Birthday Interview with the team of finnbands.com
Friends & Fans wanted to know...
How do you founded finnbands.com?
Niina: The idea just popped into my mind during a long and maybe cold –and very boring- winter’s night in 2005/2006 while doing some other band promo stuff. So this was not the first contact with music and Finnish bands –it was made to make life a bit more comfortable and put the bands together. Actually live is not more comfortalbe since finnbands is a part of our lifes (or at least of mine). It became more exhausting with a lot of work. But I love it!
Cat: It was Niina .. it was cold and i think she had some finland depressions xD
Sonia: It was Niina’s Idea and she asked me if I would help her with the site...
What does it take to be in the finnbands team? Like is it hard to find and interview bands or meet them?
Niina: All in all it takes a lot of time. It’s hard to sort out GOOD bands. Meeting bands and doing interviews is a part of the job, so it’s ok. We do this job for the simple reason that we want to do it – with everything that belongs to it.
Cat: No, it's not hard to find finnish bands .. go into a club in finland and you'll see that it's harder to find people who are NOT in a band xD
Hm, Interviews - i like them with the right bands xD but i hate it if your interviewpartner is too quiet or smth like this.
And the real work comes after the interview - i don't like typing :-|
anna: I think a major part can be seen on the band, management and record label side. If the work with at least one of those three goes well the rest comes nearly on its own...though it's taking a hell of a lot of time.
Sonia: It takes a lot of dedication. I think you have got to make some sacrifices for that, especially your holidays for going to Finland and going to concerts. Finding bands in Finland is not hard, there are thousands of them but you got to find the good ones. If you really like a band it’s sometimes weird if you talk to them for the first time. The first interviews were the worst because you didn’t have any routine in that. To be honest, if I had done one of the interviews with bands who are not talkative at all in first place I would have given up even before it really started.
What resources would you say you need to start a website/company like finnbands.com? Did you have a lot of contacts to be able to get interviews and review albums or did you start out making a lot of calls to publicists/managers yourself?
Cat: You don't need that much. All you need is TIME, some html knowledges, a huuuuge webspace and a motivated team <3 you'll get contact during your work..
anna: We started with...I don't know...nearly zero contacts? You have to work hard and need to show that you are really able to do the work the way it is expected and wanted...
Sonia: You got to have a good Idea. We started out with zero.
...and then you need stamina (or in Finnish: sisu) and built up contacts.
It’s all internet but meeting people and talk to them personally is also important.
What is the spirit of finnbands.com?
Niina: Lonkero!
Cat: Lonkku *namnam*
anna: I go with Lonkero on good days and Lonkero mixed with Jägermeister on not so good days...but is Lonkku-Jägi really that bad?!
Sonia: Keep track of good music in Finland and report about it...
But if you mean spirit ‘the other way’ I’ll go for Lonkku...
Do you all know one another? Like, is everyone on the finnbands.com team... are you all friends?
Niina: YES!
Cat: No, my friends are Anna, Niina, Sonia and Pu. The others are nice girls.
anna: I know Niina, Pu, Cat, Sonia and Jane in person. Nina and Lili only through the internet. But they are all nice girls and I would count the major part of them to my friends.
Sonia: About the ‘inner circle’ I would say: we are friends more or less. Some of the girls I know personally for a very long time others I just met once but we keep talking online.
Tell us what you think each others good AND bad points are!
Niina:
Anna: works like hell but even she needs holidays from time to time
Cat: great friend to party with but she likes Cinema Bizarre
Jane: always good for surprises – nothing bad
Lili: great in improvisated interviews but needs to be kicked to get something done sometimes (which is not too bad at all since she is freelancer)
Nina: works like hell when she is in Hell but tends to get lost when she is in Germany
Pu: great to stay awake with all night long but.... I don’t know a bad point
Sonia: relyable and best person for the hard stuff (musically speaking) but takes it Finnish sometimes
Cat:
First of all i wanna write about Niina .. the "Brain" of finnbands.com ..
I know her since .. I'm not really sure but i think it was in 2002 when we "met" online .. maybe 2003. She has a hard shell with a soft core xD
She can be SO f*cking bitchy .. But i think this friendship is for life .. even when we are not talking to each other for weeks..
Anna. She's a lovely, hard working person also a little bit bitchy .. but not that often.
Pu. You must like her .. she's a easy-going person. I don't think she has any bad point o_O but maybe i just don't know them ..
Sonia. Our girl for hard stuff xD and i'm thankful for that! <3 bad point?! her timemanagement is finnish !
anna:
Niina - fun to hang out with at concerts and gigs but sometimes it's difficult to explain you point of view if her opinion is another one.
Cat - totally crazy and has a big heart and caused by this she can be lost for ages if she has found something new that interests her
Sonia - helpful and warm-hearted but sometimes a little bit confused ;)
Pu - probably the only person of those four I could stay with for weeks without getting annoyed at any point.
Sonia: That’s a hard one.
Niina: our leader who keeps the whole bunch together, hard working, the driving force but sometimes a slave driver and occasionally harsh with words ;) don’t take it personal I know that I need an ‘Arschtritt’ once in a while ;)
Anna: diligent, hard working don’t know bad things about her...
Cat: a bit like me, in good and in bad ;) I just say Pisces. Can be very enthusiastic. (which isn’t always bad)
Pu: I guess the one in the team I have least to deal with so it’s hard to say anything about her, except I like her kind of humour.
About our freelancers I can’t tell much...I don’t know them too well.
I want to be in finnbands team... What do I have to do?
Niina: Explain WHY you want to be in the team, convince me, be able to stay awake for 30 hours or more and be willing to work like hell.
The whole team will decide about it.
Cat: Ask the boss! :p
Sonia: You got to talk to our ‘leader’ Niina!
Tell us the funniest experiences during your work!
Niina: Nobody of us fell off stage so far – but I think only because we aren’t ON stage while working.
It’s always absolutely funny when we are together with the girls – but that’s maybe more the surroundings as working. Actually there aren’t many funny things while work since you have to concentrate and not kidding around. Sometimes crazy talkes come up during interviews.
One of those was e.g. while interviewing Private Line and Ilari said, he would like to have a bath with The Pussy Cat Dolls and Jack was shocked because “that’s shitty music” – the whole interview was very funny. You should read it!
Or one day in Berlin – this involves Feiled! Before we left our beautiful apartment Anna dumped the Gin over the kitchen table instead of into the Bitter Lemon bottle, before we interviewed Jontte of Crumland Pu dumped his coffee and I dumped anybody’s guitarcase while talking to Anton. And we were sober!
Another thing which is funny when you think about it later is when you are in the photopit taking pictures and suddenly a singer jumps into your arms. This happened to me twice and I was always standing there, totally weird: “WHAT?”
Cat: Funniest? It's always fun with the girls. But i think our interview with Private Line in Rovaniemi was reeeally fun! <3
I enjoyed Tammerfest 2007 but i can't tell you all those stupid things we laughed about xD .. Just two Words "Jägermeister!Vogel!"
anna: There have been some funny experiences, e.g. things that fell under the topic "How to close the door to the tourbus on the Finnish way." or "How often can you 'go to the toilet' during one gig?" or "May I stop to see things twice if I close one eye?"...
Bands & Crew Staff wanted to know...
L-60: Is it hard to get motivated after 2 years of supporting Finnish bands and not hardly getting any credit for it?
Niina: Sometimes, yes sure. But then you see good things happen or get some nice words by nice persons and that makes it worth it. The “few” credits we get make it worth it. The team makes it worth it since we aren’t a bunch of strangers but we are friends.
Sure there are people out there that seem unable to say a simple thing like “thank you” and take our work as a matter of course, but there are nice people out there as well (like L-60° guys) And sometimes things happened that you never had reckoned.
There is one thing I learnt during the last two years: take nothing as self-evident, don’t believe in promises and start to trust when it already happens.
Maybe it’s comparable to a band: you work very hard to achieve anything and you can fall down deeply. But you never give up.
Cat: Öhm, at the moment it's hard for me, yes xD ..
usually not .. it's fun, but you can only work "for free" if it comes from your heart ..
anna: As Niina already said: sometimes it's hart. At those moments you don't know why you are doing this job, 'cause ending it would be so much easier. But then you think about the time and all that work you have already put into it and breaking up is just not worth it.
Besides a few credits it happens that we hear a little 'Thank You' every now and then. I guess those moments are the ones that keep our work alive.
Sonia: Sometimes, Yes. But you get credits, feedback and ‘Thank you’ once in a while. That’s always good to hear and that is motivation enough.
The Jade: So far you have met countless amount of Finnish rockers. Do you ever get bored talking to either sober, half-drunken or drunken rockstars and propably most of the times hearing same kind of stories from them?
Niina: YES! Actually I hate doing interviews because it’s always the same old stories. No, I am kidding, am I not?
Sometimes it’s nice to get to know people. Sometimes it’s not so nice to have a view behind the scenes (Anna and Pu might know what I mean...). When it comes to drunken “rockstars” I have to admit it’s a cliché. Sure, there have been some half drunken guys in our interviews (and maybe some half drunken interviewers – and I really have to say SORRY when it was maybe me, but this only happend once!) but mostly they really pretend to be interested. The last two interviews I did we had really fun!
When I compare the side of the interviewer to the band side I am sure that our part is more interesting, since we don’t have to tell the same story about our band over and over again. We can ask questions (and I really hate some of those we asked too often!) and can change them. And the questions should fit somehow to the band you interview. You cannot go to 100 interviews with the same 10 questions.
And heh, you aren’t good in counting, are you? It wasn’t that much!
Cat: Haha .. i'm usually also drunk .. so that's no problem xD
anna: Whether I get bored or not depends on the "rockstar". I can't say that I was really bored at any point. You just have to make the best out of the situation and even if the interviewed person is obviously not interested...well, who says that the same applys for the interviewer?! If you want you can find a good laugh in everything...
Sonia: Interviews were never boring so far. Ok once it was like ‘Talk to me guys! Just say more than yes, no and maybe!’ but most of the guys were quite talkative and usually they were not drunken or just half drunken.
Anima: I have one question in mind. Have you arranged gigs to finnish bands in germany? Have you thought about it? You know Finnbands.com Booking Agency :)
Niina: No and yes, but no. Or not yet. Maybe we’ll do some day.
Cat: I think we talked about it some time ago .. but till now we havent't arranged gigs.
anna: Thought about it, yes. But that's it for now.
Sonia: We thought about it, but it’s quite hard to do things like this.
I think you got to have a lot of money in your background if you want to start out a booking agency.
The Pleasures: How often has one of you been in bed with a musician, and i dont mean just sleeping ;-)
Niina: You mean partiing? Happens sometimes.
But meeting up in private is not about musician or not but about being friend or not.
(Sorry to disappoint you, ask again in four weeks @ Logo!)
Cat: Omena Parties?! Oh we had some and there were lots of musicians in my bed :p
Sonia: Once ;) Partying while sitting on a bed ‘cause there where not enough chairs in that room.
Swallow the Sun: If you could gather a band from Finnish musicians, who would be on the band, what kind of music the band would play and what would be the bands name?
Niina:
Mikko Sirén on Drums
Anthon of White Flame and Juha Raivio :P on Guitar
Lauri Hämäläinen and Ilari Hämäläinen on Bass (why not having a band with two bass players?) :D
Visa of Mind of Doll (current addiction :D) or Niklas of Carmen Gray on Vocals
They will do some dirty punk rock glam metal’n’roll with an energetic stage show (only the very big stages since this is a 6-piece-band). And I’d call it Weird Chaos.
Cat:
Drums: Julian Drain (Lovex)
Vocals: Jonne Aaron (Negative)
Guitar: Viljami (Heijaste)
Bass: Chris (Renoise)
they would play glamrock .. (ok, maybe it's not Chris's Genre *lol*) but i don't care, i wanna have glam. the name?! dunno.. sorry.
anna:
first of all I want to built up a choir - Ville Laihiala (Poisonblack) + Ville Valo (Him) + Jontte Genberg (Crumbland) + Vreth (Finntroll) + Malja (Lapko) + Jonne Aaron (Negative)
main vocals - Juha-Pekka Leppäluoto (Charon)
drums I - Luca Di Giovanni (Day Eleven)
drums II - Mikko Sirén (Apocalyptica)
guitar I - Skrymer (Finntroll)
guitar II - Alexi Laiho (Children of Bodom)
bass - Kai-Pekka Kangasmäki (Stam1na), oh how he would hate it to play in that band...
background dancer - every member of Lordi
I have no clue what kind of music they could play...maybe they'll mix some metal with some goth rock and call themselves 'The conquering eleven and the unholy dancers'...oh don't mind me...
Sonia:
The Members:
Bass: Lauri Porra
Guitar and (backing)vocals: Antti Hyyrynen (Stam1na)
Guitar: Juha Raivio (Swallow the Sun)
Drums: Jaska Raatikainen (Children of Bodom)
Keyboards: Henri “Trollhorn” Sorvali ( Finntroll / Moonsorrow)
Vocals: Jules Näveri (Profane Omen / Enemy of the Sun)
They’ll play a kind of melodic Deathmetal with influences of Stoner Rock and Finnish Tango.
I’ll name it: Terfomar (The word doesn’t have any meaning but who cares?)
Naked Crew: What would be the perfect way of spending a hell of a party night in Hellsinki (for finnbands.com girls)?
Niina: Hanging around with the finnbands.com girls all together, a great concert (even it’s not too easy to find a band all of us like) and a great afterparty with the girls (and some friends). And Anna should try again, that Jägermeister in Lonkero is still ugly. Maybe continuing the party in the hotelroom with talking a lot of nonsense until everything hurts.
Cat: I think a concert at On the Rocks with the girls, a great afterparty with Lonkku Lonkku Lonkuu .. maybe some Jägermeister. Later going to Loose Bar > more drinks and more party. That's it, simple but nice!
anna: All of us girls toghether in a small bar. Some band is playing. Lonkero and Jägermeister for free. Just having a good time!
Sonia: Starting out with some concert of a band we all like (it’s hard to find but somehow we’ll manage that) and then have a couple of drinks in a rock bar. Maybe Loose Bar or somewhere else. NO Salmiakki (after my last stay I can’t stand it anymore )
Other option is: in Summer near arctic circle after the concert Party all night long at a balcony with some booze just to find out that the sun doesn’t settle in beginning of July...
We want to thank every single one you who took part in this unusual way of doing an interview and for celebrating our birthday in this special way with us.
Thanks a lot.
Your team of finnbands.com
14.01.2008
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