Ian Loveday a.k.a. Eon In Memoriam

Eon: 'The Spice Must Flow' (1991)

Via Blissblog:

Ian Loveday a.k.a. Eon, a legendary British electronic dance music producer, passed away on Wednesday June 17 from complications with pneumonia at the age of 54. Loveday was known for such rave tunes as 'Spice' (1990) and 'Fear The Mind Killer' (1991), and the album Void Dweller (1992). He also recorded under such monikers as Minimal Man, Tan Ru and R. Rash. I interviewed Ian Loveday for pHinnWeb in 2002, through his connection with J Saul Kane's Electron Industries label, for which Eon released such 12"s as 'Wave Angel' (1995) and 'Phaze Test' (1996). Rest in peace.

More:

Eon interview @ pHinnWeb (April 2002)

Partial Eon discography @ pHinnWeb

Eon @ MySpace

Eon @ Discog

Obituary @ The Daily Swarm

Obituary by Louise Gray @ When That Helicopter Comes

J.G. Ballard (1930 - 2009)

British writer J.G. Ballard died on Sunday 19 April 2009. Ballard, who had been diagnosed with prostrate cancer in June 2006, was 78 years old. Among his best-known novels are such as Crash, High-Rise, Empire of the Sun, and Super-Cannes.

Though usually cited as a science fiction writer (he was one of the vanguards of the "New Wave" of sci-fi coming into prominence in the 1960s with such celebrated magazines as New Worlds, which he also contributed), Ballard's main theme was the psychopathology of contemporary society. The writer inspired by French Surrealists of the early 20th century, Ballard's works usually were about the civilisation crumbling but also mutating into something else, creating its own beauty and serenity. His psycho-geographical landscapes were inhabitated by alienated but inquisitive characters obsessed by a combination of technology, celebrity cult, sex and violence; all of which they worshipped with a religious fervour and even some sort of strange dignity.

Crash (1973) is about a small cult of people sexually obsessed with becoming injured or even dying in car accidents, preferably featuring some celebrity figures such as Elizabeth Taylor. Concrete Island (1974) describes a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, who finds himself helplessly stranded on a traffic island in the abyss of a spaghetti junction, his pleas for help ignored by passing cars. As with film director Luis Buñuel, Ballard's works could often be seen as surreal satires of the "discreet charm of bourgeoisie", and High-Rise (1975) shows a group of people consisting of highly-paid professionals and inhabiting an ultra-modern tower block degenerate into a constant life of violent orgy. In The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) an aviator crashes his plane in a suburb town of the Thames Valley, becoming a sort of Messiah with supernatural powers in a tale which might be or not only a final fantasy of a dying man. Ballard's late quadrology Cocaine Nights (1996), Super-Cannes (2000) (these two being actually companion pieces, so similar they are in their themes), Millennium People (2003) and Kingdom Come (2006) also show these same upper-middle class people instigating absurd violence to alleviate the boredom and social friction in their tightly guarded resort communities, business parks and shopping malls.

In a perfect world, the Nobel Award for Literature would have been Ballard's, but science/speculative fiction has never really fitted the appetites of that venerable election committee, not to speak about the controversial nature of his works. It would perhaps be preposterous to call Ballard's works prophetical, but I'm quite sure in the years to come more and more resonance will be found with his works and how the world around us turns out to be. No, as it already is: Ballard's dystopias took place not in some far future or a faraway country, but here and now.

In popular culture, J.G. Ballard has been for years a hip name to throw around and his works have inspired countless other writers, film-makers, artists and musicians. Empire of The Sun, an autobiographical book on Ballard's childhood years in the Japanese-occupied Shanghai, was filmed by Steven Spielberg in 1987. The Crash film version by David Cronenberg (whose earlier works such as Videodrome had a definite Ballardian tone) stirred some controversy in 1996.

Daniel Miller, the founder of Mute Records, recorded in 1978 under the alias of The Normal 'Warm Leatherette', a song based on Ballard's Crash. The Normal's electronic contemporaries such as Gary Numan ('Down In The Park') and John Foxx (Metamatic) have read their Ballard, too. Joy Division's late frontman Ian Curtis took the name for one of their songs, 'The Atrocity Exhibition', from a short story collection of Ballard.


The Normal: 'Warm Leatherette' with film clips from Crash adaptation by David Cronenberg

Ballardian.com - a Website dedicated to all things J.G. Ballard

Obituaries & tributes:

BBC News

Feuilleton

Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish)

Michael Moorcock @ Ballardian

Salon (by Simon Reynolds)

Drexciya: 'Living On The Edge' (1994)

Drexciya: 'Living On The Edge' (off 'Drexciya 4: The Unknown Aquazone', Submerge Recordings, 1994)

Drexciya Research Lab

Drexciya @ pHinnWeb

Drexciya @ Discogs

The Designers Republic Closes Down

A design by The Designers Republic for A Word Of Science: The First And Final Chapter by Nightmares On Wax (Warp Records, 1991)

The Designers Republic, an influential and often imitated graphic design studio of Sheffield, England, has closed down in January. tDR was among all known for the record sleeve designs for Warp Records, also based in Sheffield, that were there to define the look for the early-1990s electronic music subculture. The tDR designs -- a treasure trove for anyone into visual semantics -- have been known for their bright colours, immersing in their stylistic characteristics among all Japanese manga/anime style, the 1920s Russian Constructivism, corporate logos (with a healthy amount of anti-consumerist irony) and a bit of cyberdelia.

The Designers Republic Remembered @ Creative Review blog

The Designers Republic search results @ YouTube

Orbital feat. Grant Fulton: 'Belfast/Wasted' (1992)

Orbital feat. Grant Fulton: 'Belfast/Wasted' (1992)

Yet another oldie music video to alleviate the January boredom... This is the magnificent vocal version of Orbital's track 'Belfast', with Gregorian chant samples and Grant Fulton as the guest singer; one of the best things the Brothers Hartnoll ever did, in fact.

This track was originally released in May 1992 on #3 of Volume (1991 - 1997), a British CD booklet-sized music magazine carrying a CD of alternative and indie-dance artists' exclusive tracks, unreleased remixes and interviews from the same artists. Unfortunately Volume proved to be a too ambitious project for the music magazine market, folding after 17 issues and some extra compilations. I remember the magazine fondly, having introduced me to many new artists in its day. 'Belfast/Wasted' received a justified re-release on the 2-CD Wasted - The Best of Volume Part 1 (1995) and even as limited edition 12".

You were brought up like a boy,
but now you think your life's a pill.
With its love for yourself,
ticking to its timeless soundtrack.

You point the finger
as you carry the flag.
I don't pay attention.
Do you like the dust we breathe?
Do you recommend yourself
to my gentle senses?

I feel wasted.

Miss Kittin & The Hacker: 'Frank Sinatra' (1998)

Miss Kittin & The Hacker: 'Frank Sinatra' (1998)

More Miss Kittin video clips @ YouTube

Miss Kittin (born 1973 as Caroline Hervé in Grenoble, France) released in 1998 together with her producer The Hacker (a.k.a. Michel Amato) the debut EP Champagne, on which this raunchy little gem first appeared, paving way to the foul-mouthed paeans of Peaches. Note this was way before the dreaded electroclash craze, though Miss Kittin became labelled as one of the artists of that genre, and I still love the song.

I had a brief interview with Miss Kittin for pHinnWeb in 2001, when she told about this track:

"I love Frank Sinatra and the American crooners and romantic jazz in general. I was looking for a rhyme to 'area' and here it came. What you don't know, is when I said 'He's dead', I really thought he was... A friend told me it was funny because he's still alive... I couldn't believe it and felt guilty, especially when he died three months later..."

"every night with my star friends
we eat caviar and drink champagne
sniffing in the v.i.p. area
we talk about frank sinatra
you know frank sinatra?
he's dead... dead!
ha ha ha!"

"to be famous is so nice
suck my dick
kiss my ass
in limousines we have sex
every night with my famous friends
..."

"motherfuckers are so nice
suck my dick
lick my ass"

pHinnWeb's little Miss Kittin page (not updated any more)

Atari Teenage Riot: 'Deutschland (Has Gotta Die!)'

Atari Teenage Riot: 'Deutschland (Has Gotta Die!)' (live @ DHR Studio, 1998)

Wake up! Too hardcore for pop fans, too pop for hardcore fans, but I love it. Atari Teenage Riot was a Berlin "digital hardcore" group of Alec Empire, Hanin Elias and MC Carl Crack (1971-2001). ATR were outspoken proponents of anti-Nazi leftist politics, and were joined by Nic Endo in 1997. The band also ran their own label, Digital Hardcore Recordings. Sadly, Carl Crack's death of drug overdose in 2001 also meant the end of ATR; the best-known member, Alec Empire, keeps concentrating on his solo records and waving the red-black flag, often assisted by Nic Endo. Hanin Elias had a brief spell with her own Fatal Recordings, after which she announced retiring to French Polynesia with her family.

Momus Gives His Creation Albums As Free Downloads

Momus: 'Hairstyle of the Devil' (1989)


Momus: 'Cibachrome Blue' (1992)


Momus: 'Rhetoric' (1994)

Talking about favourite blogs: if I didn't have such a short attention span and if I didn't hate reading long texts off computer screen (especially here in a local free Net café amidst the clamour of 10 - 15-year old boys coming to play RuneQuest and shoot-'em-up games after the school), I would pay more attention to the Web diary of Momus where the Scottish-originated artist and writer -- born as Nick Currie in 1960 -- gives his regular views on art, culture, politics and naturally music, his own and of the others.

Anyway, I try to give at least a brief daily glance to what Mr. Currie is saying, so I recently noticed he's going to give for free (or for a voluntary donation) six Momus albums recorded for the legendary Creation Records, according to certain fans some of his best. In his own words from the blog:

"Six Momus albums -- the ones I recorded for Alan McGee's Creation label between 1987 and 1993 -- are out of print. Creation doesn't exist any more, and in theory Sony owns the rights to these albums, but isn't doing anything with them and probably never will. In the meantime, only Russian pirates are profiting, charging punters for illegal downloads.

So, during the rest of December, I've decided to release mp3s of my six Creation albums here on Click Opera, for free. Think of it as a sort of Creation Advent Calendar, with a new old Momus album every couple of days. If you're the sort of person who likes to donate to the artist when you download, do it here. But it's not really necessary; these albums paid for themselves long ago. Think of this as a Christmas present. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!"

All six albums are now online:

The Poison Boyfriend (1988)

The Tender Pervert (1988)

Don't Stop The Night (1989)

Hippopotamus (1991)

Voyager (1992)

Timelord (1993)

(Momus also added a post-script on Alan McGee of Creation Records.)

This is the era when Momus (the name borrowed from the Greek god of satire and mockery) took cues, alongside the more obvious Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker and David Bowie influences, also from such contemporary electronic artists as Pet Shop Boys, to his witty, ironic and bittersweet songs of literary style, wry commentary and "tender perversion" not unfamiliar with controversy. As is found from Wikipedia entry, in his time he has managed to anger both the trans-gender electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos and Michelin Tyres (comparing the famous Michelin Man to a blow-up doll), not to forget songs mentioning paedophilia, necrophilia, adultery and Tamagotchis.

I have to say my own knowledge of Momus' music is more sporadic and limited to owning some albums from this era of the late 80s and early 90s. Though the artist himself comments the album in question: "This is really just a funky book-end, pleasant enough as a mood piece, but not really essential", my own favourite Momus record is the futuristic-themed Voyager of 1992 (where 'Cibachrome Blue' video seen here is taken from) -- and he even had a gig at Yo-Talo in our measly Tampere during those days, which I remember witnessing.

The other connection Momus has to this country is the Man of Letters documentary film made of him in 1994 by Finnish director Hannu Puttonen (who also created the videos for 'Pornography', 'Marquise of Sadness' and 'Rhetoric' by Momus) -- the film is available as a DVD with extra material on Cherry Red Records.

Momus @ Discogs

More Jimi Tenor & His Shamans + Circle + Bad Vugum Videos

Jimi Tenor & His Shamans: 'Unknown Gender' (directed by Jimi Tenor, 1992)

More Jimi Tenor & His Shamans; this video is from Fear Of A Black Jesus (Bad-28, Bad Vugum, 1992), the band's last album before the Shamans split and Jimi launched his solo career.

Courtesy of Tommi Forsström (If Society Records), who has now uploaded to YouTube the contents of rare Finnish VHS compilations Bad Vugum: From B To V (of Bad Vugum label) and Arctic Fury, featuring videos and live performances from the early 1990s by some now-legendary Finnish indie/punk/metal/avantgarde acts such as Mana Mana, Deep Turtle and Keuhkot; and alongside Jimi Tenor & His Shamans the act maybe most interesting for pHinnWeb, the early videos of postrock/post-Krautrock band Circle, especially of their Meronia era:


Circle: 'Shadow' live, 19 Feb '93, Helsinki

Circle: 'Crawatt' (directed by Jorma Mehtonen, 1993)

Circle: 'Kyberia' (directed by Mika Taanila, 1994)

Circle: 'Espirites' (directed by Petri Hagner, 1994)

Circle: 'Gravion' (directed by Petri Hagner, 1995)

Circle: 'Surrounding' (directed by Mika Taanila, 1995)

Paul Cannell (1963 - 2005) and Primal Scream's Screamadelica

Screamadelica

Don't Fight It, Feel It

Higher Than The Sun

Paul Cannell (16 March 1963 - 5 July 2005) was responsible for the artwork of Screamadelica-era Primal Scream. Most famous of these was the "psychedelic fried eggs" illustration for that 1991 album, which the band adopted as their logo, too; also for Primal Scream's singles from the album, such as Higher Than The Sun and Don't Fight It, Feel It. Cannell created here a sort of fascinating and mind-bending combination of bright day-glo pop art colours and symbols, primitive art, expressionism and psychedelia; essentially creating a visual equivalent for Screamadelica's po-mo mixture of 60s retro psych-pop and electronic/dub sounds, Primal Scream's finest moment so far, which briefly epitomised the early-90s British "indie meets rave" scene.

As to the music itself, infamously, a lot of the output for the album was not actually created by the band themselves (who were earlier known as The Rolling Stones/MC5 copycats; the henchman Bobby Gillespie having also previously played drums for Jesus and The Mary Chain) but by the producers and remixers such as Andy Weatherall and The Orb's Alex Paterson, while the band was concentrating on just, erm, getting higher than the sun.

One of the band's contemporaries and rivals in the early-90s neo-psychedelic dance music scene, Colin Angus of The Shamen bitterly compared in an i-D magazine interview Primal Scream with The Chocolate Watch Band, a US West Coast band of the late-60s, who similarly were rather spending their time enjoying psychedelic substances in the studio backroom while their producer Ed Cobb (the man also behind The Standells and responsible for writing Gloria Jones's 'Tainted Love', later immortalised by Soft Cell) worked out with studio musicians some dazzling baroque psych soundscapes ending up on the band's album.

Anyway, despite (or maybe because of it) this lack of "authenticity" (yawn), I'm a fan both of Screamadelica and The Chocolate Watch Band. The Shamen quickly disappeared up their own Terence McKenna-inspired cyberdelic wormhole with such god-awful singles as 'Destination Eschaton' but the Primals are still around, even though their erratic output (subsequent albums featuring in turns techno sounds and "back to the roots" pastiche country rock) has for me never again reached similar solar heights.

Back to Paul Cannell, he also created artwork for such bands as Manic Street Preachers, Shonen Knife, Flowered Up and The Telescopes. Sadly, Paul Cannell ended up taking his own life in 2005, but his vision lives on.

Paul Cannell interview @ Diskant

Paul Cannell @ The Wolf Hounds

Paul Cannell @ Primal Scream Webadelica

Primal Scream's Screamadelica-era songs at YouTube:

'Come Together'

'Come Together' - long version (audio only)

'Don't Fight It, Feel It'

'Higher Than The Sun'

'Higher Than The Sun' - 12" version (audio only)

'Loaded'

'Movin' On Up'

'Slip Inside This House'

Meat Beat Manifesto: 'Mindstream' (Orbital Remix)

Meat Beat Manifesto: 'Mindstream' (Mind The Bend The Mind mix by Orbital) (1993)

Another golden oldie... a dazzling Orbital remix of a Meat Beat Manifesto song. "Things aren't too clear, and the more I see / things disappear, momentarily." (The original as video version: check the superior (IMHO) album version from their classic Satyricon of 1992.)

Video Clips of Mindfuck Rave Party, October 1992, Tampere

Mindfuck Rave Party Part 1, October 1992, Tampere, Finland

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Video clips from the legendary Mindfuck rave party held at the old Finlayson factory in Tampere, 2-4 October 1992. Footage by Tero "DJ Coma" Civill and Jarno Virtanen. The live performers here were Mighty Rubber Boots and Noise Production (who were then Mike Not and Droid a.k.a. Jazzy-O). Also Mono Junk and Sinthetik appeared on the first night.

Orion's gallery of Tampere rave flyers

Tampere Underground 1993-1996 Facebook group (FB members only)

pHinnWeb's badly un-updated overview on Finnish rave culture

Oldschool Techno Rave, 13 June '08, Tampere

OLDSCHOOL TECHNO RAVE
DJs Bringing Back The Warehouse Vibe
"Tampere Early 90s"

Friday 13 June 2008
9pm - 4 am
@ Klubi (Tullikamarinaukio 1), Tampere
age limit 18
Tickets: 6 euros

DJs:

Mike Not (Noise Production / Kompleksi) plays acid/new beat
3.14Sami (Big Pop / Hang The DJ!) plays techno/house
Sane (M.A. Numminen & DJ Sane) plays jungle/hardcore

+ strobe lights & smoke machines + a virtual flyer exhibition

This event at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=13575403820&ref=nf

Also @ Facebook:
Tampere Underground 1993-1996 Group

Advanced Art

I recently found out there's a MySpace page for Advanced Art. AA were a pioneering Tampere electronic/EBM/industrial techno act who were together from 1985 to 1995. The line-up consisted of Pasi "Jana" Jantunen (voice & words) and Petja "Vince" Valasvaara (music & machines), and their assorted cohorts. They released a couple of singles and EPs, and one longplay called Product for Poko Records in 1993.

I've had an Advanced Art page at pHinnWeb for some years, featuring a biography written by Jana (with some nice self-ironic touches which you can also find from their MySpace site) and their discography. The page is now updated with some band and record sleeve graphics sent to me by Jana, and the MySpace site tells Advanced Art "is now working on a compilation, possibly with some new remixes and 07 versions". Hats off to these pioneers.

Finnish TV Commercials Nostalgia

Finnish TV channel MTV3 has listed under its Kaikkien aikojen parhaat sekunnit ("The best seconds of all time") a series of video clips of Finnish TV commercials from the 1950s to the present day. The slick Shell commercials (see also this) with their cool fashion models and the baritone voiceover from Kaj Gahnström are still well remembered, and I wonder if the unabashed eroticism of Vivante shampoo commercial would pass the censorship today...? Tupla-City was a light-hearted Western film pastiche for Tupla chocolate bars. Helsinki's Ajatar store represented the height of 70s Finnish fashion (with now politically uncorrect fur hats, too). Finnhits was the massive phenomenon of iskelmä light pop collections of the 70s and the late pop star Irwin Goodman advertised Jenkki bubblegum. Väinö Purje advertising the meat selections of the K-kauppa grocery store chain surprisingly became a big star in the Soviet Estonia (where ordinary citizens didn't exactly eat wienerschnitzel every day), where Finnish TV broadcasts could also be seen.

1950s and 1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

Tampere POP II

Tampere POP Class of 2006: I Was A Teenage Satan Worshipper, The Tigerbombs, Regina

Part I

I always thought Tampere's POP scene in the 90s was a bit like some sort of hivemind, but isn't this the same with all scenes? Closely-knit, in-bred, people anxious to belong and to be part of something. I suppose I'm a bit of a chameleon myself, so I had no problem mingling with these people and even to buy some records and listen to these bands at home (my record collection has more closet skeletons than you can ever imagine). But I always thought the 90s Britpop bands were in essence quite derivative; it was too easy for me to recognise their influences since I had already been listening to the "original" artists myself. Glamrock-era Bowie for Suede, mod bands from Small Faces to The Jam for Blur, Big Star for Teenage Fanclub; The Beatles, The Byrds, Love, The Stones and Can for Stone Roses; then the first album of Oasis was really a laugh riot for the "Spot That Tune" fans, a total rip-off of just everything from T-Rex to the ancient Coca-Cola ad tune 'I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing'. This was my ongoing gripe with the cutie-cutie Britpop fans, but my recommendations to listen to the original bands fell on deaf ears, since these acts were so "old", unfashionable, uncool and not heavily hyped weekly on the pages of NME like Elastica, a total Wire rip-off.

Well well well. I guess I should say something about last Friday's "Valotalo" night of Aamulehti that I mentioned earlier. All the Tampere "faces" (as they put it in the days of mod) were naturally there, the new generation of POP, and also some of those belonging to the earlier class: some people I hadn't seen in ages. Probably there inspired by Tero Kartastenpää's story, hoping to get something back from those good old days, in Ye Goode Olde Tradition of Tampere POP. I sat at the bar sipping my beer in my shamanic solitude, surrounded by some members of the kurrent ultra-kool Tampere POP kontingent. One of these girls, obviously a student from TTVO (a local art school) handed out flyers for their exhibition to all the young dudes and dudettes but skipped yours truly since I apparently didn't exude enough New Fresh Young Generation POP Kool. Hey, "don't you know who I am?", etc. But who cares. Gladly soon Minna-Elina arrived, this pocket-sized Princess Leia-lookalike I hadn't seen for some time. In fact she saved my night, being the only person there I exchanged some words with, in the way of an actual conversation.

The showtime. First was I Was A Teenage Satan Worshipper with their memorable name, a trio of two guys with guitars and one specs-wearing lady dressed in Goth-cum-Japanese-schoolgirl style with keyboards and drum machine. I know Tuomo, the lanky bespectacled bassist, with whom I have earlier exchanged some words at Yo-Talo and even donated Kompleksi's demo which he seemed to be into. Tuomo played earlier in Suruaika, a local goth band which Kompleksi's Mike Not has produced, but suffice it to say Tuomo is obviously happier with this new band. IWATSW's music is a sort of new wave stuff with synth flourishes. You can hear their song 'Tampere Kicks' -- written especially for this occasion -- here. I don't know if it was a stage fright or what, but at times Tuomo stopped playing and joined the audience, only to be persuaded back to stage. I didn't ask him afterwards why, I guess he had his reasons.

Then Tigerbombs, the band playing a sort of 1979 new wave-Farfisa organ stuff, headed by this guy with a reddish face which makes me think somehow of a Finnish Christmas ham. But I think this just gives additional sympathy points to the band and positively adds to their image. Anyway, if a guy with a face like this can make it work and even look good on stage, it's a considerable feat, and I have to say I found myself slowly warming up and was even jamming to the music of Tigerbombs, which I have earlier thought a bit too retro and "heard-it-before" to my own tastes. There were humorous speaks between songs and a leather-jacketed guitarist posing coolly like one of The Clash in late 70s. Tigerbombs are considered one of the next big Finnish rock imports, so you non-Finns might catch them before soon at a venue before you. Just tell them pHinn sent you (or then, maybe not).

The last act of the night was the feted Regina, two guys on electronics & synthdrums and Iisa, their chanteuse. Regina's music is a sort of sympathetic neo-synthpop with homely lyrics in Finnish; sung with Iisa's girlishly untrained-sounding voice, which undoubtedly is an essential part of Regina's allure. This time they were joined on stage by a bunch of uniformly-dressed American-type cheerleaders, doing their dance routines behind the band. I found these accompanying little pom-pom girls funny -- for five seconds. Anyway, Regina obviously fulfilled the fans' expectations, and at the end of the night everyone went home happy -- even me, when I found I couldn't drink my last beer without getting nauseous, and had to leave -- behind them another essential Tampere POP Experience.

Tampere POP

Two generations of Tampere POP: Iisa Pajula of Regina and Minna Joenniemi of Super

Last Friday Valo, Tampere's morning paper Aamulehti's weekend supplement ran a cover story on this town's pop scene, written by Tero Kartastenpää (a guy I somehow know through Juri). Not "pop" as in Britney Spears or Metallica or anything in Top 10, but more specifically as pop has been defined by a little group of local hipsters (or hipster wannabes): indiepop, alternative pop or Britpop. (That same Friday night there was also an Aamulehti-organised club at Yo-Talo to showcase three bands of the current Tampere pop generation: I Was A Teenage Satan Worshipper, Tigerbombs and Regina.) And what the heck: even yours truly was there as a small footnote as the story's illustration featured a flyer for our own Electric Pleasures club, back in 1998.

The local definition of POP: bottle-black moptop hairdos, jangly guitars, cheap tinny-sounding keyboards, a bit mod-inspired and/or second-hand clothing (60s, 70s and 80s styles recycled with a combination of irony and the retro cool-worshipping) and general Anglophilia (with a bit of Swedish, French and Japanese flavours maybe); attitudes ranging somewhere in between irony, lacony and child-like innocence and naivety. Musical heros: Morrissey and The Smiths, Brett Anderson of Suede, Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Stone Roses; with some Depeche Mode, The Cure and a hint of goth thrown in, too. Effeminate and limp-wristed, vaguely androgynous but not actually gay; more like enjoying the sexual ambivalence of it all, but too shy to ever actually have sex with any members of either gender (a famous quote from Brett Anderson: "I'm a bisexual who has never had a homosexual experience"). This has been the hermetically-sealed world of Tampere POP from the late 80s to its mid-90s heyday, and the influence of it can still be felt in today's local music scene.

My hometown Tampere has been called "Finland's Manchester" since the early days of industrialization. This has something vaguely to do with its traditional textile factories and the general grim red-brick look of the proletariat town than it really reminiscing this Northern England town, but as it always happens with any myths, they keep generating themselves until no one can be sure of their real origins. Perhaps some wise-ass in the 80s decided: "Aha: Tampere is Finland's Manchester -- so we need here our own counterparts of Morrissey, The Smiths, Joy Division, New Order, Factory Records and Hacienda Club". Tero Kartastenpää's story accounted this history from the early No Go clubs at Laterna to Yo-Talo's legendary(?) Pop-Disko nights of the 90s to the diaspora of Tampere pop scenesters to the fleshpots of Helsinki, and the 21st century new generation of POP wannabes.

I should know something about this since I was there too. Never as an insider, though, but observing it somewhere on the fringe of the scene. Actually I've known quite a many of these people, if only on a superficial, giving-a-nod-when-we-meet basis. All these bands created out of the scene: Happy Ever After, Super, Coo, Romantic Vision a.k.a. Kinetic, and so on. I was never actually interested in being a part of any scene, but I was often attending local club nights whether they were (Brit/indie)pop, rock, techno/rave (or whatever subgenre -- at some point drum'n'bass became really big in Tampere, fuelled by the efforts of such people as Riku "DJ Infekto" Pentti), industrial or even Gothic (for the latter two there were Laterna's Frantic clubs and magazine and Cyberware label): in a small town there was (and is) always a lot of overlapping and everyone knowing everyone else. Basically the same core group of people doing their own music and playing in bands, working at record stores (or even running them), DJing and organising parties, writing for music magazines, and so on. Everything very inbred and clique-y; on the other hand quite loose to allow also the "tourists" to mingle in freely with hardcore members. I guess the hardcore are still there when the tourists have moved on, to Helsinki or to their cosy middle-aged people's family lives.

And here the nerve-shattering Part II!

Dadrave and Getting Older

Last weekend they had here in Tampere an event called "House Nation - The Resurrection". I wasn't there, so I'm not going to comment its musical content in any way whatsoever, but why did the words "flogging", "dead" and "horse" occurred to me when I heard about this? As the name indicates, this was a rehash of the popular House Nation parties about a decade ago. Yes, it's the nostalgia time for the ravers of 1990s. We already have "dadrock" (a.k.a. "classic rock" of the "heydays" of the 1960s and 70s: your typical nostalgia for the Zeppelins, The Whos, The Stones, etc.) -- now enter "dadrave".

Were you a PLUR-infested happy raver in the golden days of early 90s and its illegal warehouse parties, smileys and stupid MDMA-fuelled grins filled with love for everyone and everything? Now ask a permission from your missus and kids for a night out with the boys, try on your old smiley T-shirt (even if it's too tight these days for your potbelly), lovingly tap your balding pate and on you go. C-Tank forever!

Usually people stop listening to any new music after they have turned 30, preferring to stick to the records of their teenage years and their young adulthood. If you're a teenager or twenty-something now, hold on to every moment because you're going to re-live them for the rest of your lives in the form of nostalgia. (Personally, there's no way I would miss my own 1980s or especially 1990s, the recollections of which are mostly darkness to me.)

When you get older, it's easier to stick to what is cosy and comfortable, tried and true. Your body cannot take similar punishment as it did when you were younger: no more all-night partying out on the tiles with legal or illegal stimulants. Instead you prefer a good book, slippers and sleeping in your warm bed. You find yourself getting more conservative in your general outlook and curse the teenagers, who appear to you more rude, obnoxious, shocking and out of control every year. In other words, you're getting to be more and more like your parents ("In my youth we had no...") and forget you were exactly like those kids once.

I'm both sad and glad of the fact that I never exactly had a chance to be "young": my life was never what you could call wild and reckless, I always kept a certain distance to what my peers were doing even when participating in some of their activities. When you start to think of it, it was probably sad about all the fun that I missed, but even then, all this is very relative. I'm still that way now about being in an outsider position, and this is why I'm glad about it when I'm getting older: the people of my own age group have their families, their mortgages, their rat race, their increasingly growing conservative views, while I find myself almost totally out of that game.

I was a good, silent kid at school, I never revolted or caused any trouble or defied rules. That resistance only came later on, with the painful realisation of my mental well-being being downright threatened by having to adjust to certain facts usually taken for granted in society (the route of getting oneself an education, getting a job, getting married and so on): it never worked for me, only made me feel there's something terribly wrong with me, having to pursue that route everyone else was taking. I admit I'm only an armchair anarchist; you will never see me at demonstrations or on barricades, but there are still ways for me to question the way people do things, try to shake their self-indulgent comfortability and barren mental landscapes, just at least a little bit.

I'm still hungry for a change, I'm still a non-conformist. I still refuse to dwell in my past glories, since honestly, I can't see many of those existing. The future is unknown and uncertain, but even taking a road into the unknown is better than to get stuck in a rut.