Negative – 17-12-2008

By: Nina Mende

Jonne: Hey, how are you?
Me: I’m fine thanks. And you?
Jonne: Tired. I just got up one and a half hours ago! (checking the clock and confirming) yes, one and a half hours now.
Me: How was the tour so far?
Larry: great.
Jonne: yes, really great.
Me: Are any shows sold out?
Larry: I don’t know but I don’t think so.
Jonne: Not sold out but quite crowded. It’s really nice to see all these people here. With all the changes in the band…
Me: yeah, you had Tuomas for a while, like at Provinssirock and so on…
Jonne: oh, yeah. Gary.
Me: why is he not here anymore?
Jonne: Ah no, it didn’t fit. It was something we needed to try, but it didn’t feel like Negative. We all have been around each other for so long, I think it was no option. The festival season was a nice time to try something like this. We were in the studio while Sir Christus had to leave the band and it was since the first album that we had a second guitarist. And Larry had a lot of stress for the Karma Killer album. We were worried how to handle the Karma Killer tour, we tried it and now we are wiser.

*here I explained who we (Tempelores) are and blaaahh*

Me: What’s your favorite character of the Sesame Street?
Jonne: Of what?
Larry having a blank in his face…
Me: The Sesame Street. You know the little kids TV show with Oscar, cookie monster…
Jonne: Does this exist in Finland (asking everybody if anyone knows Sesame Street. Nobody did…) mhh. Don’t know it. I don’t watch much TV.
Me: even not as a kid?
Jonne: I watch a lot of movies and DVDs.
Me: So what was the last movie you watched then?
Jonne: Some animation movie from Disney. There was an Elephant.
Me: Madagascar?
Jonne: Yeah, Madagascar…
Me: With the penguins?
Jonne: Noooo, no penguins. There was an elephant who found a flower. He realized that there is a own world on the flower with real people. He is the god of this world and has to bring the flower to a save place.
Larry: Narnia??
Me and Jonne: No, not Narnia, Narnia is a real movie. This one was a cartoon.
Jonne: from Disney.
Larry talking on about Narnia..
Me: Is it a good movie? I haven’t watched it yet.
Larry: yes, I liked it.
Jonne: yeah, it’s good. But this was a cartoon.
(ok, I now found out what movie Jonne meant. Meanwhile I have gotten it myself and watched it. An amazing movie: Horton hears a Who! You should watch it, pretty movie)
Jonne: oh, and Prison Break I watched.

Me: ok. Let’s continue. I watched your DVD. Most of the music videos are shot in Germany as far as I could tell.
Jonne: yes.
Me: why?
Jonne: Because I think the era where most things happened were Japan, Russia and here. And especially in Germany we have a strong fan base…
Me: On the DVD there are also fan pictures and videos. Who picked them.
Larry and Jonne pointing at the entire band.
Me: I bet you got thousands of it. And you watched them all?
*nodding to the first part*
Larry and Jonne: there was a sort of committee pre-selecting them and then we watched them. Mostly Antti did. It was sooooo much.
Jonne: I was close to get a nervous breakdown with the DVD that’s why we pushed it all over to Antti.
Larry: Yeah, Antti did it.
Jonne: Antti was totally excited about the DVD.
Jonne, me and Larry talking a little more about the DVD ….
Larry: The around the world part is great…
Me: …. The “Around the World” part is not really an around the world part but showing you from the beginning stages. There are videos from way back when.
Jonne: Yeah, it is a really good thing for people who don’t know much about us. They can watch this and get an idea of what we all have gone through. A good history lesson. We started as a trio and played Nirvana, I played guitar…. ….. I still feel like there is a lot to do but I already did a lot …. …. We are still young and I have big plans for the future…
Us talking about our ages and the past, lost count in years and at what age we stopped aging …. Talking about the big rockstars wanting to stay forever young
Jonne: … yeah, like the old dinosaurs in the rock business getting plastic surgery to look young…
Me: are you gonna do that?
Jonne staring at me: well, maybe. Who knows… Deep inside I am still young, I feel like 19.

Me: On the new album, I saw that you play strings or so. At least that’s what it says in the booklet. That you play them. You and Larry it was I think.
They stared at me: We did what?
Me: well, the album says…
Larry: oh. No. We didn’t play it. We arranged it and …
Jonne: … we made the melodies.
Larry: one cello and three violins
Jonne: Actually Snack wrote the notes and we together like planned it. We have seen it all the time during the past albums. You can arrange everything on the soundboard. Just pushing buttons. You know? But we wanted to do something like that ourselves.
Me: Ah, ok. Now I understand.
Jonne: We did it on Anorectic. We had a guy from Helsinki playing cello and so on. And we realized it’s quite simple once you know how it works.

Me: Yeah. I see. So you played one show in Mexico with London After Midnight. How did that happen and how was it?
Jonne: Yeah. It was interesting. Our manager Tommi arranged it.
Me: Yeah. But London After Midnight and you…
Jonne: Yeah, I know. It was a weird combination. But it was interesting and great. While we were doing our show people shouted “London, London, London” and they were throwing things. But in the end it turned upside down. Five songs or six songs it took and then we got them. It was quite interesting. It was the most untypical crowd for us. But it was great. We have never been in that kind of situation.
Larry: Yeah, and they threw things at us.
Here we all started brainstorming what people can throw on stage: Bottles, shoes, toilet paper, cups… everything….
Jonne: No bras or stuff like they usually do here. We were like “Fuck off” and kept on going. It was a victory. And in the end when we always bow altogether I turned around and showed them my ass.
Jonne got up here to demonstrate how he did it… he didn’t pull his pants down all the way. But let me tell you: they were already down quite far….

Larry: The stage was lower and the audience was up higher than us.
Me: oh, so they threw stuff because they were sure they hit.
All laughing and nodding.
Jonne laughing: yeah, probably.Like “hey, we can’t miss here so let’s throw stuff” It was fun
Me laughing: Funny. So I should try that.
All of us laughing again.

Me: Do you plan on going back to America? Mexico? USA?
Jonne: yeah, definitely. We plan on going to Brazil, Chile, Peru, Argentina . Let’s see. No one really decided yet. So we’ll see. First we are here. We will start recording some of the new stuff soon. It’s gonna probably start next spring.
Me: The recording?
Jonne: Yes, the release will be sometime in fall.
Me: That’s fast.
Jonne: Yeah but we have lots of new stuff.
Me: what about holiday?
Larry: The tour has been really creative. We have lots of new stuff.
Jonne: A new chapter. I have been working so hard before the tour. I had insomnia. I had the feeling that a day has not enough hours. My hands were shaking. And stuff. But it was cool, it made me feel alive. But this tour is also great. We get so much power from the audience. And I am sucking the energy from them so that I can use it when I am back in Finland.
Me: Looking forward to Helldone?
Jonne: Yes.
We got lost blabbering about Helldone: 4 days in Helsinki now, the tour, 2006, Tavastia and so on….
Me: We once had the funny idea of having a concert in the toilet… (don’t know how we ended up talking about that..)
Jonne: We do that in the bathroom. I sing under the shower.
Me: Your poor neighbors.
Jonne: Yes, my neighbors. They hate me.
Me: What places in Tampere would you recommend besides Klubi and Amadeus?
Jonne: Romantic restaurants.
Me: for your fans?
Jonne laughing: yeah. Well no. Where would you like to go?
Me: I don’t know…
Jonne: There are some cool places.
Us getting off topic by chatting about Amadeus, the fans and the musicians and so on…
Larry: It’s always so crowded. But it was a good bar once…
Jonne: Yeah, that’s why I don’t go there anymore….
Blabbering about other places. Partially in Finnish. They began recommending old fashion dance places for old people, romantic restaurants and discos but couldn’t really explain where they were at….

Me (trying hard to get back to the interview): What character in the Circus would you be?
Larry laying on the table laughing.
Jonne trying to concentrate: The guy who gets pies thrown into his face… Or the balancing guy (demonstrating this as well)
Larry is still laughing.
Me: Did you ever have vocal coaching?
Jonne: Yes we did. Larry ..
Larry is distracting Jonne with laughing
Jonne: While we were recording War Of Love I had some… Larry recommended it for me…
Me: What did you do for living before being successful with Negative…
Jonne: what? I can’t imagine…
Me: No, what DID you do?
Jonne: Oh,… I forgot.
Larry: I didn’t have a life before that…
Me: And what happened in the hotel in Seinäjoki?
Larry: Well, it was a snowball effect. Jay held the TV because almost fell down. Jonne pushed it then…
Jonne demonstrating it all….
Jonne: and suddenly there was water from the toilet all over… and the doors were used for surfing…
Me: You guys are great
We are all laughing
Jonne: We are lucky that we didn’t drink the water from the toilet.

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