When I have some spare time from other obligations I turn to my project of archiving my songs (sometimes also those by selected other people, including such public figures as Lennon - McCartney and some jazz icons) in audio format instead of the dry paper versions. Although I must admit that I hardly will never reach 100% coverage since there are already nearly 400 titles I have have either authored or co-authored since my first Xmas song in 1977 (...add cover songs to that!), there exists a healthy bunch of ready material, over 10 hours worth. Luckily, some of the unarchived songs are either crap or have been recorded in one form or another by my current or former bands so I do not have a zillion songs left. Also, lately the new ones have not been coming as frequently as they used to do... maybe it's the lack of time or I am just plain losing it...
This is a true solo project, with the exception of some guest spots practically all of the instruments have been played by me, I and myself. Now, you can imagine that takes time, especially since I am a freakin' perfectionist but by no means a virtuoso in any instrument. Also, it used to be problematic to get all necessary (?) stuff to fit on 4 tracks, although now that limitation has been relaxed with the digital recording gadgetry... or should I say been replaced with a desire to tweak everything from here to eternity -- the better equipment I have the longer it seems to take to finish off a track, gotta keep honing until perfection!
About the songs, the genre varies quite a lot -- there are pieces from instrumentals to to to steely danish (whatever that would be) to to plain . As a least common denominator I would hope to find some kind of sophistication (although that certainly is not the case in some cases, especially in the older stuff) or at least a slight deviation from the norm. (but you don't get quite what you want...)
1979 - negotiated my parents to buy me an electric organ
1981..1983 - first band -- I replaced the original bass player who died in an unfortunate accident, but the band went down fairly soon
1994..1995 - , a short-lived funk band with a horn section and all
2001..2003 - , funk and rock with the Tomo Big Band horn section, also some gigs with the big band: Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert and some latin stuff conducted by Carlos del Puerto
2002.. - Fusion group
- Oktoplus album -- done, to be mastered
- Lazybonez album -- mastered, to be released
- Jastam Kastam album -- mastered, to be released
- my own stuff (some of which goes up here)
- IHO -- very much in progress
No gigs for the Riitala project in sight -- and I find it hard to believe I would ever gig with the Riitala project... especially because I play most of the instruments myself which would be a little difficult to do live.
However, there was a short-lived live project called . We did manage one gig but after all no one had the time to continue.
ABBA to Zappa.. or rather up to ZZ Top;
Steely Dan, Rush, Deep Purple; Pastorius, Wooten... too many to list.
See :)
