In 1979 I managed to manipulate my parents to buy me an electric organ. That was a key to the wonderful world of music and a big bunch of bands, listed below, in roughly chronological order – lots of overlap makes the chronology quite ambiguous.
1981 – 1983 | Nightmare | First band; at first playing organ, then changed to bass in the next incarnation of the band. |
1983 – 1986 | India Fall | Rock in Finnish. |
1983 – 1986 | Le Cardinal | Blues, Rhythm’N’Blues, Southern Rock. |
1986 – 1988 | Southern Backyard | Le Cardinal shrunk and changed names and then grew again, progressively changing styles as well, eventually to funk/soul. |
~1987-1988(?) | “Eija and the Boys” | An officially unnamed vocal jazz project with my former music teacher Eija Lappalainen (voc), Pasi Lehti (gtr) and Vesa Koskelainen (dr) from Southern Backyard. Had a gig or two. Petri Haapasalo (keys) joined later. |
1988 – | Lazybonez | Southern Backyard changed its name to something pronounceable (but not writable as evidenced by the numerous misspellings on gigs). |
1988 – | Oktoplus | Prog-pop-rock-weird in Finnish. |
1990 | Alaston haave | Prog-pop-rock-weird in Finnish, different from Oktoplus but very much out of the mainstream just as well. I was recruited to replace their deceased bass player but the band folded fairly soon. |
1994 – 1995 | FunQTwo | FunQTwo played a few funky cover gigs. |
1998 – 2000 | Riitala Index | An attempt of playing my songs. |
2001 – 2003 | Tomo Goes Groove / Tomo Big Band | Tomo Goes Groove (funk and rock with the Tomo Big Band horn section), also some gigs with the regular big band: Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concert (on guitar) and some latin stuff conducted by Carlos del Puerto (back to bass). |
2002 – | Intergalactic Huso Orchestra (IHO) | Fusion jazz seen from the rock perspective |
2003 – 2005 | E.N.E. | Jazz standards, funk and especially latin jazz. |
2004 – 2005 | Jastam Kastam | Organ rock jazz group put together for a recording project. |
2005 – 2014 | Hitmen | A party cover band quartet/quintet. |
~2008(?) | Groove MF | Expanded Hitmen meets Tomo Goes Groove. |
2009 – 2017 | Top3 | A classic rock party cover band founded to study the classic trio format. |
2009 – | Susi hukassa | Mostly acoustic cover band, not so much founded but put together for a gig (and lasted quite a few of them). |
2015 – | Bossalino | Jouni‘s (Oktoplus) bossa project. |
2016 – | Jimbo’s Garage | A hard rock project run by Jimbo from IHO/Oktoplus. |
2018, 2022, 2023 | Spiders From Malmi | The first incarnation of the band (actually there is a deeper history but let’s forget about that here) was put together for two gigs of David Bowie’s music. A new version (keys only) in 2022 and a slightly revised one in 2023. Gugge Wasenius – vocals Joni Vierre (Mk I) /Puka Oinonen (Mk II & Mk III) – guitar Jari Riitala – keys, guitar (Mk I only), bg voc Anssi Saarnilehto (Mk I & Mk II) / Dile Kolanen (Mk III) – bass Markku Tuomi- drums Here’s a video from the 2023 gig: Rock’n’Roll With Me |
2018 – 2020 | Moonstone | A party cover trio. |
2019 – | Fig Fable | I joined to complete the reborn Fig Fable Mk II and soon started writing music for us as well. |
2020 – | Nova/Riitala | Duo with Fig Fable singer Lubena Nova, founded to feast on the songs unsuitable for Fig Fable. |
2020 – | Mosaic Days | Jonne‘s studio project. |
2021 – | Laura ja luuserit | Originally Timo‘s and Laura‘s studio project but grew into a live band, with me writing some music too. |
2021 – 2022 | “JTM” | JariTeemuMoilu, an officially unnamed trio format study with me on bass and all vocals. |
2023 | GroovMo | A short stint as the bass player of a cover band doing a little fancier songs than usually. |
2024 – | “JMLP” | JariMoiluLariPetri, an officially unnamed quartet format study with me on keyboards and lead vocals. |
..And a fair number of temporary one-off subbing gigs and unnamed bands aside all this. Plus a few projects that never made it to the gig or music release state.