This interview is from 1997 but I think,that it will add and you read a little him preferably
Calm down, all Rasmus-fans, the Funky Four is not gonna break up. The band wants everybody to know, that they still have the strings in their hands, though fighting against the music business has been quite rough. The influence by the old farts is not heard on the second album Playboys, which is released today.
I'm just gonna skip the beginning of the next chapter cause I don't know all the words that I'd have to use in it.
Lauri (singer): I have been listening for four hours of the Beatles. I have a tape and I was walking throught the whole place and I got awesom vibes of it. You listen to the songs, and you think they are simple, but they've been made, they are here now.
Pauli (guitar): The Beatles is the best band in the world. You start to feel really bad, if you are trying to make some song and then you listen to Beatles and they are just so d*mn good, the songs.
Eero (bass): I respect their musical work. They have made so d*amn many records. Teja read the Shout- bok a while ago and he said there is a lot to learn. I borrowed it from library and I'm gonna learn of it. You can't say the worlds best band to be bad.
Lauri: We are bigger than the Beatles.
Ladie's men or player boys
"You are listening to the second Rasmus album, Playboys. When you hear the following sound (plim) please turn the page in the booklet you received with the CD. Here we go." With these instructons begins, today released, Rasmus' second album, last year to top 20 reached Peeps follower. Sounds like (some kind) test.
Lauri: No it's the kids books: "Now you'll hear a story of Snow White and the seven dwarfs. When you hear the following sound..." It's straight from it.
Does the title of the album means playboys or play(ing) boys?
Pauli: It means playboys.
Lauri: It describes that thing that even we are serious about this, we don't take this too seriously. In my opinion it sounds a lot like us. We are theese playboys', bombers.
Eero: That song was planned to be titeld as "Whoreboys". It’s self irony. The album starts on the title song, where is sang "I don't have to get a job". I imagine the band at first to try to continue the young rebels tradition, but the songs thematic material is not so simple.
Lauri: the song is about how d*amn rich we are.
Pauli: we have mone like h*ll.
Lauri: It's just a touch of irony, that in this you can't get so much money. People have awfully lot of all these thoughts that we are really rich. Offer beer...
Pauli: There are many friends, who are these "close friends" who you don't see so often and tey are like what's up you rich people. We probably have less money than they do.
Eero: For me the songs lyrics means also, that there are those rich family kids, who haven't learnt to act with the money. I have met few people like them. And then of course there are people, who are from a rich family, but they can behave really well. But none of us is not from a rich family. If we can afford to buy one beer a week, it's something we earned ourselves.
With the first Rasmus ep was a lollipop. What kind of product would be good for this record?
Eero: Before we had a record deal with a company, we were planning to put a kondom with the next album. But then came the record deal and we couldn't do anything like that.
Pauli: The record company was so picky that they couldn't do anythin fun like that.
Eero: I can reveal one thing in here: I have never used protection while masturbating.
Pauli: I think that you should use, after seeing what all you've been eating with those hands. Mad cow and all..
Feet shakes and sweat flies
The band itself, with a help of a sound recorder, produced Playboys is short and sheer skatestuff, which has been made softer with trumpet, keyboards, backup singers and scratching. In Raggatip they dare even among reggae rhytms and hassewallin kinda guitaring. Nowdays the youth don't seem to be so tight with their listening habits than ten years ago when The Smiths' and Puplic Enemy's albums couldn't be found in the same shelves.
Lauri: The crowd won't stuck in just one style. But then there are those really loyall ones too.
Eero: I listen to very different kinds of things. You can just pick up a few album from the library and listen to what you like. I went with my three friends to Royal Albert Hall to listen five british modern music composer. It was just tinkling, classical music, but that was a very interesting thing to se too. There was a lot like, the players talked to each other in some pieces. Good ideas.
Pauli: I think that is mostly just goofing, that it's part of the thing and they have to be done as pieces like one totality. Our band isn't like that...The funk element in Rasmus' music is still pretty much punk/metal kinda shaking.
Eero: In this album it is straighter.
Janne (drums): I can't anymore, start getting old.
Lauri: It just felt like that, when we made the album.
Pauli: Next album might be really funky. Now it feels like that. It depends on how we feel when we start to make new songs.
Does the band have any kind of interests of so called black funk?
Lauri: I doubt our skills, that do we have for that...
Eero: We started from the heavier side and now we have ended into this.
Now we can turn back to the question, that we might have not played together long enough.
Lauri: We had the critic now remarkably higher. Actually we had no critic on the first one. Now many ideas stroke off along the road. I think it's funnier to play the new album on live. Half less words in those songs. There isn't so much those really hard parts, though it's never easy.
Eero: Before the London journey, when we were on Lestijärvi's stage, I don't know if it was the change of atmosphere or that I had so fun on the stage, but I almost fainted on the stage. Feet were shaking and more blood was needed.
Pauli: In Ruisrock was a tent, where was no holes and when we had thrown the gig exactly everyone left there in the shadows to rest. We were so (I seriously couldn't find a matching word to "paskana").
Eero: In Lestijärvi after the gig we could squeeze couple desi liters water out of our shirts. It's part of our thing, that's what we've been doing from the very beginning.
Lauri: I think that it affect, wheter the crowd goes along. Finnish are kinda so stiff gang, when you compare here, no matter what club you go, even if it's just DJ playing, the feeling is so high.
Hunting and fishing
The manager Teja Kotilainen tells he arrived from London a few days later than his players just becuse that the guys could test their surviving skills without the father figure. What if the guys would have get in to a desserted island only with a rambo knife. Would they survive with their scouts skills?
Pauli: I wouldn't survive.
Lauri: Neither would I. I'd rather have packed lunch quite a lot. A bed.
Janne: Sound pretty tempting. I could eat some beatles. Kill monkeys with the knife.
Eero: I think I would survive a while. The hardest thing to get used to would be on the mental side. What would be problem there hunting and fishing.
The fight between generations?
Compared to Hanson Rasmus' musician are practicly old, but the teen age band's reputation is still following them toughly.Is it important to them to feel they are on the better side of the generations gulf.
Janne: Originally one thing that lifted us was that now here is this new young band, all minor.
Pauli: It is cool to be this better band than old guys. Seriously, there are lots of bands who are older and more handsome for sure, but in my opinion we are pretty damn goog.
Lauri: We are now 18, but I think that for many Rumba's readers, if we were ten years older, we'd be ten years more convincing. For someone it is a hell of a treshold, that we are a teen band, to start to listen to us in a totally new way. That _ (bothers) us the most.
Pauli: You can see it immediately, that if you play in older peoples place, there is less people.
Eero: You could listen objectively, of what the music is and what are we telling about. If you'd have same thoughts with us. Aren't the gyus ever afraid, that they might have too much too soon? How are they gonna avoid ending up in synical and bored twenty –years- olders?
Eero: That depend on yourself. I can find even every day that kind of source that produces in me some ideas. But it's not the end of the world, if you have made something big and now you have nothing.
Pauli: But it's always on minds, that this might end like tomorrow. To the accident or then our popularity just stops. That's why I am going to first finish my school. I don't think there's gonna be any problems. School is so _ important.
Lauri: I can start a new band, do something else. Do some of these music things, if I'm just interested. If this band stuff doesn't interest, there's no point to continue. I feel, that we can't affect anyone, if we are not interested about it.
In compression of big business
In last Rumba interview about a year ago Rasmus was already a little worried of how changing into big record company would affect to the band. Suddenly outside of the friend group came along music business professionals, who started to get tangled into things.
Janne: We even had nightmares of it.
Pauli: As a matter of fact it has slightly started to annoy, but all musicals things lyrics and photos, those stylistic matters are ours. They are mostly details where we won't take part.
Teja: Can I comment something to that? When the first album was released, we were like we do what we do and the record company men just give us money. It was aspiration, but here has been kind of fading of who decides of what.
Eero: Because record company may have different aspirations, what is not that our feeling anymore. If some older person says, what I should do differently.
Teja: It's a fact, that here starts to be all these things around, that it's not just for guys anymore. There are lots of different people who wants to give good advices, but you just have to have one common direction.
Lauri: We aspire to that everything goes from the band.
Eero: Everything goes from the band? Lets leave then! The ideal thing would be that we could find all the right people. Like Teja is just the right person to do that job. Other people would just do the stuff and we'd make songs at home and in our rehears place, play the gigs.Of course we have ideas for example to what the stage looks like, when we have visual people in the band.
New album's Kola song brings Beastie Boys in my mind and how they have succeed to carry out stubbornly their own visions. Would Rasmus have something to learn from Mike D and other boys?
Lauri: I adore those Beastie Boys.
Pauli: I don't know, if it's up to anything else but money. Money is power.
Eero: Well, from enthusiastic. What I have seen a couple pictures of them, they have looked just like the band. And then that one video, where they are some cops. So their style.
Teja: It just that when you get good ideas, they should be planned so that then you make them well. Like those web sites www.rasmus.sci.fi there comes all the time lots of material, it's kinda like magazine type solution. Through the pages people can get into different places.
Eero: Like Lauris bath tub
Lauri: Jannes hair salong.
Towels and beer
Rasmus is a group, whose home countrys bars have got even too familiar. If you wouldn't have to care for money, what would be your tour buss like?
Pauli: Sony Playstation. Good beds.
Lauri: Clean sheets. Fresh air.
Eero: No smoking. In one gig place in Kotka we thought that if we had a few railway carriage as tour buss. That would be pretty cool. And if money wouldn't be problem, then just built a rail way to every where we go for gig.
Is there in Rasmus' gig contract anything special demands for the backstage service? Dolphin friendly tuna maybe or new crispy socks?
Pauli: We have nothing. Smaller bands have much more some demands, but we have nothing.
Lauri: It says in our contract that there should be full-length mirror, fruits and something like that, but we don't demand them. It's just joking. Eero: What is really important is towels and beer after the gig, so that we can be relaxed when we go to sleep. We have no sick make ups or demanding thing, like just cutting some pig on stage.
Singer who looks like an opera house
To be young and ruff rockband Rasmus seems confusingly objective group, who tries to deal school and other stuff well. This must not be always easy, cause there are lots of all kinds of tempting things in show business.
Eero: It is like that, but it's just a simple fact in any job, that if you become attached into some stimulants, you won't do the job so well anymore. It's a fact that has been seen so many times. You have to be strong with those tempting things.
Lauri: Buy cheap?
Eero: You have to be strong and know yourself. You have to know that you are better without any drugs. I expect to have for an answer Hugh Hefner's Playboy manor for my traditional building question, but guys' comparisons are a bit more high culturer. At least mostly.
Eero: I went to Tate gallery today. There was visual art which was made after 1900- And it was so cool.
Lauri: I'd like to be Sydneys opera house. It actually looks a bit like me.
Pauli: That building cost like ten times more than it was supposed to. Janne: I'd be a bajamaja. In Ruisrock.
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Fri May 23, 2008 12:03 pm
... i like to read these kind of interviews made back in the time... they are so funny 