All Dressed Up and Nowhere To Go....

  Yep, the Kaiffari gig is canceled. As the owner has had bad times of late, now he can't even afford to open the bar on a Sunday anymore. The plan was to have the bar open during the Monturock Festival. However he wants us to play in the fall on a Friday.
  I was really looking forward to this gig, and so was the band. We have 5 new songs penciled in and swear every time we play the original songs from the first gig, they sound better than ever. 
   There may be two gigs in Mikkeli in the near future and were waiting to go. Will keep you posted. Anybody out there wants to become a band manger? Booking gigs and keeping a steady supply of beer going*?

Oh Ohhhhh. Summer's coming....

  The Finnish winter is er..... lets just say character building. This last winter it seemed to stretch out for half a year and then add the perpetual darkness of the twilight zone to it, you can understand how exstatic everyone is when the magical summer appears. Because what comes around, comes around. After the darkness, its never ending sunsets and white nights. Absolutely magical and if you have never experienced the midnight sun, you must. You must. 
  Of course everyone wants to take there vacation in the summer and enjoy. And because Finland has some great vacation time (eg., workers start at getting 6 weeks paid vacation a year), it seems like the whole country shuts down because everybody is on vacation! No problem. Bus and train schedules have to be reworked for summer hours. Store opening time have to be reworked. In fact the whole country has to be reworked. Everybody is enjoying the everlasting sunshine (when its not covered by clouds).
  And our band isn't excluded from this. Kari likes to spend his summer vacation up in Lapland, howling with the wolves with Muumi pop. He's gone for a month. Stefan has to work in the salty seas with Capt. Highliner. He's gone. Jouni and Osku both go to their corners of rural Finland and you know I will too. 
So I guess the Wednesday night practice jams will have to be also reworked for summer hours because Elvis has just left the building. There is however a slight problem with this break for me. With my memory at almost full with 55 years of living, patches are being deleted so I can actively remember what I can do at the present state of mind. For example, looking for things I had just a minute ago. Then when the decreasing daylight hours mark the end of the magic time and we get back to reality and relive our musical dreams, I think I may have to relearn everything again.......... What's a Am7sus#F again?...... What do you mean we've played this song before?..............
Oh well, until then, were still going to rock and roll and see what we can get going before the great summer arrives. eg. getting ready for Crazy Kaiffari on June 6th.