Check list

One more night and we are on our way to Edinburgh and the Fringe festival. I have really tried not to spoil the last days of vacation by only talking about Fringe but I don´t think I have succeeded very well. My check lists are all around the house, (like "go to the hairdresser", and that I did yesterday. Thank you Elina at Ges hiusmuotoilu! Check.)

And then there is the packing, of course. If a girl is going away for a month there is a lot that has to fit in the suitcase. As I write this I still haven´t packed a thing but I got it all in my head... The shoes...all the shoes that need to fit. I checked the weather forecast for Edinburgh and lets just say that I have a feeling it is quite a challenging city when it comes to shoes.
Then we have the clothes. Not only the show clothes (they should already be in Edinburgh. I hope.) But the clothes in general. I wont get into it here and now but it has given me a few sleepless nights.

I have no idea what our lovely producers Linda and Anna have been doing but every time I call them to see if there is anything I should be concerned about or something I have to fix they tell me to relax and enjoy the vacation and See you at the airport, don´t worry, everything is under control. Hm...sounds suspicious to me.
As I checked our calendar some days ago I realized that Linda and Anna really have been working. Not only are we doing the Pink Noise show every night, (except two wednesdays), we also have the mornings and evenings booked for radio performances, interviews and stuff like that.
                                    
                                         So Bye bye Vacation - Hello Edinburgh!!

and btw, the pictures are from Hanko.

More Summer!

We had a gig at Vaasa rock last Friday, it was great fun but Jonte wasn´t that good so we decided to replace him. With Paleface.

But as we arrived at Hangö Casino the next day Jonte was back in the group and everybody was happy.

We were quite bored for some hours while waiting for the soundcheck to start (there was a slight misunderstanding about the size of the PA system we wanted so we had to get another one from Helsinki. How many people do you know with a truck drivers license and available and sober on a summer Saturday afternoon? There is only one and we found him! Thank you Kim.) So we did some sightseeing and goofed around.

I am not sure our make-up was perfect that evening because we were more focused on the grand view we had from our backstage. 

On our way home we stoped in Karjaa were we, at 2.30 a.m, unloaded our stuff only to put them in the truck that will take them to Edinburgh and the Fringe festival. That´s were our next concert will be… So now some more days of some kind of vacation and then off we go!

By the way, check out the taxis in Edinburgh. 

Summer!

Just to let you know that we are still alive and kicking I am posting some pictures from our last concert from the Riihimäki Rock Festival. The weather was perfect (if you were sitting down and enjoying a cold beer or a gin tonic in the shadow..) the audience was great and we had fun!
In this first picture you see Jonte getting pretty. This was one of the few places that had some kind of shadow.

Lots going on here. Hot yoga combined with deep discussion.

                                       Too hot to stand for line check.

Minutes before. We are rehearsing Paranoid. As you can see none of us seem to remember exactly how it goes...

                       The only way out is in. These are the scary seconds.

We survived! Even if Anna was quite sure her latex shoes would burn into her skin because of the heat.
Thank you Riihimäki. Next week Vaasa! Enjoy the weather while it lasts.

cause for gratitude

For ten years now we have organized a Fork family picnic in June. The idea is to get everyone together who has worked with us during the past years or who just happens to be close to us in one way or another. It´s kind of a picnic were we say thank you and I am sorry... This year the feeling of gratitude was big, not only because we have been stretching our family members patience with lots of time away and late nights by the computer answering work emails, and they still came to the picnic. But also because our Gregory was in a car accident the day before the picnic. The car looks like a raisin but the man is fine. Of course bruised and shaken but nothing broken and very much alive. According to his wife his biggest concern was will he be able to do our concert the day after...

And yes, Gregory was mixing our concert at the Popkalaset, he wasn´t allowed to carry anything which he thoroughly enjoyed the whole day while Jonte and Kasper were doing the roading. But he once again did a fantastic job with making the Fork sound and we are so happy for that.
And about Popkalaset, what a great happening! The sun was shining, the crowd was big and happy and I could see in the eyes of my colleagues, behind the microphones, that now this is how we like it!

Have a great Juhannus - Midsommar everyone!!

Plan B

Yesterday we had a technical run-through and final rehearsal for Edinburgh with our light guy Tobias and our video guy Henrik. And of course Greg on the sound. Tobias and Jonte, who were in Edinburgh a week ago to check out our performing space at the George Square Theatre, have been doing some excellent work on planning how we are going to do the show there. Still there are many things that are impossible to decide before we are on location. This is quite nerve-wrecking... We have now made plan A, plan B and plan C. Just in case. And I am sure we will be using plan D in the end. There are always things you cannot predict. But this is kind of the thrill of it and will give us all some long wonderful sleepless nights...

Today we are doing the set list for Saturdays gig at Popkalaset in Ekenäs. It´s going to be a great way to end this season and start a few weeks of vacation! I just checked the weather forecast for the weekend and let´s just hope they are a bit wrong in their prediction. We want sunshine!

                                          Tobias, Henrik and Jonte. Planning.

The Truth!

This morning I was confronted with Brutal Facts. As I had my morning coffee I listened through the material for our upcoming Pink Noise Live album. 13 tracks of live singing. 13 tracks of us going oioio, uhuh, nanan, chukachuka, dingding and where our wonderful sound wizard Greg does magic with his fingers twisting my oioiois into something nice and cool.
And then there were my solos. And I am thinking No, that´s not me. I don´t sound like that. Do I sound like that? Why haven´t anyone told me I sound like that??!! This is the brutal facts-moment. You see, in my head I sound different, even if I have heard myself hundreds of times recorded I never get used to it. I am not saying it sounds better or worse but sometimes unawareness just makes you a happier person.

When I listened through the material for the third and fourth time I was able to focus on the whole. Many things sound so different from what I hear in my ear monitors on stage. We all have our own personal ear monitor mixes where you only hear what you want to hear and I usually have my colleagues sweet clean voices in mine, it helps me to stay in tune. So now, being able to listen to the whole of the song is great! And I must say that the record is not bad. Not bad at all.

               Leftovers from our press conference. Anna, me and the watermelons.

2 minutes 12 seconds

Strange but true. Summer is here! We still have three more weeks of intense work and tons of things to do before some kind of vacation.
A couple of blogs ago I wrote about our changing clothes - problem in the Edinburgh version of Pink Noise. Last week we then finally gave it a try. Picture this:
Thursday at 1 p.m. Forks rehearsal room, four singers all dressed in the white Pink Noise clothes. The singers imagine they are on the stage in Edinburgh, finishing a song and waiting for the applause. There comes the applause, then a bow and then black. 12 seconds of black. The singers storm out from the stage and rips off pieces of clothes. After 12 seconds they are again standing in front of the audience, behind a see-through curtain, in silhouette, wearing only underwear, singing. At this point they really hope they can trust the light guy... Then, after 15 seconds, the silhouettes disappears and the singers once again storm out. During the next two minutes, while the singers keep on singing the song, magic happens. And if everything goes as planned (there really are no options) out comes four singers dressed in... well, let that be a secret.
This is what we did last week at work. Smart? No. Fun? Yes.
I don´t have any pictures from this session since I was quite busy slipping out of one dress into another.
I give you this picture instead. Lahnajärvi, Finland. Summer at its best.