Jenni Tarma

The last couple of weeks, due to circumstances I’m about to go into in pointless detail, I have been pretty busy with music stuff, as well as all the various activities that go with it. What this means is that I’ve had to temporarily suspend my complicated schedule of watching Family Guy re-runs on DVR, assembling moderately intricate salads at home, experimenting with various ethnic restaurants in my neighborhood, and going to the movies in the middle of the day.

First things first. I got sick, not once but twice after the family vacation to Mexico, and my time has since then been largely monopolized by various nose-blowing and late-sleeping duties. That’s the boring part. The exciting part is that I also went to the NAMM Show in Anaheim last week, and played a show at Spaceland on Sunday- more on that later. I always approach the NAMM show with a certain trepidation due to its overwhelming size, as well as the inherent point of me being there in the first place: to schmooze as though my life depended on it. In addition, there’s the joy of driving to The Weird Plastic Kingdom that is Anaheim, which you’d think would be enough to push anyone over the edge in itself. Anyway, even though in my mind it’s as though I’ve been invited to watch my own death or something, the NAMM show never ends up being anywhere as bad as I think. In fact, it’s mostly pretty fun since I get to catch up with company reps I don’t see all year (and are nice enough to send me their kick-ass gear to use on tour), and I usually run into friends from out of town while I’m there as well. This year’s visit also ended up being productive, at least in terms of amassing huge quantities of business cards, and generating way more email communication than I am able to deal with on any given day. I finally met with the dude considered to be the Grand Fromage of Artist Liaison at Fender- and about time too, since Fender are the ones who have been providing me with a pass to this thing for the last couple of years. I also ran into fellow Fender artist Ginger Reyes of the Smashing Pumpkins, which was an unexpected and pleasant surprise. I commented on her cute and very recent acquisition (a baby), and we both agreed that it’s better she plays for the Pumpkins and I play for Kylie. Thank God.

 All that aside, I also had an extensive chat with the folks at T-Rex, who kindly supply me with more effects pedals thank I know what to do with. For some unknown reason, these dudes are ridiculously stoked to have me on their team, and have since then posted pictures and a little video interview from our meeting. I’m not going to do anything as lame as posting them here myself, since hearing myself talk about bass pedals is just about the last thing I need more of. But, should you be interested in that sort of thing, you can look up all of it on T-Rex’s website. I believe there’s also a video of me shredding on their Bass Juice pedal on their Facebook page. Ugh. I’m willing to take one for the team every once in a while, if it serves the ultimate purpose of me attaining global, all-encompassing Fame Among Gear Nerds. I think my plan is working, hahahahahaahahah!

This is Scott of EMG. I get to use their pick-ups, and in exchange they get to take a photo of me looking awkward. I win.

In unrelated news, I also went to see Spoon play a secret show at El Cid this week. All you need to know about El Cid is that it’s a way smaller club than what a band of Spoon’s caliber would normally play at, hence the secrecy. I do not have long and explicit history of Spoon fandom, in fact my main mental association with them is a vague memory of having to load out of a Har Mar show in London at a completely unreasonable speed in order to make way for the subsequent Spoon show. For some reason, this annoyed the crap out of me at the time. Anyway, in spite of all this, I was up for the secret show, and bought a ticket online. This operation was pretty demanding in itself since it had to be done at PRECISELY 2pm on the day (when I was already out running errands, of course), or else the show would sell out. After some general confusion with the layout of the website, figuring out where to input my credit card details etc, I was able to secure myself a ticket. My self-congratulatory back-patting was short-lived, however, as almost immediately after that, I was notified that Groovetickets.com had oversold the event, and were reversing my order. To reiterate: these assholes sold me a ticket, then decided that actually, no, we’re going to take that ticket right back. Fuck you, Groovetickets.com! The only redeeming aspect of the situation was that at least my credit card charge was reversed, also very snappily. I fear the main entity that will bear the brunt of my wrath with regards to this debacle is our friend Jonathan, who works at Groovetickets, and was the one who told us about the show in the first place. Oh, and I guess the other main redeeming factor is that my show buddy had a spare ticket, which I was able to use. Spoon are the type of band that you need some brains to enjoy, and clearly I have become smarter in recent years, because I enjoyed them way more than I thought I would. Spoon have interesting lyrics, killer bass tone, squiggly guitar lines, and solid drumming, and seem to be very grateful for the fact that people come to their shows and buy their records. Approval granted, The End.

 Moving right along. My friend Jack Burnside, formerly of Mezzanine Owls, asked me if I would play with him at his show at Spaceland last week. I was all, “Oh sure, why not, that sounds like fun etc”, so that’s what we did. The band is tentatively called Rabbits, and despite extensive online research, it did eventually turn out that there is another band called Rabbits, and we might to change our name. That shit is not going to rain on our parade, however, as both the show, and our beer-addled rehearsal week leading up to it, were tons of fun. I hope we get to do another one soon.

 This night is notable in that Jack Burnside didn't even do his customary pre-show anxiety puke.

Apart from looking totally sweet, this church also has removable floorboards!

Holy crap, I am totally *jazzed* on Mexico right now! Christmas Eve was a fun exploration of the town, including a couple of amazing little churches, a cemetery, a tiny local museum, and best of all, a mystery hunt for pulque, the local booze made from cacti. We made some inquiries and were told that we needed to go find a man called Urbano- he is the sole producer and supplier of pulque in Real De Catorce. In true small town-style, we just asked people on the street, and they pointed us in the direction of his house, where indeed we were able to purchase a liter and a half of pulque for the very reasonable price of 50 pesos. Adventure time! Having said that, the pulque didn’t get consumed till yesterday, as cousin Tero had also brought an excellent bottle of tequila, which we ended up drinking after dinner last night. Being in Mexico has completely over-hauled my appreciation of tequila as a potential choice of beverage. Tequila has (unfairly) acquired a shitty reputation on account of all the douchebags and douchebaguettes that drink it in their awful frat bars. In Mexico, tequila is considered a fine product, to be treated with respect and appreciation, not pounded down before flashing your boobs and puking in the hallway. And, as much as I love my local dive in Echo Park, the tequila here also tastes a lot better than the retch-inducing rubbing alcohol served down the street from my house. No wonder you need all the lime and salt to wash it down. Anyway, the real miracle of Mexican tequila is that because it’s not filthy like everywhere else, it also won’t give you the kind of hangover that makes you consider suicide like you’d normally expect. Hurray!

You can't just hang around the bullring, it's not allowed.

If you pray to a saint and your prayer is answered, you have to make a little painting as a thank you note and take it to the local church. This guy got bit by a rabid dog, survived, and is suitably grateful.

Our travel buddy Jose Luis had the mother of all brainwaves today, and suggested that we should hire some horses and go for a ride after brunch. Lo and behold, for about 10 American dollars each, we were able to secure said horses, a local guide, and set off through the hills of Mexico. I love horse-riding and hadn’t even been near a horse for years, so I was pretty much bouncing off the walls with excitement before we even set off. We ended up spending three hours trekking through some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen. I was so ecstatic I was grinning away to myself like an idiot for the majority of the afternoon, not least of all when we stopped midway to take a look at an indigenous ritual site. We’d gone up an extra 900ft from the town itself (which is already at the lofty altitude of 8000ft- that shit is no joke since EVERYTHING is much more difficult at this altitude), and the site itself was at the top of a mountain with mind-blowing views of the surrounding valleys and towns. The site itself consists of concentric stone circles, each representing new, heightened states of consciousness, which are attained through said rituals, not to mention the consumption of copious amounts of peyote. Some of us took a stroll through the magic circles, but I personally didn’t feel like disrespecting the local witchiness and getting tagged with some weird curse, so I stayed on the outskirts. All in all, pretty much the coolest, most radically different Christmas day I can remember for a long time.

Without this guy, I wouldn't have been able to get up the mountain.

Today the plan is to drive to Zacatecas, where we are booked into a hotel built in an old bullring. Yeah! The drive is about five hours long, and my butt hurts from the horse-riding, so it remains to be seen exactly how painful the drive will be. I’m pretty confident I’ll survive though.

OK, well since I’m not on tour right now, this is reverting back to being the Random Travel Blog rather than the Tour Blog. It’ll be the same thing, but without the shows and accompanying tomfoolery. As an added bonus, no-one needs to hear about how my in-ears are hurting me, or how the raked stage is messing up my knees or whatever. Anyway, I flew to Mexico a couple of days ago to meet up with my cousin Tero and his wife Alejandra in the city of Monterrey. I had a connecting flight in Hermosillo, and on my way to LAX, I realized suddenly that I wasn’t even that sure whether Hermosillo was in Mexico or the US. How embarrassing. Anyway, the mystery was solved pretty quickly as soon as I landed.  Most of the departure screens were broken, and the flight announcements were being made in Spanish exclusively, so I did my best to stay on the ball and listen out for my flight number; apparently I did OK because two hours later I was in Monterrey (this was actually VERY lucky according to Tero, because flights in Mexico routinely make unannounced stopovers at will in random cities). The cousin and I weren’t immediately able to find each other at the airport as nobody seemed to know whether my arrival was domestic or international- the stope-over at frigging Hermosillo was really threatening to screw my day up again. To my credit, I didn’t freak out, but decided that the best thing to do was stay where I was, get myself an over-priced drink at the arrival lounge bar, and sit tight. Lo and behold, Tero found me after a mere twenty boozy minutes. I got a quick tour of Monterrey on the drive from the airpot, and we rounded off a fairly exhausting travel day with a couple of glasses of wine and some sandwiches on the couch, after which I  passed out promptly at, um, 2am. The Christmas Sweater Festival performance with Eskimohunter the previous night had been fun, but also definitely took its toll on my energy levels, and I was pooped. Oh, and not to go off on some irrelevant tangent, but LA Weekly's magnificent Tim Norris came to the Sweat Fest, took photos, and made a slideshow of them here.

The Christmas Sweater Festival is fun, but it was a mistake taking multiple international flights the next day.

My mom and sister Juulia were also heading to Monterrey to meet us, but their journey wasn’t turning out to be quite so hassle-free. The entire East coast of the Us had been buried in snow, so their flight to NYC had been canceled, and they had to deal with some 5am stand-by bullshit the next morning instead. I guess even getting on that particular flight was somewhat of an ordeal as so many people were stranded at Heathrow that they’d had to put up quite a fight to secure the last two seats on a flight to Dallas. Long story short, they also made it to Monterrey, albeit 24 hours later than initially planned. In the meantime, Tero and I had a fun and relaxing day in Monterrey, including some light sight-seeing in the old part of town, and a two-hour massage at his usual spot, the location of which I am banned form revealing, lest it become inundated with newbies. Anyway, my initial impression of South America in general had been quite negative (the Kylie tour ran into all kinds of difficulties here last year), and I was keen to see some unusual stuff from a local’s perspective, and not be all pissed off with it anymore. On that count our day off in Monterrey was totally successful, and I became stoked on South America again, even though Monterrey itself is primarily city devoted to hardcore business and industry, and isn’t considered especially beautiful or idyllic.

My cousin was driving, so I sat in the back seat and took photos out of the window and ate snacks.

The next day we were set to make tracks for Real De Catorce, a tiny mountain village about five hours from Monterrey, so the morning was taken up with various preparations for the trip, including snack purchases, general confusion at the cash machine, and picking up an extra rental car. We’re also planning on making these traditional Finnish Christmas pies somewhere along the way as well, and Juulia had hauled the necessary prune preserves all the way from Finland, so we also had to find the specific pastry needed for this in an Mexican supermarket. I wasn’t at all convinced this was going to work out, but amazingly, the mission was accomplished relatively painlessly. We were on our way to Real De Catorce by 3pm. We listened to The Who in the car (Live At Leeds, for interested parties), I did some reading (The Little Friend, by Donna Tartt), and took some pictures of the neat sunset along the way, like a complete cheeseball tourist. Real De Catorce is a very, VERY small town, and the only way there is via a cobble-stoned two-lane road, which had all kinds of donkeys hanging around it for the last twenty or so kilometers of the journey. The final step of the trip is a two-mile-long tunnel, which isn’t wide enough for more than one car at a time, so there are dudes with walkie-talkies stationed at both ends to let you know when the way is clear. To give you an idea of what this place is like, the movie “The Mexican” (with Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt, whatever) was filmed here, so weirdly, all I could think of the whole way was how the hell they managed to squeeze truckloads of equipment and hundreds of crew through this minuscule tunnel. I pretty much kept that one to myself though.

Tero was all, "oh hey this cactus is great for your skin!", and Juulia touched it, and now she has a rash on her hand.

Our B&B in real De Catorce turned out to be really adorable and very comfortable. It’s run by a husband and wife duo, who hooked us up with a yummy pasta dinner when we arrived, and instructed us to take a hike (in a nice way) to see some ruins up in the mountains, which we did today. Real De Catorce used to be a really happening mining town, and also served as the place where the country’s coins were made. The “Royal Mint”, so to speak. Anyway, the mining boom was all well and fine, but eventually all the precious metals ran out, at which point the people took off, and left some pretty spectacular ghost towns for the likes of us to check out on our vacations. The walk itself was lovely, and I took tons of nature photographs, which nobody needs to look at in massive detail, but it’s all up on my Flickr account for anyone who cares. After three hours of pretty intense uphill/downhill action, everyone was pooped and we headed back into the village for some hot chocolate and cookies. Tonight, another friend of Tero’s is joining us for the festivities, and the plan is for everyone to hit a nice restaurant in town. It feels super weird that tomorrow is Christmas Eve; these kinds of holidays don’t hold too much sway in such remote parts of the world, but that’s totally OK by me as I’m mostly just happy to be away from the tackiness of the Western holiday season.

Standing in the ruins of humanity, with my backpack.Oh yeah, I also plan to keep track of my taco consumption while I’m here. So far: Day 3#, Taco Count: 9.



ok, so clearly i have been totally blowing it with regards to completing my proposed write-up of our trip to Japan. the last week has been busy, not to mention that some other bullshit has been happening that i don't really care to get into right now. i forgot to mention that all photos of our magnificent time in Tokyo can be found here. that's right, my Flickr page! where you can also find a literally bottomless pit of unnecessarily high-def nature photography, as well as many pictures of my shoes, standing on various locations around the world.

anywhoo, show #2 at the UFO club was also rad, if almost unbearably smoky for our cigarette-sensitive, LA-pansified selves. when i say that everyone in Tokyo smokes, i mean that EVERONE in Tokyo smokes. from what i can tell, people aren't even doing it because they enjoy it, but almost purely out of boredom, or to pass the time. feel free to correct me on that. the backstage room was very little, as well as being occupied by about nine bands that particular night; the venue was tiny but sounded great, and all the other bands were killing it too. our friend Masa joined us for some dinner at a nearby restaurant, where, thanks to him, we ended up eating things that we never would have ordered by ourselves. it's not that we're unadventurous or anything, but rather the fact that the menu was exclusively in Japanese, so we were basically pointing at random things and seeing what turned up. anyway, Masa arrived, and made everyone happy by ordering more sake, as well as different types of curdled beans and tofu that i didn't even know existed.

i should mention that it was round about this time in our trip that we started noticing the overwhelming dominance of Jazzmasters and Jaguars with local bands. i think that Eskimohunter John played the ONLY Gibson on every bill that we were on. and it's not like dudes just had crappy, standard-issue axes; most people were rocking really sweet vintage instruments. sigh... if only bands in the US could aspire to anywhere near the same standards of musical excellence and great taste.

the next day saw John and i undertake some light shopping duties in Shibuya before heading to our show at Bullet's. Jason and i had played there with Ulrich Schnauss about six months previously, so we knew what to expect. namely, no shoes allowed in the venue, not to mention the fact that shows there run very late, so you'd best be prepared to play at 4am if that's your posted set time. oh, and another thing- NO DRUMS. many folk in the other bands were concerned about the "no shoes" rule, and how it would affect their ability to switch pedals on and off. well, it seems that everyone managed just fine. this show will forever stick in my mind as the night when both John and Jason fell asleep on various couches throughout the venue; to be honest, it's a goddam miracle we were even able to play, considering the frequency with which various members of the band were falling asleep in public. at some point in the evening we took a stroll out in the neighborhood, which was only down the street from Roppongi. Roppongi is known as an incredibly wealthy area of Tokyo, populated by huge numbers of rich ex-pats and diplomats. it's also known as the seediest part of town, and the place to go should you be looking to pay for sexual favours. all i can say is, our ten-minute walk through the place grossed me out sufficiently that i will not feel the need to return, hopefully ever. woo! way to go, Western folk of Roppongi, for you clearly have the ability to make all of us look bad with no help from me.

my hoodie is from Uniqlo, which is a JAPANESE CLOTHING LABEL. do you see where i'm going with this?

Sunday was our day off, which we used for general adventuring around the city. actually, calling it a "day off" is a bit rich, since we had all basically taken time off from our real lives to be there to begin with, so it was all an extended vacation anyway. we checked out the Prada building, which was amazing in its gloriously innovative design, as well as its ability to tolerate our scruffy, sneakered, picture-taking presence for a whole five minutes. thank you, Prada staff of Tokyo. we also took a big walk in Yoyogi park, strolled around Harajuku, and met up with Jason, who had mysteriously vanished in the early am of the previous night. at some point we also made it to Tokyo Tower, which, in spite of being an obvious tourist trap, does offer some truly spectacular views of the city. we watched the sunset from there, got vertigo looking into the "Lookdown Window" (does exactly what you think it would), and then bailed to go eat sushi.

our last show at Fever was easily the best one of our mini-tour. the venue was great, the sound was fantastic, and the backstage room was DOUBLE RAD. by this point, all the US-based bands had become buddies, so there was a lot of goodwill being expressed after each one came off stage after their set. on top of this, our promoter Manabu was celebrating his birthday that day, so there were some truly touching tributes being delivered from the stage, not to mention some delicious birthday drinks being paid for on our behalf at the bar.

to summarize, i cannot wait to go back to Japan, which hopefully we'll be able to do soon, God (and Manabu) willing. thank you to the bands that we had the privilege to play with. thank you to all our local buddies who took the time out of their busy schedule to hang out with us and show us around. and speaking of local buddies and bands, here is a song by a Japanese shoegaze band that Masa was kind enough to introduce us to.

Pounding - Primrose

see you next time, Tokyo!

oh yeah! contrary to what you might think from checking out this blog recently, a whole bunch of stuff has happened, including a magical week in Tokyo with Eskimohunter. in fact, that week in particular is the reason why i haven't updated a goddam thing recently, that's how action-packed it was. there's literally a zero percent chance that i'll be able to adequately describe the awesome times we had using mere human words. ugh... departure to LAX got off to the usual shitshow of a start, complete with excess baggage issues (not on my part, thankfully), forgotten meds (again, nothing to do with me), and, most spectacularly of all, OUR DRIVER GETTING PULLED OVER AND TICKETED FOR SPEEDING ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT. which isn't exactly the sort of thing you want to be spending time on when you're scheduled to catch a plane to the other side of the world. anyway, long story short, we somehow managed to bundle all four of our selves onto the right plane, and settled in for movies and drinks and the usual bullshit dinner (guaranteed to not leave your system for the next week). i watched 500 Days Of Summer (very cool) and Julie And Julia (also enjoyable, although the main thing i took away from it is that Julia Child must have been really, really annoying).

so, we landed in Tokyo, got our Suica cards, hopped on the train, which, i might add, will sell you a nice can of cold beer if that is what you want, which is more than can be said for the United Sates Of America, and cruised into Tokyo. needless to say, we were all feeling totally gross after the long flight, and more or less delirious navigating the subway system. when John and Jason came to Tokyo last year, one of the main disasters of that trip was that they got separated on the subway, with only Jason being in possession of the address of the hotel, much less a functioning cellphone. on top of that, John had been saddled with an extra guitar, so not only did he not know where he was going, we was trying to get there loaded like some sort of armless camel. his only clue was that it was close to the "tallest building in Tokyo." anyway, as that particular anecdote had reached near-mythical status in the Eskimohunter camp by that point, we were all VERY on the ball with getting off this train, all at the same time, so as to avoid any of us being lost in the foreign-language wilderness. we made it to our apartment without any major hitches, and since all apartments in Tokyo are the size of shoeboxes, we immediately re-arranged the furniture to make it so that we would all fit in there. well, almost fit in there. unrealistic, vague plans to hit the town and grab some drinks were abandoned almost as soon as we parked ourselves on various horizontal surfaces and proceeded to pass out.

the next day had us up at the crack of dawn, and only midly off-schedule i spite of the 11hr time difference. Jason had some science to work on, but the rest of us headed to Asakusa Temple, where we gawked at the beautiful shrines, took photos and acted disdainful to the other tourists. John ate some soup which seemed like it would be tasty, but on closer inspection turned out to consist mostly of tripe, and was thus swiftly abandoned. we re-grouped at the apartment, gathered our mounds of gear, and hauled ourselves to the first show at Earthdom. after various linguistic barriers were over-come during soundcheck, we had some dinner and watched the other bands- our tour buddies Vinyl Screen Image and Ceremony were both really impressive, and the club had a sweet backstage bar/hang-out for everyone to have drinks and get acquainted. some guy at the show had even brought a polar-bear piggy bank that he wanted us all to sign, and Jason was given some "welcome to Japan" origami too. see photo evidence below:

in other news, i am currently super tired, and just decided to make the historic Japan Blog Post a multi-installment affair. which means i'll get back to this tomorrow, and will now watch the Daily Show instead. good night!