Alien abduction, roses and a secret

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Poets of the Fall – Lomakeskus Sieravuori; June 29th, 2012

This was one of these incredible gigs where everything felt right, but I have trouble remembering details or describing what made it so special. It just was great, amazing, wonderful, breathtaking, unbelievable, awesome, other-worldly, fascinating, beautiful, funny

I should have know it would be, because I have fond memories of the last concert I saw in Sieravuori on my birthday almost 4 years ago. Interestingly, it went way beyond my expectations. Maybe they weren’t that high to begin with, maybe it was because the pressure I felt for the first gig after my “break” to be extraordinary was already dealt with a week ago or maybe there is just a special magic about these concerts in the middle of nowhere that usually not so many fans seem to make it to and where anything can happen. Whatever it was, it was there and whoever made the track out to the edge of civilization (hey, it’ 30 km form the closest bus stop, that’s far out for me!) was in for a treat.

My day hadn’t started too well. The plane was delayed and therefore I missed the bus I had been planning to catch. That left me without my friends S. and M. (who were on the earlier bus) and time to kill at the airport. Sometimes I easily fret about little things so I told myself to let it go, because there was nothing I could do to change it. There was more than enough time to get there before the concert, so I took a deep breath and spent some time reading in the sun. Once I was actually on the bus I started enjoying the journey and was looking forward to meeting my friends in Eura from where we would share a taxi. Soon I was smiling, because the bus took me past Forssa and Huittinen, both places where I’d seen the Poets (and would have probably never gone to otherwise).

A bit over three hours later the longest part of the journey was over and a taxi took us to Sieravuori. The crew was already busy setting up the stage, so I briefly set hello before getting the keys to the rented mökki and setting out to find it. S., M. and I met again soon to eat and while we waited for our pizza to arrive (talk about slow service!), the Russian travel group with N., A. and their friends arrived as well. To repeatedly go through the trouble of sitting on a bus for 12 or more hours one way (not to mention traveling to get to said bus) just to see a concert, now that’s dedication! It truly amazes me, how many dedicated followers Poets of the Fall have in Finland as well as outside, who will go to any length just to see them. Their number is constantly growing too. 🙂 A special band draws a special breed of fans I guess.

We hung out, chatted a bit – the usual. They opened the doors at ten p.m. and only the front row was immediately filled. The stage had changed since last time. It still was triangular with a pillar at the side, but it now had a platform in front and a railing instead of a rope. I ended up dead center. 😀 There was still a lot of time to kill, but I didn’t mind. Somehow I knew, I felt this was going to be great.

My Russian friends had told me that the Poets tweeted Jari had been abducted by aliens and was going to be replaced by Teijo Jämsä that night. I spent some time wondering why and if it was gonna work for me. Yet there was nothing I could do about it so I decided to put it off my mind. We busied ourselves watching Hannu taking down part of the stage curtains to make room for the banner and Einari getting the guitars ready. We got a glimpse of the Teijo who seemed a little bit nervous, but was well prepared judging by what we had heard during soundcheck earlier.

Finally it was time for the concert to start. From the very first moment, everything fit. I was really happy to be there, I let the music run trough my veins and felt my heart beating in time with it. I have not felt this alive at any concert in a while, at least not from the first sound. It was effortless to be right there, in the music, not only hearing, but feeling every note and every word.  Tried to take it all in with my eyes too and it should have been easy on the small stage, but I do admit that my attention was very much focused on Marko who was directly in front of me most of the time.

It wasn’t that hot, but apparently too warm for the top hat and feather boa as they were nowhere to be seen. Jaska, surprisingly wore a jacket, but that only lasted a few songs. The others wore their usual stage attire. I didn’t see all that much of Teijo, because everyone else was in front of him, but when I saw him he looked quite concentrated. He had sheets of paper with him that apparently contained notes on the songs and he consulted them frequently. At times, I saw Captain cueing him in (or at least that’s what it looked like). He did his job very well though and it must have been difficult to learn all these new songs. On some songs his drumming was notably different from Jari, but not in any way bad. Still, I did miss Jari’s presence on stage.

They all looked like they were having fun and the audience seemed to enjoy the gig as well. Certainly the front row did. 🙂 I think ‘Temple of Thought’ was the first song where Marko stepped on the platform in front of the stage and looked at each one of us in turn. Jaska took the chance to switch places with Jani and played with Ollie for a while. They didn’t have guitar duels so much, but they played together a lot. Each one of the guys smiled and laughed a lot that night.

For ‘Roses’ the Russian travel group threw roses on stage and the guys had some fun with those. They decorate the keyboard and guitars with it and Marko stuck one in the pocket on his vest. Then he added another one and I guess he explained why, but I didn’t quite understand what he was saying (note to self: learn more Finnish). Much later, N. handed a rose to him and he kept it for a while and then gave it back with a grand gesture. That was a sweet moment. Ollie threw roses back at the audience a few times, always aiming for someone with a smile. I don’t know if the flowers made it to the intended recipient though.

The setlist was the same as the spring tour without the acoustic set. I loved having ‘Roses’, ‘War’ and ‘Gravity’ back in there. The guys were so full of energy, the small stage could hardly contain it.  Especially ‘Gravity’ was fun because they were jumping up and down a lot, while some of us were dancing and headbanging. There were some nice sing along moments too, especially ‘Cradled in Love’ worked well and the audience was responsive as well as attentive overall.

The entire atmosphere was very relaxed, the sound was good and compared to the last time I was there, the lights were a lot better. I can’t recall any more details right now, but a general feeling of happiness prevails. I loved every minute of the concert and didn’t want it to be over.

Afterwards I had the chance to at least say hello to all of the guys and chat a little with Marko, Ollie and Captain. They were just waiting for all the equipment to be loaded in the bus and then left, but before that they took time to talk to people, give autographs and take pictures. I said goodbye to them and to my Russian friends who were leaving as well and then retreated to my mökki, still smiling, replaying the concert in my head. In case you are wondering what the “secret” in my headline is about: It would not be a secret any more if I told you now, would it? 😉

POTF summer tour – 2 gigs down, 4 to go. Next stop: Tampere

Setlist

Kamikaze Love
Diamonds for Tears
Temple of Thought
Roses
Cradled in Love
Locking up the Sun
War
The Lie Eternal
Stay
Illusion & Dream
Gravity
Late Goodbye

Encore:
Dreaming wide awake
Carnival of Rust
Lift

pictures of this concert

Music is Love

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I have a question – how do you listen to music? I´m interested in what role music plays in people´s lives. Do you listen while doing nothing else? Do you listen while doing certain activities? Do you read the lyrics? Is your preferred place in the car, or headphones, or in the park, at work, while studying? How do you find new music? Radio? Internet? Friends? Bars? Do you listen together, or in solitude? Do you buy records, or download?

As a songwriter it´s interesting to know how & what people are responding to….I´m curious for some food for thought…..any random info welcome! x (Jim Kroft on Facebook, June 26th 2012)

This is my answer:

A life without music I cannot imagine. As my best friend once said: “I think too much as it is, I need music to make me feel”. Music is the path to my emotions, my heart and in the best cases my soul. It takes me to places I have never been and opens doors I didn’t know existed. It puts my fears and deepest desires into words, it shows me new worlds and guides me through them, it is a good companion on my search for a place in life and an expression of my every mood. For me, music equals love.

As a teenager and in my 20ies I constantly surrounded myself with music. When I was at home there was always a tape or CD playing and when I was out, you rarely saw me without a walkman or discman. These days, I don’t mind silence once in a while, but I still carry my iPod almost everywhere I go. I love the idea of having my entire CD collection (well over 1000) with me at all times so whenever I get it into my head to listen to some obscure song I have not heard in years, I can be sure it will be on there, provided that it was in my collection in the first place. Once in the while I surprise myself by putting on shuffle mode and trying to guess the songs that come up – it’s a fun game to play, because there are always songs and even artists that I had completely forgotten about.

More often than not though, I seek out specific songs or a specific band. I’m not sure my taste in music is really as broad as I would like to think, but the music I listen to switches with my moods and I’d find it terribly boring to only listen to one or two bands all the time. Yet, my listening habits come in phases and depending on how I feel and how my life is going in general. There are a few bands that I can almost always listen to, but everything else comes and goes and what I might have exclusively listened to last week may be forgotten the next and not be on my playlist again until weeks, months or even years from today.

At times I tend to treat music as background noise, something that is on to keep me company and make the room I’m in feel less empty. Still, not all background noise fits for all occasions and I often find myself staring at my CD shelf, reading titles, letting my hand wander across the rows of CDs until something catches my eye and I try out if this is the right music for the moment. However, this is only one way of listening to music for me. It is much too important to merely fill an empty room or provide the backdrop for other activities.

To really experience music, I need to listen to it on my own, either at home on my stereo or elsewhere on my headphones. Interestingly it does not matter what type of headphones they are and I don’t need an expensive stereo system or CD quality files to enjoy what I’m listening to. All that matters is that I am alone with the sound, that the noise of the world does not intrude and I can let my thoughts and emotions run free. Then and only then I will dive into the songs, following melodies and lyrics down to the deepest meaning and not come up for air until I have made a song mine, have understood and found a meaning that rings true for me. Some music is more inviting in this respect than other. Some music means more to me to begin with. Some music demands my full attention every time I listen to it, while other music just stays out of focus and it’s OK like that.

Music is with me wherever I go, either on my iPod or just playing in my mind. I listen to music when I walk, when I travel and sometimes when I work. I use it as a safe harbor when I need to shut out the world and be alone with my thoughts, I use it to compliment or contrast a specific mood I’m in, I use it for company as well as for entertainment.

Listening does not have to be a solitary activity though. My favorite way of experiencing music is hearing it live, preferably right in front of the stage, among the crowd. Then listening turns into action. I scream, I dance, I jump and most of all I sing along, often belt out the words at the top of my lungs. If things go as they are supposed to, I allow the music to take me over; I feel it with my whole body, my heart and my soul. While I’m letting familiar melodies guide my emotions and familiar lyrics turn into a universal language, I become part of something bigger, lost in music like everyone around me, united by a shared experience.

I find new music in a number of different ways, but more often than not it’s somewhat accidental. It may be something I have heard on the radio while still half asleep that got stuck in my head and haunted me for days, it may be a band that someone recommended, a random link I have followed on someone’s Twitter, something I came across while channel surfing on TV or a support act I enjoyed. It is not important how new music first comes to me, but how I respond to it. I can’t really pinpoint the qualities a song needs to have to make me like it, but I can say that it is usually the music that draws me in and the lyrics that make me stay. Some songs I immediately fall in love with and some grow on me over time, but if I cannot relate to the lyrics it will never be more than background noise. That’s fine too and certainly has a place in my collection, but the music that really means something to me is music where not only the melodies but also the words speak to me.

On first listen I rarely look at the lyrics. I want my first impression to be unhindered by my brain trying to make sense of the words. I may still pay attention to what is being sung, but generally it’s melody first and worrying about words later. Bands I already know and love because of their lyrics are an exception to this rule, but even with them I try to get an impression of the song through the music first. I even listen to bands that sing in languages I don’t understand and still enjoy the songs. However, when something grabs my attention, I will turn to the lyrics to find out what a song is all about (and if need be, I will find or make a translation). Lyrics fascinate me, because they can tell so many different stories, depending on the background of the listener. The best ones are those that leave room for interpretation, they have layers of meanings for me to dig into. The melody gives me a feel for the song, the lyrics confirm or contrast that feeling.

This leads me back to where I started: I love music, because it makes me feel and I listen to music, because it makes me feel alive. Music provides guidance in dark times, comfort when I’m sad, and an outlet when I’m angry. Most of all, music has the power to always make me happy. It is for sure the love of my life and possibly the only one that will stay with me until the end.