Wrum
Biography
Former TV:n Orjat member Jarmo 'Jabi' Hirvi formed Wrum in January 1980. By March the lineup had been established as Jabi: vocals & guitar, Raine Potinkara: guitar, Jari Lehtinen: keyboards, Juha-Matti Makkonen: bass & vocals and Kari Salminen: drums. The band played at Ruisrock festival that summer, and made their debut single on Fifty-Fifty label. Takapihojen rock-tähdet/Rocktähti was a great opening. The A side became a kind of theme song for them, and a minor hit. The song is catchy in its s...
Former TV:n Orjat member Jarmo 'Jabi' Hirvi formed Wrum in January 1980. By March the lineup had been established as Jabi: vocals & guitar, Raine Potinkara: guitar, Jari Lehtinen: keyboards, Juha-Matti Makkonen: bass & vocals and Kari Salminen: drums. The band played at Ruisrock festival that summer, and made their debut single on Fifty-Fifty label. Takapihojen rock-tähdet/Rocktähti was a great opening. The A side became a kind of theme song for them, and a minor hit. The song is catchy in its swinging reggae-style, and it was even included on an obscure schlager compilation, together with all kinds of oompah groups! They started recording songs for an album in July, and were finished by October. In the meantime compilation LP Vaahtopäät was released, featuring a faster rock version, or "part 2", of the song Takapihojen rock-tähdet. Their own album Takapihojen rock-tähdet presents perhaps a little too wide variety of songs. In my opinion at least leaving out the three songs sung by Makkonen would have improved the album as a whole, as it's the catchier tunes by Hirvi where the band is at its best. The title track, Elämä anna mulle voimaa and Hulttiosoittaja are top-notch songs, the others less so. The album was released on Selecta label, but then they switched to Poko Rekords, and lost some of their edge: their next single Katujen kasvatit/Kusiainen is quite poor an effort. The A side is an attempt for some kind of sequel for Takapihojen rock-tähdet, but it's a miserable failure. To tell the truth, I can't listen to it with a straight face. On the B side is Kusiainen, composed by Makkonen and Potinkara and sung by Makkonen, a ludicrous song about making love on the back seat of his fancy car. Also studio engineer Sundqvist failed in producing decent sound for the single. It took a whole year before they got their next (and last, as it proved) release out. The single Viiniä/Peili, released in summer 1982, was an improvement compared to the previous single, but still not very good. Rumours have it that they recorded a full album's worth of material, but no such record was ever released. Wrum's story was over. In 1997 the band however played a reunion gig at Down By The laituri festival in their hometown Turku.
After Wrum Jabi continued with his band Taivaanrannan Taiteilijat, and made a rather dull single Tyttö hei/Kauas pois, released on Poko Rekords in 1985. Later he has played solo gigs (also a television appearance with some other guy), and as a duo with Emilia Hirvi under the name Hirvivaara. At some point he moved to Velkua. Potinkara formed Koirasoturit, which played weird rock with sitars and all. Koirasoturit released a couple of albums. Salminen has been playing in numerous bands and appeared on many releases. He doesn't play on Via Dolorosa's single (he joined the band later), but for Rapudes he recorded one single, for Ho-Dads a couple of singles, and for Mahtavat Lämpöpussit, a Kollaa Kestää-style band, a mini-CD. He has also been involved in Kauko Röyhkä's project 500 Kg Lihaa. Makkonen played in Huhu, which was moderately popular, and in Johannes Byyt. The latter released a single, and Salminen played on it too. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
