Beat a Go Go

A.W. Yrjänä, Tavastia, 4/30/03

A few years ago, I was needing a break from work and life and thought that a trip to Montréal might be in order. I was surfing the net, hoping that I might find that my favorite Québécois band, Les Colocs, might be playing in Montréal sometime in the near future.

Sadly, instead of tour dates, I found heartfelt messages posted by distraught fans in memory of André Fortin, the lead singer, who had committed suicide a year earlier. I looked to see if my favorite Finnish band, CMX, were playing any gigs soon. And, to my dismay, I found a posting on their website that they were not planning to tour any more. I spent the rest of the day wallowing in thoughts of missed opportunities.

Hidden Sky CD release concert, Seattle 2004 (photo: Nancy Chapin)

In October 2004, the Broadway Performance Hall in Seattle sold out all 300 seats in a special multimedia concert to celebrate Hidden Sky, the most recent CD release from cellist, composer, and singer Jami Sieber. In tribute to the elephants who participated in creating the album, a portion of proceeds from both the concert and the CD have been donated to elephant conservation. Against a backdrop of moving pictures that stretched from stage to ceiling, concertgoers were treated to the music, stories, and images that told the tale of how one woman was inspired to break new ground by jamming with elephants.

Marko Annala (photo: Mikko Hinkkanen)

Mokoma was relatively unknown to the majority of the record-buying audience when they were recording with the multinational EMI, even though the band itself was formed in 1996. Not until they left/were kicked out from EMI and after they had put together their own label, Sakara Records - and after they had recorded the first-ever thrash-metal record sung in Finnish, Kurimus - did the majority of record-buying people, me included, start to notice Mokoma. To me Mokoma was an oddity and their music did not open up to me at all. Maybe it was because of the artsy-fartsy songs they used to perform. Anyhoo, I was wrong, that image I had was based on one record I had heard and a bunch of gigs I had seen Mokoma perform as a warmup to other bands. Everything changed one night at the Tavastia club, right after Kurimus had been released, when I saw Mokoma on stage, opening for Kotiteollisuus. I listened to them with every hair on my body standing up. I was literally awestruck.

Bruno Subiotto on the cover of Manitu

What is your inspiration when you are writing texts for songs?

Life is of equal value for human beings like for other living creatures, animals and plants. No one has the right to take anybody's life. It's one of the, let's say, "cosmic rules" and breaking it means misfortune and misery. The scale of suffering is equal to the negligence of this rule. Don't we have the commandment: do not kill? This commandment is meant for people, not animals ­- they have other rules to follow. Sorrowfully, people proved not to match such a "high" standard.

Cheshire Agusta at the Nyabinghi in Youngstown, Ohio, May 2003
photo by Dan Beland of stonerrock.com

What you need to know about Cheshire Agusta is right there in her tattoos. Along the inside of one of her forearms is inscribed in script: "I Am Fine". The other arm reads: "I Am Time". Flying across one of her biceps is an action portrait of the cartoon character Wonder Woman, complete with bright red boots.

William Faith and Monica Richards

Music is mythic. Its powers are magical, its effect transformative. Often derided as "product" (or worse) in today's market, music has the capacity to awaken wonder, nostalgia, even sanctity. And while airwaves and magazines might be profaned by gross commerce, a handful of artists are working even now to restore the sacred power of music.

Enter Faith and the Muse.

Brought together a decade ago, Monica Richards and William Faith epitomize the restless spirit of transformation. Both products of the post-punk underground, they connected on an almost mystical level. Within a few months, their debut album Elyria had taken both musicians in a very different direction. Since then, a series of albums, tours, books and side projects have marked Faith and the Muse as an obscure but brilliant force in the musical realm.

left to right: Tapani Varis, Ruthie Dornfeld, John Miller, Petri Hakala of Helsinki Express

April 25, 1946: The Liberty Theater in Ridgefield, Washington showed its very first film, Bandits of Sherwood. April 25, 2003: The renamed Old Liberty Theater hosted a concert by a unique musical group, Helsinki Express, on their first US tour. What do these two facts have in common? Not much, except possibly the excitement that a new experience has to offer, and the anticipation that something good is about to happen.

Aleš Rendla, Nino de Gleria and Bratko Bibič in Cerkno, Slovenia, May 2003

It's May of 2003 and we're on our way to the jazz festival in Cerkno, a small town about an hour's drive from Ljubljana. We're hurtling along the narrow road at high speed and I'm watching the countryside flashing past.

Matjaž Sekne backstage at Siddharta's stadium concert

You were born in a small ironworks city in a valley in the Slovenian Alps. When you were nine years old, you started to learn violin in music school. Was it your decision or your parents'?

My parents enrolled me in music school. I didn't wish this very much because I was a child and of course kids don't like to go to any school and learn. But later I found out that I love to play violin.

Nino de Gleria, soundcheck at Cerkno, May 2003 (photo: Bogo Pečnikar)

How long have you and Aleš known each other?

I’ve known Aleš from birth. We were living in the same house. We were neighbors. We were together all the time as kids. We had a puppet-show together. Then after Aleš moved, he began to learn violin in music school. My first wish was to play cello. I asked my father to enter me in music school. But something had happened a few days before my request. At that time I was very young, six or seven years old. I went with one of my friends from home and we got lost. We were walking at the river Gradascica, very far away from home. Our parents went completely crazy, worrying about where we were. At last they found us in another quarter of Ljubljana. Then when I asked my father about going to music school and playing the cello, he said, “If you are independent like this” - he was thinking about my vagabonding – “you can go and enter yourself in music school alone.” This was a kind of pedagogical step. Of course I didn't go to school alone.

Siddharta

I went to Italy last summer to see the highly popular Slovenian band Siddharta performing at a small rock festival in a village called Praprot. The festival was arranged by young Slovenian people living in Italy near the Slovenian border. Slovenians are a national minority in that part of Italy.

It was a pleasant experience to get there. There were Slovenian and Italian people of all ages. The village was crowded with cars from everywhere, motorcycles and of course Vespas. When we came into the audience, an old woman with a walking stick, surrounded with a lot of kids, said hello nicely to us. On the other side was a biker with long blond hair, in leather jacket and pants, drinking his beer slowly from a plastic glass. Late at night, after the old lady and little kids had gone off to bed, and after we'd had a few glasses of local red wine, the stars were in the crystal sky and the other stars took the stage at the edge of the little village surrounded by dark forest.

Mick Turner, Jim White and Warren Ellis

It is really interesting how many different kinds of music we can find under the name of "rock 'n' roll". I have talked with many musicians who dislike to be precisely classified in music - they just like to play rock 'n' roll in their own "noname" way - but they still rock.

Dirty Three is one of these special rock bands. From the distance, they look like a band on a street corner. But when you go and see them live on the stage, the angels and the devils begin to dance...