Wigwam - guestbook

Name :	EsaJii
Message :	The old joke goes that if you can remember the 60s, you were not doing it right and had no fun. Some of us weren't quite old enough. People have a reaction to different times and environments. I don't regret my childhood, and we certainly had as much fun as any kids, but Finland in the 50s was a boring place. We collected stamps, it was a cheap hobby, after the wars. The anti-American sentiment was all over the place in the 60s, and much of it was justified, as it is now. But I hope we are a tiny bit smarter now.
	23/02/08 21:56

Message :	hitto, että edelleen ei THE WHO:ta pysty kuuntelemaan sydämellä sen townsendin pedo-homman jälkeen. vittu että näitä mulkkuja on olemassa. Pakko näistä on kirjoittaa.
	23/02/08 21:27

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	I was ten years old in 1968. That summer my family went through Europe in our little car (a Fiat 500, to be exact). Amsterdam was full of young people who had obviously only substituted one set of rigid rules for another (including the dress code). Paris was downright life- threatening. Not a lot of peace and love going on there so we stayed on the outskirts. The next ten years in Denmark I'd rather forget, except for "Exotic Birds and Fruit" by Procol Harum and, particularly, finding a copy of "Milky Way Moses" at the library in Glostrup. "Get my kicks like an octopus donkey!" Not to mention Jukka Tolonen's attempt to "twist his blues away". The growing menace of "How to start a Day". I sat there with the headphones on and laughed so much the librarians told me to either shut it or get out. I never got to Finland until 1975. Still remember the occasion. We were in Happaranda and couldn't get a tyre mended because it was Sundays and all the workshops were closed. So we entered Finnish territory. At the first filling station we saw a group of young Finnish lads sitting on the ground wearing caps with ridiculously large peaks the colours of the Finnish flag, turned up. They had no problem working on a Sunday, and when we asked what it would cost they looked as though they were really taking us for a ride and said: "Five Swedish kronor", which I suppose would be about three Euro today. We thought: "Great place!"
	23/02/08 16:45

Name :	EsaJii
Home page :	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigwam
Message :	Yes, we know all about Indians now, I actually know the most about Navajos, from reading Hillerman books. I must point out that the picture on the Tramdriver single is tipi, I think a sketch by Jim. There is a cartoon poster somewhere of the band sitting in a tipi. A sort of Outside Indian was Tolonen. I think he brought his own pipe. The tipi can be thought of as a club, the band's inside ring. Sorry about your Danish revolution, Claes. Now I must ask how old are you?
	23/02/08 15:23

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Current favourite song :	The Tanskalainens: Paint my Tipi Purple
Message :	EsaJii, thanks for the further explanation. I do have Mikko's book but there is a slight problem with reading it unless you're Finnish. All the more great to see essential parts of it explained. May I add that the hippie movement developed completely different from one country to another. The US was involved in a horrible war in Vietnam, enlisting young men and forcing them to go there as soldiers and participate in atrocious war crimes. Several other European countries still had colonies in the so-called Third World. In other words, there was a lot of reasons to be anti-estasblishment and I certainly don't disagree with that. In England it was entirely different, with the hippie movement being kind of nostalgic and romantic, harking back to the days of Robin Hood, merry troubadours and so on. Again, I'm not knocking it, in fact I love it. My own background, however, is Danish and there it was all a very bad, monochrome, Marxist joke, a kind of downscaled version of the situation in France and Germany without the social excuse. How things looked in Finland I'm not sure, but if the Finnish equivalent of the hot dog is fish baked into a loaf of rye bread there is no limit to what the hippie movement might have been like. There is, indeed, a tough, militaristic streak to the country. Then again, some people claim that without that the country would never have had a rock scene, only balalaika ensembles. Let's not get into that discussion, though. Jim Pembroke's might have called himself a hippie. In my humble and narrow-mindedly Danish definition, he is far too hard-working, honest, flat broke, humble, self-mocking, intelligent and above all FUNNY to be anything of the kind.
	23/02/08 12:40

Name :	Jusu, Vaasa
Message :	EsaJii, that's all well and good, but a "wigwam" is not a tent: http://www.nativetech.org/wigwam/construction.html Also, I think Mikko's book makes it clear that Nikamo, Huldén and Groundstroem were all schoolmates, whereas Ronnie Österberg had dropped out of school at the earliest opportunity to travel Europe and support himself as a professional drummer.
	23/02/08 04:43

Name :	EsaJii
Home page :	http://www.ostokset.fi/pd/552e8385/
Message :	intiaaniteltta, see above
	23/02/08 03:48

Name :	EsaJii
Message :	The name story is on page 77 of Mikko's book. Jim had a list of names on a sheet of paper and had to explain Wigwam to Nikke. Buy the book to find the rest. I had a tipi from cloth as a kid, from the store, with cowboys and indians printed on it. We set it up in the summer home yard. No Finnish speaker kid of the 60s knew the word Wigwam, I called mine intiaaniteltta, Indian tent. Dictionaries speak of intiaanimaja or some such thing. So we can be fairly sure it came from Jim's list. We are not making fun of Indians here. In the late 60s, I was 15 in '69 (saw Wigwam in 70), many of us really had some idea that a cool new world was coming, with brotherly love. We were so anti establishment, it was the cool thing. Possibly only Frank Zappa realized it was a fad (he was mature and realistic), but he liked to hang out with freaks anyway. The thinking back then went way past illicit substances, it seemed like a real world wide mood. I even thought that John and Yoko were cool. You had to be there. But then we graduated and got jobs...like Jim explained: Get yer hair cut, get crew cut, get a suit Get a white shirt, get a job, be respectable Get a good shave, get a shoe line, manicure Elocution lessons and be acceptable
	23/02/08 03:41

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	Skigge Boy, your remark would be very relevant indeed if your perception of the joke had been correct. Luckily, it isn't. Check out the current discussion and you will see that it wasn't the Native Americans I was making fun of, it was a certain kind of misunderstood idea about them.
	23/02/08 00:13

Name :	Skiigge Böy
Message :	Foresight to be hippies..? I know you meant that as a joke, but making fun of Native Americans, as they like to be called, isn't something I find very funny. Nice topics though, please just keep the racial humour out and we'll all have a good time.
	22/02/08 23:29

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	I just thought that if the American Indians can have the foresight to be hippies centuries before everyone else, surely a group of Finnish hippies must be able to name themselves after a Bob Dylan song that hasn't yet been written. Of course, you will note that I suggested the Dylan connection before EsaJii informed us of the Red Indian theme. Whoever said that time travel was impossible?
	22/02/08 19:00

Name :	Jusu, Vaasa
Message :	The Dylan track called "Wigwam" was on his album "Self Portrait" which came out in 1970.
	22/02/08 18:04

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	EsaJii, in that case a more obvious name would have been Tipi, since it even rhymes with hippie - well, kind of.
	22/02/08 17:41

Name :	EsaJii
Message :	Now you had to ask. It is actually in Mikko's book. I think there was agreement on it being in the hippie communal spirit of the times. See the cover of the Tramdriver single. Search under pictures.
	22/02/08 17:09

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Current favourite song :	Tasavallan Presidentti: Dance
Message :	Talking about band names, here is a banal question that I suppose I ought to know the answer to (but I don't): Who came up with the name Wigwam, and why? Something to do with a Bob Dylan song of the same name, perhaps?
	22/02/08 14:46

Name :	k.p.tikka-ri, saimaan kaupunki
Current favourite song :	ebba grön : staten ock kapitalet
Message :	Some other very funny but great rock-languages: Tanska: Burnin Red Ivanhoe.... Saksa: Witthuser & Westrupp.... Venäjä: Grazhdanskaya Oborona.... Puola: Niemen.... Ruotsi: Ebba Grön.... Viro: Tönis Mägi.... Tsekki: Plastic People of the Universe.... Kobai: Magma.... etcetcetc
	22/02/08 10:35

Name :	TimoV, Tampere
Message :	Sorry Tanskalainen, don't have that disc, but the list of songs looks like it has the whole Lambertland as bonus. Have some Walhalla releases on my shelf and the sound quality on those ones isn't the best.
	20/02/08 16:40

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	Timo V, have you got the disc and if you do what can you tell us about it? Tracks, sound quality etc.
	20/02/08 14:57

Name :	TimoV, Tampere
Message :	The Tasavallan Presidentti "second album" with bonus tracks is released by Walhalla label, which is very well known to be a bit of a bootleg label.
	20/02/08 13:34

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	EsaJii, nice additional info there on Nikamo. He seems to have had some interesting ideas but perhaps needed time to develop them more. The demand for a West Coast sound can't have come from Pembroke who never liked that genre. "It sounded all out of tune to me," he says in my interview from 1983, and I think that is a pretty precise description though there are exceptions.
	20/02/08 12:59

Name :	EsaJii
Message :	Tanska, it does seem like Nikke had very little to play live or on record. But I think he did his job OK. I read your Devil analysis. Maybe it was the hippie shit influencing them. I have heard the guitar sound described as West Coast. Nikke played when asked and it was as you say mostly rhythm. I checked on Nikke with a friend. He did go to a Swedish language school, possibly the same school as Ronnie. School had compulsory religion and for many years Nikke was a religion teacher in Swedish speaking schools with kids that were Russian Orthodox. You traveled from school to school to cover the area.
	20/02/08 03:29

Name :	EsaJii
Message :	Jouko, thanks for the input. Go Nikamo! I think Nikke may have been a Swedish speaker, as his work with the orthodox church indicated something like that. He is on p.68 of Mikko's book. Of course, the interview bit is in Finnish. http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikke_Nikamo http://www.globalmusic.fi/immigres/venajan_federaatio/Vladimir_Nikamo.html
	18/02/08 23:53

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	Jouko, what you say is very true but only as a general rule. Things can also go the other way around. I once spoke to Glen Colson who was associated with Charisma Records in the early 70s. He told me something that I think is pretty unknown (though it may be in Mikko's book). When Jim had the "Wicked Ivory" LP released by Charisma it was only because the company were enjoying huge success with Bo Hansson's "Lord of the Rings" LP and were looking for some other Scandinavian artist to sign. Of course, Pembroke isn't Scandinavian and neither are the Finnish players on the record - strictly speaking (Nordic yes, Scandinavian no - or so I learned in school and I think it makes sense). But as the old Danish saying goes: in the dark all cats look grey. Talking about the elusive Mr O'Riley he himself told me once he had gone into a big record store in New York and looked for his LP. They were happy to tell him they had already sold half of their stock and there was now 1 album left! Anyway, I got to go polish my spade. Terveisin, the Tanskalainen
	18/02/08 11:50

Name :	Jouko, Kerava
Message :	Claes: Yes, we are touching on quite a subject here. There was a kind of inbuilt imperialism in "rock" - that is, if you didn't sound as expected by the big market, you were excluded by the marketeers. This meant that e.g. Nordic bands with weird accents and inscrutable musical influences could not expect an international career - unless they had an Englishman or an American as a frontman and conformed to the expected scales. European bands were all ethnic before "ethnic" became hip in the 1980's. Wigwam was lucky indeed to find Jim, and vice versa. He might or might not have made it big in his native London, but other geniuses like Gustavson and Pohjola might never had stood a chance without Jim's English frontmanship to validate them. Strange, but true.
	18/02/08 03:17

Name :	the Tanskalainen
Message :	Ilkka, the disc is available from jukeboxshop.net, which is a Finnish company. I've also seen it on Ariman's list. It is listed with Amazon US, as well, and has one superb review. Jouko, there are sometimes aspects of Finnish rock which I don't grasp. Perhaps that is the case with Nikamo's solos - there could well be a tradition there that I don't know of and it's very relevant of you to point that out. At the same time, part of the idea of me doing these analysis is to show Finnish fans how the outside world sometimes perceive Finnish music - why some things go down well abroad and others not so well, though the quality is top notch. I think all nations have a unique musical style that can sometimes be difficult to grasp for others. It was, for instance, a problem for the Danish group Gasolin' (apart from the fact that they didn't play very well, wrote shitty lyrics in English and the singer had a terrible accent). The Finnvox gear looks perfect, so I wonder even more now about the dull drum sound.
	18/02/08 01:32