SunriseAve ITALY

On da road again ... from Samu's Diary!

Riku is sleeping next to me inside the Austrian Airlines Fokker on the way to Vienna / Austria. We are flying there with Karri, our tech chief, to play this very special little show at someone’s home. There had been a competition in the internet and this girl has won us to her home to play at her party or something. I guess the audience will not be that loud today ;) It’s naturally acoustic.

We’ll also do plenty of interviews in Vienna and obviously other parts of the country as well and then tomorrow evening after the interviews we fly to Zurich, Switzerland. We play our release show there in Zurich and sure meet the media as well. From SUI we go to Germany (Don’t know where) to do 2 TV shows and we fly back home on Sunday. Then one Day at home and off we go again. That time to Sweden and Greece. Before this flight we were home for one day after coming back from Japan. I am playing in a traveling band ;)

Japan / Tokyo

I have never ever been to Asia in my whole life before and I was expecting pretty much from the trip. And I must say I fell in love with the people and the place. It’s amazing how friendly they are and how clean, safe and well organized the whole city feels. Nobody really knows the real population of Tokyo, but if it’s close to 30 Million people walking the streets every day, it’s just amazing how they all fit there. No cigarette ends on streets and no trash or dog shit.

The Japanese culture is somewhat twice as old as ours in Europe (for example in Finland, there were only forests and wolfs 150 years ago) and that really shows over there. The respect they have for one another is really something us westerns should import to our daily lives.

We arrived in Tokyo with Riku one day later than the other guys and sure the jet lag hits you pretty bad no matter how great seats you have on the plane. We still forced ourselves to join the guys exploring the city and we saw all the shops and stuff, even if we had been up for 36 hours in a row. We had a super great diner in the evening at around 9 PM and there was no problem falling asleep. I guess we slept for 13 hours. Like little babies. It was actually the first time in years we had to share rooms, but it wasn’t that bad. It’s nice to have someone there who you can talk to if you can’t sleep ;) Muahahahaha. Poor Riku ;)

The “Liquid Room” club was a big surprise. It was maybe a 1000 capacity rock club with Germany level of equipment and back stages and stuff. There were 7 bands from Finland, bands that try to get their way to Japanese market and actually the Finnish government supported us all by paying a little share on the costs of the trip. That is really important, you know that only the extra bags & gear we had to fly back from Tokyo cost 3.600 €. Just the extras, just one way.

Not many people in the audience knew us, so we had to play this kind of an introduction show of Sunrise Avenue. And that is always very much fun. It’s cool when the people don’t expect anything and they don’t know the songs and in the end you have them jumping hands up ;) I will have to learn a lot more Japanese for the future shows.

After the show they had arranged this party in a bar that plays only Finnish music. I actually didn’t wanna go there because you know what happens when you mix a lot of Finns and alcohol. And for me it’s not a Finnish rock club I want to visit when I am in Japan! I had an early interview wakeup the next day and gladly I had left the bar at around 5 AM before the mess started.

Two crewmembers of this new Finnish band destroyed the whole bar. Must be really nice to drag some staff to work for you on the other side of the planet and then to pay all the costs of destroying a bar afterwards. There’s also a chance the governmental support will be taken away from other bands too. It’s sad but so typical. First our band got the blame for the whole thing, but gladly there were a lot of witnesses at the bar and someone had even taken mobile videos, so we will be safe and the ones responsible will pay for the damage. Sami had a black eye and other bruises in the morning. While this moron had been kicking our Sami in the ground, Riku had jumped on him to get him down and he had some hits there too. But you don’t leave your pals in that kind of a situation, do you? But everyone’s ok now and hopefully the laundry is been done soon.

It’s just pretty embarrassing to give this kind of an image of the Finnish bands to the locals but what can you do.

The Japanese can cook! What ever you eat where ever in Tokyo, you just jump when you taste the food. Some of you know how excited I sometimes get with tasty food, I mean I always get these FoodGasms and the EMI team in Germany sometimes laugh at my reactions(Julia & Kerstin, you should have seen me;). In Tokyo, I nearly had heart attacks. It was so damn good. Everything was so fresh. And I love sushi so there we were in Heaven ;)

One thing that reminded me a little bit of London there was the amount of different clothes and hair styles you see on streets. You can have someone entering a subway / underground wearing almost a shower curtain and nobody even notices it. Everyone’s accepted as they are. All different colors of hair and seems as if you are allowed to be whoever you are and look the way you want in Tokyo. That is cool. So even my long legs & non-existing ass didn’t confuse people that much…

The last day I just did interviews at our local record Company’s PONY CANYON’S office and in the evening we had dinner with our local A&R Yusuke and his Boss Mr. Cat. The whole Pony Canyon team was super cool.

When we were outside the Record Company building, Yusuke was carrying this pocket size ashtray (like a lot of people there). You are not allowed to throw cigarette ends on the streets. He collected them from us and then emptied the stuff in a garbage can.

You ARE allowed to smoke almost everywhere inside bars, restaurants etc., but you are NOT allowed to smoke outside on the streets. There are these smoking areas in the city, where all smokers gather together around these huge ashtrays. In some places they are cabins like at airports.

When the reporters entered the interview room, they first changed business cards with the local record company people and sure our Mikko from Bonnier Finland. They hand the cards for each other and bow a few times. Our Mikko was sometimes a bit funny looking following the tradition. With his hangover…;)

They say New Your never sleeps. I have been there too a few times and I can say that it’s Tokyo that never sleeps. New York does take a short nap.

The trip home was pretty hard. I was an idiot and bought a bottle of Santori Whiskey (The one that Bill Murray was promoting in the movie “Lost in Translation”) and sure we had to empty it in the night in my bath tub with Sami and Riku. We slept only for a few hours. I was able to sleep only for an hour of the 9-hour flight, so I was pretty tired when I got home. Yesterday I woke up at 7 AM because the rhythm was so twisted… And today I am feeling really tired but hopefully the tiredness goes by. I don’t know if I’m feeling a bit ill or just tired but we’ll see.

We will land in Vienna now so I must put Riku’s seat belt on (he is sleeping) and switch off my laptop….

Uuu and the Austrian Arrows stewardess just asked for my autograph. She is so sweet with her uniform - uuuuumamamaaa ;)

Linda Landbauer’s Garden Party!

There had been a competition at the KinderMaxiKing.at and the competitors had to make a short video with our song “Choose to be me.” The video made by Linda Landbauer won. There were some 30 people including her parents & some media at the garden of her parent’s house and drinks and food and stuff. And Jägermeister.

I was actually a bit worried before the party because I still feel so tired after the Japanese trip (the jet lag) but as we started playing and singing, the whole atmosphere was just so relaxed and nice. And we made Linda sing with Riku a bit too ;)

Thanx Linda for the coffee and the toilet!

So now we will have dinner with the Austrian EMI and go to bed early so we don’t get ill. We do more promotion tomorrow and a flight to Zurich in the evening.

Hope we don’t miss our flight from Vienna again tomorrow…;)

Oookay… It’s been a while. I got this most annoying flu after the garden party in Austria and I have just been so exhausted after the days that I was not able to write or nothing. I felt this strange thing in my throat & nose actually already in Helsinki but I thought it was just being tired.

Zurich Show

I was a bit worried when Carlo, our EMI Boss Switzerland told me a few weeks ago that the capacity of the venue is 1.300 people. I just thought the room would be half empty. I was wrong. They had done such a great job in Switzerland promoting the event and making it happen big time again.

The venue was this old theatre kind of a place with a balcony and all and it was packed full. I felt really ill before the show and I was just trying to keep myself warm and to drink as much warm stuff as possible. My secret flu medicine is hot water, rum, honey and squeezed lemon. It does work a bit but sure it can’t make miracles happen. As we got to the stage, I felt just great. Sure I had a bottle of rum there all the time and I sang half of the songs with a Vick’s Blue in my mouth but it worked. The show was the 4th show with PopGasm songs and definitely the best one so far. Now were getting the PopGasm stuff working on stage bit by bit ;)

The party after the show was a PARTY!!!!! It actually got a bit out of hand but probably the fact that Sami’s and Osmo’s toenails were pink in the morning describes the session well. The guys were totally masked in the morning. It was pretty cool to sit in the sauna at Intercontinental Köln the next day with Sami and Riku and their lady-look feet. I was so proud of the guys.

If I remember correctly, we were a pretty huge gang all the way to the last hours, so thanx to everyone for the party and company, Especially EMI folks, and sorry for my sayings and doing if I did something stupid, can’t really rember. I think I danced a bit, so if someone has that on video, please delete them. I don’t dance ;)

So Friday was the hangover day and we spent that shopping in Köln. It’s actually sometimes hard to star a shopping session, but now when we were still a bit on a boogie mod with Sami & Riku, the shopping was so easy. We all found tons of stuff we liked & needed. Especially Sami. He spent his future salaries from 2009 & 2010. For shopping, Köln is super cool.

On Saturday we made a performance at this pretty strange TV show where these teams are competing against each other about who gets the most long-lasting domino effect (or something, didn’t quite get it…;) with all different kind of obstacles. We were inside this small office room and as our song started, all kinds of stuff started falling on us and that’s it. Leutnant Zimmermann says that TV time is always good so I bet it was worth it. And today we did this kind of a garden TV morning show. It was very cool performing to all the families, grand mamas and grand papas. They actually were very well with us the whole way and they rocked good ;)

So now I am home and will go downtown to get something to eat. I might call Karri if he wants to join (if I pay) so I don’t have to eat alone. It’s actually funny and kind of sad how I don’t meet my friends from outside the music industry that much. Apart from the band & crew I don’t know who to call to now if Karri will not join me. I have been away for so long… Maybe I should go through my phone and see if I still have some non-pop/rock friends….

Thanx everyone for the fantastic trip again. It’s pretty hard every now and then with the traveling and all, but you know you all make me / us very very happy.

Moi moi,

Doctor Haber

PS: I will get my car tomorrow (about f**ing time). Just got a call from the shop. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (wrooom wrooom wrooom) I have a full day to wroom tomorrow until the next trip - wroom wroom wroom ;)