Author: Eduardo Alonso

Categories
Cover story Misc

Sport 2.0

{mosimage}Is it a sport? Is it a reality show? It’s
Leet! A couple of years ago, a young Finnish entrepreneur Jaakko Mäki-Petäjä
thought that it would be a good idea to create a new sport. But how to make
people play it? Easy! Recruit teams around the world, take them to a reality TV
show and offer a one million dollars reward. That’s the Leet challenge.

What it looked like a crazy idea late at
night, which would be soon developed into an adventurous business opportunity.
Jaakko and his partners at Spring Sports Ltd, Keni Simola and Iiro Lahdenranta,
met with top executives of the sports and media industry, like Formula 1 chief
Bernie Ecclestone and British television producer Mark Burnett. A few months
later, they were ready to present Leet to the world.

Justin Chacona, Marketing Manager for
Spring Sports, is the first face in front of the Leet cameras. He briefly
explains the concept of the new game: “The sport itself is played with a plastic stick
with which players can receive, carry and pass a rubber ball. Two teams of up
to ten players, only four of which may be on the playing surface for each team
at any given point, must try to surge past their oppositions’ defense to reach
the goals located high in the air at each end of the fifty-five yard long
arena.”

This
concept reminds Rollerball, the old sci-fi film from the seventies, but Leet is
not about smashing heads and slaughtering the opponent. “While essentially a
non-contact sport in nature”, continues Justin, “Leet is specifically designed
to exploit the best of one’s speed, agility, and hand-eye coordination. Hard,
rough, and full of non-stop movement, Leet can be enjoyed and played in your
backyard (where ‘Street Leet’ rules apply) or on top of the world in the
international Leet arena.”

{sidebar id=11}Start training

But before the competition, it was
necessary to create the rules and have someone to instruct the players. The
Leet team needed a trainer so they hired Coach Flanagan who became the fourth
member of the company. He spent one thousand man hours creating the rulebook,
travelling to China to test the prototypes of the sticks.

To spread Leet, the necessary equipment
(the stick and the ball) will be sold through the web in January. Then everyone
can start training and preparing for the TV show. Filming will start in the
autumn of 2008, but you can already pre-register your team at www.leet.tv There you can already take a glimpse
of what Leet is about, but expect a full launch of the website in less than one
week.

Categories
Cinema Interviews

Watching the sound

{mosimage}Once again,
the reputed Finnish filmmaker Mika Kaurismäki focuses on music with the
documentary Sonic Mirror. Guided by legendary jazz drummer Billy Cobham,
Kaurismäki’s camera travels to different parts of the world to present music as
one universal language. From Espoo to the kids in the streets of Brazil to an
community of autistic people in Switzerland to the primal music in Nigeria,
Sonic Mirror is a vibrant trip where there is rhythm is the only language. The
film premieres in Finland this Sunday as part of Espoo Ciné festival and Mika speaks to FREE! about it.

{sidebar id=10}What is Sonic Mirror for you?

It’s an
attempt to demonstrate that rhythm is one of the main things in human life. It
is something that unites all of us. It does not matter where you are. It’s a
universal language.

Billy Cobham, a drummer who played in Miles
Davis’ Bitches Brew and with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu
Orchestra, is the central figure of the film, but Sonic Mirror is nothing
similar to biography.

We decided
from the beginning that we didn’t want to make a portrait of Billy. That would
have been too easy and obvious even for him. We wanted to do something
different. Billy Cobham is the central figure, but Sonic Mirror is not just a
portrait of him. That would be a completely different thing because he’s
involved in so many activities. We wanted to make a film about rhythm and
education.

How did you translate rhythm into the language of
cinema?

Cinema is
also rhythm. I think music and cinema are very close. In both of them there’s
nothing concrete. Everything comes from imagination. It is hard to think of a
movie without music. Even silent movies had music.

You worked on this movie without a previously
written screenplay. Like in music you had to improvise. How was the experience?

In the
beginning the only idea I had is that music and rhythm are a universal
language. In many occasions, like with the autistic people, we didn’t know what was going to come out of it. It was an experiment. It was impossible to
write a screenplay. You can't tell beforehand how autistic people react to music.
It was the same thing in Brazil. I shot in different stages. In one year, I
shot during five or six different periods. I shot a bit and then thought what to do
next. I was writing the film with my camera.

Did you change much during those stages while
the film was in production?

I changed
some things. For example, I didn’t use anything of some shooting session. It’s
not because it was bad or I wasn’t happy, but somehow when I found the right
line between the autistic, the poor street kids in Brazil and the Nigeria
scenes, everything was in place. That shows how the music is born in its tribal
mode. It’s like the heartbeat. Then there was no room for many things I shot
before, but I will make some other products with it, some dvd or something
else.

It was
during editing When the film really took shape. We had around 200 hours of
material so the editing was very challenging. When I think back to that moment,
I realize that we got most of the final film in the first cut, but then we
changed the order of some things. It was very complicated, indeed. It was like
writing the script after shooting.

What are the plans for the material that is not
included in the documentary?

We filmed
much. We have a lot of material about Billy Cobham’s life. There will be
something about it. Also we want to release the Cobham’s concert at April Jazz
with the UMO Jazz Orchestra. It will be a DVD of the complete show and maybe
some extra material like interviews, making of and more.

Do you have any plans for the future?

After
making three music documentaries, I’m planning some fiction. I’m writing the
script now and I will do it in Finnish and I will shoot in Finland.


Sonic Mirror at Espoo Ciné – Sunday 26.6 at 19.15 in Louhisali, Tapiola. More information and tickets:
www.espoocine.fi

Categories
Cover story Misc

Are you in a game?

{mosimage}
Art-theft,
stake-outs and penetrating high security areas may seem like a list of
television themes but you may find yourself caught in the middle of one of them
without even knowing. Some may say that the era of pervasive gaming is upon us,
where digital mobile technologies mean that we can interact with unseen
opponents 24/7. However, the fact is that pervasive games, or games which
transgress the “magic circle” of traditional games, have existed as long as street
carnivals.

 

 

Pervasive
gaming aims to break the boundaries (the “magic circle”) of what are considered
traditional games. These boundaries include: place, the games can be played
anywhere; time, although the gamer may choose when they want to consciously
interact with the game, the gaming never stops; and people, individuals may not
even know that they are a part of a game.

Researcher Jussi Holopainen, a key
collaborator and planner of IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming)
recalls stories where people have played roles in pervasive games without even
knowing that they are doing so. Holopainen, who has researched the
relationships between technologies, gaming and play since 1998 at Nokia
Research Centre, recalls one scenario where the challenge of a game was to
penetrate a high security area of a hotel. Gamers were trying to persuade staff
to allow them into the area. Unknowingly, the hotel staff had become
characters/obstacles in the game. In another example, gamers were required to
obtain a specific artwork from an art gallery. In this scenario, the unaware
staff had considered the scenario so far-fetched that they began “playing” with
the gamers.

Anyone
anywhere may be consciously or not involved in a game, whether through pure
spatial circumstance or due to the technology that they utilise. Holopainen
describes how traditional games generally had a start and an end, whereas
pervasive games are continuous. In Citywide games, non-players may also become
spectators, particularly when gamers have drawn attention to themselves through
actions out of the ordinary. Through these scenarios professionals such as
performance artists have capitalised on the combination of a live audience and
real-space, and the capabilities of broadcasting online via wireless
technologies, to bring art out of the gallery. On rare occasions, unaffiliated
bystanders have been hijacked through gamers mistaking them for other gamers.

IPerG began
in 2004 and will continue until 2008. It is a collaboration between the University of Tampere,
Nokia Research, Interactive Institute, Swedish Institute of Computer Science
(SICS), the University of Nottingham, Fraunhofer Institute, Sony NetServices, Gotland University and Blast Theory. IPerG is
devoted to supporting research in pervasive gaming which spans topics such as
analysing how new technologies can be incorporated into pervasive gaming, what
the ethical implications are of pervasive gaming, how gaming may be developed
in terms of entertainment and feasibility, and what the social impacts of the
gaming are.

Holopainen’s own research looks at how PDAs (Personal Digital
Assistants) and regular mobile phones may be utilised for gaming purposes. A
characteristic which makes gaming via these mobile devices more significant
than via regular PCs is that they have been designed specifically for personal
usage. In other words, the mobile phone is an individual’s trusted belonging
containing highly personal information such as SMS:s and phone numbers.
Holopainen cites research of mobile phone games from the older Nokia 3310, 3330
and 5110s Snake Game (incidentally the most played mobile phone game in
history) to games which utilise all the functions of a phone such as the
calendar and alarm.

In regards
to the future of pervasive gaming and pervasive game research Holopainen
speculates that in the future, more so than now, games will be running all the
time. Where now the idea of observing grown men secretly handing large brown
envelopes and intercepting other’s telephone calls may seem peculiar or
criminal, in the future there is the possibility that continuous real-space
gaming may become as normal as SMS, or even the Snake Game itself. Interfaces
are constantly being re-developed which may make even virtual space more
tangible to the user. One field that Holopainen suggests should be expanded in
regards to research is the investigation of ethics. One workshop that covers
such a theme is Ethics of Pervasive
Gaming, to be delivered at the PerGames conference June 11-12th
in Salzburg, by
Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros and Annika Waern.

In
November, IPerG will be releasing a new game called Mythical: The Mobile Awakening, you will find information
about this at www.mythicalmobile.com. 

To find out more about IPerG and their research see: www.pervasive-gaming.org

Categories
Misc News

Espoo Ciné starts tomorrow

Categories
Interviews Misc

Professionalism on stage

{mosimage}Juan
Echanove is one of the most popular Spanish actors in the last twenty years. Although
known by his sweet and kind roles, Echanove adventures into difficult and
challenging performances like his role in Calixto Bieito’s adaptation to
theater of the controversial novel by Michel Houellebecq, Platform, which was just presented during Helsinki Festival.

 

Platform is
an uncomfortable play. It talks openly about pornography, sex tourism,
terrorism and the differences between the rich Western world and the developing
countries. The three representations in Helsinki are the last ones of a long
year with 200 performances since its premiere in the Edinburgh Festival where the
Spanish actor was honored with the Herald Angel award. Echanove speaks clearly
and frankly. He admits that he is exhausted after so many performances,
although willing to go once more on stage and fight with the demanding role of
Michel. Right after speaking to FREE! Echanove will start warming up his body
and his voice

Why did you
choose to play the role of Michel?

My decision
was completely based on my confidence in Calixto Bieito, our director. I
couldn’t imagine that there could be a play based on Michel Houellebecq’s novel, but if
Bieito was able to see a great show on it, it was good to trust on him.
Probably I wouldn’t have accepted to play this role if Bieito wouldn’t have
been involved.

It is one
of your most challenging works.

The text of
this play is very dangerous. It is very intimidating. It burns. It is a bomb.
In a very precise manner, it tells the lowest qualities of modern Western
civilization, of a nowadays individual from good old Europe. The play shows
normal people of my age, 45-50 years old and their expectations and emotions.
Indeed, it is very challenging and complicated to be for two hours such a
character, with those low human qualities and under the influence of alcohol
and pills.

How did you
create this character?

I went to
Barcelona for six weeks and lived alone in an apartment. I didn’t do anything
else but rehearsals in the evenings and building the character in the mornings.
I tried to make the complex psychology of Michel real, to find out how the
feelings of such a person would be, creating something real beyond the literary
work of Houellebecq. I wanted to know how a person of those feelings and characteristics
would be for real.

Did you do
anything special?

I did the
usual work when preparing a role. There was a lot of background documentation. I
did some research on the main issues that Michel Houellebecq addresses with his
thinking and criticism about society. The issues are the power of money over
poverty, terrorism and pornography and sex tourism.

Is it
easier for you to play a character that it’s so different from you?

No, it’s
the same. Acting is a job. A friend of mine says that being an actor is either
very easy or impossible. With this performance I learned to be shameless of many
things, for example things related to sex. It is not easy to talk about your
father’s dead while looking at a screen showing a double penetration. This is a
very tough role. Every performance I lose two or three kilos and it’s not
because of its physical intensity, it’s because the emotional intensity. But
there must be a good distance between the character and the actor. Sometimes
actors say that they are so identified with the character, that they own it.
That’s bullshit. My job is wonderful, but it is also tremendously complicated.
It’s a job like a pianist or violinist. All my life and education have been
devoted to acting. It’s natural for me to go on stage.

This is a
high point in your career.

It’s funny
because a role like Michel, who has nothing to do with me, marks a turning
point in my life and in my career. It’s a point of growing up. Doing
performances like Plataforma, one realizes that it’s not worthy to go on stage
if there is not a real motivation, if it’s not risky and meaningful.

Do you
think you could have played this part earlier in your career?

Absolutely
not. This was the right time. I think I would not accept if I had been called
next month. But as I said before, Calixto played a very important role. He
called me and I accepted even before knowing what was the play we were going to
do. He’s one of the best contemporary directors in European theater. If you are
an actor, you must be at his command at least once.

How is
working with Calixto?

He is a
sweet guy, very sincere and a very practical person. I like those qualities. He
is honest. He knows the audience; he knows what the audience looks at and why. He’s
unique.

Categories
Cover story Misc

The Helsinki Festival starts today


The Helsinki Festival is this year expanding its
programme. Arts from the Baltic Sea region will be very much to the fore. The
Festival presents three leading orchestras, several theatre groups and visual
arts from around the Baltic. There are also more free Festival events on the
programme than in former years. The revamped Night of the Arts caters for a
wider range of tastes than ever. The sculpture exhibition in Esplanadi Park and
the open-air movies in the Lasipalatsi square will all be free. The summer
season at the Huvila Festival Tent ends with a six-hour open-house day
masterminded by Pekka Kuusisto.


The Helsinki Festival begins with Kaija Saariaho’s dramatised Passion de
Simone directed by Peter Sellars (US) at Finlandia Hall. The orchestra will be
conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. New works by Magnus Lindberg, another
contemporary Finnish composer of international repute, will receive their
Finnish premieres in a two-concert cavalcade of chamber and orchestral music
also starring Lindberg as a pianist and conductor.

The visiting orchestras include the Oslo Philharmonic and the Swedish Radio
Symphony; the St. Petersburg Philharmonic will be playing music by Sibelius,
something it rarely does in Helsinki. Appearing at the Festival will be
violinists Lisa Batiashvili, Viktoria Mullova and Christian Tetzlaff, and
pianist András Schiff – all great favourites with Finnish audiences.
Representing the Finnish vocal elite are Monica Groop, Camilla Nylund and Topi
Lehtipuu, all of whom enjoy a fine international reputation.

The hundred-strong Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra will be playing familiar
tunes from pirate films at the family concert that is always a Children’s
Festival hit. In addition to music, theatre and film the children’s programme
will include an exhibition on the theme of Giotto with numerous workshops and
tie-in events at the Annantalo Arts Centre.

New circus, Chekhov and contemporary European theatre

International circus, theatre and dance are more in evidence at this year’s
Festival than ever before. One of the Festival’s big attractions is Collectif
AOC, a French new circus group that will be erecting a 600-seat tent in
Meripuisto Park near Kaivopuisto. ‘New circus is conspicuous in this year’s
programme,’ says Festival Director Risto Nieminen. ‘Helsinki will also be
acting host to a number of current names in European theatre and dance, such as
dancer-choreographer Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and the enfant terrible
of Spanish theatre Calixto Bieito.’ The Stage festival to be held for the first
time at the Korjaamo Culture Factory has invited along five European theatre
groups.

The four-year Chekhov series culminates this year in three topical interpretations
of works by the Russian master. For the production of The Three Sisters
directed by him Declan Donellan (UK) has formed a cast of leading names in
contemporary Russian theatre. The Von Krahl Theatre from Tallinn is bringing
along a re-reading by Kristian Smeds of The Seagull, while Dmitri Krymov, a hot
name in Russian theatre, will be staging a collage of four Chekhov plays.

New rhythms, nostalgia and mysticism at the Huvila Festival Tent

The packed programme for the Huvila Festival Tent ranges from pop and world
music to poetry and a children’s day. Among the most eagerly-awaited guests
this year are French chanson star Juliette Gréco and blues legend Taj Mahal.

Bringing along a breath of the rich musical tradition of the Middle East will
be the Syrian Ensemble Al-Kindi reinforced with a Sufi singer and a Dervish
dancer, and Turkish Mercan Dede, combining electronic rhythms and Sufi ambience
straight from Istanbul. Ville Leinonen will be inviting dancers to take the
floor at the Huvila Saturday hop. ‘It’s great we were able to get Ayo, an
artist very much on the rise, for the Huvila Festival Tent,’ says Production
Manager Kaarina Gould. ‘In addition to new rising stars and old world music
hands the Huvila profile will take in such hybrid evenings as Lännen Jukka – a
joint gig by J. Karjalainen and one of the leading names in American old time
music, Dirk Powell.

Flow moves to the Suvilahti power station area

The visual arts will be make their presence felt in the city right at the
beginning of May, when the sculpture exhibition Las Meninas by Manolo Valdés of
Spain takes over Esplanadi Park. The series of 21 sculptures can be viewed free
round the clock until the beginning of September. The exhibition of work by
Carnegie award-winning Karin Mamma Andersson from Sweden will be travelling to
the Kunsthalle straight from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Meanwhile the
Amos Anderson Museum will be putting on an exhibition of oil paintings by Anna
Retulainen.

On each of its three weekends the Helsinki Festival will be screening movies
free in the Lasipalatsi square. The Orion Cinema will be showing a unique
retrospective of work by Iranian Abbas Kiarostami. The life and works of Andrei
Tarkovsky will be portrayed through documentaries about him.

The revamped Night of the Arts, shifted this year from Thursday to Friday
(August 24), is an urban event providing a feast for arts lovers all through
the night. Culture vultures will thus be able to revel in events numbering well
over a hundred in new and sometimes unexpected settings scattered round the
city. The enlarged Runokuu will be taking lyrics and literature out into clubs,
churches, public transport and nature trails and strengthening the role of
verbal art in the Festival programme.

The popular Flow festival will be focusing on the hottest contemporary rhythm
music from indie rock and folk to various subgenres of electronic music and
swinging jazz. One new urban venue is the area round the former Suvilahti power
station. As the August evenings draw in jazz fans can look forward to Viapori
Jazz on the island of Suomenlinna and the UMO Jazz Fest.

Helsingin Juhlaviikot – Helsinki Festival 17.8-2.9
www.helsinginjuhlaviikot.fi

Categories
Cover story Misc

North goes South

{mosimage}
It sounds
strange: a Scandinavian festival in Italy. Usually you
can find a lot of Latin festivals or even African one but never
Scandinavian.
From here the need, felt by a group of people, of trying to organize in
Milan,
with the help of some important partners and sponsors an event that
could promote the Scandinavian culture in Italy with the aim of
stimulating the exchange between different cultures.


 


The
Ragnarock Scandinavian Music and Art Festival opened his first edition on the
7th of July in Milan Magnolia, near the Idroscalo. From 5 pm until late night,
you could find a photographic exhibition of 
the Danish Søren Solkær Starbird, for the first time in Italy, a fashion
show, a Scandinavian buffet and five concerts. Near the stage and the bar you
had also the chance of reading an Iperborea book, the biggest Italian publisher
of Scandinavian literature who has organized a books banquet and a reading
area, or you could also win a flight ticket to Copenhagen or Stockholm.
Everything for only 6 euro.

Starbird
himself, a great example of music photography, explained the criterion by which
he has selected the pictures underlining the aim of the festival: promoting the
Scandinavian culture:“Related to the
philosophy of the Festival, to the promotion of musical Scandinavian talents, I
decided to choose a selection of photographies that mainly show Scandinavian artists,
especially Danish. The theme of the exhibition is, then, linked with the one of
the Festival, in a continuous dialogue between the artistic and the musical
dimension”.

The result
was a musical trip throughout eighteen shots realized while touring with the
most important bands of nowadays.

But not
only photography, as I said: fashion show of five Scandinavian stylists from
the European Institute of Design (IED) and five different bands who were performing
on the stage (Promise and the Monster, Niepoort, Jonna Lee, The Fashion and
Prins Thomas).

One thousand
and five hundred people welcomed this first edition of the Ragnarock
Scandinavian Festival, showing how much is widespread the interest towards the
Nordic culture and stimulating, I hope, the organization of other events like
this.

 

Categories
Interviews Music

That punk on TV

{mosimage}Henry
Rollins is one of the most active characters I have ever
interviewed. He has
done almost everything in the show business, from singing in a hardcore
band to writing poetry, acting and touring as a stand-up comedian.
Nowadays
he hosts a talk show on independent American TV. This summer, YLE
Teema brings to Finland the first season of The Henry Rollins Show. Read what Henry Rollins told FREE! He speaks loud and
frankly. He is not afraid to say anything.

 

 

 

 

How did the
idea of show start?

The producers
asked me if I was interested and then we found a TV station interested in the
program. After the first season, they asked me do you want to continue and I
said yeah, so we did another season that just finished in the US. It wasn’t my
idea. I never thought about doing a TV show, but I like doing different things.
It keeps me awake. Now it takes quite a long time of my year. It needs detailed
planning and it is not easy to make good interviews to people. It burns a lot of
calories.

Do you
choose the guests?

Yes, I do.
I’m interested in a lot of people, so my wanted list is huge. We call them and
most of them say: No! There are various reasons: “I’m not interested”. “Henry
Rollins? I hate that guy!” “We are busy, we live on Mars, we cannot make it”.

Mention
some of your “dream guests”.

There are tons
of them. Bob Dylan, Al Gore, Keith Richards, David Lynch, Martin Scorsese,
Brian De Palma… There are a lot of interesting people in the world, doing great
things from art to reporting. For example, there are many investigative
reporters, like Greg Palast and Christian Miller.

What about
the live performances? Do you also pick the bands?

I didn’t
pick some of them. Since it’s not my money, I don’t get to make all the choice,
so there are some bands that stick out for their MTVness. Nice people, anyway.
They showed up, they played well, but I have none of their records. The rest of
the bands I both know them and love them or I have toured and played with them.
I’m a fan, I play their songs on my radio show. In the season we just finished
we had Iggy Pop and The Stooges, Peaches, Manu Chao, who made his first American
TV appearance ever. He’s huge all around the world, but not in America. He’s a wonderful
guy, very humble. He came to play at the Coachella festival and all the TV stations
invited him, but he said no to all of them and yes to us. Why? I don’t know. We
were lucky. The Good, The Bad and The Queen played also. That was a highlight
for me. I walked into the the studio, turned around the corner and there’s Paul
Simmons, the bass player of The Clash. Wow!! Also Fela Kuti and Tony Allen… I
was like yeah! I love this job.

Conan O’Brien
is very popular here in Finland. Do you watch his show?

I think
he’s good. He does a very normal kind of interview show. They interview pretty
famous people about being famous and pretty. Conan is very talented and funny.
He used to write for The Simpsons! He’s a very funny guy, but it’s not the kind
of TV show I watch. I don’t care about an interview with half of the cast of
Friends. I fall asleep. I don’t care.

You are
very politically outspoken. Do you also follow the events in Europe?

Somewhat…
but quite honestly I’m more concerned about the current Administration in the
US. I’m not trying to devalue what goes on in Europe, I think that America
could learn a couple of things from Europe. I primarily focus on and research
on the daily catastrophe in Iraq. I try to understand our relations with Iran
and Syria and what the president is doing to destroy our Constitution. Right
now Europe is not a priority for me because I’m watching my own country going
up in flames.

{sidebar id=4}In spite of
being clearly against the Iraq war, you went there and did a tour for the
American troops.

Yes, I did
it. I disagree with the policy, but I don’t disagree with the troops. They go
where they are told. My argument is not with the soldiers, it is with the
Administration, with Dick Chaney, Donald Rumsfeld. It’s not with the soldier,
he’s only 22. He’d rather be home. I’ve been in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait,
Qatar, South Korea, and few others. I go far for these people.

Is the show
business industry also a war?

The
business aspect is way more unpleasant. I have my own publishing company to
publish my books, my records. I have a two-person staff. The insights of the
business can be very disturbing. For instance, the distributor of my books just
went out of business, with a lot of my inventory in his warehouse which was now
seized by the government. I cannot get my property and the guy even owns me
50.000 dollars. Guess what? I will never see anything. What is difficult is the
artist who has to become the business man. I have to be the boss and the artist
guy. It’s difficultt to make that separation. I don’t bring the art into the
business meeting and I don’t bring the business into the art.

You are
very active and have worked in many disciplines from singing in a hardcore band to
acting and writing. What is the most challenging?

Writing is
very hard for me. It’s the most time consuming. The talk shows are also very
difficult. There’s no script and It requires lots of concentration on stage.
It’s all difficult, just different levels of intensity and concentration that
you have to give. When you are writing, you have to make it clear. When you are
editing, you are trying to make it better, you have to be aware of the words.
When you are on stage, you need a lot of preparation. When I interview people,
I do a lot of background checking on the interviewee, so I know what I’m talking
about and I don’t disrespect that person. All is a lot of work. Nothing is that
fun for me. I don’t understand fun. I’m a very nervous person. I get stress out
very easily, very much for a long period of time. I don’t sleep very well. I’m
always thinking something needs to be done. I’m a little crazy all the time.

Are you
still a solitary man?

I live
alone. I don’t have any family. I don’t have any kids. I don’t hate people, but
I’m very busy. I write a lot and that takes a lot of my time. Nobody is going
to make that for you. I also travel a lot to places where having someone next
to you could be a liability, like parts of Africa. I don’t want a woman
traveling with me. It’s not that women are not strong and cannot defend
themselves, but in Morocco I don’t want to turn my back when the woman is not
looked out, because she can get in danger. Also when I come back from a two-month
tour, I don’t want anyone waiting for me. I don’t want to have to call someone
and ask: “what is that with the tone of your voice?” I don’t want to have that
conversation. Also, I’m a pretty crazy man and I have seen many awful things
and those things have had a very substantial impact on me. A friend had his
head blown off next to me. I cleaned his brains so his mother didn’t have to
see it. I’ve seen some things that one shouldn’t see.

What is more
dangerous: to sing in Black Flag or to have a big mouth on a comedy show
nowadays?

The Black
Flag experience was physically dangerous. I still have a lot of scars from that
period. I got punched. But I got stitched up. You heal. I hit back. I broke a
lot of people’s noses. Never women, only men. But I’ve beaten the hell out of a
lot of guys. Pretty substantially. No regrets. But I think it’s more dangerous
what I do now in the present climate. To say what I’m saying and about whom I’m
saying it. I think you can suffer.

Do you have
any plans for the future?

I cannot
think of anything specific that I haven’t done. Perhaps catch up with some
reading or get a full night of sleep.

Do you like
reading a lot?

Yeah, I
cannot read as much as I want, but I think you should always have a book going,
you should be reading something.

 

Photos by: Veronika Vera

 

Categories
Misc News

Blues legend “Honeyboy” Edwars to play in Tampere

In Tampere, Edwards will play at the Down Home Island festival in Viikinsaari. Other bands on the bill are Honey B and the T-Bones and Jo' Buddy & Down Home King III. The festival is organized on an island and there is transportation, by boat of course, from Laukontori. The show starts at 7pm. Tickets are 15 euro.

More information at Blues-Finland.  

 

Categories
Albums Music

Moneybrother – Mount Pleasure

{mosimage}Moneybrother
(aka Anders Wendin) is the latest rock star in Sweden. His
latest album Mount Pleasure reached the top of the charts in the neighboring country
this summer. No surprise here. This is a very fine album, a good collection of
catchy songs and sweet melodies.

The
artwork, featuring Anders Wendin looking straight at the camera with messy hair
and white shirt, could resemble the cover of Bruce Springsteen album. That is a
pretty good lead of what we will find in Mount Pleasure. There is a Born to Run kind of feeling on it: songs
about teenage loves, growing up, summer nights, working days and break ups. The
music also has an E Street Band influence, especially songs like the opener Guess Who's Gonna Get Some
Tonight, with the sax, the piano, the organ and the melody, it borders the wall
of sound.

But
fortunately, Moneybrother does not try to be the next Bruce Springsteen and his
music explores many other textures. The ballad It Might Aswell Be Known is a duet with Norwegian artist Annie Brun
and it could be one of those murder ballads by Nick Cave. Dance, pop or classic
rock (did I hear some early Wilco or The Jayhawks on It Is Time For Falling
Apart?) also make appearance in Mount Pleasure. Even Thin Lizzy! In his
website, Moneybrother recognizes proudly that Will There Be Music? is a total
Thin Lizzy rip off. It is too obvious to deny it. That song is like Dancing in
the Moonlight part 2. But like Wendin says: “I
absolutely adore Thin Lizzy and I don't want to make an album without a song
sounding exactly like them.” Well done, I say then.

In spite of all the clear influences, Mount
Pleasure sounds fresh and modern. The songwriting is too good to make this
album a failure.

Rating: 5/5

Categories
Albums Music

Sixx:AM – The Heroin Diaries

{mosimage}The Heroin
Diaries is the soundtrack to Nikki Sixx recently published addiction memoir. In
the book Motley Crüe’s bass player shares mesmerizing diary entries from the year he spiralled out of control
in a haze of heroin and cocaine. Surprisingly enough, the soundtrack to the
book does not have much to do with the music of the band that put the bassist
into the spotlight and eventually led him into drug addiction.

According to Nikki Sixx, this album is a
collaborative effort with James Michael and DJ Ashba. The result is an
overproduced pop metal collection of songs with some spoken excerpts from the
book and some touches of circus music. Instead of edgy and dark sounds, The
Heroin Diaries is an album full of soft ballads with sweet melodies. It brings
to mind the music of The 69 Eyes, HIM and other love metal heroes.

Nevertheless, for this style the album has
some good songs, like the rocker Pray for Me, the mid tempo Tomorrow. Perhaps
the most interesting song is the closing track Life After Death, which has some
cinematic qualities and a contemporary Alice Cooper sound.

The Heroin Diaries would have been a solid
debut for a new band. However, one could have expected Nikki Sixx to deliver a
different soundtrack to his darkest memories.

Categories
Albums Music

Turbonegro – Retox

Turbojugends
of the world, rejoice! Get your asses ready! The best fat gay Norwegian punk
metal band has a new album out and it is a helluva album. With Retox,
Turbonegro goes back to the basics, gets heavy and deliver its best album since
the classic Apocalypse Dudes (1998).

Turbonegro
returned from hiatus in 2003 and since then the band has been very active,
touring constantly, while the fan base of Turbejugends grew and show the
Turbonegro official uniform across the planet. Retox is the third album since
the comeback and it is somehow different than the previous Scandinavian Leather
(2003) and Party Animals (2005). While those were pompous productions, full of
clichés and easy wow-ooh chorus, Retox is a return to form with a raw and edgy
sound.

The album
sounds furious and energetic since the very beginning with the explosive We’re
Gonna Drop The Atom Bomb. There are some heavy riffs and many songs are metal
flavored: Welcome to the Garbage Dump, Boys from Nowhere, Hot and Filthy, You
Must Bleed/All Night Long.

Apart of
the violent riffs and chords, there’s a bit of sex obsession: No, I’m Alpha
Male is one of the most outstanding songs in the set and probably one of the
best ones Turbonegro has recorded since Apocalypse Dudes. And of course, there
is a tremendous sense of humour which characterizes the band. Singer Hank Von
Helvete takes a look at the mirror and laughs at himself in the songs Every
Body Loves a Chubby Dude and Hell Toupée, which is the great hymn to male
baldness every written: “Spent my life fighting off the
pigs, drinking beer and smoking cigs / stealing riffs and a blowing gigs, but
now I'm stuck googling for wigs / Skin is glowing, dome is showing, my
bio-clock is ticking so fast / And it's gonna be Hell Toupee”.

The album closer is the eight-minute prog/metal/punk
suite What is Rock? This is a three-part song which brings the best of
Turbonegro and which in its last part answers to that philosophical question.

Less glam,
more metal, 100% Turbonegro!

Categories
Albums Music

Hanoi Rocks – Street Poetry

{mosimage}Any new
album by Hanoi Rocks has to be celebrated. After so many years, it is a wonder
that Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy are still doing music together. Some might
even say that it’s a wonder that they are still alive. But indeed, they are
very much alive and Street Poetry is their best album since they reunited as
Hanoi Rocks in 2001.

 

 

{sidebar id=16}Street
Poetry sounds like a band’s effort, instead of individual parts put together,
with Conny Bloom and A.C. completely integrated in the group. Actually that is
how the recording was done in a studio in Suomenlinna. The whole band playing
together live in the studio. There are not many overdubs, synthesizers nor
artificial effects nor experiments like Reggae
Rocker. This gives a very fresh feeling to an album that sounds like good
old rock and roll.

Indeed,
Street Poetry sounds very classy. Conny and Andy deliver a good amount of rock
and roll riffs and the guitars don’t sound so metal as in the previous release
Another Hostile Takeover. There are some good rockers, like the opening
Hypermobile, Tootin’ Star and Powertrip that includes some good guitar licks
with slide. There are even some retro sounds: Teenage Revolution has all the
qualities of a classic Alice Cooper tune. Even its chorus features the vocals
of the 6th graders of the Suomenlinna elementary school. The new single, This
One’s For Rock ‘N’ Roll, is a classic rock and roll anthem that could have been
penned by Ian Hunter and his Mott The Hoople.

But after
all, this is Hanoi Rocks and in Street Poetry we find the mark of The Muddy
Twins: the catchy choruses, the riffs, Michael Monroe playing sax… even the song
Transcendental Groove has the same vibe as the classic Taxi Driver.

Street
Poetry is 13 songs and 45 minutes of good rock and roll. It will be a real
treat to see them played live. Indeed this one’s for rock’n’roll.

1. Hypermobile

2. Street Poetry

3. Fashion

4. Highwired

5. Power of Persuation

6. Teenage Revolution

7. Worth Your Weight In Gold

8. Transcendental Groove

9. This One's For Rock´ Roll

10. Powertrip

11. Walkin´away

12. Tootin´Star

13. Fumblefoot and Busy Bee

Categories
Cinema DVD

The Last King of Scotland

{sidebar id=15}The first
feature film of Scottish director Kevin MacDonald focuses on the figure of Idi
Amin, army officer and president of Uganda between 1971 and 1979. But rather
than being a biopic of the atrocities and actions of the dictator, the film shows
the relationship between Amin, played by Forest Whitaker, and the fictional
character of his personal physician, Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy). It is this
relationship what creates a consistent story and takes a glimpse at Amin’s
brutal regime.

The viewer
discovers the character of Idi Amin through Dr Garrigan’s eyes, whose vision of
his friend and leader drifts from sympathy to fear. And so the mood of the film
varies. Considering the subject matter, there is much comedy. The funny first
part of the movie precedes the uncomfortable course of events.

Much has
been talked about Whitaker’s performance, including an Academy Award. But
indeed, his performance is impressive. He steals the show, even though the
screenplay seems to appoint the physician as the main role in the film.
Whitaker recreates the complex psychology of Idi Amin and presents the leader’s
paranoia and egomania.

The Last
King of Scotland lives up to the hype with a solid narrative and its focus on
people and its relations, putting aside easy clichés.

Categories
Concerts Music

Pleased to meet you

{mosimage}They are
very close to the Steel Wheelchair Tour 2010, but on Wednesday The Rolling
Stones confirmed once again that they are the majesties of rock and roll. As
usual, the Stones put an extraordinary show supporting an unbeatable collection
of songs that can hide any defects (which are many) of their playing.

 

After a
stormy and cold eve, the good weather and the sun did not want to miss one more
Rolling Stones concert in Finland: a nice summer evening welcomed an audience of
35,000 people at the Olympic Stadium. The band came on stage around 9pm with a
big bang of fireworks and the famous riff of Start Me Up and everyone stood up.
It was a rocking start in which the band adventured into an odd succession of
songs, which included not so popular songs such as All Down the Line, She’s So Cold
or Love Is Strong and ended with the country rock ballad Sweet Virginia.

This was
the most outstanding fragment of the show. All the special effects were put
aside and on stage there was just an honest rock and roll band with all its
virtues and defects. Although focused on the show more than one could have
expected, Keith Richards’ playing is nowadays more erratic than ever, hitting wrong
notes or just stopping playing. But that’s Keith Richards, anyway. Ron Wood showed
some nice slide guitar playing, Charlie Watts played a solid beat as usual and
Jagger held everything together.

{sidebar id=2}
This first
part of the show manifested the curse of the Stones. The tremendous popularity
and the stadium do not seem to allow them trying new things. Of course, they
just do not need it, although the music would improve if they would bother to
dig deep into the band’s repertoire or to explore the country influence that has
been present in many of the Stones albums. Sweet Virginia sounded sweet, with
Jagger laying down some good country vocals. They could easily deliver great
performances like the ones that were compiled in the magnificent Stripped album.

After the
extended jam of Can’t You Hear Me Knocking and Keith’s moment (he sang amazingly
clearly You Got The Silver and he looked amusing hugging his guitar in I Wanna
Hold You), the concert became predictable: all the hits. But there is not a
better collection of rock classics. It’s the greatest hits of rock and roll. It’s
the time for the visual show: the trip to the back of the stadium with a moving
stage, the giant balloon tongue on the stage… Sympathy for the Devil is the
great “golden god” (or better evil) moment for Mick Jagger. Dressed in a red coat
he stood on top of the stage. But that’s what deserves. He is the best frontman in
rock and so it showed in Helsinki: dancing, running from one side to the stage
to the other, speaking Finnish to salute the crowd…

During the
last segment of the show, the whole band sounded tighter, louder and rocking.
They played a terrific version of Paint It Black that was probably the most acclaimed
song of the entire night. The encore of Brown Sugar preceded the fireworks and everyone
was happy.

There were
no surprised, but again… it’s only rock and roll!

 

Toots &
The Maytals

Introduced
as the greatest reggae band opening for the greatest rock and roll band, Toots
& The Maytals were indeed a good opening act. The Jamaican band played a
short set based on from its first album: Pressure
Drop, Funky Kingston and even the cover of John Denver’s Country Road. It was
just a pity that a stadium is such a big place for an unknown legend like Toots
Hibbert and his band and the crowd did not pay the deserved attention.

The only bad
thing of the evening was the tight security. One wonders if it is really
necessary to have one security guard for every 100 people during a seating concert, with a
mainly mellow and aged audience. Indeed the security did not help at all to create
an enjoyable atmosphere, especially when the guards would not allow anyone to
dance or move more than ten centimeters from his place. After paying tickets costing up
to 100 euro, the audience deserves some right to enjoy the show and not be
observed and watched like a flock of sheep. After all it was just a rock concert,
not a mob convention.