ABOUT US – the history it was, wasn’t it?

biggest inland city in the Nordic countries. The radio was on all the time and a cassette in stand-by, ready to record any piece of music to their liking.

In the late 70’s, the disco music was hot, and then punk rock emerged. There was a slight delay before the waves hit Finland those days, years before the Internet. At the same same with punk, rock & roll revival – which was now called rockabilly – too over. Brothers Virta liked them all: punk, rockabilly, pop, rhythm & blues, ska, new wave – even disco, which was fading fast by then.

Jumpin’ Scissors

Listening to music became more serious, when the boys got themselves a stereo equipment with a turntable. The first purchase was Portrait In Music by Elvis Presley. In hindsight, the start couldn’t have been better. This was late 1979, and Elvis was back albeit, sadly, dead. The next LP’s were by Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Johnny Burnette and Paul Anka, who wasn’t that much rock & roll but still. Current artists, like Matchbox, Stray Cats, Polecats, Shakin’ Pyramids and Shakin’ Stevens visited on the platter.

In 1981, Esa got himself an acoustic guitar. The need to play was more important than to know how to do it. Marko started singing and strumming a self-made snare drum. There were no rules to it, indeed. It was serious, but then again it wasn’t.

Stones and The Zombies. Also, some American groups like Lovin’ Spoonful, The Turtles and even The Monkees were under a lot of careful scrutiny.

In February 1985, Esa played his very first public gig with Kainot pojat featuring Jyrki Virtanen of Two Witches

Hysterical sessions

The next important step was taken in the summer of 1985, as Esa bought himself an electric guitar, a black lefty Ibanez. He put all of his payday earnings into it.

It was 1986 and Esa joined the army. In a sense, to help Marko out with continuing with song recording, he bought Tascam Porta One, a four-track tape recording device. It was a decision to carry out anyway, with or without the army absence. During 1986, Marko developed into much better a song writer than ever.

When Esa was out of the army in October that year, he wrote a song called I’m Gonna Miss You, which was the first song to end up on a record. The final recording session took place in Hervanta, Tampere, at Kari Soini’s 4-track studio basement. The session was short but intensive. Kari played the half-written bassline, Esa played guitar parts and Marko sang it, with a runny nose. The drum machine was already in the can along with bass as brothers entered the basement.

The name of a band came from Esa. He liked the idea of having a name which means the same both in English and Finnish. So Hysteria it was.

The cost of being included in the Avzaltti compilation was 100 Finnish marks (appr. 17 euros but closer to 100€ today) per minute. That is the reason why their song took 2 minutes exactly!

Rock & Roll

It seemed like a good idea at the time to call a rock and roll music magazine Rock & Roll, and so they did. In afterthought, not so much. Esa and Marko had tried out writing a magazine for their amateur acting group, just for the fun of it, but in June 1st 1984 they released the very first copy of Rock & Roll. It was purely for fun, although a copy of it was sent to Kyösti Mäkinen, Esa’s rockabilly brother-in-arms in high school.

It got serious along the way for Rock & Roll too. That meant a lot of more money on the table to buy the latest releases, news and see artists on stage. Photo copies were replaced with offset prints. Taking photographs was not cheap either back then. In 1989, when it was Marko’s turn to join the army, Esa was pretty much on his own whole year, but made it with a little help from their assisting editors. Esa also developed better song writing skills during that period, just like Marko had done three years earlier.

The latter music and fun magazine was taken over by Timo “Zim” Nurmi, who had his own wide-spread following. Name-shortened Echoes improved a lot pretty quickly.

…Almost! Sixteen years later, the web release of Rock & Roll rose from the ashes like a Phoenix.

reMix

It was hard to let go though. The idea of having multiple editors-in-chief attracted. Two issues of reMix were realized in 1991 and 1992 respectively. The first issue with Siobhan Fahey on the cover faced difficulties with the offset printing company, whereas the printing of the second one (with P.J.Proby on the cover) was basically taken care of by Esa alone since he was working in a local small budget offset print as a trainee.

for Friiti. As a rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll based magazine Rumble was published in 1992, it felt like the best Finnish publication ever, along with TMN naturally. Esa had hardly anything to do with it; it was nice to relax and enjoy good reading for a change.

Just for the record

Around 1990, there was a group called Paratiisin Jälkeen with line-up: Mika Kautonen (vocals and synth), Kari Soini (bass and engineering/producing), Esa (guitars) and Marko (backing vocals and percussion). They planned to put out an EP but the history disagreed. The result was to have one song (Mika’s ever-great Levottomuus!) on an Indie-Vidual label, one of Zim’s projects. The session was fast-forward and it was Esa’s turn to perform under the weather. Paratiisin Jälkeen line-up was behind Annie Cooper’s Eyes also, except for Annie herself of course. Check out the availability here.

The musical taste of the brothers was now broader than ever, and it reflected on their musical output. The last recording session with them in Kari’s “bunker” was held in 1991, when Noisy Cats made their debut on wax. More about the cats here.

Marko had written a song called Kissannahka (cat skin) which became the name for their next band. Esa got a Gibson Les Paul, barely broken in for him.

Marko, Esa and his wife participated in Triangeli, a music-based quiz on television in 1997. They won the first round with flying colours but missed the final by not winning the semi-final. There was a need for anger management, because the brothers felt they had been jinxed by the rules. The host of the show was none other than the late Jussi Raittinen, one of Finnish rock and roll and country music pioneers and icons.

Calm before the storm

As the Millennium got close, Virtas’ songs became more and more friendly for listeners. The complex stuff was passé. After several home-brewed releases it felt like giving up though. Yet new songs piled up. The stories of Noisy Cats, Kissannahka, Beats Flippin’ Burgers and The Stetsonics can be read elsewhere on this site. Please do.

Esa wanted to produce a CD by artists who were his or Marko’s buddies. It wasn’t easy but he pulled it through. The Virtas’ input on CD Poprock Special 2007 was Blood Ceremony, Esa’s idea of a Gothic rock song.The release contains some rarities, for example the only Dreamtime song released sung in Finnish! Check out the availibility here. The cover art was by Marko.

Along with The Stetsonics, there was another Youtube project going on. This time Esa and Marko were Termiitit (Termites), who re-arranged and recorded some Finnish pop and rock classics there. It was a tribute to their heroes in their childhood and teenagedom.

In 2009, Esa was back with Puu~tiainen, the comic strip bird. Esa also wrote a lot of novels during that period. The biggest task was to finish a rock-musical comedy Terassi with Marko. Rade more about these in Book Store.

Unlike his brother, Marko played bass guitar live in several bands, like The Daffodils and Nashville Bum. Most of these had Ola Turro on Gretsch guitar. With Zim on vocals, Marko played some fine rockabilly as The Wanteds. Marko also participated in Kiti & Knightriders by playing bass and arranging. Here’s a link to their live performance in 2013, the year they released a CD Tall Dark Stranger. Marko also played in Vihreät sipulit (Green Onions), which played a lot of The Shadows instrumentals.

a cheap alto saxophone during The Stetsonics era – just because they needed one!