Little
Mary Mixup
This article originally appeared in NFH #22 in
the winter of 1992.
There's a tendency to
judge all-girl bands by a different yardstick than all-male or mixed gender bands. I'm not
sure exactly why that is; it's probably largely because even today there aren't that many
all-girl groups so the novelty aspect is worth something, but I think that when there's no
men in the band the feminine touch changes things in a way that may not be easy to
describe but results in something unique that can be felt in the music.
I'm not sure why I
like Little Mary Mixup as much as I do. They don't play punk rock influenced music fueled
by distorted guitars, which is the sort of thing I usually go for. In fact, it would be
hard to pin any one tag to the music on the debut lp by this Finnish band...there are some
power pop tracks, some ballads, some up-beat country western songs and even a Tex-Mex
track about Joe "King" Carrasco that'd he'd have been proud to write himself.
They've been described as "the Shangri-Las thrown to the Texas desert" or
"Bangles on acid", and I'd guess there's some truth to either of them. They
certainly can match harmonies with the Bangles, though not having zillions of dollars to
spend on their record means that it has a rougher, more live feel to it. Which is fine by
me...it feels real that way, and it's better that way. But the Bangles don't exhibit half
the versatility of this outfit.
One of the great
things about their lp Sway is that it's so upbeat; you can sense the band having a
blast making every song. The rollicking country track "I Was A Truckdriver's
Wife" makes me want to laugh every time I hear it just thinking of the incongruity of
one of these Finnish gals being latched onto a pot-bellied, gear jamming redneck. Then
there's "E.S.P.E." (I have no idea what the significance of the title is), which
starts with a slurred introduction: "I always wanted to talk to you, but I had no
courage!".
But aside from the
humor there's also some first rate power pop tracks here, like "Breakaway" or
"Pretty Lies", both of which have a kind of 60s innocence that's rare enough
these days, and especially so when it sounds as uncontrived as this music does.
I got a long letter
in response to my questions from bass player Reija Nieminen (she's a doctor at the
Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki according to her letterhead!). She says that
the band formed in 1986 "by four friends fascinated not so much about forming a BAND,
but rather about learning to play together and most of all, producing music of their own.
And having fun and staying friends nevertheless."
"At that time
"female music" and all-girl bands were the issue of the day in Finland, and this
undoubtedly was one of the reasons why the band was dragged on stage even before it had
got a proper name. So, maybe luckily, LMM was given a chance to show what it had got - and
hadn't - at a very early point."
On the way home from
that gig the band decided that a name was going to be important, and Reija, a
self-described "hard-boiled comic enthusiast", suggested Little Mary Mixup,
chosen from an obscure daily comic strip from New York papers of the 1920's. Armed with
this moniker, the band played over 40 gigs that first year, which is quite a lot for a new
band. "None of us ever dreamed about big success when we started. There was hardly
any time for that, either, since we were on a gig before being able to play more than 5
songs!"
"Our first gigs
were received with mixed reactions: there was wide debate on girls making music going on
(and on) and the approaches to the topic were pretty sharply for or against. We certainly
were no professionals, so those against took us as proof that women can't play. Those who
were for saw in us such "innocence", "magic", and "attractive
shyness" that we sometimes wondered if it was really us they were talking about...we
simply though we were quite clumsy at that point in our career."
"It felt bad to
get this kind of criticism, which, as a matter of fact, is no criticism at all. It was
great to get positive attention, but there was the other side of the coin; almost no one
talked about the MUSIC; what they actually were talking about was the WOMEN. It's very
hard to answer questions like "What is it like to be a woman musician" or
"how is it different from being a man musician" since we have been female all
our lives and cannot reliably compare to anything else. People have been more emotional
than they would have been if we were male: either they have been more hostile or a little
overestimating or just more curious, but we think these are things that the audience and
press should perhaps consider. We try to concentrate on music. Luckily for us there are
also individuals who genuinely seem to love or hate us for what or how we play. That makes
playing interesting."
Now things have
changed a bit. "It's pretty good to be a girl group in Finland these days. The
overexcitement has passed and it's easier to get to be taken just as a band. The
discussion made some good, too: there are more women in the rock business. It's almost
normal to be female."
"Whether people
in the business will take you seriously or not depends on how much you are willing to
work, naturally. A woman, perhaps, has to work harder and prove that she is more serious
about what she is doing. This isn't, for example, a question that you would ask a male
musician. There are also many practical questions that somehow never arise if one is a
male musician. You have to convince managers and record companies that you, for example,
aren't going to quit because of "personal reasons", or that you can handle your
child caring, etc. But then, that's how it is in every line of life. Cruel world, ain't
it?"
Little Mary Mixup
haven't gone into the Finnish mainstream music industry (though I suspect they could if
they wanted to and were willing to make a few concessions that would ruin them) because
they've consciously decided that they want to maintain the freedom to make their own
choices about how to do things. So happily they haven't had to deal with all these
prejudices as much as they otherwise might have to.
They had numerous
lineup shuffles in the next couple of years after that first gig; in fact guitar player
Kikke Heikkinen is the only original member. Original singer Anne Perttula left to go back
to school in the fall of 1987 and in early 1989 drummer Tarja Lotvonen also dropped out to
concentrate on school. They were replaced by present members Riita Talasniemi and Kaarina
Kilpio. Even earlier Reija had replaced Tiina Tenhunen as bass player.
Twenty five year old
Kikke has been playing guitar since she was a little girl and has been writing songs since
she was a teenager. She also plays piano, and Reija says she "knows which way to hold
a flute and saxophone". Kikke writes most of the music to the songs. According to
Reija "she has also been badly affected by Rickie Lee Jones and Lou Reed, but is
still able to listen to rougher music like the Stray Cats, Giant Sand, Scraping Foetus,
and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, etc."
Singer Ritta's early
influences come from "the golden punk days", and these days she listens to Steve
Earle, the Beat Farmers, the Replacements, the Saints and the Long Ryders. It was she who
wrote the song "I Was A Truckdriver's Wife", and Reija credits her with being
the most active member of the band in following up to date music.
Drummer Kaarina is a
real muso...she studies music theory and history at her university and she also plays
piano and flute. Among rock and roll influences she credits REM and the Hoodoo Gurus, but
she also likes Latin and African drum music and Reija says that her tastes and knowledge
are "quite wide and far from the average".
Reija herself is the
oldest member of the band at 31 and has been playing bass since she was 16. She has
co-managed her own little record company called Pygmi and is co-editor of a comic fanzine
called Suuri Kurpitsa (Great Pumpkin), and she writes most of Little Mary Mixup's
lyrics.
It's quite an unusual
mix of people, and the resulting music is also quite unusual. There's no one obvious
influence to tag them with, and that's as it should be, since Reija says there is no
particular band they would want to sound like, though there are a lot of bands that they
like to listen to. Early on they were often compared to a Finnish (male) band called
22-Pistepirkko...LMM rehearsed in their house and used their equipment for two years, and
though Reija says that she didn't think they could copy 22-Pistepirkko if they wanted to
that some of their sound may have been influenced by them, and she hopes that Little Mary
Mixup have some of the good attitude that they have.
Although they have
done a few gigs in arenas and larger outdoor shows, Reija says that most of their gigs are
in smaller clubs and they like those better: "We like to play close to the audience
and close to the earth." They normally play at relatively low volume and haven't
developed any great stage show..."we sort of trust Riitta to handle the spectacular
side of the job."
Although they work
with a management company and have had some fairly formal tours where they stayed at
hotels and traveled with their own bus, more often they do they standard thing of jumping
on a train carrying their instruments, borrow the rest of the gear from other bands and
sleep on someone's floor. The economic situation in Finland is pretty bleak these days,
and it has cut into everyone's chance to work, and especially to get paid for it. But for
bands that have already learned to operate on a small scale it's not so bad. In Finland
there's now an organization of independent publishers and clubs that make it easier to
arrange tours, and the smallness of the country adds to the close feeling among bands. The
members of Little Mary Mixup who sing have done backing vocals for other bands, and
there's always help with traveling, accommodations and equipment. Reija finds the
atmosphere to be friendly and easy.
As for the future:
"Recently we have made only a few gigs. There have been all kinds of plans and
promises for the future, but at the moment we work peacefully on the new material in our
little studio next to a butchery. (!) We would like very much to test the atmosphere
abroad, too, and have had plans for Canada and Germany, but so far there has been too much
happening at home."
"When you first
start to play, development comes quickly, even easily, but the more you learn, the more
ambitious you get. So now we want to work on something new, make new kinds of songs,
practice a lot and take our time before putting out another record. We have learnt our
lesson the hard way: Little Mary Mixup is a long term project for us and we don't intend
to get pushed around with it anymore."
