Bajo Cero band's blog

¡Gettin’ da Gig!

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:58:23 +0000

Besides music, everyone in Bajo Cero has a special role in our D-I-Y band. We are doing it ourselves so maybe I should call it D-I-O band instead (no pun intended R.I.P. Ronnie James). Anyway, D-I-Y means that we have to do everything that is involved in making music and getting it out there. My responsibility is to get gigs to our band. When a band is big enough, they are invited to all of their gigs; the bands responsibility is to pick the suitable according to their schedule. We are in a situation where we get invitations too, but most of the time we have to do the selling work for the gigs to appear into our schedule.

This gig selling does not differ from the work of a telephone salesman: you call, represent your stuff, get an answer. Often before the telephone salesman phase, you have entered into e-mail lottery, i.e. sent the stuff via e-mail to various promoters who receive thousand similar kind of offers. It is difficult to stand out. However, one thing is true to all selling, whether it is a vacuum cleaner or one-hour-musical extravaganza: the content has to be right! It has to be good stuff that you are selling.

Last year was so far the greatest for Bajo Cero gigwise. This year’s bookings are on the way, if everything turns out right, the upcoming summer is full of very special events! Stay tuned for our gig roster to be completed and announced!

-Antti

Fan lotto

admin — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 17:06:17 +0000

I’s been quite an active spring at the Bajo Cero Facebook-site. We’re happy to have noticed that there are almost a thousand likers, in fact all together there are 914 people, touched by our world fusion at the moment. And since none of us band members have so many moms and dads or spouses, it seems there has to be at least one or two real fans amongst these likers. Yippee!

As an Easter surpise Bajo Cero now declares the search for it’s 1000th fan open. Bacome a fan (or suggest it to your frends if you happen to be one) and win our upcoming debut album! The winner will be declared when we have reached the magical number of 1000!

-Anna

Caught red handed

admin — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:12:48 +0000

I need a therapy band with a name that means something warm. Bajo Cero, “below zero”, always ends up doing stuff in extreme coldness. For me this winter has been amazing – first i froze my hands in Bajo Cero’s photoshoot, then a few weeks later in our video shoot.

We had a grande finale for the video shooting week as we played a gig in our hometown Oulu. The atmosphere was great, the audience beat all of my expectations, and playing was fluent fun. After the gig there was a musician that i highly respect, who wanted to thank the band for a great gig by shaking hands. But this i couldn’t do. My double frozen skin had not liked my one hour bare hand beating of cajon, and it started cracking in some point, so that for the last fifteen minutes i’d been playing very manly with bloody knuckles. Skip the hand shaking.

We wish to thank all of you who were present at that gig, but also those of you that helped us with our music video shoot earlier that week (Ville R., Teresa, Erick, Mia, Pirjo, Esa, Jamal, Kerttu, Pekka, Joni aka Camera wizard, Jenni, Tiina , Kaisa and those of you whose name i maybe accidentally forgot to mention. You were and are important). And my hands are starting to get better!

We lost a lot of loot in the thunders of the video shoot (including my beloved kalimba, but it’s now found, after just three weeks of being lost). Also we now finally found some pictures from the video day, to add into our Bajo family album.

-kili

The artist and the director share their views. The actor is sitting at the back paralyzed with fear.

The director, the artist and the lovely hideous camera monster we just created.

Our singer is locked into a box. It only makes her totally freak out just a bit.

All the little obstacles on our way were greeted with enthusiasm.

The actor falling on his arse does make him smile (apparently), but luckily the actress keeps her poker face.

You gotta get us to the next whisky bar, feat. our bass player Antti Sixx and his heavy metal nasty pose.

Is it a bird? A plane? No, it's songs from the second floor.

Fearless Joni grabs the camera monster by its hand and shows no fear. Behind him our artist seems to be admiring Joni's bravery.

Tornio Rocks

admin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:10:05 +0000

In the Finnish town of Tornio, a hundred kilometers north from our home town, when you walk to Meeri’s Grill (that certainly would deserve a whole blog post just about its menu), you can see a very confusing installation. There’s a pile of rocks by the road, and a sign that tells us that it is a monument by the people of Tornio, made for the people of Tornio.

So you guys made this all by yourself? The whole little bunch of rocks, in a handsome pile, there by the road? This self-made pile of rocks has been a never-ending source for making fun of my hosts every time I’ve been in Tornio. And for some reason every time I’ve been to Tornio, the trip has included a visit to Meeri’s Grill and a huge amount of making fun of the hosts and trying to piss them off in a way that is typical for friends in northern Finland.

I have started to appreciate this pile of rocks a lot nowadays, but let’s get back to it later.

A recent research by Tomi Venho shows that the campaign budget for parliamentary election candidates has been getting bigger (as expected), and that in the past elections it was 11 000 euros per candidate in average. For those who got elected, the average budget was 35 000 euros. Now this is a bit problematic, if you think of democracy.

It seems that the huge sum of money, 11 000 euros, is not enough if you want to get there. You need to triple it. I get this feeling that we’re not starting from the same start line when it comes to getting your voice heard. And the feeling that democracy is quietly slipping to “them”, when it should be “us”.

But how do we get back to the pile of rocks from here? Easily. There is no art without a community that it’s made for, and therefore art is always political.

When taking care of your community seems to be slipping out of our hands, the pile-of-rocks-monuments suddenly appear in a very touching light. They are not artifacts coming from “outside”, statues that confirm the contemporary structures of power on the main street of the city, neither are they commercial shopping heavens where you can dream of buying your personal slice of material paradise. Politics and money are somewhere out there around their big table, but behind their backs the people of Tornio have built this monument by themselves, for themselves. Isn’t that beautiful?

We need a world where everyone can build these piles of rocks on their own conditions for themselves and for everyone else. Bajo Cero seems to be getting one pile done, as it starts to look inevitable that our album is coming out later this spring. Then we are going to need you that we might call fans. In facebook there seems to be 905 of you at the moment. When the album comes out, we’re going to need you so that together we can build a huge pile of rocks together, for us and for everyone.

And to end this blog, I’d like to play a very confusing mind game: how much would the world have changed, if all the election candidates had used their campaign money for publishing their own albums, instead of politics?

-kili / Bajo Cero

Promo shoot in -25° celsius. Photography is more fun in Finland.

admin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 07:04:17 +0000

Shooting promo-stills in insane coldness with our animal friends Petteri, Kulkuri and Taika.
We have the raw photos but you’ll have to wait a while till we get them photoshopped.

Music video project is starting

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:12:52 +0000

Finnish comics artist Ville Ranta improvising the first scetches for the forthcoming drawing/music video with Bajo Cero.

Reindeers and rainbows

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:56:48 +0000

About a year ago our usually loud orchestra went pretty speechless, as a huge crowd of Finns voted for the party that in foreign magazines gets translated as ”the True Finns”. For sure a big part of the voters just wanted some changes to many real problems, but for many others their choice looked like growing intolerance or even allowance of racism in the public debate. For us damn hippies that support softer values, that triumph of hard values or a closed Finland came as a total surprise. For that I blame Facebook.

When you get to choose your friends and acquaintances, the mass of people whose opinions you see and hear from day to day, it’s easy to keep the illusion that the whole world thinks just the way you do. This issue has been recently approached quite critically by internet activist Eli Pariser in her book Filter Bubble.

Luckily it still seems that quite a bunch of people think pretty much the same way we do. At this moment we have the second round of the presidential election in Finland, and tolerance, humanity and human rights appear to be possibly the biggest themes. After the so called True Finn spring, who would’ve thought that on the second round of these elections the other candidate would be an openly gay man with modern green values.

Many of our friends have surprised us by not just commenting or spamming on Facebook, but by actually taking actions. In our cold distant hometown people organized a support concert for the candidate Haavisto, as he is known to have not quite as much money for campaigning as his competitor that is supported by Big Money. Many brilliant local musicians offered their help in the best way they could, by playing music and having a good time.

That same bright and shiny but terribly cold winter day Bajo Cero was (although we were with those musicians in spirit) in a pretty different kind of a place, crossing borders in our own way. Check the brand new video blog to find out!

-Anna

We’re not dead

admin — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:43:16 +0000

Making music makes you look very silent.

You know writers that end up writing about writing? Or about not writing, or about just trying to write. Well, it’s hard to make a song about making a song. Some people I can say have succeeded in it, but not many. I don’t want to give it a try. I’d rather stick to something else. Not drumming about trying to do percussion.

Get to the point: We’ve been silent as hell, as we’ve been working our behinds off. The more you work on music, the more silent it seems to get. When you work it’s hard to keep on shouting about it.

Silence is good for our guitar hero Okko, as all the recordings are now over, and he’s concentrating on mixing and mastering the stuff the others played. He will soon be turning into wobbling pink mold in the corner of his house, as the solitude and too much mixing start to work on him.

But we have a solution: Releasing a record this spring requires other stuff, not just the music. So we’re taking Okko out of his house today, to go and see a few places for our promotional pictures, and some animals. It’s good to see animals every now and then, in between mixing and mastering. You’ll be getting a few glimpses of this process in a few days if we’re not eaten by those animals.

We’re also in the process of making a music video. Maybe several. But let’s start with one. To be honest I’d like to direct one myself. I have the right car for the great getaway scene (my friend’s old yellow car), and that’s about all I have. A Great start! Next I will need a camera.

-kili

Viva Mexico!

admin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:09:34 +0000

I went to Mexico to my brother´s wedding and it was such an interesting trip. Now I really have a Mexican family there. On my trip I was thinking the differences between social cultures in Finland and Mexico. Like in Spain, in Mexico, the family is really an important thing and when you speak about the family you mean all your grandparents, aunts, cousins and so on. And they meet each other very often and have parties together. During the two weeks the relatives and friends often got together having a good time eating, talking and playing. In Finland the family is important too, but we don’t gather all the relatives together so often, only when we have a very good reason for that, like wedding or funeral.

Then I noticed that maybe we don´t have so big families here in Finland, but we have other groups that can be as close as family. Bajo Cero is one for me – like a family. We are really close to each other and share all the good things and bad things together. And we have also parties! A common goal in life can bring people together. Like in Family there are different personalities for our band, but that´s also the richness for our band. I´m happy about all my families in Finland and Mexico and I think the best thing people can have is to get such wonderful dear people near you. And I think I’ve got the best!

-Elina

we don’t gather all the relatives together so often, only when we have a very good reason for that, like wedding or funeral.

Birth

admin — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:08:27 +0000

Eyes half open I watch as snow whirls off the front wheel of my trusted bicycle. There’s that strange fog of silence floating in the air, that you can only experience when you are out when the bars have just closed, having left home a couple of minutes ago. I decided to smoke for one evening, again, and I can feel it in the cold air grinding my lungs as I gasp and pant thrusting the pedals down. If it only hadn’t snowed tonight. I’ve got to make it there in time.

The wine I had last night slows my body down and it feels like I’m going to short circuit and shut down. The toes and fingers are probably still asleep as I’ve stayed up all night in anticipation, stress and insomnia combined into one hazy state of existence. Somehow I find the fifth gear as I think to myself: ”This is the last time I’m doing this.” And my lungs get another winter-air-whipping.

I force myself into the blinding lights of the hospital hallways and have a hard time finding the right room. Once I do, I become a total passenger. I observe a natural pain that hurts me as well because there is nothing else for me to do but hold a hand. I offer a glass of water, as if it could ever help anyone in this situation. I try to think of something supportive to say, but all that comes out are horrible cliches. Furthermore, I get told to go and stand in the far corner of the room and not have my hands in my pockets because it is irritating to look at.

Once it’s all over, I’m holding my daughter in my arms for the first time. Excitement, happiness, amazement and love, they are some of the obvious things I don’t even have to mention. Actually, the first practical thing that comes to my mind is that if in about 15-20 years time I see any long haired musicians, especially bassists playing in some weird artistic bands, knocking on my door claiming that they’re going out with my daughter, I will have prepared well by joining a moose hunting society and will have bought a couple of rifles that I can have handy.

Giving birth is weird for men, so weird.

-Juhani