Poets of the Fall – Himos Areena, Jämsä; March 18th, 2017
The Poets of the Fall concert in Himos was the halfway mark on the current run of Finland gig with seven concerts before and seven still to come. It brought us a comfortable waiting time, the smallest meet & greet I have ever been too, many funny stories, a big stage, great moments, a full house and an overall fun concert experience. Nothing more I could ask for. 🙂
My day started with lots of tea in Tampere and much time to relax before catching a bus. S. picked me up and I got a nice dinner with her and her family before more relaxing and finally going to the venue. Two people had arrived before us and the doors were open, so we just went in and sat down. Most relaxed wait ever. When the time came around for the meet & greet, I was really surprised that only four more people had showed up, among them T. and S.. Even bigger was my surprise when it turned out that the first two in line did not have meet & greet tickets. So in we went, six people, two of which are practically crew members. The band arrived and I suggested we all sit, so we sat stood in a circle by some tables, just chatting. Eventually Marko asked if anyone wanted pictures. One person did, then everyone went for it just for the fun of it. There as a lot of selfie taking and people taking pictures of other people taking pictures. 😀 The chat? Well, all I can say that it was really really funny and we learned some surprising things. Other than that I’m sorry to tell you that what happens in Himos, stays in Himos. 😉
The doors opened, but the venue filled only slowly. We spent the time chatting and T. shared some of her pictures from the meet & greet that had just happened. We joked around and remembered a few things from their last concert at this venue almost five years ago. Once again time passed so slowly, we watched some people dancing and noticed some groups that were quite drunk already. Oh boy! The place still looked half empty, but the moment the music stopped, everyone gathered on front of the stage and suddenly the floor was packed. 🙂
While the intro was playing I realized I’d been mistaken the previous day about it taking extra long for the band to walk on stage. It was just the same this time around. The sound however, was much better and of course there was much more room for all the lights they use. Nice. 🙂 Again it was “Love portrays Ms Take” in the intro and “love becomes Miss Take” or maybe “love becomes mistake” later on. Just the little changes in the lyrics that always happen when they play live.
With us being right up against the large stage it became a challenge to take everything in, but then again that’s only ever possible from the back. As usual I had to choose whom to watch and it was a difficult choice too, especially because I was using my camera again and tried not to miss anything. I did not quite manage to capture all the fun moments though. It became quite amusing for instance how often Captain had his hand in the air, but always managed to take it down just when I raised my camera. I did catch Ollie flying high during ‘Dreaming wide awake’ though. It was one amazing jump! 😀
The stage was higher than the previous one and Marko made up for it by getting down on his knees a lot. He sang to S. all the time and watching her watch him was so joyful. <3 One time, a woman bumped or was pushed into her during that and apologized many times. The look on Marko’s face was priceless: A mixture of apologizing to S. for such behavior and wondering what the fuck was going on. 🙂 Of course the people on the left and right got their share of Marko singing to them too and he even leaned out and shook hands. Jani, Jaska and Ollie used the railing as a foot rest all the time, so I got an interesting perspective for my pictures. 🙂
Somewhere early on a pair of men’s underwear came flying on stage. Glen immediately picked it up and took it away, but it led to Marko threatening to drop his pants and show us his butt. He stood right in front of us too and as I was shaking my head “no” Ollie saw me and grinned. The were having much fun with playing together and pretending to fight. Jani was pointing his bass at Marko, chasing him across stage, Ollie and Jaska were standing on the drum and keyboard raiser, facing each other and during Rogue, Ollie used his guitar to point at Sami, who was once again playing the drums that night. He did a great job too. Recognizably different from Jari, but well done. 🙂
Captain had a lot of visitors behind the keyboards and really got into playing with all of them, leaning back, bending his knees and totally rocking it! After Ollie, Jani and Jaska, Marko stood next to Captain for a while too and when nobody joined him at the keyboards, he came out for a closer look at the audience or his band mates twice during the show. He even leaned cooly on to the keyboards to do so. 🙂 Marko made a lot of use of his mic stand guitar once again, even doing the Pete Townshend move with his right arm. At other times he was balancing the mc stand on his foot, then kicking it back up, twirling it round and round or raising it above his head.
During ‘The Labyrinth’ Jani sat down on the drum raiser for a while and Marko sang to S. once again, so I got a nice close up view. 🙂 T. and S. next to us could not stop smiling either. They rarely stand in the front and were clearly having fun with it. It was a great spot to be in and thanks to the large stage, we could actually see everyone without our view being blocked all the time. 😉
It was a show full of funny little moments like Ollie blowing his hair out of his face at one point and him running back and forth in front of the drums together with Jaska. I also remember Jani pointed his bass at Captain like a gun and Captain raised his hands above his head and pretended to be shot. They liked this so much, they repeated it a few times. 😀 At the end, Marko walked over and casually turned the tuning keys on Jani’s bass. Sami looked like he was having fun too and when he was introduced he took a bow with the drumsticks held up to his head making it look like rabbit ears. 😀
When they returned for the encores the guys went completely crazy, especially during ‘Lift’. There was so much happening I did not even catch it all. Jani was leaning back against Marko, sticking his tongue out, so Marko chose to stick his tongue and get so close their tongues almost touched. I actually looked at S. to confirm I had seen what I thought’s I’d seen and she just nodded, both of us laughing. During the sing along part, Captain conducted the audience and somewhere during the song Marko stole someone’s hat, put it on and then gave it back. Ollie was playing his solo on the far left of the stage and one fan tried to get him to bump fists, but he was busy playing.
It was such a fun and funny night and even ‘Children of the Sun’ did not feel as somber as it usually does, but somewhat playful. When it ended, Ollie, Captain, Jaska and Jani all shook hands with the audience and Jani blew a few kisses too. Ollie and Jaska hugged, it was really sweet. The whole night left me with a very happy sigh. Totally worth traveling for. We stuck around for a while chatting, then walked back and talked the show over for a bit before we felt calm enough to sleep. How lucky we are!
Setlist
Shadow Play
Daze
Dreaming Wide Awake
Diamonds 4 Tears
The Game
The Labyrinth
Temple of Thought
Rogue
Drama for Life
Everything fades
Locking up the sun
Carnival of Rust
War
Lift
Children of the Sun
Clearview Finland tour: 8 gigs down, 7 to go. Next stop: Vantaa