Poets of the Fall – Übel & Gefährlich, Hamburg; November 24th, 2012
The day after the Dortmund concert we were back on the road. “We” in this case means C., L., A. and myself. We all got to sleep late, our train did not leave until noon. Hamburg greeted us with rain, but it stopped after a while. We went out, spent some time walking across the Dom and had drinks, but still went home before midnight. I was completely exhausted and still could not sleep so I rested the next morning instead of sightseeing with the others.
In the afternoon we headed out for the venue. It was located in a huge, grey, bunker-like building and we could not find the entrance on our own. We asked at a store and learned we had to go up to the fourth floor. We rang the bell and were told that the regular entrance was downstairs, but the VIP entrance would indeed be up there. Thus, we got ourselves some food and settled in for some waiting. Luckily there were stairs to sit on. We had some fun though, watching people arriving and listening to Oliver from Remote Music interviewing people.
The club was really small, the smallest venue on the tour, sold out and rather dark. I kinda liked the atmosphere of the place though. Souncheck consisted just of ‘Signs of Life’ this time. When they were done, Marko commented “this was the first time I sang that through without breaking my voice” and joked that he’d probably screw up the lyrics later. During the meet and greet they got lots of presents again. Ollie got a garden grome that he seemed to like, because he put it up on his soundboard. Captain got chocolates and jokingly complained that he never gets anything else. The box of chocolates came in handy though when Oliver did a video interview with him and he hid behind it. When asked about Poets of the Fall, he said he didn’t really know them. Marko, of course, put on a big show: First he pretended to pull his tooth with pincers an when asked about Poets of the Fall he said he’d heard “their singer is really hot” – all of us were laughing at that so he added “and I’m not conceited at all” with a big grin. When it came to signatures I told them unless they wanted to sign body parts there was nothing else I had. Ollie commented “that’s always fun” and Marko decided to sign all my VIP bracelets instead. 🙂
They kicked off the show as usual, but I had a little trouble getting into it, because I was so very tired. Still, with ‘Running out of Time’ it’s impossible not to sing along. I also enjoyed the smaller stage and being closer to the guys than at the other gigs. ‘Diamonds for Tears’ brought a nice view of Marko crouching down in front of me and shaking hands with people. The rest of the song was completely spoiled by a jerk of a security guard who told me I was not allowed to take any more pictures despite my best efforts of showing him my photopass. 🙁 Later I saw him talking to Jani and pointing to me. After the concert I learned that Jani had told him I was allowed to take pictures. Only the guy did not bother to come and tell me. 🙁
After a while I was enjoying being without my camera – I didn’t need to look for pictures, could just enjoy the concert and rock out. 😀 I did secretly snap a few pictures now and then, but not very many. The show was fun, the right mixture of slower and faster songs as always. The audience was very responsive and the guys liked it too. They were smiling a lot and up to their usual shenanigans: Marko and Jani were “fighting” each other, Ollie and Jaska duelling their guitars. Jani sat on the boxes by the side of the stage quite a lot, Marko cameto the front to shake hands with people.
Jaska started laughing when he saw C. and me raising and dropping our hands during the “You raise me high to tear me down” line in ‘Kamikaze Love’, Marko sprayed himself and us with water and Ollie had sweat dripping into his eyes so Einari came over and wiped his face with a towel. At one point he had fun dancing to the front on the stage and back again several times and Marko went with him. As every night they left the stage after ‘Late Goodbye’ to great cheers from the audience.
Since they had not soundchecked anything else this time I was wondering what the acoustic song would be. First, Marko told us a little vampire story though: “I was borne in 1722 down in the Cajun country in Louisiana…”. The story ended with the first notes of ‘Sleep’ – such a beautiful surprise. When Marko raised his arm and waved, everyone in the audience did the same. I especially loved the piano part of the song. Captain really shines on this one every time. 🙂 The next song, however, was even more surprising: ‘King of Fools’, the first time I heard the full band version live. I could hardly believe my ears, the song absolutely made my night! 😀
The last three songs were the same ones as for all the other gigs, but this time we got parts of ‘The Hapy Song’ with ‘Lift’ – the whole audience yelled “Psycho! Psycho!” in unison, while Marko conducted us. He asked us if we’d come back and bring a friend next time. Of course we would! The song ended with Ollie’s amazing solo where he played his guitar on the monitor boxes right in front of me. As they left the stage, they threw their LED rights to the crowd. We cheered for a long time.
Once they came back C. and I introduced them to our tour mascots who had been sitting in a little plastic box and “viewing” the gig from their little balcony. We got lots of smile sin return. Finally I hugged Jari too and Captain told us they had added the two extra songs during rehearsals and he had been afraid they would not work out, but thought they worked well. We assured him they did. He and Ollie both asked me what the scale for the day was. I gave them a 9. A guy standing next to me was surprised that they hugged people and wondered if he could get a hug too – he did.
We had to leave and said goodbye to some of our friends, then went looking for a bar to get a drink. We finally ended up at our hotel, where we had enough space to sit and good drinks. We chatted well into the night, before it was time to go to bed and catch some sleep.
Poets of the Fall autumn tour – 10 gigs down, 4 to go. Next stop: Mannheim
Setlist
Running Out of Time
Diamonds for Tears
Temple of Thought
Cradled in Love
Locking Up the Sun
Signs of Life
Stay
Illusion and Dream
Jeremiah Peacekeeper
Kamikaze Love
Miss Impossible
Late Goodbye
Encore:
Sleep
King of Fools + band intro
Dreaming Wide Awake
Carnival of Rust
Lift / The Happy Song (partly)