Poets of the Fall – Viinijuhlat, Kuopio; July 4th 2009
Travelling over 12 hours one way, just to attend a concert? “Crazy!” you say? It may well but, but it was so worth it.
Friday was my travel day. Started out in Dortmund at 6:45 a.m., train – plane – waiting – another train, and arrived in Kuopio at 7:30 p.m. I was lucky enough to have a place to stay with friends and they took great care of me all weekend. 🙂 Before we went to the Winefest the following we took a cruise on the lake – fun, despite the cold.
When we arrived, coverband Osmos Kosmos were playing. They were quite entertaining and helped passing the time. As soon as they left the stage, I and the other “usual suspects” took over front row. We didn’t move either, even when it started raining. I met a few more people, chatted, put up the Prowlers banner and tried to keep warm. Considering it was early July, the weather was rather cold.
Shortly before the show started the rain ceased – for a while at least – and when the master of ceremonies announced the Poets, everyone clapped and screamed. Looking at the guys made me freeze even more, because they were wearing T-shirts, while I stood there in my jacket. It didn’t take long to get warm though, jumping around to their songs. The rain started up again soon, but that didn’t matter to anyone.
‘Diamonds for Tears’ was the opener again, ‘Sorry go round’ and ‘Fire’ followed. After that Marko’s mic stopped working and had to be exchanged. He decided to walk over to Jaska and play guitar – only that said guitar was still strapped to Jaska. Very funny. Captain, once again, was busy filming us with his mobile phone, playing the keyboards one-handed.
They played ‘The ultimate Fling’, ‘Clevermind’, ‘Carnival of Rust’, ‘Locking up the Sun’, and ‘Stay’, had fun getting us to clap and sing along and moved about a lot. Ollie and Jaska kept posing for pictures; Marko ripped flowers from the decoration and threw them into the audience. He also talked a lot, but as usual I didn’t understand much.
At one point, people from the back started pushing to the front and it got rather uncomfortable. Luckily the security people took care of it and it didn’t spoil our enjoyment of the gig. It ended with ‘Lift’, ‘Illusion & Dream’ and ‘Late Goodbye’ as the last encore. In the end, Marko jumped off stage and shook people hands. Compared to my cold hands, his were nice and warm. For a moment, I didn’t want to let him go, but of course I did.
All in all a short, but great gig. Once again I talked to Marko and Ollie afterwards. Marko pointed out to me that somebody had had an even longer trip than I did: C., who came all the way from Switzerland. Ollie asked me if I was going to come to Lohja (their last gig this year), but I cannot make it. I still thought it was cute that he almost expected me to be there.
The following day it was time for me to go home. During the long trip, I had time to look at the pictures I took and reminisce about the concert. It made me a bit sad, knowing that I would not see them play again in 2009, but as Ollie said “there’s always next year”.