back on the subject of ordering them when they arrive. I also did some rearranging of the Graceskull-section of this site. New topics are "Pictures", "Products" and "Julius". There are also new pictures in the new pictures-section. They're from the night when we recorded weird noises in the city's wildlife. Julius' page is still in the works but should be up there pretty soon.
13.09.2001 Had a look at some guitars yesterday and I found a couple which I liked. It's just hard to pick a color, which is of course the most important factor when buying a guitar, since the color I had in mind isn't available that easy. Well we'll see what I come up with. And it seemed this guitar shopping couldn't come at a more appropriate time since when we rehearsed yesterday, the first hour was spent struggling with my current axe. It strangely picked feedback so damn easy it was nearly impossible to play a song through. Things weren't helped by the fact that most the crew were also tired. Dayjobs aren't for rock-stars, it's clear to me now, hurhur. But we got through the set a couple of times and I managed to come up with something that might evolve into a verse or something in the future. Right about now I'm going to see a T-shirt manufacturer about our shirts, hopefully we'll get them in production straight away.
12.09.2001 As the saying goes, it's official!
The album - First Time Again - is out next Monday. I had
a look at the sleeves yesterday and they looked fine although
the original sleeve looked better on the computer screen. But
in print I preferred this one by far. Here's the tracklisting for ya:
Diagnose
Lover
Uneasy
Silence makes us strong
Boxing day
Demons
Beautifullest lie
You could be the one
Stay around
Before the crtain arrives
Try again
You lucky internet people can order it already now, check out the
ordering info.
In other news Julius has really gone tech on our asses, he spends
all his days dangling with electronics now which I guess isn't a bad
thing since it's hella useful. Yesterday he scraped together a pedal
type tuner in a matter of minutes and he had also built a reverb
apparently the same day. I've considered buying a new acoustic guitar,
steel stringed this time, but the problem seems to be that it's hard to
find them with as wide a neck as I'd like. I'm going to Unisound
today (great instrument store in Vaasa, outstanding service guaranteed)
to have a look to see if they'd have some solution.
11.09.2001 Back to business then, Julius had worked on the acoustic guitar amp thingie some, or more precisely loads more and it now seems be somewhat complete minus some small details. I got a message from Julius 7AM this morning that he had painted it in beautiful deep blue. I think we need a name for it, if you have a suggestion mail it to us at oves_amp@graceskull.com. If we pick your suggestion we'll send you a free copy of our album, fair enough? Talking of the album, the sleeves are finally getting printed this week so more firmly than ever I can guarantee that it will be released next Monday. Probably. Also in the works any day now should be our T-shirts but I'll get back on that subject when something other than sheer designing happens.
10.09.2001 Even more goodie. The past three days were spent on mine and Ilkka's behalf with our Contrast buddies, Sakke and Nicke (also known as the Heaviest Man of Vaasa, an alias that has nothing to do with the man's weight) on a field trip to Stockholm to see Radiohead. It is fair to say that Radiohead is pretty much the number one band for me so I was pretty excited to get to see them live for the first time. We set sail on Friday from Turku and spent the ferryride observing the stunningly stupid people aboard and believe you me, there were a-plenty. We also learned that a national treasure of sorts, Mr Pertti "Spede" Pasanen, had died which didn't much perk up the atmosphere. When we arrived to Stockholm at about 7AM in the morning we hadn't slept but a couple of hours and had over 24 hours until the next time we'd see a bed so you can imagine the truly high standard level of the conversations that day. Saturday was mostly spent shopping and eating, my compliments to Pizza Hut's folks over there. We finally entered Globen, the venue where the concert was held, around 7PM and caught half of the Anti-Pop Consortium's, who were the opening act, set. They sounded interesting but not interesting enough in the tired state that we were in. A couple of cups of Coca-Cola later I was feeling a bit more awake as "The National anthem" kicked in. Gawddamn. Well firstly, the sound and lights were so good I nearly soaked myself right there but I guess in the prime mover was just to see those songs performed. I really can't say a bad thing about the whole event, even my tiredness was completely washed away on the first chord. Most moving moment of the gig was when they finished the first encore with "How to disappear completely", it was just amazing, I have to admit I nearly cried. It rained the whole night through and we had nowhere to sleep over but it made little impact on the mood the concert had left us with. We finally stepped onboard Silja Europa at 8.30AM Sunday morning a couple of pubs, McDonald's and a few minutes' sleep at the bus station later our clothes soaked from the rain. We hardly said a word and drifted off to sleep in a fraction of a second. So the whole Sunday we spent in a vehicle or another, half or fully asleep but arriving back home again the good feeling I got from the gig was still there. I guess that's some once-in-a-lifetime shit right there. Since I have no news on Graceskull to give to you, I have to out one more demo song, so get on downloading "I should know by now" from the songs-section. Coincidentally it's quite a Radiohead-ish number, I reckon.
06.09.2001 Goodie. Yesternight's rehearsals went dandy and having El Tero-Teró's bass in there really made a difference, especially to "Lover" and "Not that fast". Damn musician, he had the basslines down with very little effort, it seemed. Another thing that truly made a difference was the "insides-of-an-R2D2" looking guitarmic-gadget Julius had built, it worked like a charm. We rehearsed the usual ten or so songs we normally do and also managed to fit little pieces of "Darling little bird", "Promise" and "Silence makes us strong" in there as well. Towards the end of the rehearsals, the boys suggested that I'd do "Wish I was drunk" as the final song of the set all by myself which would probably count as a good idea in my book if it weren't for the tricky guitar parts. I dunno if I can pull it off. Maybe I'll have to practise àla Jimi Hendrix for that shit. This is what you get when you never took time to learn to play the guitar right.
05.09.2001 We had a short rehearsal yesterday though still without El Tero-Teró who was still feeling a bit weak. There was some trouble with getting the new sound system to produce the same kinda sound we're used to, mainly because of the mics which also have been replaced. We're probably trying out new solutions tonight so maybe we'll get the shit together. Me and Paati played around with "Promise" and it sounded promising (hurhur) although he claimed I had nicked the main riff from somewhere. Hope not, not consciously anyway, but if I have I hope it's somewhere good. I decided to unleash the demo for "As you are" on yo asses, so get downloading from the songs-section. It kinda reminds me of "Carrot rope" by Pavement because of the accidental wah-wah guitar bits.
04.09.2001 No rehearsal yesterday due to El Tero-Teró's medical condition, hope he's alright now. I think we'll give it another try tonight. Instead I scraped together some demos. I got three songs done - "I should know by now", "Promise" and "As you are" - and even tried "I wish I was drunk" but it was too much a hassle, some of the guitar parts were a bit too much for me at that late hour. I might put the rest up here also but as a taster you can download "Promise" from the songs-section.
03.09.2001 I got really fed up with the hassle with the sleeves on Thursday so I made a new layout with a different picture. I was pretty happy with it and it had colors that couldn't really be fucked when printed but the boys weren't feeling it. I think Julius has had a go with the colors on the original photo again, let's hope they come out somewhat right this time. Friday saw me and the whole of Sugarrush heading to Helsinki to spend the weekend there on a recreational basis. After some shopping done, we went to see one of my favourite bands ever, the Eels, which was a truly great gig. It was great in a different way than I had imagined, they rocked harder and most oldies were transformed into obscure versions, but I guess that was one part of why it was so good, because it was unexpected. One of the definite high points of the gig was a cover of the Missy Elliot tune "Get Ur freak on" which featured classy falsetto vocals from the man of many talents, Butch the drummer. On Saturday we spent some more money on records (check out new additions to my record collection) and clothes after which we invaded the Art of Star Wars exhibition which had hit Helsinki a couple of weeks back. And boy, was that spectacular or what! The costumes, storyboards, models and everything really made an impact on me. I felt like 11 again. And the grand finale, good ol' Darth himself in a dark room, really sent shivers down my spine. On Sunday we got back, once again tired out of our heads but with good spirits for this was a truly fun weekend filled with high culture and hysteric laughter. Thanks a lot, guys, for everything. Sunday night I met up with Julius and we picked up the sound system he had and drove it to our rehearsal quarters. It was hella cool with an impressive retro vibe but worked perfectly. I think we're going to try it out tonight when even our new bassman should be in attendance.
30.08.2001 Good news on the lower frequencies' front, El Tero-Teró, who also does some guitar duties for El Camino and the Sugarrush, agreed to get on the bass so next week onwards we'll be probably rehearsing in full force. We had a major pow-wow yesterday with rest of the boys and scraped up some strategies and shit. It seems we have to wait for some number or code from the copyright authorities until we can get the sleeves printed so the kinda-sorta date I gave you a couple of days back isn't the correct release date. Hope we get it next week but there's no knowing with these authorities. I also managed to write a song while the boys were waiting for me downstairs. Well OK, so I finished the lyrics later on when I got back from Julius' but most of it anyway. The lyrics for this song "Promise", as well as for the two I promised yesterday, are now added to the songs-section.
29.08.2001 I think I got two more songs about ready now, the aforementioned "As you are" and "I should know by now". I suppose I'll get the lyrics up here tomorrow. There are also a couple of parts of songs that sound good which I haven't had time to work into songs just yet. It's a pity that I don't have time to get songs finished right away nowadays. Before I always finished the songs pretty much there and then but now I have to tape everything and hope it was a good idea and come back to it later. It kinda can fuck up the mood or whatever. Since we're now missing a suitable bass-player, we're also missing a PA system so we can't really rehearse just now. Our former system belonged to Alkalyne's Mikko but since he's been building a new studio recently he needed it there. We're going for a field trip to the studio later on today, it's nice to see the new gadgets and whatnot he's gathered in there. Luckily for this situation, however, Julius has a system of his own (well, what does he not have) stashed somewhere and hopefully we'll set it up sometime soon since I've been dying to rehearse some more. Also we have a person in mind that might be up for some bass playing duties, Julius is supposed to ask him today. As usual, we'll keep ya posted. Oh yeah, and I added some records to Ilkka's record collection, note that there are no Miles Davis records among them, a triumph to say the least.
27.08.2001 Fun weekend, though I'm tired beyond imagination right now. For my part the weekend was all skateboarding as we made a trip witha couple of my friends, Ville and Lauri, to Helsinki for the Finnish Championships. Just before rushing to the train on Friday I wrote a new tune which I think is called "As you are". I didn't quite finish it due to the lack of time in that situation but it's just inches away. Our first stop was in Tampere where Ville lives and we checked out the local skatepark which was fun, just a bit too big obstacles for my limited skills but I managed a few nice tricks. Later on we proceeded to the city center to check out Disco Ensemble who once again rocked my bollocks. On Saturday we continued to Helsinki with some shopping and a massive eating binge during the day and partying activities at night. On Sunday we checked out the finals of the competition which were really great and pleasantly enough the winner was Harri Puupponen who is the provider for this webspace at nolla.net. His skating is just unbelievable, smooth and fast, tech and fat. Feeling like crap after a day of eating just chocolate and Pringles we headed to the train and I was finally home at around 11PM Sunday night to catch some unfortunate news. Firstly, my fave r&b singer Aaliyah had been killed in a planecrash and secondly, the person we had asked for bass-playing duties wasn't up for it for one reason or another. I think it's great he let us know 'cause I know it's bullshit if you have to play with a band for the wrong reasons. Now we just have to come up with another suitable person which I believe will prove quite difficult but we'll figure out something, dontcha worry.
24.08.2001 Still dangling with the sleeves but they should be pretty much done by now. Julius reassembled them with a different program and whatnot and I hope we're getting them printed next week so the completely, totally unofficial release date for our eleven song debut album entitled First Time Again is set for September 3rd. Julius has also been eager to fill out all those copyright blankets and its ilk and I'm not complaining since I have an allergy of some sorts when it comes to forms. And there are tons of them when it comes down to releasing a record but I'll let Julius sweat all over them and treat him an ice-cream for the effort.
23.08.2001 You can't blame the media for being slow, no sirree bob. Yesterday RadioMafia - Finnish national radio channel - played the "You could be the one" single that we had sent them only the day before. And damn did it sound good too. There's just some magic in hearing your songs on the radio. I've heard a couple of my tunes on the radio before and they've always sounded different, often for the better. To tell you the truth I didn't really expect they'd play it anywhere. Maybe a review here and there but that's all I expected so we're already above the waterline. Our DJ gig also went great indeed, it seems there's more people attending every time we play so I guess at least somebody's enjoying it although every time there's always one or two beer company capped gentlemen who ask if we're going to play this shit all night when were in the middle of spinning a Leonard Cohen classic or something. I usually let Ilkka take care of them, I'm not too good with handling these people, maybe I'm too elitist or something. With a range of musical styles as wide as ours one should think that there'd be no room to complain but hey, some people wouldn't know good music if it hit them in the genitalia. But you can judge by yourself, here's the setlist.
22.08.2001 Rehearsals again yesterday. We were all dead tired so I don't knwo if it was a good idea to rehearse but we still managed to squeeze out over two hours worth of half-assed songs. Well, better energy levels next time I hope, maybe we'll pack up with a couple of packs of Red Bull just in case. Julius has been hard at work with getting the colors right for the picture on the album sleeve. It's very difficult since the picture had kinda fucked up colors so it will print out looking like crap. Apart from the picture the sleeves are all done and when he finishes the pic we're all set for production. Right about now the split 7" promos should be in the hands of the media also, so maybe we'll get some reviews up here someday. Something that is up right now is lyrics for Ilkka's new song, "Darling Little Bird". As usual you'll find them in the songs department.
21.08.2001 I've been up to my elbows in work at late so updates and whatnot have been somewhat scarce, sorry about that. We've been rehearsing a lot recently. Well a lot to our standards anyway and things are beginning to sound more like they should. Sunday night's session especially went great with an extraordinary salsa version we did on "Boxing day" and also other fun stuff. Ilkka had written a new tune which we jammed on. The lyrics had something to do with birds, I think, maybe Ilkka's picking up ornithology or something. I sincerely hope not though. I also played around with a new song again yesterday and I've been getting a bit worried cause a good part of these new songs seem to lack real choruses. I don't know if it's a thing to worry about but I do so anyway. The song is probably called "I should know by now". Maybe. Today they ran the article on us on the local paper, Pohjalainen, and it proved to be very nice. They ran the picture where we were sitting on a parkbench with these elderly citizens. Hurhur. I think I'm running out of superlatives for today so just to remind you: don't forget to check in for a hefty pile of good music again tomorrow at Papin Nenä restaurant where we're deejaying.
16.08.2001 Quite a fun night deejaying last night. We wrote down the setlist too adn you can check it out here. There were some very nice Portuguese folks among the punters which we donated our record to later that evening upon striking a conversation with them. Apparently one of them was even a celebrity of some sorts with a sitcom in Portuguese television. Anyway, it was nice to have people in the audience that enjoyed fine music and not just rednecks who request Safri-Duo.
14.08.2001 I wrote something yesterday which might evolve into a song, it was quite slow and sad so it sounded nice. Ilkka and Julius had had a word with some person from Joensuu who was interested in fixing us a gig at a local club, Kerubi. There's also been some smallish talk about a possible gig in Tampere sometime in the future, let's see if something happens. It would be nice to get a few gigs outside Vaasa arranged for the fall. Today we're once again deejaying at Papin Nenä club in Vaasa with another session booked for next Wednesday, so get yer asses over there for some better than excellent music.
13.08.2001 We rehearsed two times this weekend, on Friday and Sunday. Both times we had Paati with us and it really did some good for many songs. I think we have to change the songs we had planned to play live because at least "Outside" and "Demons" sound really good with Paati's drumming. And "You could be the one" really doesn't work live. At all. But that's just my opinion. Another song which really went well was, surprisingly, "Night falls" which Paati played perfectly although he had never heard the song. Let's see what we come up with. If there was one conclusion we made was that we've got to get a bassplayer onboard too and we already have one candidate in mind. I scratched a couple of songs together too, they're not really ready yet. The other one has most the lyrics but the other one hasn't. They're a part of this home assignment Julius left me 'cause he'll be out of town the whole week so I have to write four songs. Two to go, then. And on the media front, apparently the local City-magazine had some kind of an article on us last week, I haven't seen it yet.
10.08.2001 The interview went good. I think. I guess we wont know until the story hits the paper. We shot some pics with a couple of anxious elderly people so maybe my current undead-like looks were a bit softened. Later on we checked out this wonderful flick with Ilkka, "Requiem for a Dream" which really shook us up. First I thought the portrayal of those characters was a bit too tidy and clean but the closer we got to the end the better it got and the grand finale was just really damned powerful. Ilkka even got a bit sick to the stomach but I guess that could as well be accounted to the fact that he'd eaten a huge ol' bag of sweets during the movie. It's been a while since I've been that much affected by a film...and also it's been a while since I last was scared of a refridgerator.
09.08.2001 Even less things going on yesterday. We weaved some strategies for our releases and promoing but that was basically all. Ilkka had set up an interview for us for today. Let's hope I don't come across as a total zombie on the interview, especially if they're taking pics cause I don't think this flu has left me looking any better. I wrote even more lyrics for "I wish I was drunk" and have a ton of 'em now but I still haven't really gotten out what I want. Crap. I guess I'll have to manage with the version I finished yesterday for now. As usual, the lyrics can be found in the songs-section.
08.08.2001 Not much went on yesterday, just continued with being sick and ate a whole lot of chocolate. I did write more lyrics to "I wish I was drunk" but I still couldn't get the final version done. Julius came by and we listened to some stuff and mixes he had done to the new songs and they sounded very good. I especially liked "Night falls" which has a really fine atmosphere to it and it seemed our fevered up guitarstuff the day before had worked out good. Ilkka had also had a listen to the songs and he thought we should put them out as a six song package but Julius and I quite disagree since we're on a roll with these songs and new ones keep popping up all the time. So you better watch out for the next full length release this winter or sooner. To be completely serious I just wish we could get the first one out pretty soon, we've been sitting on it for over a month now...Oh yeah and I added some new records we've bought to both mine and Ilkka's record collections.
07.08.2001 This flu doesn't seem to let go too easily. Yesterday Julius forced me into dragging myself dripping of feverish sweat to the studio to lay down some guitarstuff since he had these FX-pedals there which he had to return today. Surprisingly we got some pretty good sounding stuff laid out to "Night falls" although my playing and timing might have been a bit off, it was a bit difficult to concentrate when icky stuff kept dripping out my nose. I also came out with a new song but it's miles from finished but it has a title already: "I wish I was drunk". Julius is now on vacation from his dayjob so he had been hard at work with some songs most of the day and I got an SMS from him at about 1AM at night and he still was working on something, I can't quite remember what it was because I was so messed up from fever and sleep. But he's keeping it busy which is great.
06.08.2001 Quite a frustrating weekend. We got nearly fuck-all done and I managed to catch me the flu. We recorded some feedback guitar to "Breed" yesterday but the flu rwally got to me so that was basically all the work we managed to do. On Saturday I and the Sugarrush's drummer, Paati, jammed a bit and it sounded surprisingly good, even "Demons" which one would guess would need a lot more shit to it to be pulled off. Paati was quite enthusiastic about joining us on stage sometime and when we discussed this with Julius, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't a bad idea at all. Our live setup has a lot more thinking over to be done bt I guess we'll get there someday. I'm really looking forward to playing our stuff live, especially the new stuff. Damn, I really wish I get over this flu quickly.
03.08.2001 Some bits and pieces to a couple of songs yesterday. Julius had added a bassline and some other stuff to "Breed" but we started working on "Wait" which I've considered waste material thus far but we injected some funk into it and now - once again - it's begun a life of its own. I played some slap bass and Julius did his clavinet trickery and then there's that disco-beat. First it sounded kinda funny but as the stuff kept on piling, it started to make sense. Somehow. We also went through the stuff we have in progress which made also a surprisingly hefty and decent pile. "A perfect smile" sounded very nice indeed which also is one of the songs I've kinda forgotten. It seems that recording everything really pays off. I also presented the demo of "Push" to Julius (some of you have probably heard it before him and Ilkka, lo and behold the wonders of Internet) and he seemed to like it so that one is also added to that heap o'songs.
02.08.2001 I did a demo of the aforementioned "Push" and uploaded it to the songs-section. It peaks a bit and stuff but I guess you'll get the picture. We also test drove Ilkka's new guitar when we played through a couple of songs in our rehearsal facility. The guitar seemed pretty fine and Ilkka seemed to like it at least. I managed to snap a string when we were playing the last song that evening so I'm going to have to get me a new set today. About bloody time too, some would probably say.
01.08.2001 I finished the tune I worked on yesterday and so the lyrics are now available in the songs-section as usual. I'm not really that sure about the title - which is "Push" - and the lyrics to the chorus. I intentionally tried to avoid writing lyrics on the relationship crumbling down aspect which mostly has been on my mind and write about another kind of relationship trouble. I'm pretty pleased with the subject it handles though I'm not sure if it comes out the way I'd want it to but then again when does a songwriter ever know how the song or the lyrics will sound to the listener. Ilkka had finally gotten round to purchasing himself an acoustic guitar yesterday which he was very enthusiastic about. And also Julius had set his eye on a new instrument. Though he didn't buy it yet, a vibraphone had come his way which was pretty much begging for shelter under the roof of casa de Thölix. Let's hope it's at a reasonable price so he can get his hands on it.
31.07.2001 So I got pretty much kicked in teeth on an emotional level yesterday. Like bigtime. Sometimes I fucking wonder why do I bother with any of this shit but I guess I'll live to write a couple more sobbing bastard songs. And ain't it so that in order to write good songs you have to live and get experiences in between? Hope so. And I managed to squeeze out one song yesterday, although it's lacking lyrics and is basically just a sketch but it sounded still kinda good in the morning. Alright, now I'm gonna get me some super glue and get my shit together. And no, I'm not planning on huffing...
30.07.2001 Me and Julius were at it again all Friday night as we built up the new song he had been working with. We added some piano bits, some acoustic guitar, a guideline vocal and some splashing of the waves among other things to it and it sounds very good indeed. Once again it's a different kind of tune compared to the stuff we've done so far. I was so into the song I had to write the lyrics to it the very same night after coming home from the bar. So it's called "Breed" and you can find the lyrics from the songs-section. On Saturday I skated pretty much the whole day through 'cause I had this old friend come by who's totally ace at the sport. We had a really good time which continued pretty much all the way to the next morning, although the latter hours we were off our boards. "Rock the fucking sidepipe" as they say, hurhur. As you can guess Sunday wasn't really a day you tell your grandchildren about, all comatosed from the lack of sleep and with a bruised back I helped Ilkka move again. He's going to move again in a month and I'm planning on being a couple of thousand miles away when that happens. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit...but I ain't carrying one single Miles Davis record anywhere, that's for sure.
27.07.2001 We had ourselves a brief rehearsal yesterday before we had another game of the rockstars. Julius had worked on this little riff we recorded last weekend and it sounded promising. Now all we have to do is scratch up a song around it. And as far as the streetgolf news go, I am happy to announce the first victory for the Graceskull team as I swinged myself to the top spot last night. The course was tricky, lights were low and especially on the "green" Kena was really close to whooping my ass but his final shots, to my luck, weren't up to par. Our team's complete result was evened out by Ilkka as he nightclubbed his way onto the final position once again. To his defence I have to say that he had been forced to gulp a pint of moonshine before getting on course which might have had something to do with the unsatisfying results.
24.07.2001 Back on dat ass, baby. Last night the clubs clashed against the Vaasa asphalt once again with much improved result for the Graceskull team. We had a more technical course this time including an extremely sensitive slope which proved to be the turning point of the game. While some of us cleared this obstacle - which gained the nickname "World of shit" - in just under five swings, others were still cursing the ball up the hill in twenty plus. We also had a photographer with us who took over 150 pics, some of which might end up here possibly someday. So in the end it was Coma who took the first prize once again with me close second and sadly Ilkka had his troubles in chipping the ball to our target - a lit map of Vaasa - and finished last behind Paati, Kena and Kaizu Soze. We got the promotional gears in motion yesterday with the single and relieved ourselves of the better part of the print. I'm pretty eager to see what kind of reaction we get or maybe I'm just eager to see if anyone cares to listen to vinyl stuff anymore. And then I got one new song called "Surrender" done and added its lyrics, along with a couple of other newbies "The Passenger" and "Night falls", to the songs-section.
23.07.2001 A very visual weekend, my brothers
and sisters. Saturday was all work as me and Julius started
early with mixing "Stay around" and compiling the whole record.
We also added some guideline-ish guitar and vocals to "Night
falls" and did some other interesting stuff. Then when night really
did fell we headed to the outer regions of Vaasa and recorded
some interesting stuff like the ocean, car-motor and mosquitoes.
We also had a camera with us so we documented some of this
madness and also took some mugshots which might prove nice. We'll
see. On Sunday we headed over to the Vaasa docks with Skithund
Records' Micke Wägar and shot some more pictures, which came
out pretty good, especially one background we found there
looked great. I might put up a pic or two this week so watch out.
And another thing to watch out is - finally - the split 7 inch
limited edition transparent of "You could be the one" on Skithund
Records! It's a very limited edition piece and most of them
will end us us promos but if you're really quick, you can
order a copy directly from us by sending a 20FIM bill in an
envelope to this address:
Graceskull / NSA Records
Kauppapuistikko 18 A 15
65100 VAASA, Finland
If you reside outside Finland, contact us for the appropriate
currency: graceskull@nolla.net.
20.07.2001 Yay, baby yay. We got our own domain name now so you can now access these pages by just typing www.graceskull.com on your pretty little browser. The pages are still located at nolla.net thanks to Harri so the old address still works too. We did a bit of practising again yesterday which went fine enough, even sketched out a setlist of some sorts althoughthere are too many songs on it but it's better to know too many songs than too few, that's for sure. Again some rumours about the split 7", it's supposed to finally come out next week but this is musicbiz so let's see what happens.
19.07.2001 Gawddamnit! The Graceskull team was crushingly beaten in yesterday's streetgolf game, the others finished at least 20 swings ahead of us. But nevertheless it was a pleasant game as the course was truly nice, once again we finished in a waterfountain which proved to be difficult enough for our skills. Some practise with chipping might be in order. Luckily at home my brand new Radiohead vinyls were expecting me and they warmed me as it had poured some rain during the game. I can't believe how excited I was to get hold of these vinyls, the sleeves are just fantastic when they're that size and at least "Kid A" was more pleasant to listen to on vinyl though I can't explain quite why. Maybe it's because you have to be quite active when you're listening to it, flip a side over every 15 or so minutes. I also managed to scribble lyrics to this one new song which is at least for now called "Night falls". I don't know whether I'm that pleased with the lyrics yet but I shouldn't really get all critical about them since I guess most our lyrics are syrupy sentimental bollocks anyway, hurhur.
18.07.2001 More pics for ya right here, there are about 15 more of them now. We did a lot of cutting and soundtrickery yesterday on "Stay around" and it's plenty better now than it ever was although as Julius said, it sounds more like a remix but it don't matter. There's still some work left to do with it, mostly with mixing the vocals. Our dear producer had also begun the work on my guitar mic and was basically just a few small steps from finishing it, apparently the electronics store had run out of certain crucial parts.
17.07.2001 Julius had laid plans for a guitar mic he's going to build for my raggedy ol' acoustic. He'd drawn these schematics I believe they're called for a couple of different solutions and I picked the one which had the prettiest picture. I also got the pics that were taken at our rehearsals by Skithund Record's Michael Wägar and so I have new pictures for you to take a look at. Click here for the new photographs. That's just the first 20 pics, I'll be adding more of them this week so stay tuned.
16.07.2001 As I strongly suspected, our DJ gig wasn't happening as the wind blew hard and it also poured some in the morning. I didn't mind that much since my rock'n'roll duties had kept me awake for pretty long the night before (actually we hit my place after a night at the bar and peeped through a couple of Jackass-episodes with the Sugarrush's Paati). As the deejaying thingy didn't happen, we decided to put the time to use in another way and recorded hopefully the last fucking pieces to the record. We re-did Ilkka's vocals for "Stay around" and recorded some other funny stuff as a surprise to Julius who had left us two alone in the studio for the first time. We recorded odd harmonies, duct tape, knee-slapping and handclaps among other things. Let's see if his twisted mind will fit that shit in the song. Later on I polished the records sleeves a bit more, inserted the (at least for the time being) correct tracklist and so on. On Sunday I managed to hurt a few regions of my lower regions again skateboarding but it wasn't anything that bad. I've been fiddling with a new tune which sounds a bit like this one Sparklehorse song I think, don't have a name for it yet. And once again on a final note, added some new records in both our collections, take a wild guess which name stands on every single one of Ilkka's new CDs? Yup, Miles fucking Davis...Hmm, haven't we been buying some grandad music recently; Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder and Carole King. Should I start worrying already?
13.07.2001 Rehearsed a bit yesterday but bad luck seemed to continue as we really sucked, my singing mostly. I really felt depressed after the rehearsals but I guess I just have too high hopes or something, most other bands suck on their first gigs, so why not us? Coming home I listened through our record and was kinda relieved as it at least sounded as it's supposed to. Tomorrow we're supposed to DJ again, this time right in the middle of Vaasa city center but the weather doesn't seem very promising as it is an outdoor thingy. But I guess this bad luck is bound to end sometime. Added some new records to Ilkka's record collection, Miles Davis times too many again....
12.07.2001 Not that much luck with our guitar hunt, our budget might be a bit on the skinny side though. Unfortunate news also on the record front, due to some problems with the sleeves the single-release has been pushed back to next week but you may as well start cracking your wallets open already.
10.07.2001 Another game of streetgolf again yesterday and it clearly seems that the Sugarrush guys are taking this season by a storm. Coma played a clean game and finished first with Paati on the podium right next to him. I managed a shared third place with newcomer Kena and yet again Ilkka - or "Rough Boy" as we like to call him - pillaged through some bushes, streetlight poles and whatnot therefore finishing last. In a fit over one stray ball he did throw his club respectably far, though. I was quite happy with one shot I made over a moving car, the ball flew only inches over the windshield. Today we're apparently going guitar hunting for Ilkka, hoping to find some nice, wide-necked acoustic axe.
09.07.2001 Kinda slow weekend for a change which was nice I guess. It's been so damn hot that I haven't really had that much energy to do anything. Luckily our rehearsal facilities are located deep underground so it was a pleasure to escape the high temperatures yesterday as we rehearsed a bit. Again some songs sounded pretty good and some songs didn't but we're getting there. On the emotional graceskull barometer, Ilkka's been pretty fucked the whole weekend through because of all-around relationship-related troubles. And on the physical aspect I managed to tweak my ankle yesterday pretty nicely once again skateboarding. It was the darned good weather that made me do it. The weather also forced me to stick this Wilco CD into the player, mmmgood.
06.07.2001 We had a three hour rehearsal session yesterday, played through every single song we have and a couple of covers too. It's still kind of a mess but it went unexpectedly good, can't expect us to hit the same note all the time at this stage. We had Skithund Records' cameraman also onboard in the beginning of the session, taking some 70 promoshots. I'm hoping we can get them here sometime next week.
05.07.2001 We had a wonderful evening yesterday, had a round of street-golf with the Sugarrush's Coma and Paati. The weather was finer than fine and the clubs did indeed kipinöidä - as they say. We cleared the demanding course in under two hours and managed to hit only one car, a Talbot, so nothing to lose one's sleep over. Paati finished first with a score of 41 with me hanging tightly onto the silver medal with 44 swings. Ilkka cleared his way onto third place although he seriously hit rough only a couple of yards away from the target. Coma's solid gold shots unfortunately didn't help as he detoured a couple of backyards outside the course. After all this sport activity we chilled a bit enjoying the sunset after which I returned home and wrote a little tune called "Alright". The lyrics can be found in the songs-section as usual...and no, the song ain't about street-golf.
04.07.2001 We tried some rehearsing with Julius yesterday, Ilkka was working so he could make it. After somewhat figuring a couple of songs out, the Sugarrush gang invaded the room and made our task nearly impossible as Andy - El Homosexual de la Forza, as he is often called - assumed the role of a tone-deaf solo guitarist and played some jazzed-out wahwah-shit all over everything. Thanks, baby. After hitting the road on Mr. Thölix's fine vehicle, we proceeded (Ilkka included) to D.O.M. which is a local pub or someting along those lines where we made some hardhitting plans about out livesets and even the next release. We haven't even managed to come out with the debut split-single and we're planning on our third release already, aren't we a bunch of smart fuckers... Speaking about the split seven inch, it now has an official release-date which is Friday the 13th of July so solely on that basis it's bound to do well. And on a final note, today I added three more Miles Davis-records to Ilkka's list of records, should I start worrying about him already?
03.07.2001 Wrote a new song yesterday, it feels like it's been such a long time since I've last managed to do that. Just as I had finished the song, Julius called me up and just moments after we demoed it. We managed to get some ultra-distorted guitar in there although it was nothing like I had planned for the song. The song is - at least for now - called "Not that fast" and you can find the lyrics for it in the songs-section. Ilkka came by also and we did some minor changes for "You could be the one". Also added some new records to both our record collections.
02.07.2001 Back to business after some busy days. I spent the best part of last week in the beautiful capital of Sweden, Stockholm that is. What a nice city with all too many good records shops. It was quite frustrating with my budget but I managed to step on the plane with three sparkling Twisted Sister vinyls, one Nelly Furtado single and a Battlestar Galactica video. I also got a fair share of the local sights as no other than princess Madeleine herself seated behind me in this sushibar I enjoyed a meal in Thursday night. Beautiful girl, what can you say...Back in Finland Ilkka was doing the DJ thing again on his own but apparently it hadn't been as fun as our doubles shit which figures I guess, I'm after all a fabulously fun person to be with. Yeah right. Anyway when I got back to Finland it was all hard labour as first we moved Julius' stuff to our rehearsing facility and then we helped Ilkka move to his new apartment downtown Vaasa city. He had so much strange shit in those boxes it's amazing. Tennis racket? Que? Sunday's only mentionable thing was me hurting my toe pretty bad skateboarding - I ran into a wall, hurhur. On the Graceskull tip, I just hope we can now get rehearsing soon as we got all the stuff ready. More on that hopefully later this week.
26.06.2001 Midsummer festivities are over and it's time to get back on track with the almighty routine. To tell you the truth routine doesn't sound all that bad due to the emotional rollercoaster the last week has been. Right now unfortunately I'm at the low point of the track once again hoping that at least some good songs would spring from this state I'm in. But I'm sure you've now had enough of my cry-baby antics so let's get down to what the Graceskull crew did during the Midsummer. Actually it was more the Sugarrush crew that was on the move as both Ilkka and I were tour extras for their gig on this shady festival in Virrat. Arriving on location the festival really didn't overthrow any of us with any good vibes, the crowd was poor in number and redneckish to say the least. After a short, sweaty and mosquito-filled night in the back of a too little van, it started raining on Saturday so our mood wasn't much lifted then either. But as we finally got on stage after some solid 30 hours of being pissed off, playing was really fun and the small crowd seemed to like it too. We even had a couple of male exotic dancers on stage (ie. a couple of drunken dudes showing their arses) which the females seemed to like. I also had a gig with Alkalyne an hour later that evening at the same festival which went dandy as well so that kinda evened out all the bad karma around. Anyway a second after the Alkalyne gig I got in the car with my stuff and off to Vaasa we were, we even made it to a local club before closing time but I only hung around for a little while since lack of sleep got to me big-time. A lazy Sunday brought the weekend to a close with a little depression over relationships, the Sugarrush's acoustic set and watching Planet of the Apes on TV.
21.06.2001 I'm so damn tired right now that it's hard to hit the correct keys on the keyboard. We did our DJ-thing again yesterday and the nightly activities went on a bit longer that is healthy for a working man but I guess I'll survive. We played a game with Ilkka where you had to mix an artist whose initial letter was the one the previous artist's name ended with to the song the counterpart played. So we had pretty strange set but it was all good (...The Afghan Whigs - Stevie Wonder - Refused - DJ Shadow...etc.). As I once again bailed out a bit before the club closed while Ilkka was pumping the speakers with "Axel Foley's Theme" from the Beverly Hills Cop flicks.
20.06.2001 Finally finished all the songs yesterday and damn, does it feel good. Now we've got two different running orders that we must test out, I even haven't had the time to check out both yet, just the first but I was pretty happy with that. I replaced the unfinished versions of "Lover" and "Beautifullest lie" with the new ones to the songs-section and even added a brand spanking new song, "Boxing day", on there so check 'em all out.
19.06.2001 Boy, had our producer re-done "Stay around". It sounded nothing like the first version, had crazy piano stuff on there and a six-feet-under-beat. I think we're gonna release it but the version on the record is going to be the original because it was so totally different compared to all the other songs and it still needed some work. I also made a suggestion on the tracklist, we'll see what the others guys think of it. And on one final note, it seems that the split 7" single is finally going to be out in a week or two but we'll get back atcha on that.
18.06.2001 Gawddamn we survived Provinssirock! Truly an unexpectedly great weekend with a couple of fabulous gigs and heaps of brainless humor. Best gigs were mostly by bands that I didn't expect much (or anything) from like the Soundtrack of Our Lives and Limp Bizkit. I can feel your amazement, my brothers and sisters but Bizkit's show just was one of the best I've ever witnessed; bombs, confetti, beautiful dancing girls, fire and whatnot - and it didn't sound too bad either. I was just blown away...as I was with TSOOL's performance, great tunes with rocking show, the bemoustached guitarist mostly caught my eye. A bit of a dissappointment for me was Weezer who were the main reason I even dragged my ass over. Their sound and performance were a bit half-assed, the gig didn't really catch full speed until about halfway into the set and for me at least, it was too late. A guaranteed booty-shaking gig was Flaming Sideburns' Sunday set which brought the audience to their knees - literally. This is starting to sound like a review, isn't it? Tough luck. During the weekend nearly all the peeps onboard our festival machine gained a new Spanish nickname so hereon ye shalt call me by the name of El Impuro - a translation of one of my stage names Likainen - and Ilkka is now called El Mecánico. You're probably wondering where Ilkka's nickname came from and I'd gladly reveal it to you if only I wasn't sure he'd be hella pissed of at me if I did, hurhur. Our producer unfortunately didn't make it to the festival so he had worked with our stuff the entire weekend and basically remade "Stay around". That's probably the first song we started working on and now it's the last one getting finished.
14.06.2001 Extremely busy day yesterday. I did the last of the vocals by singing "Beautifullest lie" and then we kinda mixed some shit too. After that me and Ilkka spent the rest of the night deejaying at local club Papin Nenä which was quite nice although drunken white thrash that appeared on the set later that night spoiled my mood by asking for stupid tunes and whatnot. We tested a couple of our own tunes too, "Lover" and "Silence makes us strong" sounded great. As I had to wake up early today, I proceeded home sometime at about 3AM while Ilkka closed the set with some oozing slow numbers. We're back on location at Papin Nenä next week, same bat-time same bat-channel.
11.06.2001 Another nightshift on Friday as we tangled with compressions and mixes and all that until the breakadawn. I think we need some new vocals for a couple of songs, a bit of mixing and then we've got the shit together. Exciting times we live. The rest of the weekend was spent on my behalf in an emotional ditch (I guess I'll squeeze out a tune or two because of it so it's not that bad, hurhur) which wasn't much eased with watching Dancer in the Dark and the fact that it rained the whole Sunday through. Ilkka was reprazenting his ill ol' self on the a local radio station, Radio Vaasa, where he now has his own program Puistikoita ja puuta heinää with Vapaapudotus-vocalist TKK aka Pekka Karppinen. For quality music and banter check it out now every Sunday at 14.00 sharp.
08.06.2001 Sketched out the sleeves for the split 7" single, it's going to be quite a minimalist affair. The discs are pressed and on their way, so I guess the single will be out in the next couple of weeks.
07.06.2001 Even more work yesterday as we sat in the studio
until 2AM in the morning. We mixed three songs ready; "Demons", "Uneasy" and
"Lover" and almost got "Before the curtain arrives" into shape. Finishing
songs made me stress about the order in which we're going to put the songs
on the record. The complete list of songs on the record is pretty much as follows
(in no particular order yet):
You could be the one
Boxing day
Silence makes us strong
Stay around
Beautifullest lie
Demons
Diagnose
Uneasy
Before the curtain arrives
Lover
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear
06.06.2001 Lots of work done yesterday. Played some acoustic guitar, some percussions, mixed this and that song and cleaned up sounds and songs. Today we're planning on getting "Demons" and "Boxing day" together.
05.06.2001 Added "Wait" - that's one of those older demos - to our songs-section. Spent most of yesterday recovering from the weekend, too much rawk hurhur.
04.06.2001 What a weekend, four gigs in two days. We had the comeback of Hietasaarirock in Vaasa this year and it was supernice although the moody weather surely put more than a dent in the number of punters. On Saturday my first gig of the evening - with the Sugarrush - was pretty fucked as I once again snapped a string and spent half the gig trying to get the damn guitar tuned as my tuner was at least as moody as the weather. The gig was alright though and so was my other gig with Alkalyne that evening. On board with Alkalyne was also my dear colleague, Mr. Bad S. Kiisto and he rocked the percussions dept. harder than ever. The next day weather was more pleasing although a bit colder. The Sugarrush set that day was undoubtedly one of the most fun gigs I've ever played. The other extra axeman of the Sugarrush, El Tero-Teró, managed to bleed all over his guitar yet again during both gigs of the weekend so that must be some guarantee of the hardhitting action that went on. Sadly I had rocked my nuts off during that set so I was pretty beat when I had to get up on stage with Alkalyne, so my apologies. A big thank you to all the organizers and the people who showed up. On the Graceskull front things are looking at least as bright as Saturday saw Ilkka finishing his vocals off with a deeper than deep bass vocals for "Stay around". We're trying to wrap the shit up this week, let's hope we can pull it through.
01.06.2001 Although our dear producer had celebrated the new floor in the studio the night before thus sporting a massive hangover, we got some work done yesterday. Recorded some acoustic guitar and then we fiddled with a new tune that we started building on this one strange bassline. It sounded quite promising and I got to hammer some Rhodes on it too. Added some new records to both our record collections: Ilkka and Ove.
31.05.2001 Our studiosession that was scheduled for yesterday got canceled since our producer had been struck by a sudden interest in carpentering. Oh well, at least the studio has a brand spanking new floor now. I did a demo of "The kid with fiery eyes" at home instead and it came alright, did even some drum programming for it on a tracker which you can tell by the sound, hur hur. Download the fucker from our songs-section and check it out. I also found some older demos that I might leak out later on as well.
29.05.2001 Got down to some real Graceskull biz again yesterday, spent the most of the day at Julius' recording and mixing songs. We got four songs now that are pretty much 100% finished: "Diagnose", "You could be the one", "Uneasy" and "Lover". We recorded some shady guitar stuff like extreme fuzz sound through a two inch amp and an unplugged electric guitar. I think we have most of the stuff recorded at least instrumentwise, so it's pretty much mixing, fine-tuning and background vocals hereon.
28.05.2001 Busy weekend indeed, on Friday I once again played with the Sugarrush at Tampere's YO-Talo supporting the fabulous Lemonator. The gig went great and I have to give it up for my colleague El Tero-Teró for his magnificent performance, he nearly lost a finger battering that guitar! After some rock'n'roll-antics and a night poorly slept we headed back home where I had a gig axing for Alkalyne. I gathered up good spirit watching Boogie Nights right before getting up on the stage but somehow it got lost (the spirit, not the stage) during the gig as I snapped a string and the crowd seemingly wasn't feeling it. At last on Sunday we got round doing something Graceskull-related as we took pictures for the ads for our deejaying gigs. We are gonna deejay at Papin nenä 13. and 20.6., be sure to arrive, some great tunes abound like you never heard before. The picture came out pretty funny, although we both look pretty stupid, especially me. In the picture I'm holding an Elvis-record in one hand and a drill in the other in a secret agent pose while Ilkka is utilizing a handheld grinder. I'll get it up here once I get a hold of the pic.
25.05.2001 Blech, I've been sick now for the most part this week so I haven't got much done. Scribbled some lyrics whilst in fever, so they didn't amount to much when I had a look at them again this morning. Apparently Ilkka did some vocals yesterday but at the moment I'm oblivious to whether they've really got something on tape or not. It would be about bloody time. Listening now to the new Radiohead album, sounds good though the connection is awful so the songs snap-crackle-n-pop all the time. Maybe they're supposed to do that?
21.05.2001 Once again an interesting weekend with the Sugarrush crew. Friday saw me finishing the artwork as planned, maybe some finetuning is in order still. On Saturday I was on stage in Helsinki with the Sugarrush and the gig was hella rockin'. I don't think I've ever been that sweaty after a gig in my whole life. The after hours party was an interesting ordeal also, damn tired after driving 500km and playing a gig and all I almost wet myself laughing at all the stupidity around. However in the morning it turned out that this one jackass that had slept in our host's bed had really had problems keeping the bladder-control under wraps as his bed was basically swimming in a pool of urine. There comes a time in every man's life when you have to buy a new madress and for Mikko, our host, the time came that particular Sunday morning. After ditching the rapidly spreading stench of his apartment, we spent the rest of the day driving through rainy Southern Finland. After arriving Ilkka came by and we tried out this new song he'd come up with that day.
18.05.2001 It seems that also the nice people at mesta.net like "You could be the one" since they have selected it as their song of the week. Luv. Today I finally got the high-resolution version of the coverpic so I'll be finishing the artwork hopefully this weekend. Added new lyrics for "The kid with fiery eyes" to the songs-section.
16.05.2001 We've though about our liveshow a lot recently, especially our producer has and we came to the conclusion that Ilkka is going to take up bass (and maybe some other instruments) on stage and Julius is handling the tech shit and keyboards and I'll be on the guitar. Maybe. A lot of questions are still unanswered and we're hoping to clear them coinciding with the record's finishing process. I tried to find a WAV-sequencer of some sorts to help us with the liveshow but I couldn't really find any suitable, if you have any suggestions mail us. Also added Ilkka's new records to his record collection-page.
15.05.2001 I spent yesterday working on the sleeves for the CD. We bought rights to this beautiful photograph by world renowned photographer Juhana Hurtig and I did some sketches on it. I think I'll get a proper high quality version of the picture today, so I hope to be doing more than sketching later. Thanks go out to Kaarle for hooking us up.
14.05.2001 Niiice weekend. On Friday I made a new tune called "The kid with the fiery eyes" which came out somewhat different to the songs we've done so far. The lyrics are under progression still. The rest of my weekend was spent in sunny Hämeenlinna where I was gueststarring as the Sugarrush's extra guitarist. I played like shit, snapped a string in the first 10 seconds of the gig and had trouble with malfunctioning guitar mics but it seemed like the audience didn't mind nearly as much as I did. The highlight of the evening was no doubt Flaming Sideburns' performance, rock'n'roll to the max! Then once awaken sometime noon on Sunday we payed a visit to the arranger of the gig (also a national radio celeb and record company guru) Miettinen. All of us left with a hefty pile of great records and an empty wallet (nece the new additions to my record collection-page). Ilkka apparently spent the weekend underground writing new heartwrenching songs due to his recent emotional rollercoaster.
11.05.2001 Been busy at work recently, hence the scarce updates on the newsfront. We did loads of shit on Wednesday, recorded almost all my remaining vocals on all tracks and Julius' special organ (no pun intended) for "Uneasy". So right now two most crucial things to do are to figure out which one of the remaining songs will be included on the record and get Ilkka's vocal tracks done, after those it's all mixing and finetuning and other downhill typa shit. So basically for all your amazement we're pretty much on schedule.
07.05.2001 Luvly Monday morning and Turin Brakes' blasting on the speakers. Mmmgood. We recorded some acoustic guitar on a couple of tracks on Friday and also did the vocals for "Silence makes us strong". Damn I really did suck donkey dick at playing the acoustic but we got at least something done. On Saturday I gueststarred on stage with the Sugarrush which was hella fun and after that we deejayed the night away with Ilkka. We played some rockin' tunes which people seemed to enjoy strangely enough (we played at least half the tracks on that Les Rythmes Digitales disc) and there was even talk of Papin Nenä club hosting a monthly clubnight of our own sometime in the future. We closed the night with a Mötley Crüe classic "Home sweet home" and damn, did it work the booties of all lovers on the dancefloor. Hugs'n'kisses to all the nice people who attended.
04.05.2001 The producer had added some piano and other shit on a couple of songs, the Kujansivu newbie "Boxing day 2000" and "A perfect smile". We looked through the almost finished songs and made a decision to get them done first and then push out the one final song whichever it may be.
03.05.2001 It's been a while since I last wrote due to a couple different reasons; one is that a national holiday called Vappu has kept us busy on the non-musical rock'n'roll side of life and other is that we switched servers and the default editor on the new server was crap but now nolla.net's techguru Harri has installed a better one so we're back in business. I'm hoping on getting back on track with the recordings soon although Likainen Harri Keitele's - my alter ego's - duties as the Sugarrush's tour guitarrist will probably take some precious studio time. Maybe Ilkka will get some work done in the meantime, though I seriously doubt it. The lazy fuck.
26.04.2001 On Monday we did a bit of training and came up with a new song "Boxing day 2000" which was kinda nice although a few fits were thrown before we got the fucker together. Sometimes I don't know why I even bother to collaborate with Ilkka but the fruits are decent enough so I guess it's worth it. Yesterday I did demos of a load of songs to our producer, so we could figure out what the last couple of songs on the record will be. Among them were the afore mentioned new song and another newbie "Outside" which even Ilkka hasn't heard yet. They were all done first take so I think I'll keep 'em out of this site due to bad singing and playing. For your safety, dear reader.
23.04.2001 Recording some interesting stuff again on Saturday. Among a bunch of other shit we recorded the sounds of sandpaper, 8mm camera and and an old beercan. On the more musical side we recorded a lot of keyboards and even I got some Rhodes in there. Gotta love that czar of all instruments.
20.04.2001 Things starting to brighten up, all we need is a couple of decent songs and we've got ourselves a record. Of course mixing and whatnot will take their time but I'm really glad the light at the end of the tunnel is finally visible. Yesterday's work quota was pretty minimal as all we really got together was the structure of "Demons" and an excellent "aeroplane-taking-off" - type of sound for that same song. Let's hope the weekend springs something more meaningful.
19.04.2001 Again a demoversion for your listening pleasure added to the songs-section. This time it's a little ditty called "Before the curtain arrives". Mr. Thölix had spent all day yesterday on a couple of tracks and I think we'll be doing some shit today too.
17.04.2001 We got through the easter pretty much intact although we made a decision that only one of us is going to attend the studio with Julius at a time. So I did just that yesterday and we built a nice grooving version of "Silence makes us strong" which now has a ton of keyboards on it and sounds somewhat Afghan Whigs-ish. Not very electronic though so I don't know where these recordings are heading any more now than I did in the beginning. Also we decided that we should have a collection of ten or so songs ready before the summertime. Let's see if we can keep that deadline.
11.04.2001 Updated Ilkka's list of records and added our version of Iron Maiden's classic song "Wasted years" to the songs-section. Check 'em out.
10.04.2001 New lyrics for "Demons" in the songs-section. Our producer had bought a beautiful new keyboard yesterday, a bright red Yamaha Electone, let's hope we can make use of it.
09.04.2001 Another lazy Sunday session yesterday, it was almost a perfect replica of the Sunday before. Ilkka and Julius had been living the rock'n'roll life again with the aid of free alcohol at local restaurant Papin Nenä so all attempts at making any progress with the recordings pretty much failed. Ilkka even tried vocals lying in our producer's bed with the blinds down in red light to give the track ("Bellyup") some erotic edge bur somehow the erotica really didn't find its way on tape. I was in a tiptop condition of course...yeah right.
06.04.2001 Got another demo up and downloadable in the songs-section, "Silence makes us strong" it's called. Worked on a couple of songs yesterday, the other one was a more rockier song I came up with the same day and the other was something we just built on a Rhodes-riff that was left over from "You could be the one". Interesting stuff.
05.04.2001 The good folks at mp3finland seem to like us, "You could be the one" is number 3 on their best of -chart, whatever that means. Yesterday we did some rehearsing and came across something that could be a new song maybe someday. We also talked with the producer about the songs we're going to record so the tracklist might be more or less different to that which we started with.
03.04.2001 The sun is shining and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy are pumpin' on the stereo, luvly. One demo called "Uneasy" is up and downloadable in the songs-section.
02.04.2001 Did some recordings again on Saturday but the progression came out pretty minimal as Ilkka and our producer were in an ameba-like state the whole day. Sometimes the rock'n'roll lifestyle has its drawbacks.
31.03.2001 Recorded a couple of demos of new songs yesterday with my dear old beaten Landola. I might put some up here next week if I dare.
30.03.2001 The brand new mastered version of "You could be the one" is up and downloadable in the songs-section.
29.03.2001 Yesterday the song got mastered and it's about to be sent for pressing any day now. We'll expect the discs to arrive in approximately a month. I added the inspirational forces behind the both of us to the graceskull-section in the form of our record collections: here's Ilkka's and here's mine. Every record we own should be there pretty much, warts'n all. Due to a memory lapse Ilkka might be adding a few a bit later on.
28.03.2001 It's pretty much official now, we're going to release "You could be the one" on transparent vinyl through Skithund records. On the flipside there'll be a song from another fine Vaasa-band Atyd. Yesterday we got the mix together and today should be the day for mastering. I also added lyrics for a new song "Silence makes us strong" to the songs-section.
25.03.2001 Ilkka and Mr. Thölix finished work on "Lover" this weekend with some vocal and bass additions while I was seeking inspiration for new songs in the woeful cold breezes of Helsinki.
22.03.2001 Now we got some 45 brand spanking new more or less homoerotic pictures of us boys for your viewing pleasure. Clickety click here.
20.03.2001 Homepages open for the general public. Some songs' demoversions uploaded. There's been talk of maybe doing a split 7" vinyl with Atyd. Maybe we'll put "You could be the one" on our side but then again maybe we won't. Uncertain this rockbiz, ainnit?
19.03.2001 More work with Mr. Thölix. Recorded vocals, guitars and weird noises on "Beautifullest lie" and "Lover". After a hard days work we proceeded to relax with some Stevie Wonder and I tried to push Ilkka into doing a cover of "I just called to say I love you" sometimes but he wasn't that excited. I proceeded my persuasion with some oldfashioned violence and he still didn't give in. Hardheaded man, that Ilkka.
18.03.2001 Shooting photos with Tiina Miettinen behind the camera. We had spent the whole week watching the American idiot savant TV-show Jackass and Ilkka had a gigantic hangover so the situation got a little physical from time to time. We're still friends...kinda. Fucker. Hopefully we can get these pics up here next week.
16.03.2001 Working with the producer Julius Thölix on a couple ditties, we tried to get a beat going on "Bellyup" but it really didn't come out right. I think we have to try to slow that one down a bit.
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