My summercamp with Manifesto Jukebox, 2006.

by LaBe

May 2006 Getting ready in Finland

Sometime in the spring of 2006 I got a surprise phone call from Ville, the bass player from Manifesto Jukebox. He told me their guitarist and founding member Jani was leaving the group, and they had a European tour booked. In other words, the guys needed a guitarist to do it. They had already at that point found a replacement for Jani, but the new guy (Heikki) was touring with his other band (Abduktio) at that time, so I was brought in. We rehearsed four times and did three shows in Finland before leaving. It was pretty intense and scary for me to do the first shows in Finland, basically in front of a bunch of friends, eventhough I would never have admitted it at the time. But all in all, it was a good start, and probably saved a lot of energy needed to make the tour go smoothly.

There was some excitement before leaving too, the van we were going to use had broken down in Sweden only three days before our departure! Luckily it turned out to be just a minor problem, and we met up in Tampere for a last minute practice session on Tuesday. After that we drove to my place in Helsinki and managed to sleep for a couple of hours.

We 31.5 Riga, Latvia@The Saxofons

We took an early morning ferry, and as usual I had slept really bad. Tried getting some more sleep on the floor of the boat, in the way of Finnish vodka tourists. We were a party of five: Jukka(no hair, drums), Antti(a lot of hair, guitar and lead vocals), Ville(hair, bass), Pekka(greased hair, driving), and me(some hair, guitar). We got to Vilnius too early, and were starving. Luckily it didn't take too much time to unload the van, and go get fed with the promoters. We returned to the club a couple of hours before the show. The Saxofons had a nice atmosphere, perharps the stage was too small for a band with three singers though. The show went very smoothly until I broke a string, and had to use my shitty spare guitar for the rest of the show. But that's just me, everyone else had fun and so did the crowd, it seemed.

So it was a pretty good start for the tour. We stayed at the venue for a while for beers. The only bummer was that we couldn't find any place that still sold more beer, so we had to settle on sleeping comfortably and well.

Th 1.6 Vilnius, Lithuania@The Intro

Arrive in Vilnius, look for the place for too long. I supposedly remembered the way there, but as it turned out there were some crucial gaps in my memory. After finally finding the place and checking it out, we left to load up on vodka, to make some "Fisu". I had already bought a big bag of Fishermans Friends at the ferry, and was glad to get to mix some brown vodka for everyone. We sipped a little before the show, a lot more after. The show was so-and-so, the place was pretty big but empty, and we were told the sound sucked. It probably had more to do with the space than the equipment though. After that we left for the sleeping place and food, all the while drinking more beer and Fisu. We had an early drive ahead of us, so me and Antti decided to get drunk in the van, and try to sleep all the way to Gdansk, Poland. We ate, took some beer and went into the van. We quickly ran out of beer, and had to switch to the only drink we had left: straight vodka. At some point we realized we were running out of matches to light our cigarettes, so we tried to smoke all the time. When the other guy was done, he'd light the other guys cigarette with the stump of the former. That was obviously too hard, so we just started hailing cabs, random people on the street, whoever, just to get a light when needed. Most of them ran away in fear. In the morning we noticed some guy at the bus stop, he was wearing blue workers overalls, obviously on the way to some factory job. He had a lighter, so we invited him to the van. He did not speak one single word of English, but understood things like: "Suomija"(which means Finnish), "Rocknroll", "Bruce Springsteen" and "Vodka". He especially understood "Vodka". He gave us a lighter, we gave him alcohol. By the time we were leaving he was already drunk, but left for work anyway. Antti and I passed out immediatelly, and slept most of the 11-hour ride to Gdansk. So everything went as planned.

2.6 Gdansk, Poland@some bar

I woke up somewhere in Poland, not having noticed crossing the border. It's a lot easier these days. The officer had just asked if there's someone sleeping in the back. - "Yeah." replied the driver, and we were allowed to continue. A few years ago it would have been different. The road to Gdansk was shitty and the drive took a very long time. We got there in the afternoon, and first had dinner at Pavels, the organizers place. The show was at a bar, where the upstairs was for drinking purposes only, and the basement disco room was for the rocknroll. It was insanely hot, and they had a strobelight on all the time, so I didn't watch the two other bands. The other one was Biala Goraczka, who we were going to do the entire Polish portion of the tour with. They are very popular in Poland, and an excellent live band, but like I said I didn't catch them this time. We played last. They turned the strobelight off for us, thank god. The show turned out the first really good one of the tour, a great time. The only downside was that Ville broke some strings from both his main and spare bass guitar, so we couldn't do any encores eventhough the crowd really wanted more. For some reason we took it pretty easy with the drinks, and proceeded to Pavels place to eat again. After that we went to sleep at the promoters house.

3.6 Torun, Poland@The Pilan

Got up after a good nights sleep, and found an excellent breakfast in the kitchen. Yum! After eating well, shaving and showering it was nice to have some time to check out the city. We went to the old town, as well as the Gdansk shipyard, which was the main site of the general strike in 1980. After the history lesson we left for Torun, fortunately it wasn't a long ride.

We pulled over in front of the club in the late afternoon. The place was really small, featuring a long hallway, with two rooms on the left side. The first one was the bar, the second was the stage. We put the amps behind the drummer out of necessity, the room was tiny. And dark. The place was very crowded though, and the show was intense. Biala Goracka seemed to go down very well. We had people falling all over us, at one point Antti was accidentally pushed to the floor and missed a bunch of vocal lines. After playing the set, and a bunch of encores we had to load the stuff back in the van very quickly, to make way for the disco party! Excellent!

Most shows in Poland seem to end in disco inferno, which is a policy that I personally agree with very strongly. I have also concluded that the most popular song in the Polish scene is Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor. That's cool, I prefer Burning Heart though. The next days drive to Warsaw would not be very long either, so Pleksi the driver was finally relieved of his duties for the time being, and could get as drunk as he wanted. He, uh, did. We walked to the sleeping place at dawn.

4.6 Warsaw, Poland@some new squat

In the morning we went to get the van from a guarded parking lot, and left for Warsaw. We got lost in the incredibly confusing Warsaw traffic, but managed to find the place by basically just good luck. The show was at a new squat, a very nice place eventhough I don't remember what it was called. It had been moved there at the last minute, since it was an antifascist benefit show, and problems with the local nazis were expected. I've kind of developed a false sense of indifference to the nazi threat in Poland. They're always supposed to attack the show, but usually never do. Well, this time they tried, and it wasn't very pleasant. We were just sitting there drinking coffee, when everybody started running around, pulling masks on their faces, and gathering weapons. I very quickly remembered that I hadn't gotten any travel insurance, and being hit in the face with a two-by-four would be even more fun than normally. Eventually the nazis were chased away without us even seeing them. The squatters seemed well prepared to defend themselves. Even the guitarist from Biala Goracka, who was suffering from high fever got up from the van and grabbed a club to beat the boneheads with. I also heard that even the cops had helped keeping them away from the show. A local band played first, we went second and Biala Goracka tore the roof off playing last. Literally. After the show there was a disco again, me and Antti stayed up while the others went to sleep. The crowd seemed to have fun, we had problems because of the language. Nobody spoke any English(or Finnish, of course), and we sure as hell didn't speak any Polish! Unfortunately. We still stayed up until very late, and slept in the van.

5.6 Krakow, Poland@Zascianek

The last Poland show was at a rock club in the Krakow university campus area. We had been told to be there early, which we did, but by that time there was only one bartender present. Of course. Eventually the promoter showed up, and we could start taking care of business. We set up the stage and did a quick soundcheck. There were two local bands playing, the first one basically practiced on stage for half an hour before playing the actual show. The other one was considerably better, with an excellent female vocalist. Our show was ok, and the Bialas were on fire again.

Some friends showed up as well. The girls from Spoiled Betty, who had a day off their tour came to see us, but got there too late. It was still really nice to see them, and we drank beer with them for a while before leaving for the afterparty. It was our last show with B.G after all, so it was obvious we needed to party with them. Most of us didn't speak the same language, but the universal tongue of hard liquor and punk rock totally compensated! We had a lot of fun.

6.6.6 Brno, Czech Republic@Yacht Club

I woke up on the kitchen floor. The text messages started coming. "Happy 666!", "Slayer rules!", "Listen to metal!", "Backwards!", "Praise Satan!", "!tseirP saduJ rof flesruoy lliK" etc. Yes we listened to a lot of satanic metal on the way to Brno. We were playing with Innoxia Corpora from the Czech Republic, and The Low Budgets from the US, who I was interested in seeing because they were advertised as ex-Dead Milkmen. I loved that band when I was young, and still spin their records pretty often. We arrived in Brno very early. The city looked like a massive pile of concrete from the highway, but turned out to be quite charming once we got to see more of it.

Anyway, the show was in a two-story pub with disco a upstairs and the rock venue on the ground floor.

The turnout was ok. The Low Budgets really took their time, and we weren't sure if they were going to show up at all, or if we would play before them. We were billed last. I kind of wanted to play sooner, but they got there at the very last minute, and we went with the original schedule. Innoxia Corpora first, Low Budgets next and us last. I liked both bands, our show was pretty cool too. We slept at a really nice house up on the hills surrounding the city.

7.6 Wien, Australia@EKH

We left pretty early, to meet Abduktio and Armageddon Clock, two fellow Finnish bands on tour. We found them at a Tesco in the centrum. They were on the way to Budapest, in a big ugly old Mercedes van. It was equipped with a loft for sleeping, eventhough the mattress was so filthy, that a naked woman would have had a fair chance of getting pregnant just by sleeping on it. We exchanged tour stories for a while, and parted ways.

After that we got some food and cheap Boris-vodka from the store, and headed towards Vienna, in the beautiful mountain country of Australia. (Yes yes, I know, it's just cheap and stupid tour humour...) Martin Malarie, a dude from Roznov, was supposed to join us for our trip to Vienna, but had forgotten his passport and had to pass for now. We were on our way back to CZ anyway, so we decided to pick him up then.

The drive was short, and we managed to find a parking place right in front of the club. The show was at a huge old squat called the EKH. It was a perfect place really. They had an infoshop, a kitchen, a pub, a big venue and the small venue, which is where we played. There was another band called Brambilla playing. I mostly missed them, because I can never really concentrate on the band that's playing right before I'm supposed to go on, for some weird reason. Ville said they were excellent. Our show was probably the tightest of the tour so far, we were very happy with it. Some guy told me he really enjoyed it, but our set was too short. This is a weird cultural difference I've noted between Finland and the rest of Europe. Everyone outside of our little country seems to think playing for half an hour is a short set! The shows on this tour ranged from 30-40 minutes, and I think that's a pretty long show. Unless you're the Ramones or Social Distortion or something, you shouldn't be allowed to play hour long sets.

Well enough rambling. If the show was "short", the drinking session afterwards was a very extended edition. We had not one, but TWO bottles of Fisu made, as well as unlimited beer from the bar. I remember lighting Anttis beard on fire, and then my own pubes to apologize. The locals didn't get the brilliance of Rytmihäiriö for some reason. I crawled upstairs to sleep sometime in the morning, Pleksi and Antti stayed up even longer.

8.6 Prague, Czech Republic@007

I woke up extremely drunk, as is customary after a good night of drinking. Loading the van was not very much fun this time, especially since the venue was in the basement, and there were stairs involved. It was also a hot day. Somewhere from the depths of my hungover mind I remembered a game I'd invented on an earlier trip to the German language area: Hans-spotting! It works like this: you go to any public place, yell "HANS!" at the top of your lungs, and see how many heads turn. We found only one Hans in Vienna, when Pekka yelled "Hi Hans!" at some random suit from the window of the van, and the guy turned around and awkwardly waved his hand. That was funny.

We got to Prague just in time for the traffic jams, and found the club called 007 easily. Playing with us was the American thrash-outfit The Bones Brigade, who were easy to tell apart from the crowd. All of them had long hair, metal t-shirts, denim vests and bandanas. Nice guys.

The soundchecks at the 007 are legendary for their quickness, but this time we had some problems with getting the balance for the guitars right or something. I think it took as long as ten minutes! The show was pretty good, eventhough the BB were the band the crowd had obviously mostly come to see. The audience was kind of small too, we heard that there were seven punk shows at the venue in the space of nine days! I really dug the Bones Brigade, it's a shame they broke up after the tour.

We stayed at a very nice house somewhere in the suburbs. I slept in the van again, I'd grown fond of it at this point.

9.6 Roznov, Czech Republic@Vrah

As usual, we took a stroll around the city around noon. The vegans loaded up on soy, the alcoholics loaded up on booze, the playas loaded up on guitar strings, everybody happy. We parted ways with our host and started driving towards Roznov, which was probably the most awesome place we visited on this tour. It was a small, picturesque town in the northeastern part of the country, surrounded by mountains and forests. The club, called Vrah, was up on the edge of town, and looked really cool. The others told me that this had not always been the case, as on their last visit her they'd had to share their sleeping quarters with a bunch of rats. I guess the place used to be a school, and was now built into a venue/bar. We played with Innoxia Corpora again, and went on last. It was packed! The show was the hottest and most intense of the tour, at some point Jukka even jumped up from behind his drumkit to calm down some guys in the crowd. Maybe they were getting violent, I tend not to notice these things. Anyway the gig was great, and so was the party afterwards. I was told that nobody saw any rats while sleeping, but Ville had some problems keeping some guy from climbing into his bunk. Tyhmä jätkä, oisit päässy panee!!! I slept in the van again.

10.6 Strakonice, Czech Republic@Na Kremelce

After a breakfast of falafels, we visited Martins and his wifes place in the mountains surrounding the town. What a nice place! He took his distro with him, and joined us for a few days, to hang out and sell records. On the way to Strakonice we bought about 15 cases of Czech beer, the best beer country in the world in my humble opinion. On top of that, it costs next to nothing when bought from its country of origin.

We played in some pretty large bar, and a decent crowd showed up. The soundcheck was pretty funny. The soundman, who didn't speak a word of English, came up to the stage all of a sudden, and started fooling with my settings, all the while babbling something in his own weird language. Ville and I just looked at each other with a mix of puzzledness and amusement, after which I just set the knobs back as they where. The show was nothing special, despite the large crowd, since nobody seemed very interested in us. We sold next to nothing on the merch table, drank a few beers and left. What I learned: in the Czech Republic, when trying to order a Pilsner Urquell you have to say "One Plz, please", instead of asking for an "Urquell". I was wondering why they would never sell me any!

11.06 Passau, Germany@ZAKK

We left for Germany in the morning. The border guards checked us a little more carefully than usual, probably because of the football world championships that were going on there at the moment. But we weren't really hassled or anything, just had to pull over and let the border guys take a superficial look at our stuff. We got to Passau way early, as usual. The city was absolutely beatiful. Built between two rivers and surrounded by mountains with castles, and a lot of old buildings still intact in the centrum. I guess this place was one of those that didn't get bombed into rubble during the war. We sat by the river waiting for the organizer, who took us to his place to eat well. German hospitality rules!

So we had to wait pretty long for the show to begin, but it was worth it. It went really well, aside from yours truly fucking one song up so royally that it was hard to resume playing because everyone was laughing so fucking hard! I'm glad no one was taping the show, and that's all I'm saying about it! (If I used smilies, I'd put one of those laughing ones here)

So the show was totally fun, but the day ended on a sad note, when Ville got some very bad news from Finland, one of his good friends had just died. I don't remember much about the rest of the night, I think most of us went to sleep pretty soon after getting back to the organizing couples place.

12.06 Munchen, Germany@Kafe Kult

By the time we woke up, the man of the house had left for work, and our hostess seemed to be having the worst hangover of her life! We got one of those legendary German breakfasts, and left to check out the city. We visited churches and such, taking a lot of pictures before heading back to the club to load the van.

It was a very hot day, and it was a sweaty trip to Munich. We found the Kafe Kult easily, since the band had played there before. We were playing with a Swedish girl band called Kamikatze, who got there a little after us. We were going to play other shows with them as well. Some US band was also supposed to play, but we heard they had broken up and flown home. What is it with American bands breaking up on their eurotours? The guys running the club set up a grill, and we waited for the show eating in the yard, while watching football. Martin was happy to see the Czech team kick the USA:s ass! The shows started unusually late on this tour, because of the championships. We always had to wait until eleven for the crowd to show up, and the first band started sometime after that. In Finland it's always like that of course, but in central Europe the shows usually start at a more sensible hour.

So after the games were done with, and the crowd showed up, Kamikatze started. They were great rocking punk, with 80's hardcore influences. Our show was pretty cool too, as far as I remember. We spent the entire night drinking with the Swedes, and playing records. It was Pekka's birthday after all! A fun night.

13.06 Innsbruck, Australia@PMK

Despite my prayers, morning came and we had to wake up. Tess from Kamikatze had a nasty bruise on her chin, having stumbled out of the van at some point, and falling flat on her face on the asphalt. The rest of our great big convoy weren't exactly jumping up and down in excitement about leaving for Innsbruck, but rocknroll doesn't show any mercy. On the way I bought a "Capitalism Kills"-pin at a Shell gas station, choosing it from a range of others, including "Antifa" and "Punk" pins. Astonishing. We looked for a lake to swim in, but when we eventually found one it turned out to be a waterpark, and you had to pay to get in. Fuck that. On this drive we also realized that we absolutely had to find a laudromat, and soon! The putrid stench of rotting socks und feet was getting un-fucking-bearable! We played at an awesome club called the PMK. As we were early again, we had plenty of time to surf on the web, eat, and relax from the insanity of the night in Munich.
Thanks to football, we had to wait until very late for Kamikatze to start again, but the place did fill up pretty nicely. They did really good, and I remember us having fun as well. The crowd was almost Finnish drunk, at least noticably more intoxicated than in other parts of civilized Europe. Loading the van was hilarious, since we had to slalom our way through a mess of passed out streetpunks and pools of puke, all the while carrying amps and shit. No one felt like partying for some reason! Kamikatze were going somewhere else, so we said goodbye to them(for now, we still had a show together) and left to sleep. And more importantly, to get a shower!

14.06 Freiburg, Germany@KTS

Today was a night we'd been waiting for, our show together with two other Finnish bands: Armageddon Clock and Abduktio. We were first at the venue, but the other bands showed up pretty soon as well. Nice seeing them again. We waited forever for the show to start, Armageddon Clock opened the proceedings after the game. It was Germany playing that night, so the organizers set up a special rule that required anyone trying to get in wearing a German football shirt to pay 150€, instead of the 4-6 or whatever they were charging normally. They enforced it too, a couple of guys didn't get in because they didn't wanna pay that much!

The place was packed, and all the bands did great. We got sprayed with beer at the end of our set, by Jamppa from Abduktio. Andy from the same band was celebrating his birthday. I remember a few funny things, like one of the organizers asking me why I'd stopped dying my hair black and combing it back with grease. She was obviously thinking of the original guitar player Jani! (I've also washed off my tattoos, man was that hard!) She complained that while the band still sounded good, we'd let our looks deteriorate. Sorry 'bout that, maybe it made her glad that I wasn't really in the band? We also taught basic German to some guy, I think we managed to insult him somehow. Sorry 'bout that too. All of us stayed up pretty late, I personally went to sleep on the floor of the van at seven in the morning, when we started our long drive towards Italy. Martin stayed in Freiburg, he was getting a ride back home from some other band.

15.06 Bologna, Italy@Atlantide

I woke up somewhere in the middle of Switzerland, severely dehydrated. Pekka and Antti were still passed out, Jukka was driving and Ville was reading the map. I heard they'd tried to wake us up at the border, but eventually the guards weren't interested in anything but hearing that we were only passing through. That was a relief, since Switzerland isn't part of the EU, and touring bands may get in trouble for carrying merch. We had to take a long detour, since a major tunnel was closed for repairs. The mountain scenery was probably breathtaking etc., but the unbearable heat got the best of me, and I focused my energy to try to survive. We managed to get through the country safely. Driving up and down through the mountains with a fully loaded van, on a hot day to top it off, is always a bit of a gamble since the brakes get worn out easily.

We got to Bologna, and searched for the club for a while, the directions had mysteriously disapperad. After a few phone calls we managed to get to the Atlantide, a building stubbornly standing in the middle of a busy roundabout in central Bologna. We parked the van as legally as we could, and started waiting for the organizers to show up. While waiting we noticed that one of out tires was on the verge of exploding, with the steel wires inside the tire already pushing through the surface. Good job that it had lasted through the winding roads of the Alps, huh?
After getting fed, I spent most of the time before the show resting in the van. I had to keep the door open because of the heat, which almost gave Jukka a heart attack, as he was returning from a walk thorugh the city and noticed the van with it's side door open, without anyone around. The venue was packed when we played, it went great. I missed the other bands this time, but the other one, Sumo, was playing with us the next day in Milan as well.

After the show some punks had started causing trouble around the venue, and the cops were called. We had to get out there fast so the problems wouldn't be associated with the club, which probably was having a hard time anyway, considering it's location.

Slept very comfortably at the organizers place.

16.06 Milan, Italy@Leoncavallo

In the morning we left for the tire shop, with our host leading the way on his scooter. The bumpy streets of Bologna had us grasping our seat at every little jump, fearing that the tire would blow. We got to the shop, and were promised a new one by afternoon. We walked around the city for the day. After pizza and coffee, as well as taking tourist pictures and loading up on booze again, we returned to the tire center and drove back to the Atlantide with our good as new(for the time being) van.

The Leoncavallo, where we played, was a huge center featuring a bar, a venue, a restaurant, even a homeless shelter. Because of football we played in the smaller bar, which was good since about 20 people showed up. We had a pretty good time anyway and, aside from Ville who went to sleep immediatelly, stayed up pretty late. Actually I think me and Antti only got about two hours of sleep.

17.06 Nice, France@Tapas

I woke up to the motherfuckinest hangover of the tour. Projectile vomiting ensued on the streets of Milan. I went to a store to buy some juice, but in my stupor accidentally bought some kind of cyrup. Yuck (I mean, bleaaargh!). Luckily it was a beautiful day, and our route took us along the shores of the mediterranean, past Monaco and the French Riviera. So the scenery cheered me up a little. By the time we got to Nice I was pretty much fine. Finding the club was really hard since we didn't have a decent map, and there were too many one-way streets. We met up with Jack and the Bearded Fishermen, who were doing three out of our four shows in France with us. We were supposed to have the Sons Of Saturn do those shows with us as well, but they had to cancel because their drummer had strained some muscles or something, and wasn't fit to play. Boris, their guitarist, still booked these three shows with his wife Lola, who played bass for the Fishermen.

The show started way late because of p.a problems or something, and the owners of the place seemed to be concerned about the volume level during the Fishermens set. We went on way late, and hurriedly tried to throw the equipment together and get to play. During the first break between songs, the club threatened to pull the plug because of us being too loud. What these people usually fail to understand, is that drummers do not have volume buttons! I was so pissed off that I was about to storm out of the fucking place, but the guys managed to negotiate a little extra time for us. After which someone started a fight in the crowd. We managed to do six songs, after which we definitely had to quit. The bar declined to give us beers afterwards, and we weren't in the best mood. So I broke out what was left of my Fisu from last night, and passed it around. One of the organizers managed to get some beer for us too, so things started to look up. Our sleeping places were in another town, I forget which one. It was one hour away, which is French for two hours. Two Lithuanian traveler girls, Akvile and Elena, joined us. They were on their way to Lyon where we were playing the next day, and we agreed to give them a ride, the gentlemen that we are. The gas stations wouldn't sell us beer at this hour, luckily we had "a couple" in the back! France has the better beaches and wine but as far as beer goes, the Czech Republic kicks their ass 100-0! There was a party at our destination, which I didn't mind. I still went to sleep at a pretty sensible hour.

18.06 Lyon, France@The Sonic

In the morning we ate some baguettes with chocolate like they do in France, and went to cure the hangover in the warm waters of the ocean. Good times. We drove to Lyon, where we got lost on a hooker street. They all had their own vans, the front being the office, and the back being where the business happens. The show was on a boat, anchored on the riverbank. The fridge was full of beer, and there was plenty of food. Unfortunately it wasn't very vegan, so two people had to go on salad only. We met Boris from the Sons Of Saturn there, he had booked all of the shows in France. SoS where supposed to do the tour as well, but their drummer was having some health problems and couldn't do it.

We waited for the show to start pretty long again (yes, football), but not too much of a crowd showed up anyway. Well, what can you do. All I remember is that the place was extremely hot, and that the show was ok.

We stayed at Boris' and Lolas place. They had an incredible apartment in a village just outside of Lyon. Some people stayed up, I was pretty tired and went to sleep "early".

19.06 Besancon, France@La Cremerie

We slept pretty late, and had baguettes for breakfast. It was a very hot day, and we started driving towards Besancon, where our last show with the Fishermen was to take place. Boris, mrs.Boris and their kid rode with us. We checked the tires before leaving, and didn't notice anything alarming. However, when passing a truck on the highway we heard a loud bang, and the van tilted a little. We figured we'd blown a tire, and pulled over. Actually the treads had just come off, but we still had to call roadside assistance, since we didn't have the necessary equipment to change it.. Luckily we had the locals with us, we aren't exactly used to talking about replacing tires in French...

We drove slowly to the next town, where we replaced the rest of the tires. Something we should probably have done in Bologna already, but what can you do. We finally got to the basement club where the show was, and we were billed as "Manifesto Lukebox". It was already pretty hot down there, but once the place filled up... So the room was incredibly hot, and the show was really good. After the show the owner of the bar threw everyone, including us out. He even came out himself and locked the doors! As we were wondering what just happened, we saw a group of cops arrive and check out the place. Someone had complained about the noise, but since the bar was "closed", the cops could do nothing! After they left we got our gear and some beer, before driving to the sleeping place again. It was a huge apartment with a nice balcony, and we stayed up for quite a while, as long as the beer didn't run out. Had fun again!

20.06 Paris, France@some very French looking tiny cafe

This day was supposed to be a boring day off, but luckily we got a last minute show in Paris. We found the place, and started to wonder if there's a basement or something where we were supposed to play, the place looked so tiny that we'd be lucky to fit our equipment in! But that was it. We got our parking permits and started killing time by eating fries, and loading up on cheap booze. Eventually our organizer/hostess, Magali from La Fraction, showed up with a pile of baguettes. Yay! The next to show up was the Mexican grind/crust-band we were playing with, followed by surprisingly many people who had come to see the show. We really lucked out, this being a last minute thing and all. We even managed to fit our stuff in the tiny bar, once they cleared all the tables. The audience? Some managed to fit inside, those who didn't watched the show on the street, through the windows. We just left the door open so they could hear us. It was afternoon, so they didn't get in trouble for the noise, actually I was told that they have shows like this pretty often! After playing we didn't have much time to catch our breath, because we had to make way for much more important players: football players! We got our gear out and into the van, while the bar owner organized the chairs again, so people could watch football on the bigscreen tv. We hung out for a while having dinner, and drinking outside. After an hour or two in the bar we left to get to Magalis place.

The drive wasn't that long, but it took like two hours to find a parking spot! Luckily we had several boxes of sangria with us, they cost 1,40€ for one and a half litres! Eventually we settled on a less than legal spot, and took our stuff to Magalis place, before embarking on our little Paris-by-night adventure. Ville stayed in the van, which he later regretted, having had to be scared of gangsters running around.

The night tour of Paris was a blast! We were loaded with wine, beer, sangria and booze, and it was a perfect warm summer night. Our first checkpoint was a good distance away, but worth it. It was some road overlooking some park, behind which there was an enormously wide view of the Paris centrum and the Eiffel tower. We watched the tower go disco, it does this lightshow every hour. Antti pointed out how much it looked like Leviathan, the allseeing eye of Hellraiser II, with it's searchlight going around endlessly. Next stop I think was some abandoned metroline, where we had to climb some fence to get into. Apparently the Paris metro company owns these tracks that they don't use. They're still privately owned areas, and people can have parties or shows there, because the cops have no business interfering unless the owner complains, and they don't give a shit. A slightly different side of Paris, that I was glad to see. We had to climb even higher fences, and jump off them on to busstops in order to get out. Jukkas fear of heights didn't help here! After that all I remember is meeting some guy who gave me rum, almost passing out on the street, and replying "I dunno..." to some nice people, who I was told were inquiring if I'm alright in French. All in all, I think our little walk took several hours, and I'm glad I went!

21.06 Aachen, Germany@AZ

In the morning we got our last excellent French breakfast, before heading back to Germany, the land of excellent breakfasts. We got to the AZ in Aachen pretty early again, and had plenty of time to wait in the huge underground complex that was the club. We were welcomed back to Germany with an insane selection of food and beer. No one complained. The local Six Bullet Plan opened, after them it was some metalcore band who had a Turkish singer. He even sang in his native language. As usual I missed most of this, because I like to keep myself busy before a show. Making setlists, changing strings, anything to keep me from getting nervous or bored. I guess we played allright, otherwise it wasn't anything spectacular. The afterparties first at the venue, then at the disco, before moving to our hosts place, were much more fun. At the venue, some guy apparently thought we were Swedish, and asked us to teach him some sentences in Swedish. We did, although the sentences we taught him were not the ones he asked for... I reaaallly would like to see the look on some our western neighbors faces, when he tries his newly learned language skills on them!

The disco was fun too, as far as I remember, with a bunch of people from the show coming there as well. The afterparty focused mainly around drunken talk about politics, which is always fun, especially if the guy you're staying with majored in that field...

22.06 Mulheim, Germany@AZ

I had a frightening hangover in the morning, again! The horror... The horror... The club wasn't far away, so we walked there. Having plenty of time to spare, I went to finally do some laundry with Antti and Pekka, while Ville and Jukka stayed at the venue to wash the drums and go through the merch. After that we visited a record store, and set our sights on Mulheim.

We got there, and were again greeted with a table full of food. If I toured Germany more than once a year, I'd probably weigh about a ton! We were way early again (what kind of a punk rock band was this, anyway???) , and had plenty of time to relax. Antti, Pekka and I were lying in the van with the side door open, listening to Elvis Presleys Greatest Lovesongs, to the amusement of the crusties passing by. After a well deserved rest it was time for soundcheck and rocking. An Australian (actually from down under, not our stupid tour humour) band called Pisschrist played before us, and rocked hard. Our show went down alright I guess, I had a lot of bad luck with guitars and amps. I won't bore you with details, let's just say that everything possible and even the seemingly impossible went wrong!

Everyone except me seemed to be into having an afterparty. A lot of people stayed around to drink until the morning, I had decided to have a day off the drink. One of all three that I had on the whole tour. To my surprise I ran into Jasmine from Signal Lost, she had just flown in to meet her boyfriend and was very jetlagged and drunk. It was weird to run into her here all of a sudden, her being from Austin, TX and all. I talked with her for a pretty long time. The others were busy playing kicker, and I hate kicker. I was later told that the night had ended in drunken mayhem, involving naked wrestling and climbing on walls, while I was sleeping in the van. A man has his limits.

23.06 Göttingen, Germany@Juzi

Before leaving Mulheim we had to take care of something important: buying booze to bring home! You see, in Finland alcohol prices are very high, supposedly because most Finns drink so much that cheaper alcohol would lead to a national disaster. I believe this to be true. The saleswomen were pretty amused with our purchases, "Machen sie eine Party, oder?" they asked. Jawohl!

The Göttingen show was the farewell show for El Mariachi, a very popular local band, so the big place was totally packed. We went on before them, and the show was a blast. El Mariachi naturally got the crowd really going, and played a long and powerful set.

We sat drinking by the merch table with two of the organizers, and told them about our little game of Hans-spotting. They found it amusing, but informed us that no one in Germany is called Hans anymore! They asked us what we thought were the most common German names and we came back with Fritz, Horst, Udo etc., which had them giggling. For girls we thought Gisela, Trudl and Doro Pesch were the most common names, but we were wrong again. - "You'd have to go back to the second world war"; they laughed. Apparently the most common names in Germany right now are Kevin, Tim, Peter, David and others like that. Luckily they were very cool guys, and had a good enough sense of humour not to be offended of our (or was it just me?) stupid humour. The rest of the night was spent at the afterparty which took place at the venue, we stayed up until the bar closed. Twice.

24.06 Bremen, Germany

Opened my eyes in the van again. I stumbled inside to get something to drink, and the first guy to pass me in the stairs was some guy who had tried coming on to me during the night. The hellos exchanged were a bit embarassing. The next guy I met upstairs feigned being scared when I said hello to him. Apparently I'd been waving a knife at people while drunk. Yeah... I remembered now. I was probably thinking I was funny, but some people might've missed the joke, when a drunken foreigner storms in with a knife in one hand, and a bottle of vodka in the other, demanding that they don't close the bar yet. Ehhh... Sorry 'bout that. Finnish midsummer humour. The others had been sleeping elsewhere, but got to the venue pretty soon as well. We ate well, and headed for Bremen.

When we got there the whole city was going crazy. Not because of us though, but football. Everyone was honking their car horns, or hanging out of the window waving German flags. Lunatics.

Again we had plenty of time at the venue, so we went to a nearby store with Pekka to get some more booze and wine to bring home. The combined reserves in our van started to resemble those of a major nightclub, let's put it that way! We were playing with a Spanish band whose name I forget, and a local band called Hodz, who were friends of the band from previous tours. I'd never seen them before, but they were really good, as well as nice people. After the show we went to some illegal bar, but I couldn't stay up too long with the others. I went to sleep early, while the others stayed.

25.06 Flensburg, Germany

Last show day! We stopped by at Toni's, the Hodz guitarists place to get some excellent breakfast before leaving for Flensburg. The show was at an AZ again, one of the nicest I've seen. Do I have to even mention at this point, that the catering was first class? Aside from that they were going to keep the bar open and free for as long as we liked! They didn't know what they were in for..
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We were playing with Kamikatze again, and it was nice catching up with them. It sounded like they'd had a fun tour as well. We were the only two bands playing. Unfortunately the crowd was really tiny, less than 20. It was kind of anticlimactic for such a good tour, but these things happen. Kamikatze were good, but unfortunately they had to leave during our set.

Most of the crowd left after we were done, but the organizers lived up to their promise and worked the bar until the dawn. Pekka stayed up with Antti and I almost until the end, but eventually we were the only two who made it through the entire night of suicidal drinking. The bartender tried all kinds of drinks on us, and they were well received. The others told me that when eating breakfast, the guy had come up and said: "Ok, I finally got them out of the bar. Do not tell them that there's breakfast, that would be a bad idea." or something along those lines. I heard that they'd found us outside screaming for Hans, with Antti lying half in the van, half outside, and me wandering around aimlessly like a zombie. Gute Nacht Flensburg!

26.-27.06 Germany-Denmark-Sweden-Finland

When I woke up I had no idea what country I was in at first. Then I realized that I was on a boat. I got up, and walked upstairs from the cardeck. There I ran into some friends from Helsinki, on their way home from the K-Town fest. Turns out we were just arriving in Sweden. While I'd been asleep the windshield wiper had fallen off from the drivers side of the van, and driving in the heavy rain to Stockholm was not very much fun. We tried taping it on, but it kept falling off again and again. Luckily the rain started to end, and we got to Stockholm, with time to get falafels before the ferry to Finland. We paid for ten, but got only nine. Ville will have his revenge on the culprits!

On the ferry the first thing we did was reserve a sauna and a jacuzzi. That is always very nice after three-four weeks of filthy touring life! The much anticipated ferry nightlife turned out to be very quiet, with almost the whole boat reserved to Russian tourists, all of them families. Well, maybe I deserved some sleep after all. Pekka and Antti didn't give up so easily though, and their eventual return to the cabin was a sight to be seen!

So that was my summercamp with Manifesto Jukebox! I had a blast, and from what I gathered the band enjoyed it as well! Take care guys, all the best in the future, and thanks for the ride! See you around!

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