I'm very happy to continue the interview section of this webzine with this absolutely HUGE, more or less all-encompassing and totally mind-blowing talk with Mikko Järvinen, who is known for his long history in the punk scene of Jyväskylä, having played drums in bands such as MOLEMMINPUOLEINEN VARMA TUHO and ANTIKLIMAX, prior to his newest project BOMBER GAP, which has represented a turn into more musically ambitious territory for Mikko, with the band having more of a classic rock / doom / stoner type of sound.
In addition to halis own musical projects, Mikko has been actively booking shows since he was very young and still living in Muurame, and he's definitely always done his part in keeping the DIY-underground scene alive and well.
In recent years Mikko's arguably most prolific project was making the 'Jyväskylän Meininki' punk documentary, which chronicles the Jyväskylä punk-scene from the 1970s to today. The film was put together with a very limited budget and only very little know-how about making movies. However, through the hard work of the production team and everyone involved, the movie turned into a full-length documentary that has been shown in numerous film festivals and other similar events with great success.
Talking to Mikko about his musical history, starting all the way from his teenage years, as well as discussing his views on the significance of DIY-culture, making punk music and the ethic of following your passions was so much fun that we ended up having a pretty hard time trying to keep things brief, so brace yourselves for a long read! Enjoy!
PROCRASTINATE: HELLO!! And thanks for agreeing to the interview!! How are you doing today? What did you have for breakfast??
In addition to halis own musical projects, Mikko has been actively booking shows since he was very young and still living in Muurame, and he's definitely always done his part in keeping the DIY-underground scene alive and well.
In recent years Mikko's arguably most prolific project was making the 'Jyväskylän Meininki' punk documentary, which chronicles the Jyväskylä punk-scene from the 1970s to today. The film was put together with a very limited budget and only very little know-how about making movies. However, through the hard work of the production team and everyone involved, the movie turned into a full-length documentary that has been shown in numerous film festivals and other similar events with great success.
Talking to Mikko about his musical history, starting all the way from his teenage years, as well as discussing his views on the significance of DIY-culture, making punk music and the ethic of following your passions was so much fun that we ended up having a pretty hard time trying to keep things brief, so brace yourselves for a long read! Enjoy!
Mikko performing at KWF#3 with BOMBER GAP
(Photo by Antti Makkonen)
PROCRASTINATE: HELLO!! And thanks for agreeing to the interview!! How are you doing today? What did you have for breakfast??
MIKKO: Thanks a lot for doing this! I'm doing real fine, having a late sunday afternoon coffee and rewinding after a longish weekend. I had a baguette with mock blue cheese and lettuce, a banana-berry smoothie, a vitamin drink and a lot of coffee. T'was nice.
PROCRASTINATE: Sounds NICEEE!! A great variety of nutrients there! You organized the 'Kill With Fire #3' show this friday at Ilokivi in Jyväskylä, with MARA BALLS (solo gig), GARDEN OF WORM and KIARAMA KOLLEKTIV, where you also performed with your band BOMBER GAP! I was there and although I thought all of the bands were really decent I have to say that your gig was my favorite!! How did you experience the show from the point of view of the organizer / performer?
MIKKO: I was happy with the way the show went down! It was our third club under the KILL WITH FIRE name and I was initially pretty stressed out about how it was going to go, as we've already organized two good clubs and I really wanted to get a hat-trick done with the third one and have a clean trilogy. Those kinds of things really matter to me. I'm big on entireties, and I'm relieved we were successfull with the third one as well.
Naturally I'm using 'success' as a sort of elastic term here, as for some it might mean making a profit, but we only profited 3€ from the tickets on Friday and I still feel like the show was a total success and that it couldn't have gone better. For me, the definition of success is more about the reactions and feelings that I read from the faces of the audience and the bands performing, and in that sense, it was a hugely successful night.
And I'm glad you dug our show too, thanks you! We had a ton of fun playing live. We haven't had that many chances to do so this year and I think this was actually our first show in about six or seven months. This was one of those times where you kind of feel like you're channeling something pretty deep and unknown even to yourself by hitting the drums as hard as you can and just living in the moment.
I threw up like a half a pint in my mouth after the last hit and then ran backstage to throw up some more, so it really was one of those "give it all you've got" -kind of shows, which have something really magical about them, being forms of pure self-expression without any thought.
Poster for KWF #3
(Artwork by Riina Maria Laukkanen)
PROCRASTINATE: I'm glad to hear that! And yeah I definitely see what you mean! I've been to loads of sold out shows where I've had a relatively shitty time and loads of really small and sparsely attended shows where I've had a total blast! Hahaha and I'm glad to hear that other people struggle with holding down their puke while playing live too!
You definitely have a pretty aggressive style of drumming, which I really like, so it's of course no wonder that you'd feel pretty exhausted after such a formidable show! Are you planning a new installment of the KWF-club for the future?
MIKKO: Yeah, I ain't got a lot of technique to my playing, which might be due to the fact that I've never had any formal training on the drums and that I'm not a very talented person rhythmically or musically, quite the opposite actually. So the way I learned to play the drums was just to hit them as hard as I could. But that's what I love about drumming, you don't got to know shit, you can just hit hard and with all of your body, and that there are very few variables when it comes to playing them.
We are definitely going to keep KWF going, but I have no idea when the fourth installment of the club will happen, as this is not a twice-a-year-type club, but something that we arrange when there's a real need for it, like when a band that I really like is touring and needs help getting a show in Jyväskylä.
I've wanted to keep it pretty casual with the club and just do it when there's a demand for it and when I can fit it into my schedule, as I don't want these things to start feeling like work. But the saga will continue. We had some discussions on Friday with the people from the venue about maybe growing the concept a little bit, by mixing more electronic DJ-music with the psych/prog/heavy-bands, which is an idea that I'm really into at the moment!
Mikko performing in Oulu with BOMBER GAP (2016)
(Photo by Heini Luotola)
PROCRASTINATE: Funny you should say that because I've always regarded you as a very talented and precise drummer, despite your aggressive style! Very nice to hear that you're into developing the club into new directions! In KWF#3 there were some great visuals by Riikka Maria Partanen (check it out: facebook.com/riikka.arte) that accompanied the bands which I really liked, hope to see more of this kind of stuff in the future too!
By the way, do you see any significant obstacles / difficulties regarding booking shows in Jyväskylä? I think there's a pretty good scene here but I think that for the last few years people don't really attend gigs that actively, which is a shame! Additionally with Rentukka having been closed down there aren't as many venues that you can now book heavier / weirder clubs in, especially on short notice. What do you think about this situation?
MIKKO: The scene is good, in the sense that we have a lot of people here who understand the basic values and mechanisms of keeping the scene alive, e.g. lending you a hand and coming to sell the tickets and carry the equipment and do all sorts of hard work for basically just a cup of rice and a thank you. So that makes it easier to organize shows here. And having a place like Ilokivi makes it possible to take some risks with the line-ups, by allowing people to book more marginal and interesting bands.
A lot of cities don't have this option, so even as Rentukka is gone, which is a real shame, we still got it pretty good, I think. Plus the bars here are more or less accepting of weirder stuff too. I've played in most of the bars here over the years, and naturally I've never been in a band that could be considered to be "big" on any level.
The fact that people seem to participate in shows less these days is somewhat a problem, I think. It can make doing shows more stressful, 'cos you have no guarantee that enough people will show up. I really have no solutions for this, since I am a part of the problem myself I guess, as I stay home on many nights when there is something happening and I know the people who are putting the shows up would need my ticket money.
I guess it might have something to do with the frequency of quality shows here and with the level of activity in the margins, which is sort of a paradox. People are so accustomed to having interesting underground marginal shows, be it hip hop, punk or rock'n'roll, that the feeling of "I need to participate with a ticket to keep it alive" -sense of responsibility has somewhat worn off. But it might be this or that, I really dunno.
PROCRASTINATE: Yeah I see what you mean, Jyväskylä has a disproportionately good supply of cultural activity in relation to its size. And I have to admit that I don't go to as many shows as I should either haha! I should definitely get off my ass more often and go support the local scene!!
By the way, were you from Jyväskylä originally, or from Muurame? Am I remembering this right at all? How did you get involved with music in the first place? Was SHITSNACKERS your first band? Could you tell us a little about that?
Shitsnackers live in Turku (2007)
MIKKO: Yeah, I grew up in Muurame. I moved to Jyväskylä after turning twenty, but I still feel like a Jyväskylä boy, despite the fact that Muurame is like 15km away from the city. We formed our first band in Muurame when I was fifteen, which became Shitsnackers (god, I hate saying or typing out that name even to this day), and we started doing shows right away at the local youth center, 'cos we wanted to play live, and we didn't have any connections that would help us get shows elsewhere.
Plus at the time we were a pretty terrible band, which didn't help either, I guess. We started doing our own shows for the sole purpose of getting a chance to play live ourselves, but pretty soon we realized that people were really interested in these kinds of DIY-shows, and eventually most of the audience started to come from outside of Muurame. Occasionally most if it had even come from outside of Jyväskylä.
That's one of the things that I'm sort of proud of when looking back, the fact that our small group of friends kind of accidentally managed to create a scene for five years in that small town, just by doing what we wanted to do and by booking bands we wanted to see live ourselves. But that's how I got into playing music and doing shows, and the mentality I have towards those things hasn't really changed a lot over time.
I gotta say, I'm not terribly embarrassed of Shitsnackers, since I do realize that it was our first band and that we were really young back then. But I still do get blushed a little whenever someone mentions the band. But we all gotta start somewhere and there's no reason to be ashamed of having done what you've liked to do at a given moment in time. But I am glad the band was active in those pre-Youtube days (or even pre-Myspace-days!), so the really shitty first demos never got anywhere, hah!
PROCRASTINATE: Haha there's definitely nothing to be ashamed of!! I found a song by Shitsnackers on youtube titled '...And All the Best From Papillon', and I thought it was really decent hardcore punk!! And I think the name of the band is fine too, heh, as it sort of encapsulates that whole 'our very first punk band' vibe, with all the excitement and even naivety that is connected to that! I know I've had lots of more embarrassing ideas for bands when I was younger hahaha!
How long was the Muurame scene active for? Were there still shows there after you moved to Jyväskylä? I'm also from a pretty small town and I remember it was a very different experience being in the punk scene there than in for example Tampere, where there's a lot more bands, venues, people and just overall scene infrastructure. I guess in a strange way there was a more intense feeling of unity and purpose in the smaller town, as with there being less people I felt more like I was really doing something important just by 'being punk' in a town where there weren't as many others like me. Did you feel the same way while you were in Muurame?
In addition to the demo that you mentioned, Shitsnackers at least released the split tape with another one of your bands, 'Molemminpuoleinen Varma Tuho', but I was wondering if you put out any other releases than those two with this project? When did the demo come out and what was the format? How long were you active with Shitsnackers and did MVT become an extension of that band or was the line-up completely different? By the way, wasn't there some American radio guy who contacted you about Shitsnackers a while ago? What was that about and how did it turn out?
MIKKO: Yeah, the one song on Youtube is from our last record we released at our funeral-show in January 2010, and I also feel that record and the one before that titled "Destroy Yourself and Everyone Else" started to have some pretty decent ideas on them! Everything before that kind of makes me cringe, but that's natural. We did four DIY-releases with Shitsnackers. Everything was on CD, except the tape-split with our "follow-up" band MVT, that had MVT songs and the last Shitsnackers record (Porukka on vähän alkoholisoitunut) on it.
MVT had the same guitar player as Shitsnackers did, my friend Arttu, who has always been a real talent with the guitar. I switched from the vocals to the drums and we had our old friend Roope come do the bass, as well as our at-the-time new acquaintance Mika to do the vocals. I was really impressed with Mika back then, as he was like "a real punk" to us, having "VEGAN" tattooed on his arm and having been in prison for six months for refusing to do the mandatory military service. So in our eyes, he was the real deal, a real militant punk. He also introduced me to a lot of bands that I hadn't heard before, stuff like Dropdead and Deep Wound, which ended up influencing MVT and my drumming quite a lot.
We organized shows in Muurame from 2005 to 2010, if I remember correctly. After that these two brothers, Jaakko and Samuli Jylhä kept the tradition going for a while and took it up a notch, by booking bands from the States and Sweden and so forth, which was really cool. When I moved to Jyväskylä, we started doing shows in Ilokivi and Rentukka, and we might have done a show or two in Muurame too, but the aim of our DIY-efforts generally moved to Jyväskylä.
And I totally agree, the fact that you're doing your own thing in an environment that doesn't have a lot of opportunities or ready-set-tables really makes it seem all the more unique and rewarding. It's that underdog-position of going against all odds.
Yeah, the American radio DJ was a pretty weird coincidence! He was an old punk from Los Angeles who had his own radio show and he had listened to our songs from Myspace or somewhere and wanted to get our full discography on MP3's so that he could play the songs on his show. He was really into the band, so I sent him all of our stuff with a bit of background info and I guess he's playing the songs there, which is obviously simultaneously crazy cool and a little humorous to me. But that's the power of the internet! You can be a kid making hardcore in the boondocks and then years later you get an email from a guy from Los Angeles saying he's going crazy listening to your records!
"Molemminpuoleinen Varma Tuho" live in Jyväskylä
PROCRASTINATE: I think that's definitely one of the coolest things about the DIY-scene, that some really tiny release that you make all by yourself in the spur of the moment can somehow make it all around the world and have a big influence on someone years after you've conceived it!
I was actually fortunate enough to see MVT at the youth center of Muurame when I was only 16 years old! You guys played with Hangover Overdose, Rakkaus, Kohu-63 and a bunch of other awesome bands. Me and a friend traveled all the way from Tampere to be there. It was really awesome that you guys did all-ages shows at a time when there really weren't that many places organizing them in Finland!
MVT had a pretty original sound I think. Super fasts hardcore with some powerviolence influences, but on the other hand your 'spasmic' style of playing could even be regarded as quite technical in some respects! There's definitely a lot more to your music than just insane and chaotic noisecore improvisation!
How long did MVT stay active for? Any favorite records, shows or memories of that band? I was just now listening to MVT and I was wondering who wrote the songs and the lyrics for the band? Was it a group effort? Somehow I thought that maybe you did a lot of the lyrics because I think there are at least some vague similarities in the lyrics of all our bands!
MIKKO: So cool to hear you were at that show! I remember that one, it was a support show for Aseistakieltäytyjäliitto (The Union of Conscientious Objectors) and it was one of the really good ones that we had! And yeah, the all-ages aspect was really important for us too, since we were all underage when we started doing the shows, and it has been really nice to get to hear that a lot of the people who attended those shows, and whom I've been fortunate enough to befriend later on, we're in fact underage when they came to the Muurame-gigs. Some of them have told me that the whole Muurame-experience was something that got them doing DIY-themselves, which to me is the whole essence of DIY, the idea of inspiring others to take control of their environment and lives, and passing on the torch, so to speak.
Even I thought of MVT as a pretty original band. It didn't really copy a lot of stuff. A big reason why the band turned out to that way was due to our guitarist Arttu, who did all of the songs and most of the lyrics too actually. I guess we all wrote our little share of the lyrics, but Arttu was definitely the primus motor of the band. He just did whatever the fuck he wanted with the lyrics and songwriting. He could take a riff from Papa Roach (swear to God) and follow it up with some real intense powerviolence shredding, and then go into a riff taken from a rap song.
His approach to the lyrics was also perfect. He wrote stuff that still makes me laugh my head off, for he was and still is one of the funniest motherfuckers that I've ever had the pleasure to know. He embodies the core of "not giving a fuck", which has been present in his playing, performing, writing and in the general way that he lives his life.
I have a ton of fond memories from the MVT-times, since it was, personal chemistry-wise, a real heart warming time for us. We were four friends doing what we wanted, just to make ourselves laugh. We were also doing a shit load of getting fucked up on the daily, so a lot of the memories are entwined with being shitfaced. But those were my rock'n'roll years, and I think it's healthy for a person to have those, to be honest.
One memory that pops to my mind is our first show in Estonia in 2008. We played this huge punk-festival in an abandoned milk-factory in Tarto. We had been accustomed to playing shows for 15-50 people in Finland, and then all of a sudden there were hundreds and hundreds of people going apeshit when any band was playing. We drank ourselves to oblivion before the show and lost our bass player, waiting for him to show up on stage. When he finally did, he came up shirtless and had "GANGSTA RAP MADE ME DO IT" inked to his chest with huge letters and had to have the bass basically put on him, 'cos he was so out of it. But the magical thing was, even though we were really into fucking up our heads, that we managed, most of the time, to do real shredding shows, and that one was by far one of the most shreddiest that we ever had.
MVT live in Pärmivabrik, Tartu (2008)
PROCRASTINATE: Hahaha that show sounds awesome!! Some of that rock'n'roll lifestyle must have made its way into the music too cause there is definitely a good dose of total fucking chaos in your music!! I've actually had the chance to play with Arttu too and I'll have to agree with you that he is a fucking insane guitarist!!
Some point after MVT you founded the crust band 'Antiklimax' right? How did this band come about and what kind of history did this group have? You released at least one tape and a 7" if I'm not mistaken. I also remember you guys having toured Finland and Northern Sweden sometime in 2011, in relation to the 'CRUSTOBER FEST' that was being held in Oulu and Luleå that year. When did this band stop playing? Was Antiklimax actually the last punk band that you played in?
MIKKO: Antiklimax came about when Mika from MVT and his nephew Lari asked mo to come and jam some 82-style hardcore on the drums with them, I think around 2010. We wrote a song called "The blood of the tyrants" on the spot, which was basically just to make fun of the generic 82/crust bands. Saara was hanging out at the practice-place, so we tossed her the microphone and asked her to sing the lyrics, just for the joke of it. And even though the song was written as a joke and just to pass the time, when we played together it felt right, so we just said on the spot that we should probably be a band.
Antiklimax was a good experience as well. I really dug the way Mika incorporated these sXe-hardcore influences and breakdowns to the Tragedy-esque crust-stuff. I had stopped drinking during that time, so that kind of an approach made its way into the lyrics that I wrote too. A lot of people actually took us for a straight-edge band, since Mika, Lari and I weren't really fond of getting fucked up during that period, and I did some speaks at our shows about how twisted it is that we live in a subculture that refuses to look at clearcut drinking- and drug problems as they are, but instead sees them as a part of being "punk".
I was real fed up with that after those "rock'n'roll years" of mine, so it felt like I wanted to have a say on the issue. I also wrote a lot about my depression, which had been going on for a while at that time, so you could say Antiklimax was a real serious kind of a band, for me at least.
We actually released only one tape and recorded a 7", but never managed to release it physically. It's up in Bandcamp if someone wants to give it a listen and there have been some talks of putting it out as a physical release, even though it was recorded some five-six years ago. We did a good bunch of touring with Antiklimax in our short period of existence. A lot of smaller tours in Finland and in Northern Sweden as well as an Euro-tour in 2012 with Total Recall, which was one of the last things we did before breaking up.
After Antiklimax I felt like I had gone to the end of the road with punk, and I didn't really feel the need to keep on playing it, 'cos my interests in music and just generally had spread way outside of the punk-spectrum, so it was indeed my last punk band to this day.
Some point after MVT you founded the crust band 'Antiklimax' right? How did this band come about and what kind of history did this group have? You released at least one tape and a 7" if I'm not mistaken. I also remember you guys having toured Finland and Northern Sweden sometime in 2011, in relation to the 'CRUSTOBER FEST' that was being held in Oulu and Luleå that year. When did this band stop playing? Was Antiklimax actually the last punk band that you played in?
MIKKO: Antiklimax came about when Mika from MVT and his nephew Lari asked mo to come and jam some 82-style hardcore on the drums with them, I think around 2010. We wrote a song called "The blood of the tyrants" on the spot, which was basically just to make fun of the generic 82/crust bands. Saara was hanging out at the practice-place, so we tossed her the microphone and asked her to sing the lyrics, just for the joke of it. And even though the song was written as a joke and just to pass the time, when we played together it felt right, so we just said on the spot that we should probably be a band.
Antiklimax was a good experience as well. I really dug the way Mika incorporated these sXe-hardcore influences and breakdowns to the Tragedy-esque crust-stuff. I had stopped drinking during that time, so that kind of an approach made its way into the lyrics that I wrote too. A lot of people actually took us for a straight-edge band, since Mika, Lari and I weren't really fond of getting fucked up during that period, and I did some speaks at our shows about how twisted it is that we live in a subculture that refuses to look at clearcut drinking- and drug problems as they are, but instead sees them as a part of being "punk".
I was real fed up with that after those "rock'n'roll years" of mine, so it felt like I wanted to have a say on the issue. I also wrote a lot about my depression, which had been going on for a while at that time, so you could say Antiklimax was a real serious kind of a band, for me at least.
We actually released only one tape and recorded a 7", but never managed to release it physically. It's up in Bandcamp if someone wants to give it a listen and there have been some talks of putting it out as a physical release, even though it was recorded some five-six years ago. We did a good bunch of touring with Antiklimax in our short period of existence. A lot of smaller tours in Finland and in Northern Sweden as well as an Euro-tour in 2012 with Total Recall, which was one of the last things we did before breaking up.
After Antiklimax I felt like I had gone to the end of the road with punk, and I didn't really feel the need to keep on playing it, 'cos my interests in music and just generally had spread way outside of the punk-spectrum, so it was indeed my last punk band to this day.
Antiklimax live in Jönköping (2012)
PROCRASTINATE: I was reading some of your lyrics today and I did notice that there was a very realistic, even nihilistic approach to substance abuse and its glorification. Funny that I didn't remember this aspect of Antiklimax until you mentioned it, even though I saw you live so many times. But then again, those were my own 'rock'n'roll' years, so maybe I was too busy getting fucked up myself to pay attention heh!
But seriously, I agree that substance abuse is a pretty big issue in lots of subcultures. I was actually reading a sociological study on some metal subcultures recently, in which the writer suggested that substance abuse is actually a very integral element in a lot of subcultural scenes, because it represents a sort of bodily transgression of societal boundaries, and rather ironically gives people a heightened sense of control or autonomy over themselves, as they are in a way gaining their freedom by being able to function in an altered state of mind that is actively shunned by society.
I personally try not to take too strong stances on what people should or shouldn't do to themselves, but if there are cases where substance abuse really becomes a huge problem for some people and really fucks up their life, then surely it should be possible to discuss it in a more objective manner. It's not such a simple issue after all and it can be quite destructive if there are things that are made taboos for some reason!
I guess in punk it can be difficult to talk about the subject without it becoming an argument between two extremes, when in reality there is of course a lot of grey area between being 100% sXe and having a serious problem with drugs/alcohol, in which a more productive discourse on the subject could be built upon!
But anyways, I'm digressing quite a bit here heh! When did you stop playing with Antiklimax? Was BOMBER GAP founded straight after it? How did that band come about anyway? I think after all it was the first band you played in that didn't involve any of the Muurame punks! How was the transition from drumming in a punk band to playing the stoner/rock type stuff that Bomber Gap puts out? I'd imagine it was quite an adjustment!
MIKKO: To cut a long story short and not digress any further, I'm just going to say that you are a very informed and intellectual person, and I wholeheartedly agree. I've never been totally sober myself and it's something that suits me. My personal stance on the subject these days can be summed up with the first lines of Steppenwolf's 'The Pusher': "You know I've smoked a lot of grass, oh Lord, I've popped a lot of pills. But I never touched nothin' that my spirit couldn't kill." Digression over!
We stopped playing with Antiklimax after the Euro-tour and a final show in Jyväskylä in 2012. After that I sort of figured that I might be done with playing music. It didn't really feel all that important anymore. A year later, Aleksi (guitarist/vocalist of Bomber Gap) asked me to be the drummer for their new punk band he had started with Jari, with whom he had played in a punk band called Narkoosi.
They both had backgrounds in punk and metal and initially wanted to do something along those lines, but I said, that if I'm playing with them, it ain't gonna be punk, 'cos I want to try something different for a change. I knew they were both music-enthusiasts that we're, like myself, into 60's and 70's rock'n'roll, so we dropped band names like Cream, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Hendrix and got the basic idea of the lines within which we wanted to operate.
It was really fun to learn to play that sort of music together, where the idea wasn't just to play as fast or as hard as you could, but where the idea was to make songs that were as interesting and "complex" as our limited skills as musicians allowed us to do. So it was a lot more ambitious, and the first year we just stayed in the rehearsal place, learning to play together and figuring out how to do rock'n'roll songs that felt interesting for us to play.
When we had our first 8 songs ready, we immediately booked a studio-weekend and recorded a full-length, basically without doing any live shows before that. We self-released the "Bomber Gap" LP in May 2015 and started doing more live shows, which is really the stage in a band's existence where you learn how to play and see what works and what doesn't. So we did it kind of backwards, which is the reason we've dropped like half of the songs from the LP from our live set, 'cos we didn't really "test them out" before recording and releasing them.
Playing in Bomber Gap continues to be very interesting for me. I admire Jari and Aleksi as people and musicians like crazy and I hold them both in very high regard. I wish to keep doing music with them for a long time. Aleksi's songwriting continues to be more interesting song by song and it's cool that we've sort of left the whole "Black Sabbath & Hendrix mimicking" stuff further behind and kept integrating influences from a broader spectrum, which I feel is exciting. I ain't saying we're re-inventing shit though. Everything we're doing has been done before, but it continues to be, for me, my most challenging and interesting musical journey, in the lack of a better term.
PROCRASTINATE: Interesting that you were about to quite music altogether! I've done that once or twice myself haha! It seems to me that a lot of people who put a lot of effort into music tend to have thoghts of quitting altogether and sometimes have inactive periods in between bands, which on the other hand is very understandable, because making music and being active in the scene can be really exhausting!!
How was the Bomber Gap debut LP received? I remember that at the time it came out there was quite a bit of buzz about your band! I've really loved everything you've done so far, both live and in the studio! Really great musicianship, carefully crafted tones, and absolutely no bullshit in the influences, just rifftastic rock'n'roll!
I'm really excited to hear the new stuff! Are you planning to go to the studio or do some shows anytime soon? By the way, I really loved that you took a strong stance against the forced deportation of refugees in Finland at your show on Friday!! It's really nice to see bands being explicit with their politics and taking a stance on all the bullshit around them, even if their 'scene' is not as defined by politics as for example punk is! Is this something that you do often with Bomber Gap and is it a big part of your lyrics?
Bomber Gap live in Jyväskylä (2015)
MIKKO: The LP was received surprisingly well. The few reviews that were written were really positive and people have been pretty welcoming about the record, which naturally feels weird to us, because we are looking at it from a very critical point of view, which I guess is the case whenever you release something you've made. I don't know if we had a "buzz" going on, but in general people were really friendly, polite and surprisingly excited when we started out.
We do have new songs ready for a 7", which is the format we want to do next, but we ain't got no schedule on when we're going to the studio, not to mention when we are going to be able to release it. But I'm personally looking forward to it a lot, as the record is going to have a song called "Red on Green" on it, and I honestly feel like it's the best song I've ever been a part of making. I've told a lot of people that if I stop playing now, it won't matter, 'cos I have been part of making one song that I feel is really good and that I can stand behind one hundred percent.
Yeah, we played "Hate the Police" by The Dicks as a cover, and Aleksi said beforehand that he wants to do a little speech before the song about the unfair actions of the police force here, which I though was a cool idea, although it obviously carries a lot of that "preaching to the choir" -type of function. Our own lyrics (which Aleksi does for the most part) often seem to come from a place of some sort of frustration, from the pressures and anxieties of living in the current world and in modern society, so in that way, all the bullshit does influence and make its way into our lyrics I guess, even though they might be more broad and introspective, rather than actual stances or warcries.
I think one of the only songs from us that has a very clear and strong "political view" and message in its lyrics is "Flags and Leaders" from the LP, which I feel Aleksi did a real nice job with. When we started out, we had some discussions about the kind of lyrics we wanted to do. We don't want to sing songs about "the spirits of the bong" or some other lame stoner shit. We want the lyrics to have substance in them, without writing manifestos, in the vein of Pink Floyd's "Animals", for example.
PROCRASTINATE: Good to hear that you'll be recording new material sooner or later! Really looking forward to it! And I don't think you can really preach to the choir too much heh.. I think it's always nice to hear bands making statements, because I think a lot of people (myself included) sometimes tend to take a lot of the really important aspects of our scene for granted and just focus a lot on the music, clothing and other perhaps a bit more superficial stuff like that. A good speech is always a good eye-opener for that!
Changing the subject a little bit, you've been really active in the last few years with more than just your own bands, as you were heavily involved in making the 'Jyväskylän Meininki' punk-documentary that was released on DVD pretty recently! The documentary chronicles pretty much the entirety of the Jyväskylä punk scene, from the 1970s to today, without forgetting the scenes of the smaller towns around Jyväskylä, such as Muurame. Were you the one who originally had the idea for making this film? How did the whole project start and what were the very first steps you took with it?
MIKKO: Point taken, preaching to the choir can have its benefits, especially in times when people are levitating towards more of a "it's just music, man" -kind of direction. It can be helpful that someone reminds them that there are things that actually matter, besides riffs!
I don't think I had the original idea for the film, 'cos I remember Mika, the vocalist from MVT and guitarist from Antiklimax, talking about a Jyväskylä punk documentary some ten years ago, when we had just met. Mika doesn't seem to recall these conversations, but I remember them, 'cos I was very fond of the idea. It seemed sort of plausible even then that something like that could be made. It didn't seem like rocket science. Naturally we didn't do anything about it, other than just casually talked about such a movie and the bands that would definitely deserve a mention in history, such as SHITTER LIMITED and ON A SOLID ROCK, which both ended up in the movie ten years later, so even if Mika is reluctant to take any glory for putting the idea between us in motion, the talks we had back then really left its mark in the overall idea.
The documentary came up again very spontaneously in late 2014, in a get-together of a cultural organization called TUFF!, which I've been actively a part of for some three years now, when we were discussing what kind of ideas we might have for future projects. TUFF!'s whole premise has always been to act as a catalyst, muscle and an enabler for the ideas that people have for creating and documenting local culture, so I felt strongly that if this kind of project was ever to be made, here's a group that can make it happen, being that TUFF! consists of very dedicated and determined individuals. So I pitched the idea and ten minutes later had a crew of four people, who said that they can do the sound and the filming, if I focus on the logistics of making the movie, figure out a timeline for the work, handle the contacts and so forth.
The very first things I did was just going around Jyväskylä with a pen and paper, asking my friends and the older punks of the scene what they felt should be represented in the movie. I wrote down a ton of band names, venues, people, phone numbers, email addresses, places of work and such information that would help me in tracking down especially some of the pioneers of Jyväskylä punk, 'cos a lot of them had quit the scene basically in the early eighties or their whereabouts weren't common information for some other reasons.
PROCRASTINATE: Mika sounds like such a humble guy!! I think a lot of really good ideas originate like this, with just a bunch of people getting together and talking about their passions. It's really nice to see that sometimes those talks actually lead to something as substantial as an hour long documentary film!
How did you and your crew divide up the work? Did everybody participate in pitching ideas and the planning? How long did it take for you to gather all the preliminary material regarding who you were going to interview etc.? Did some of this material surprise you in some way? Was it generally difficult to gather the videos, pictures and audio for the older stuff that was on the documentary?
MIKKO: The rest of the crew sort of came from different scenes: most of them were really into hip hop and one of us was a blues guy. They didn't really have any prior connection with punk, which I thought was great, 'cos they brought in a lot of that perspective of what's really important and relevant information for those people who aren't that into punk.
They also let me know when I felt that something was really interesting that there's a good chance that I just feel that way 'cos it's my friend talking. I think this outside perspective was a pretty vital thing in the making of the film and it has been super cool to get to see how getting to know punk and its ideologies more has influenced some of our crew. The guy who was most into hip-hop described himself as a "20 percent punk" in one of our screenings. He doesn't dig the music that much, but he digs the way these people live their lives.
And yeah, all of us did pitch in the planning in some way. Everything we did was very much a group effort, 'cos everyone was just really focused on getting shit done and nobody had just one strict role in doing it. The filming crew pitched in a lot of ideas and did some "directorial work" from time to time, just as I was holding the camera or the recorder every now and then. A lot of the ideas we ended up doing came from outside of the crew. For example the idea to interview a person from the local police force about their relations with the punks and anarchists of Jyväskylä was something that a friend suggested to me at a bar one night and that later became one of my favorite things in the movie.
Getting a hold of the archive footage and photos was one of the easiest things we had to do. We just had to get the word out there that we needed this kind of material, and then people just kept bringing and sending us stuff. We got boxes of photos, zines, posters, records and all kinds of cool stuff that made a huge improvement to the movie, and I think it's really cool that it happened that way, that this was something that was done mostly as a community. We just sort of put the things together once they were handed to us.
PROCRASTINATE: As someone who has been active in the punk scene for a long time, were there any things that came up during the making of the documentary that surprised you or changed your conception of the punk movement in some way? When interviewing the people who were active punks in the 1970s and 1980s, did you notice any significant differences to the punks today?
I understand that you also made a knowing choice to leave your own bands and other projects out of the documentary. Was this a tough call? On one hand your bands have been pretty influential for the scene, but on the other there is of course a conflict of interest in indulging in your own history, especially in a crowdfunded project. I have to admit that I have already ended up doing something like that in this blog haha!
Oh and by the way, how did the crowdfunding campaign for the film go? Was the project funded 100% through the crowdfunding campaign or were there other sources of funding too?
MIKKO: I think one of the most pleasant surprises when considering the content of the movie and my personal experience in making it, was noticing at the very early stages of making the interviews, that the people that we talked to seemed to very naturally gravitate towards talking about punk as something a lot deeper than just music.
And I know this is something of a slogan in the punk community, that it is something bigger than music, something that involves all these ideologies and ways of living and treating other people, but for me, a part of what sort of started to push me away from punk some years ago was the fact that it started to seem, for me, that it was more about just some slogans on T-shirts. It seemed that there were all these people who seemingly embodied these ideas of freedom and individualism and so forth, but who didn't actually really make an effort in acting out these ideas in their own behaviour.
I know it's not that black and white, but it started to feel like I was seeing a lot of the same structural kind of bullshit that I saw in conventional society within the punk community, and the whole trip just started to feel a bit disappointing.
But when we talked to people while filming, they very honestly and openly talked a lot about what punk means to them as an idea and how it has influenced their lives and their perception of themselves, and I started to reconnect with that basis of ideology within punk, that immaterial feeling of freedom, which was the initial thing that sort of drew me in and which is an element that has stayed the most important for me throughout the years. So it removed a lot of that filter of "this is just a fashion show with ethical slogans on it", and made me connect with the punk community a lot more.
And yeah, there were some differences between the very early punks and my own generation, to be honest. A lot of the older folks we interviewed had more trouble with looking at punk as something that made a difference. To them it seemed to be more about just the music; the fact that it was raw and loud. I felt a lot of the veterans were sort of reluctant to look at punk as being anything other than just noisy music. This wasn't the case with every older generation punk that we talked to, but I feel like I can say there was more of a consensus between them that punk was and is and should be seen as just music and that's it.
And to be honest, we did leave a lot of those kinds of comments out of the movie, 'cos we wanted to make an uplifting and empowering documentary, one that focuses more on the positive effects of punk as a movement and as a philosophy in people's lives. And in that way, you can say its dishonest, but the way I look at it is that every documentary movie is dishonest in that sense, 'cos every documentary, no matter what the subject is, chooses its angles and where to look. It's selective, and we chose the angle of looking at punk as an energy that can transform the way people feel about themselves, their surroundings and their possibilities.
Leaving my own bands out of the documentary wasn't actually a tough call. It was clear to me pretty much from the get-go that I wouldn't want to include them. I'm glad to hear you feel like we had an influence and it's cool if people agree, but it just seemed like an ego-trip to make people talk about your own bands. I feel it would have been super uncomfortable. And besides, even though we filmed 33 separate interviews for the movie, it was obvious that that number doesn't include ALL of the punk bands from Jyväskylä over the four decades, not even close. So a lot of the bands were going to be left without a mention, and I just figured that my own bands should fall into that category. We weren't, at least in my mind, so significant that leaving us out of the film would hurt the overall structure in any way.
I did want to include a section reminiscing "the boondocks scene" that was happening in the outskirts of Jyväskylä, the DIY-shows that went down in Muurame and Joutsa and Petäjävesi during the same period of time, 'cos even though I was involved in the Muurame scene, it didn't feel self-serving to talk about it, 'cos it meant a lot more to a lot of people than any individual band. I have to admit that one of the biggest rushes I still get when watching the movie comes from the section where people talk about the small town shows, 'cos it brings me this feeling of "fuck yeah, we were just kids and that's what we did, on our own.", and it feels important.
https://bombergap.bandcamp.com/releases
https://antiklimax.bandcamp.com/
https://xmxvxtx.bandcamp.com/,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAvEUirHvA
https://www.facebook.com/jyvaskylanmeininki/
http://www.tufftuff.fi/
The documentary came up again very spontaneously in late 2014, in a get-together of a cultural organization called TUFF!, which I've been actively a part of for some three years now, when we were discussing what kind of ideas we might have for future projects. TUFF!'s whole premise has always been to act as a catalyst, muscle and an enabler for the ideas that people have for creating and documenting local culture, so I felt strongly that if this kind of project was ever to be made, here's a group that can make it happen, being that TUFF! consists of very dedicated and determined individuals. So I pitched the idea and ten minutes later had a crew of four people, who said that they can do the sound and the filming, if I focus on the logistics of making the movie, figure out a timeline for the work, handle the contacts and so forth.
The very first things I did was just going around Jyväskylä with a pen and paper, asking my friends and the older punks of the scene what they felt should be represented in the movie. I wrote down a ton of band names, venues, people, phone numbers, email addresses, places of work and such information that would help me in tracking down especially some of the pioneers of Jyväskylä punk, 'cos a lot of them had quit the scene basically in the early eighties or their whereabouts weren't common information for some other reasons.
Poster for the support show of the documentary (2015)
(Artwork by Mikko)
(Artwork by Mikko)
PROCRASTINATE: Mika sounds like such a humble guy!! I think a lot of really good ideas originate like this, with just a bunch of people getting together and talking about their passions. It's really nice to see that sometimes those talks actually lead to something as substantial as an hour long documentary film!
How did you and your crew divide up the work? Did everybody participate in pitching ideas and the planning? How long did it take for you to gather all the preliminary material regarding who you were going to interview etc.? Did some of this material surprise you in some way? Was it generally difficult to gather the videos, pictures and audio for the older stuff that was on the documentary?
MIKKO: The rest of the crew sort of came from different scenes: most of them were really into hip hop and one of us was a blues guy. They didn't really have any prior connection with punk, which I thought was great, 'cos they brought in a lot of that perspective of what's really important and relevant information for those people who aren't that into punk.
They also let me know when I felt that something was really interesting that there's a good chance that I just feel that way 'cos it's my friend talking. I think this outside perspective was a pretty vital thing in the making of the film and it has been super cool to get to see how getting to know punk and its ideologies more has influenced some of our crew. The guy who was most into hip-hop described himself as a "20 percent punk" in one of our screenings. He doesn't dig the music that much, but he digs the way these people live their lives.
And yeah, all of us did pitch in the planning in some way. Everything we did was very much a group effort, 'cos everyone was just really focused on getting shit done and nobody had just one strict role in doing it. The filming crew pitched in a lot of ideas and did some "directorial work" from time to time, just as I was holding the camera or the recorder every now and then. A lot of the ideas we ended up doing came from outside of the crew. For example the idea to interview a person from the local police force about their relations with the punks and anarchists of Jyväskylä was something that a friend suggested to me at a bar one night and that later became one of my favorite things in the movie.
Getting a hold of the archive footage and photos was one of the easiest things we had to do. We just had to get the word out there that we needed this kind of material, and then people just kept bringing and sending us stuff. We got boxes of photos, zines, posters, records and all kinds of cool stuff that made a huge improvement to the movie, and I think it's really cool that it happened that way, that this was something that was done mostly as a community. We just sort of put the things together once they were handed to us.
Documentary crew production meeting (2015)
(Photo by Timo Suutarinen)
(Photo by Timo Suutarinen)
PROCRASTINATE: As someone who has been active in the punk scene for a long time, were there any things that came up during the making of the documentary that surprised you or changed your conception of the punk movement in some way? When interviewing the people who were active punks in the 1970s and 1980s, did you notice any significant differences to the punks today?
I understand that you also made a knowing choice to leave your own bands and other projects out of the documentary. Was this a tough call? On one hand your bands have been pretty influential for the scene, but on the other there is of course a conflict of interest in indulging in your own history, especially in a crowdfunded project. I have to admit that I have already ended up doing something like that in this blog haha!
Oh and by the way, how did the crowdfunding campaign for the film go? Was the project funded 100% through the crowdfunding campaign or were there other sources of funding too?
MIKKO: I think one of the most pleasant surprises when considering the content of the movie and my personal experience in making it, was noticing at the very early stages of making the interviews, that the people that we talked to seemed to very naturally gravitate towards talking about punk as something a lot deeper than just music.
And I know this is something of a slogan in the punk community, that it is something bigger than music, something that involves all these ideologies and ways of living and treating other people, but for me, a part of what sort of started to push me away from punk some years ago was the fact that it started to seem, for me, that it was more about just some slogans on T-shirts. It seemed that there were all these people who seemingly embodied these ideas of freedom and individualism and so forth, but who didn't actually really make an effort in acting out these ideas in their own behaviour.
I know it's not that black and white, but it started to feel like I was seeing a lot of the same structural kind of bullshit that I saw in conventional society within the punk community, and the whole trip just started to feel a bit disappointing.
But when we talked to people while filming, they very honestly and openly talked a lot about what punk means to them as an idea and how it has influenced their lives and their perception of themselves, and I started to reconnect with that basis of ideology within punk, that immaterial feeling of freedom, which was the initial thing that sort of drew me in and which is an element that has stayed the most important for me throughout the years. So it removed a lot of that filter of "this is just a fashion show with ethical slogans on it", and made me connect with the punk community a lot more.
And yeah, there were some differences between the very early punks and my own generation, to be honest. A lot of the older folks we interviewed had more trouble with looking at punk as something that made a difference. To them it seemed to be more about just the music; the fact that it was raw and loud. I felt a lot of the veterans were sort of reluctant to look at punk as being anything other than just noisy music. This wasn't the case with every older generation punk that we talked to, but I feel like I can say there was more of a consensus between them that punk was and is and should be seen as just music and that's it.
And to be honest, we did leave a lot of those kinds of comments out of the movie, 'cos we wanted to make an uplifting and empowering documentary, one that focuses more on the positive effects of punk as a movement and as a philosophy in people's lives. And in that way, you can say its dishonest, but the way I look at it is that every documentary movie is dishonest in that sense, 'cos every documentary, no matter what the subject is, chooses its angles and where to look. It's selective, and we chose the angle of looking at punk as an energy that can transform the way people feel about themselves, their surroundings and their possibilities.
Leaving my own bands out of the documentary wasn't actually a tough call. It was clear to me pretty much from the get-go that I wouldn't want to include them. I'm glad to hear you feel like we had an influence and it's cool if people agree, but it just seemed like an ego-trip to make people talk about your own bands. I feel it would have been super uncomfortable. And besides, even though we filmed 33 separate interviews for the movie, it was obvious that that number doesn't include ALL of the punk bands from Jyväskylä over the four decades, not even close. So a lot of the bands were going to be left without a mention, and I just figured that my own bands should fall into that category. We weren't, at least in my mind, so significant that leaving us out of the film would hurt the overall structure in any way.
I did want to include a section reminiscing "the boondocks scene" that was happening in the outskirts of Jyväskylä, the DIY-shows that went down in Muurame and Joutsa and Petäjävesi during the same period of time, 'cos even though I was involved in the Muurame scene, it didn't feel self-serving to talk about it, 'cos it meant a lot more to a lot of people than any individual band. I have to admit that one of the biggest rushes I still get when watching the movie comes from the section where people talk about the small town shows, 'cos it brings me this feeling of "fuck yeah, we were just kids and that's what we did, on our own.", and it feels important.
A still from Jyväskylän Meininki (The Escapist -interview)
The crowdfunding was one of the best experiences we had, and it made me very confident about the fact that you can do anything if you just find the right people who want to support the idea and want to see it come to life. The really cool thing is that in that way, you don't have to be in debt or in a leash to any outside source of funding, other than the people who really care about the project and are willing to pitch in to get to see it materialize. I feel this is a way things should be done, within a community and as a mutual effort. And I see a lot of opportunities with crowdfunding, it's one of the coolest mechanisms out there for people who want to get shit done.
We got through the crowdfunding, which was putting up T-shirts, DVD's and premiere tickets for presale for a month and a half, an astounding 4000€, which blew our heads off, and in all honesty is 100% of the reason that the movie ever got made and released as a physical DVD. I was literally choked to tears, and I'm not bullshitting, when I saw people just ordering a huge bunch of shit from us, like T-shirts and DVD's for hundreds of euros and more, and it was pretty clear that this wasn't done to have a shitload of our stuff, but to give us the money we need to actually put this thing together.
I got to meet most of the people from our area who pre-ordered our stuff, 'cos I hand delivered the shirts and DVD's to people here, and one guy that had ordered a lot of stuff from us lived in what you could call "a better neighborhood", in a real fancy house, and it was clear that he was very well off. When I delivered the stuff to him, he just explained that he's not into punk, but he is very inspired about the fact that young people are taking control and doing stuff on their own, and he really wants to be a part in making that happen, this guy in a suit. And to me that was amazing.
In addition to the 4000€ that we got through the crowdfunding, we received two grants. Taiteen edistämiskeskus (The Center for Advancing Arts) gave us 1500€ and the city of Jyväskylä gave us 500€, which made our total budget to be 6000€, plus the 150€ we got from organizing a support show for the documentary very early on, which was in all honesty the initial sole idea for getting the money to do the movie. For a long time we just hung on to the 150€ and hoped that nothing will cost us any money in the process, hah!
PROCRASTINATE: Nice to hear that the process of making the documentary revealed some new things about the scene and the people in it! I suppose sometimes a lot of the things that people were inspired by in punk become so mundane over time that it can almost seem like all of that has been forgotten, when really it's still there, waiting to be reanimated again by something inspiring!
And yeah I see what you mean! I generally do appreciate it when documentary makers stay as much off-screen as possible haha! In a funny way that shows how small and unified the punk scene is, that the people who make documentaries about the scene have to actually work out a way to keep themselves out of the film heh!
Nice that you got funding from such a variety of sources. Was applying for the grants a difficult process and were there any strings attached to any of that money? Do you feel that there is any contradiction between the DIY-ethic and taking outside funding from governmental/institutional sources? Personally I think its pretty great that we have at least some sort of system that supports creative endeavors like this, and most of the time the finished project is a lot more valuable than the amount of funding it got due to the hard work and creative vision of the people involved!
I think it's very understandable that you wanted to focus on certain aspects more than others, but I was wondering if there was any other stuff you wanted to leave out of the film for different reasons? Were there some things you really would have wanted to explore in more depth but for some reason couldn't? Did any stuff like this end up on the extra-materials of the DVD?
MIKKO: We got a ton of help for the grant applications from our cultural organizations secretary Johanna, who basically took care of the applications, deadlines and so forth. It was one of those things that from my perspective sort of just happened, when in fact there was a lot of work being done behind the scenes, so to speak. A lot of things came through like that, me receiving phone calls saying "we've got a 2000€ grant" or "we got accepted to this film festival" et cetera, 'cos everybody had their own corners and more to look after and people did a beautiful job taking care of their business.
I'm glad to say that there were zero strings attached to the money we received as grants, no outside demands, nothing except a "there you go"! We didn't get asked to add the city's or TAIKE's logos to the end credits or anything, but we did anyway, 'cos they were a part of making this happen.
I didn't feel conflicted at all about taking money from those two sources, even as both are, by definition, governmental sources. I have been coming in terms over the last few years with the fact that I actually enjoy, value and support a lot of governmental actions and the existence of our society, that I do not in fact have a drive to demolish it or to see things inside it as being "bad" by default. I do like the idea that we have institutions that are there for the sole purpose of giving aid to people realizing their ambitions, such as TAIKE, for example.
That is not to say that the grant system for cultural projects isn't a problematic system, 'cos fuck yeah there's a lot that could be done to improve it, but I think that sort of works when looking at the society as a whole. There's a shitload of injustice and wrongdoing going on and such, and a lot of valid criticisms are to be made about the powers that be, but I would be lying my ears off if I said that I didn't enjoy the benefits of living in our society: the healthcare, the 24/7 supermarkets, the libraries and the fact that the government is keeping me in bread while I do my thing, and occasionally even supports it.
Interviewing Juice Kokora (2015)
(Photo by Timo Suutarinen)
(Photo by Timo Suutarinen)
But, I do have to say that I do feel much more closer to crowdfunding as a mechanism than receiving grants from the state, and that is a thing I want to keep on doing, which is not to say I'm not gonna apply for grants, 'cos I am. And I do get it if someone thinks of this project as not being DIY because of the grants, but that's not really an issue for me. When you've been working 10 to 13 hour days for two years straight to make something happen as a voluntary thing with no pay in it, it's hard to see how a few grants would take away the DIY-aspect of what you did, so I'm at peace with it.
Besides the fact that we wanted the overall feel of the movie to be empowering and uplifting, which directed us towards certain kind of cuts, we didn't really have stuff that we wanted to keep out. In fact, it was a hard realization for me when our editor first asked me "OK, so what are we leaving out?", 'cos I just went "...nothing.", since I had the idea that we're going to be using stuff from all of the 33 interviews and 10 live shows we shot. He luckily explained to me why that isn't possible in a one hour time frame and we just made a list of things, using the script I had written and a color-code system to mark everything I absolutely wanted to keep in and what I could deal with losing.
Naturally it wasn't as easy as "this is good and this is bad". A lot of things that I felt to be really interesting did end up getting cut, as they didn't really fit with the overall structure and continuity of the movie. We did put a lot of these parts into the DVD release as deleted scenes. The deleted scenes section of the extras is almost as long as the movie, so there's a lot of stuff there, plus we included footage from our two film festival trips and the Q&A-sessions we did there to the extras, plus footage from the premiere, behind the scenes-interviews etc.
Looking at the whole thing in retrospect, there is a ton of stuff I wish we would have talked about more! It's not that we couldn't, it's more the fact that I didn't realize that it would have made perfect sense to be more concerned about the structure of the movie while doing the interviews and to really think about what kind of stuff we should be talking about in order to make a whole story about the punks of Jyväskylä, one that has the historical points and facts in it and one that has linearity and clear transitions between topics etc.
We just went with the "keep the cameras rolling and we'll just talk a bunch" approach, and didn't really think about how the talks are going to be connected to each other or anything like that. That's something I would do differently now, be more fixed towards diving deeper into interesting topics and thinking about how it all connects, not just let it happen, which is what we did this time around. But you can totally make a documentary like that too, so no biggie, hah!
PROCRASTINATE: Lots of good points there! I definitely agree with you about the grants and other beneficiary systems being a good system at its core, even when sometimes it's not executed to its fullest potential. And I can definitely imagine the editing process being pretty excruciating in many ways, especially with you having come up with such a huge amount of material!
How did people react to the film when it was released? I'd imagine that there was a big difference in the movie's reception when you were showing it to punk-audiences and when you were showing it at festivals where the audience consists of a more varied group of people, some (or maybe most) of whom have no personal connection to punk. What kind of discussions did the film provoke in these different audiences?
By the way, I noticed that the movie has been leaked into youtube. Any thoughts on this? I'd imagine that having someone upload the film for everyone to see would be quite flattering, even if it undermines your own distribution system. Do you have any plans for future films or will you be concentrating on other things now? I know I'd be delighted to see you continue making films alongside music!
MIKKO: The first and foremost trial by fire was obviously the premiere, which was held at Tanssisali Lutakko on October 15th 2016. I was a total nerve wreck before the premiere and was convinced that we'd achieved nothing; that the movie was going to be just a baffling and embarrassing experience to everyone involved, and I knew that it would break my heart if the reactions of the audience would be disappointed or confused. Over 300 people turned up to see the premiere and they laughed and got a bit serious just when I had imagined they would and when the film ended, they kept on applauding throughout the end credits, and it felt great, 'cos they were the people the movie was really made for, the people in the film and in the scene, their family and friends, so their reaction meant a lot. It was such an overwhelming experience that afterwards I got more drunk than I believe I ever have, but hey, that's showbusiness!
But naturally we knew that the premiere was also sort of the easy part, 'cos it consisted basically of just people who really, really wanted to see the film and supported it in every way, and we knew that it's not such a hot idea to make some sort of a consensus of the reception based on that one screening. But when the second screening we had at 'Night Visions Film Festival' in Helsinki sold out a big theatre beforehand, I started to feel safer about the overall interest for the movie, and it was bizarre beyond words how positively the movie was received in the festival screenings as well as the screenings that were to follow.
We've done something over 20 screenings all over Finland now, and a lot of people have seen the movie. I stopped counting once we reached an audience of 1000, and I don't think we've had a screening where the feedback was negative or even profoundly critical. People have been incredibly polite about the whole thing. We've received one very carefully crafted critical email about the movie, stating things that didn't work from the viewpoint of the writer, and I had to agree with a lot of the points, as he made some pretty valid notions about the weaknesses of the film, but I think that's about it when it comes to receiving criticism. I was expecting a lot more of it, especially with the film festivals. I was fully prepared to answer questions about why our footage sucks and our audio is incoherent, and why we have no real plotline, but everybody who spoke out was just super excited about the feel and the look of the movie, which was a real blow to the head.
Editing the first draft of Jyväskylän Meininki (2016)
(Photo by Jyri Kiuru)
(Photo by Jyri Kiuru)
The audience of the film has had huge variety in it. We've had screenings in movie theaters, in bars, in DIY-punk-squat-type venues, at schools, at a university and so on. The number of people attending has varied from two people to hundreds of people. One of the things that make me feel like we accomplished what we set out to do, is the fact that the movie has reached an audience beyond the punk scene, and that a lot of the viewers have been people that don't really have a connection with punk. They've been coming up to us after the screenings, saying that they had no idea punk exists as such a vital part of so many peoples lives and that they got a pretty good understanding about the principles involved in the punk and DIY-scene. For me, that's the greatest. I always tried to keep my mom in mind when we were writing or doing cuts. I kept saying that "my mom needs to understand this", so it doesn't only cater to the people who are fully aware of the world that the movie is talking about, and I'm pretty happy that it seemed to work out that way.
We've travelled to almost all of the screenings we've had and after each one we've held a sort of Q&A session, where we've done our best to explain how the movie got made, and that has been really rewarding, 'cos it's been a chance to get rid of some of the mysticism that is involved in making a movie, and just tell people that this kind of work is possible for anyone without a film school degree or a huge student loan or without having to sacrifice any of your own core beliefs.
We've talked a lot about the basics of DIY-film making and people have been most interested in the technical and monetary aspects of the process, which we have been more than happy to pass out, 'cos I would really like to see this type of film making become more usual. I would love it to have the same kind of mentality that underground music and writing has, that it's something we can make happen as a community, creating our own networks of financing, distribution, marketing and so on. And it has been super cool that people have been inspired in part due to this movie and these talks to start gearing up for their own documentary projects. I'm looking forward to seeing those come to life!
Shit, I had to go to Youtube to check it out, but as far s I could tell, the movie isn't there. There are links to JYVÄSKYLÄN MEININKI FULL MOVIE ONLINE FREE, but they're not real, you're just gonna get a virus, kids. I guess they generated once the movie got an IMDB-page, that's the internet for you. But I'm glad to notice they were fake, since it would in all honesty piss me off if someone leaked the movie to be watchable for no charge, since we did spend two years making this and now that we're done and the movie is out, we do have a drive to also sell copies of it.
When we released the info about the DVD's, I did include a passage asking people not to be jerks and upload the movie somewhere 'cos it was kind of hard to do this and we do feel that the final outcome is worth paying a couple of bucks for. We're also working on getting the movie released as a digital copy for a smaller fee, but I'm not a computer guy, so the digital version comes online when our computer guy has the time to figure out how those things work!
PROCRASTINATE: I'm so happy to hear that you still feel so inspired about film-making and that the whole experience turned out so well! You guys definitely did a huge job with the documentary and I really hope you guys get the credit that you deserve and that you'll get to keep pursuing your passion. I also hope that people will buy the DVD! It's definitely worth the investment to support such a humble endeavor that documented a local scene with so much integrity and vigor!
I think by now we've definitely covered pretty much everything that I wanted to ask you and quite a bit more too! There's always some stuff that you forget to ask and later regret, but I'm afraid we're going to have to stop this conversation somewhere, even though it has been such a delight!
So are there any final words you'd like to impart on your fellow underground fanatics, aspiring film-makers, DIY-musicians or just the general public? Or if there's anything else you'd like to write about feel free to do it now, the floor is yours! Perhaps you could also tell us what your plans are for the near future with your bands and other projects so we can stay up to date with all of that stuff!
MIKKO: At the moment I'm only doing Bomber Gap, so it's pretty easy to stay up to date on my bands! If you want to see Bomber Gap this year, you can come to the Choomfest<3Kiamara-show in Turku on the third of November, (ED: Due to me being the slowest editor ever you've already missed your chance to see this, SORRY!) but other than that, uh, I guess we'll tell you if we get something cooking up. I guess the same goes for the other projects too. But when the next film or such and such is underway, you'll hear about if you keep your ear to the underground!
Ungh, I'm bad at these 'final words' type deals, so I'mma leave you and anyone who made it this far, hah, with the closing words from the documentary, spoken by Tuomas Mäkinen, the singer of ON A SOLID ROCK:"be honest to yourselves and make your life out to be what you want it to be." I feel that pretty much sums up the things I have to say. Thanks a lot for doing this and for letting me reminisce all this stuff out, it was a lot of fun! Mad props about what you're doing with the zine, take care!
(Photo by Jouni Parkku)
THAT'S IT! A THOUSAND THANKS TO MIKKO!
HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS! I HAD A LOT OF FUN
INTERVIEWING MIKKO AND DEFINITELY LEARNED A LOT
IN THE PROCESS! KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR ANY NEWS OF
HIS VARIOUS PROJECTS! HERE'S A BUNCH OF LINKS TO THEM,
GO CHECK IT OUT:
https://bombergap.bandcamp.com/releases
https://antiklimax.bandcamp.com/
https://xmxvxtx.bandcamp.com/,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAvEUirHvA
https://www.facebook.com/jyvaskylanmeininki/
http://www.tufftuff.fi/
___
facebook.com/anttimakkonenphotography/
facebook.com/riikka.arte
