On Easter Monday, Sunrise Avenue, this time with Osmo on the keyboard, honoured the Uebel & Gefährlich in Hamburg by playing a gig of their „small“ tour through Germany being a kind of pre-event for their Out Of Style-Tour in October. Nick Howard, a British singer-songwriter, accompanied them as support act and did a pretty good job by only singing and playing the acoustic guitar. Even my doubts about him being able to do a good warm-up for the audience disappeared pretty quickly as he was able to make us clap our hands already. Also his reaction to a belated „Happy Birthday“ from the audience for his birthday on Easter Sunday, when he seemed to feel a bit embarrassed, was pretty likeable.
Already a few minutes before it was 9 o’clock, Sunrise Avenue entered the stage of the sold-out Uebel & Gefährlich. It was pretty warm in the club already, but that kept neither the band nor the audience from rocking.
Opening track of the current tour is Damn Silence from the new album Out Of Style which could almost completely be found on the setlist as the concert went on. There was a good mixture of ballads and rocksongs on the setlist and also songs from On The Way To Wonderland could have been found, such as Fairytale Gone Bad (what would a gig by Sunrise Avenue be without this song!) during which Samu – as well as in Hollywood Hills – made the audience sing as a huge choir, Choose To Be Me, Forever Yours and Destiny which is already the obligatory song to add a medley to. And so they did also this time: You could hear parts of songs by Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, The Scorpions and many more in it before they played the final chorus of Destiny. Also Samu’s idea to make a roadie dance the funky chicken caused amusement among the audience. Once, Riku also got the idea to add Beethoven’s Ode To Joy as a guitar melody to one of the songs – to say it in a nutshell: The guys were as offhanded and creative as usually.
The guys left the stage for the first time at quarter past ten, but came back soon to play the loudly requested encores. Unfortunately it had become even warmer in the club in the meantime so that even Samu mentioned it and some people had already left the club because of the muggy air. Without the cans of water distributed among the audience by th club’s staff, some people might have got serious circulatory trouble during the gig.
The ending of the concert was, as it’s already typical of a Sunrise Avenue-gig, Nasty which raised the mood of the audience once again even if – compared to ohter gigs I’ve been to – you could see and feel that many people were already pretty exhausted.
Concerning the club, I have to admit that the light and sound were really good, but the air and temperature inside are huge demerits as it was pretty warm and muggy already after Nick Howard had played. As I read on the internet, this is a typical problem of the Ü&G and that’s why I will think twice about going to a concert in there next time. In addition, „sold out“ seems to have the meaning that not a single more person would find a place in the room as there wasn’t really a lot of space for anyone.
Result: I’d always go to see Sunrise Avenue again (I already have got a ticket for their gig in Hannover on 25.10.), but I don’t need the Uebel & Gefährlich again!
I am shocked o.O
The title already says almost everything: When I just read the results of the Finnish parliamentary election, I had to try not to fall from my chair because I was so shocked. Finland is going to have a conservative-populist government, which mainly follows from the result the „True Finns“ (Perussuomalaiset). Considering the current projection, they are the second strongest party. reaching 19,1 % and being only beaten by the National Coalition Party of the current minister of financa Jyrki Katainen that reached 20,3 % in the current projection.
The first shock for me was the fact that the Perussuomalaiset managed to almost quintuple their share of votes since 2007 when they reached 4,05 % and the second shock was that you can’t even blame this result on a bad voter participation because this was, as far as I know, higher than 70 %. That’s why I realy ask myself how a party being in favour of, for example, a stricter policy on foreigners, an interdiction of homosexual marriages and the rejection of the EU and the Euro could be able to reach such an amount of votes. I’m asking myself if the Finns are really persuaded of what they voted for?