Poets of the Fall – Huittinen; April 2nd 2010
With gig number two of my mini-tour I learned that sleep deprivation wanted to be my companion. Woke up at 7:20 and was unable to go back to sleep, just too wound up after everything that had happened the previous day.
I spent the time until breakfast reminiscing about everything, then met C. around 9:00. We took our time, left the hotel at 11 and hopped on a bus to Huittinen. Two hours later we arrived, but the Hotel was closed and nobody in sight. It took a bit until someone else came along, called the number on the door and we were let in by a very tired guy who had clearly just fallen out of bed. He let us in and made coffee before he did anything else – that should have been an indication of how much rest we would get the following night, but neither of us thought about that.
The rooms were pretty horrible with random holes in the wall and 70ies decor. So bad it was actually funny. The entire hotel seemed pretty much run down, but it was the only one in the vicinity…. the things you do for love 😉
We went for a walk and then a pizza across the road from the hotel. The owner of the pizza place was funny. He was from Turkey, had lived in Austria before moving to Finnland and spoke German. We got a good laugh when he started translating the menu to German: “Pizza, Kebab, Chicken Wings” (oh really? well that’s just what the sign says…)
Back at the hotel we got a chance to check out the concert hall before they closed the doors for soundcheck. We listened to it from C.’s room and heard Ollie play guitar for a while. Then Marko was singing and it sounded extremely painful. Apparently his sore throat had gotten worse since the previous day and he had lots of trouble with the high notes. We really felt sorry for him.
Before the concert we hung out at the bar and in front of the doors to the concert hall for quite some time. At some point, the outter hotel doors were locked and nobody without a key could get in. I had to come to the rescue of Phoenix Effect who came back to the hotel and were stuck otside.
It was a rather late show, Phoenix Effect started about midnight. They rocked the house, Anton kept smiling at me all the time. They were awesome and didn’t play the same setlist as the previous day. I think one of the new songs was different too 🙂 I could not remember any of the lyrics, but had fun nonetheless.
The place was strange though. Directly in front of the stage was some sort of railing, about 30 cm higher than the stage and maybe 15 cm wide that had holes for glasses. These holes were taped shut. In front of those they had put up boxes so we would not stand directly against the railing. The ceiling was quite low too and that was only one factor that made the gig weird.
The audience contained of a huge number of drunk people, half of which probably didn’t have a clue who was on stage. Time came for Poets and the crowd got thicker and a bit uncomfortable.
The whole atmosphere was strange, but the guys still gave all they had. It was fun watching Marko climb up on the railing several times and watch Ollie goofing around, doing some funny sort of moonwalk. Jari completely lost it and cracked up behind the drums when he saw that. 😀 Jaska kept smiling at us, Jani was lost in the music as usual. I didn’t see much of Captain from where I was standing, but he also had fun, once again fanning Ollie and Jaska with a towel.
Despite the sore throat, Marko handled the singing extremely well. If I had not known I would have never guessed that he has a cold. They left out two songs, but he mastered everything else.
It was a tight gig overall and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not as good as the previous one, but certainly worth the trip.
When it was over C. and I went upstairs to sleep which was not possible because music was blasting from downstairs until 4 am. The bands left in the middle of the night – when we got up in the morning the tourbus was gone.
We didn’t get any breakfast at the hotel, but at least there was coffee for C. and tea for me before we hopped on another bus and continued our journey to Helsinki. Two gigs in a row down, one to go.
Setlist
Dreaming Wide Awake
Smoke And Mirrors
Diamonds for Tears
War
Given And Denied
Dying To Live
You’re Still Here
Illusion & Dream
15 Min Flame
Rewind
Change
Locking Up the Sun
Lift
Encore:
Carnival of Rust