current music: j. karjalainen – mä meen(live)
Hello there, sorry for no instant updates after our out-of-Turku shows with Endrive. Now i will recap these two amazing evenings. On wednesday we packed my car full with equipment and five monkies and headed towards Tampere. I drove the whole way and we had no trouble finding the venue, Vastavirta Klubi. We had a few stops on the way and on one bathroom break we saw a reindeer, fenced, but still. When we arrived to Vastavirta i was impressed by the place, thought it would’ve been way more crappier, to be honest. We soundchecked first since we would be the last band of the evening, the headliners so to speak. During soundchecked i was yet surprised by the venue, the stage sounds were really great. The other bands soundchecked after us and then started the long waiting, it’s always like this, hurry-up and wait, but whay are you going to do about it. We met an interesting character at the club while waiting for the bands to play. A man who was a part of the motorcycle group “MC Varma Kuolema” (translated as MC Certain Death). He told some stories of when he was in Turku and was being held at gunpoint and his mobile phone rang, he was innocent of course and they cought the right guy. He had also been swimming in turku (near Turku atleast) with a dead pigeon, bypassers looked weirdly at these swimmers, but, can you blame them? The three bands besides us were The Breed, Kallichore and Dusk of Man. Won’t go into specifics of their sets. There was quite much people and we managed to brake even, even though during our set most of the people had gone home, but we had fun on stage without any major messups. After our set we quickly packed our van (my car) and headed back to Turku, Ville stayed in Tampere for the night. Was quite bad weather at some points so i had to drive very slow, fog and rain and such. I came home pretty late and had a semi-morning shift the next day (10am – 2pm), was a tough one.
On Thursday when i got home from work i made some food for the trip for me and visited Melanie quickly before picking up the guys, except for Ville who was coming to Helsinki with Dusk of Man. Niko was driving my green tiger this time, since i dont want to drive in downtown Helsinki. We had some trouble finding the venue, Lepakkomies, but we took onboard from Helsinki the guitarist of Jets and present member or The Låvers, Antti. He guided us to the place, and we had been very close to it but, well we made it. We unpacked our gear and Dusk of Man checked first, they were going to be the last band of the evening. We did our check after them and the sounds were decent. Kallichore checked last and then started the waiting again. The Breed wasn’t a part of this evening. Kallichore started jamming at 9.55pm, with almost no audience, they said they just wanted to get it over with. When they finished we decided to wait a bit if maybe some more people would show up, and luckily did. We did an energetic show, maybe the most energetic to date, atleast for me personally, i rocked my heart out. We had some technical difficulties with Sauli’s and Niko’s guitars but it didn’t stop us from going completely nuts on stage. Dusk of Man rocked out last and me and sauli had a little two-man moshpit in front of the stage. After they finished we packed up and started driving back to Turku, Niko was behind the wheel this way also. We stopped on the way back for some food and took us quite a while to get back, due to occasiional foggy weather. I got to bed at about 5am or so. I had to get up at 7.45 to get to work, to do another of those semi-morningshifts, yet another tough one.
Not that doing this short shift with little sleep wasn’t enough. I got the following evening shifts (sat-sun) off due to inventory at the factory (of Nokia) so I decided with Melanie that we should drive to Kokkola and surprise my parents and my sister (yet again). So straight as i got home we got ready for driving up to Kokkola, and we did so in about six hours (only one stop on the way). We listened to the Finland – Russia semifinal in the car which finland ended up losing 4-0. Just as the game was over we arrived to our parents summerhouse and caught them offguard, again. We had some to eat there and then we drove off to our parents place in the city for the night. In the morning we headed to my sisters place and surprised her too. We were there to help her with the kids but also to see the new baby, which doesn’t have any name yet, officially. In between we went to Pedrina’s and eat with Hans (aka Hank, aka Hade) as he was also in Kokkola at the time. After our food we took Hankie back home and went back to my sisters place. The kids were quiet and calm but as soon as we stepped through the door, they went insane. At around 8.30pm we drove back to our parents summerhouse to watch the bronze medal game between Finland and Sweden, which Finland ended up winning 4-0, yes! Always nice to beat sweden in hockey. I had a quick sauna before the game. My dad had installed a new ‘oven’ to the sauna so ofcourse i had to test it, and it was so nice and relaxing. The water was way too cold for swimming and i didn’t want to get sick, so i skipped it. My uncle Bernhard (my dad’s brother) and his wife were also at the summer house, was nice to see them. After the game we headed back to the city to sleep. In the morning we packed our stuff, picked up Hank (who was coming with us back to Turku) and drove to the summer house for lunch before starting to drive back to Turku. We got on the road at about 3pm and were in Turku around 10 in the evening, so six hours it toox approximately this time too. When we got back we watched the hockey final, or what was left of it and went to sleep.
This could possibly be my longest post in a while, i hope it wasn’t boring at all. Now i will go and wash the dishes. See you again soon!
peace love and understanding,
-pooki
