1987-1989. The Jone personnel without Jone, at first. Then some additional action and personnel.

Members:

Ari Hujanen: Drums
Jaakko Kiikeri: Guitar
Tomi Laaksonen: Drums
Pauli Päiviö: Keyboards
Timo “Tipi” Pulkkinen: Vocals
Sami Sarhamaa: Bass, vocals, bg vox

Me and Jaakko had a good vibe between us and made some songs together while in Jone. As things wrapped up with Jone, we were ready to basically continue, just without him.

So we started rehearsing as a trio, I took on the bass duties. I got myself a red Yamaha Motion Bass and went for it.

Quite soon we had a chance to make a demo with Gabi Hakanen. The first idea was to have Jaakko be the lead singer, but it didn’t pan out, so we came to the conclusion that I should be the singer.

As more colours were needed, I tried to do a “Geddy Lee” and play keyboards as well. It sort of worked but wasn’t that much fun so I once again asked for Pauli to join as a keyboardist. This was a good combo, we practiced a lot and composed quite a few songs, I still wasn’t too comfortable with singing but wanted to move the band onwards so kept singing. We turned into Ricochet for a while as Timo “Tipi” Pulkkinen asked us to accompany him on two gigs. So we rehearsed a half hour set and performed it at Kaivopuisto and Tavastia.

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Tipi had won a Radio City demo competition, that’s why such high profile gigs. When the gigs were done, he asked us to become his band and we asked him to became the singer of Red. Neither happened, then.

So we rehearsed some more and purchased our first own set for recording our stuff, Fostex E-16 and a Studiomaster desk. We did some recordings and managed to get Tipi as the vocalist.

We performed our only gig at Down by the Laituri -festival in Turku 25.3.1989. Tomi was replaced by Ari around this time (after some try outs, among them my school buddy Pete Parkkonen, later with Zen Café).

After a lengthy recording stint that only produced one usable song (“Tie”), we disbanded. Tipi altered the internal chemistry of the band and some of the fun disappeared, at least for me. PS. was in the horizon…

Thanks Jaakko and Tomi for the photos!