Poets of the Fall, Forum, Bielefeld; October 17th, 2013
The concert in Bielefeld was the only one in my area this year. Why they didn’t play in Cologne or Dortmund again is beyond me, especially since both concerts had to be moved to bigger venues due to high ticket demand. Not to mention they were really amazing and surely would have drawn people back. However, it wasn’t meant to be and Bielefeld was it. Finally Marko’s sun dance had worked and I arrived to beautiful weather. Met up with B., S. and her son and had a pretty good lunch together. At the venue we met up with J. and H., who had been in Dortmund last year and once again H. was majorly excited. 🙂 We had lots of fun joking and sharing stories. It was all very relaxed, because we had benches to sit on and most people arrived quite late. Since I was returning home that night, I had brought my vinyl of ‘Signs of Life’ to sign and the photograph M. had given me got signed as well. As usual I chatted with everyone a little bit. Got a really nice picture with Marko and Petri too. 😀
The show kicked of nicely with an enthusiastic audience clapping and singing along from the start. The guys visibly enjoyed being received so well and often asked us to participate for the rest of the night. I enjoyed watching the audience as much as the guys. The place may not have been sold out, but those who were there easily made up for that. 🙂
A day off and a night in my own bed had done wonders for me. Batteries recharged, it didn’t take much to get lost in the music. The band seemed very relaxed as well after the break. It was one of those concerts with so many little nice and fun moments like the guys watching each other playing or leaning on to each other to do so. Jani and Ollie visited Captain, playing beside the keyboards for a while. 🙂 At this concert Marko and later Jaska stood up on the barstools they used during the acoustic set.
During ‘Late Goodbye’ Marko did not only play Ollie’s guitar, he also pretended to paly the flute on his microphone. While mock fighting with Jani, he tickled him under the chin. Jaska, Jani and Ollie played together a lot, smiling all the time. At one point Ollie was posing for me when I was taking a picture. There was a lot of jumping going on as well.
For the acoustic set the guys played ‘You’re still here’ and ‘Roses’. The former was just Marko and Ollie. Before they started they improvised something, with Marko joking about having half the sideburns of James Hetfield. The song was beautiful, I was quite happy to hear it again. ‘Roses’ ended in improvisation with Marko retreating to the side of the stage watching while the others played on. The melody they played seemed quite familiar, but I have no clue which song it might have been.
Somewhere during the show Marko leaned down to a fan on the floor and sang to it. He might have done it to cool down or just for fun. Either way, it made me smile. Pretty much everything made me smile that night like Jani raising the bass high in the air, Jaska and Ollie dueling on guitars, Captain coming to the front to raise his glass to us or Jari taking a bow in the end. All in all a fun show that ended too soon as they always do.
Setlist:
Dreaming Wide Awake
Show Me This Life
Cradled In Love
Kamikaze Love
Temple Of Thought
Rogue
Locking Up The Sun
Illusion & Dream
Diamonds For Tears
The Distance
Late Goodbye
unplugged
You’re still here
Roses
Running Out Of Time
Carnival Of Rust
Lift
Soon it was time to say goodbye to my friends. B. accompanied me to the train station before going back to her hotel. All the way back to Dortmund I chatted with another fan who was still very excited about having seen the Poets.
Poets of the Fall Switzerland/Austria/Germany tour: 8 gigs down, 2 to go. Next stop: Hamburg