Poets of the Fall – Kosmonaut, St. Petersbug; March 22nd, 2013

How does one write coherently after three gigs in three days with too little sleep and much traveling in-between. How to tell apart all the little things that happened, how to sort through this huge flood of memories?

I’ll have to start at the beginning I guess. My original plan had been to go home after the Viking Grace gig and fly to St. Petersburg on Thursday, but since traveling from Düsseldorf had been difficult, I chose to stay in Finland – thanks to my very awesome friends A. and I. + M. I had a free and very comfortable bed for all those nights. <3

So I was gonna go to St. Petersburg by train for the first time. It left from Helsinki at 9:00 a.m. I do admit I had been hoping to meet the Poets there, because it was the same train they had taken the previous year. No such luck though, they had already traveled the previous night. I much enjoyed the ride though. It was fast and comfortable with nice views of the snowy landscape outside. Upon arrival I took the subway to the Moscow train station where my Russian friends picked me up and helped me leaving my luggage at the station. Thank you for always taking such great care of me. <3

We arrived at the venue around 4 p.m. and there were some people already waiting. Luckily we had a roof over our heads and it wasn’t windy, but cold nonetheless. More and more came along. The street team arrived carrying 10^th Anniversary balloon – the looked beautiful. I can’t remember when they opened the doors, but my toes were so cold I could not feel them anymore. It was all a big rush inside, then up several stairs. Running when you can’t feel your toes is really weird. On the final stair they stopped us and checked our bas, then more running inside. My friends were in a little before me and had found a spot on the far left of the stage. Fine with me, front row is front row and standing on Ollie’s side is always great. 🙂

While we waited for the show to start I was slowly thawing and finally was sure my feet were still intact. I looked around and everyone in the first few rows had balloons. They were gas filled and flowed up nicely. I tied mine to the railing for a while and put up my Prowlers banner. We chatted, happy to have made it.

Compared to the wait outside it didn’t take long for the show to start. As the intro started, hands and balloons went up in the air and the noise level was deafening. People screamed a loud welcome to each one of the guys as they entered the stage. From where I stood on the far left, I didn’t see much of Captain, but it was a good spot to view the others. Also I could get a good overview of the audience for a change. All those flying balloons looked beautiful.

‘Delicious’ followed by ‘Locking up the sun’ and ‘Kamikaze Love’ worked well at starting the show in high gear. Not that this audience needed any prompting. 😀 Marko had a red feather boa that must have been a gift, because I heard him say “How did you know I would love this?” It went well with the black and white outfit and lost a lot of feathers during the course of the evening. Of course these were gathered and blown towards the audience.

Between the stage and the railing to front row there were two or three large pipes, probably to keep everything in place. I fully expected Marko to try walking across them, but he did not, only stepped on them with one foot. At timed to lean out and reach people’s hands. As usual with a big stage there was lots of movement going on.

Each song was greeted happily and appropriately with people listening intently to ‘Jeremiah Peacekeeper’, singing along to ’Cradled in Love’ or rocking out to ‘Don’t mess with me’. This was clearly the dress rehearsal for the filming of the DVD in Moscow the following day as the guys had changed a few little things since the last show. Unfortunately the details escape me now, but there were a few times when I though. “Yeah, that’s gonna look good on the DVD”.

The whole show was amazing and energetic. Some songs into it we were asked to let go of the balloons and they all floated up to the ceiling. It looked beautiful. Of course it was over too soon and when the solos of ‘Lift’ rang out I was prepared to leave, happy there would be another show the following day. But wait, what was this? Those notes sounded nothing like ‘Lift’ and why is Marko back on stage? The answer came immediately “I told you I’m a Psycho” he screamed and they played part of ‘The Happy Song’ with us yelling “Psycho! Psycho!” back at them. The lines were soon changed to “We told you that we love you!” and we yelled back “Love you! Love you! Totally awesome!

After that it was over, but we still waited around. Ollie, Jani and Captain came out to sign stuff if I remember correctly. They told us there wasn’t much time. Marko walked on stage and waved one last time, but didn’t sign any autographs. I said a quick hello to them, joked with Ollie that the show was “an eight”, coming back to the grading I gave them last fall, thanked them and they were gone.

We left, had food at the train station and headed on to Moscow, this time on a different train than the guys.

Poets of the Fall 10^th anniversary tour – 3 gigs down, so far 7 to go. Next stop: Moscow.