31st January Lepakko (Helsinki)

December 1996. The phone rings. I answer.
'Hello'.
It's Wallu Valpio.
'I told you I'd get a gig for you, and I did.'

I swallow. Now we'd actually have to scrape together many enough songs decent enough to make a set; I'd have to finish all lyrics, design and print posters and flyers; the band would have to rehearse, and rehearse some more. I kind of thought we'd just play at the rehearsal place forever, recording demos. I'm excited, though.

The poster is the easiest of all the things that the gig requires; the first Mummypowder logo gets created along with a drawing of animals with a psychotic look on their face, all heading to our gig to see us play. We spread some posters around town, excited as we are about the gig.

The gig is at Lepakko, which is convenient, as our rehearsal place is there also - we'd only have to carry the stuff outside and then inside through another door. The soundcheck is just like everyone always says - soundmen, in general, aren't friendly people, when you're doing your first gigs and he has to tell everyone what to do, where to plug that guitar, how to sing in the mic.

After the soundcheck we go to the bass player's girlfriend's flat and get drunk. Not totally pissed out of our heads, just drunk enough to cope the excitement of the first gig. When we go to Lepakko, we are greeted with the angry face of the soundman, who tells us we should have been there earlier.

We play the gig. We're on first, of course; other bands playing this night are Thee Ultra Bimboos, Flaming Sideburns and The Duplo - whose frontman Aleksi has now been Mummypowder's guitar player for a few months. Our gear is, in a word, crap; Aleksi's guitar leads have, to this day, rarely worked perfectly through a set, neither with The Duplo or us; our drummer, Janne Nissilä, didn't have drumsticks or cymbals that weren't broken to start with; Tero's bass starts feedbacking the moment he stops playing; my guitar, good though it is, sometimes just cuts out.

The gig goes well. It's not by any means groundbreaking, but people tell us we have great songs. (No word about playing.) Whether Aleksi plays half of the gig lying on his back like all the other gigs he's ever done, I can't remember.

– Janne Lehtinen