Jake Starr's Monthly Harangue

November 2002:
How I, a Dumb American, Discovered Finland!

Hi, even though this is my second monthly column for La Bruta Rockzine, I should properly introduce myself. My name is Jake Starr and I'm the singer in the rock-n-roll band Adam West. I also am the president of Fandango Records based in Washington, D.C. Anybody that knows me knows that I love what I like and I hate what I mildly dislike, if that makes any sense. And when I hate something, I tend to go on and on about it ad nauseum. That is why I have named this column "Jake Starr's Monthly Harangue."

This month, I want to talk about the lovely country of Finland. I also want to talk about why most Americans are too stupid to even know how to spell Finland let alone anything about its culture. I'll begin with myself as a child.

When I was in school, I really loved geography and I made an effort to memorize the capital cities of every country around the world. When I was 8 years old, I could tell you where Finland was and that the capital was Helsinki, but that was about it. At 8 years old, I was still more informed than 99% of all Americans today. See, Americans believe there is the United States of America and all the other countries of the world are just places to visit on vacation. We have been raised to be so nationalistic, intolerant, and just plain ignorant about the rest of the world. And that's come to bite us in the ass right now with all this terrorist bullshit. Enough about all that...

My father took me to Lake Placid in 1980 for the Winter Olympic Games. My father has always been an ice hockey fan and we were both very excited to see some hockey. In one game we saw, Finland was one of the teams. Immediately, I noticed the blue and white uniforms but it wasn't until I heard the crowd chanting "SUOMI" over and over again that I got really excited. I asked my father what Suomi meant and he told me that it means Finland in Finnish. That struck me so oddly cuz I couldn't figure out why the word "Suomi" looked so different to the word "Finland." My first lesson in foreign languages, I guess. In my house, sometimes Yiddish or Russian was spoken but it didn't click to me that they were other langauges. I just thought that was the way certain things were said.

Moving on to my high school years, I had a friend who's last name was Pekkanen. He told me his family was originally from Finland. We were both into science fiction and fantasy books and games and he had discovered the famous Finnish epic saga, The Kalavela. So we obtained copies and read it. It was difficult to read as a teenager, but I thought it was cool. When we started to investigate the Finnish language, we were stunned at how starnge it looks to an English speaker. I mean, Finnish has more umlauts ( ä,ö ) and "k's" in each word that anything I'd ever seen! It looks and reads like no other language I know of, except maybe Hungarian. Maybe there is a connection between the two.

Next up was my first year of college when a friend of mine played me Motley Crue and Hanoi Rocks for the first time. When I found out Hanoi Rocks were from Finland, they became 100% cooler in my eyes. Then I realized that maybe Finland could be a cool place to visit. Years later, Bad Afro Records in Denmark introduced me to a band called The Flaming Sideburns who blew me outta the water! From them, I found Thee Ultra Bimboos, Sweatmaster, Larry and the Lefthanded, and more. Now I've got the Trassels "Out of My Mind" blasting in my car to and from work every day. Shit man, Finland fucking rocks!

I was more than thrilled when Sami from Bad Attitude Records in Tampere asked my band Adam West to do a 7" single. Our first release in Finland all these years later from my first discovery of Suomi... what a fitting conclusion!

And as you read this, I will be visiting Finland for the first time on tour with the Hellacopters this November. What a better way to see a rocking country than touring with a rock-n-roll band? So like that crowd chanted at the Olympics 22 years ago, so will I chant at every concert, "SUOMI... SUOMI... SUOMI!"