David Watson“We’re one of the best bands in Finland. According to us
“We’re one of the best bands in Finland. According to
us… Let’s hope we stay on top of the charts.”
“But Pertti, we haven’t even recorded yet!”
Life
in a rock band can be Hell. The touring. The drink. The
drugs. The groupies. The self-delusion. The
constant battle for creative and artistic control. The singer’s
always an arrogant egotist, the guitarist’s always a sensitive soul, the
drummer’s usually bonkers (Keith Moon,
John Bonham, Animal from The
Muppets – the prosecution rests…) and nobody ever likes the bass
player. Nobody.
While
there’s little in the way of drink and groupies and the only drugs are
carefully administered by healthcare professionals, life in Finnish punk
band Pertti Kurikan
Nimipäivät (Pertti Kurikan’s
Nameday) is just like any other band, the only notable difference being
that the band members, guitarist and songwriter Pertti, singer Kari,
drummer Toni and
bassist Sami, are all living
with some form of learning disabilities.
Charting
their rise from obscurity to dominance of the Finnish punk scene, The Punk Syndrome follows the
band’s emotional, life-affirming journey as they fight, reconcile, rehearse,
record and tour, tensions within the band always threatening to blow them
apart. Like Britain’s Heavy Load, Pertti’s songs are angry, deeply
political, unflinchingly honest glimpses of his life and experience of
disability. Fierce, frank and triumphant, The Punk Syndrome is a
defiantly anti-establishment portrait of a band of outsiders finding their
voice, suffused with a genuine punk ethos.
