Sunrise Avenue at Tavastia Klubi Helsinki

I wanted to publish this report several days ago. Pictures had been developed, movies had been cut, but I wasn’t able to upload anything. Since October 27th my internet was not working at all.
At first a broken router, which was very quick exchanged by my provider. Got the new one on the Monday after. Great.
But it happened that the very weekend before a huge storm was running over the northern parts of Germany. That’s why on Monday Nov 30th the provider run a tape which claimed that due to storm there was reduced up to no internet. Berlin was hitted hard by it. So no diagnosis to figure out if the new router might be a broken router as well or if techy magic would be necessary. On Friday they had fixed everything and the diagnosis could be run. But imagine us, being off the internet for nearly a week.
We needed kind of quadruple techy magic. First of all this very secret magic, where the technician is hiding in his chamber and sends some bits and bytes through the wire. Not sure how that works. Then some visits of men in grey with long ladders, who also established new lines at the house and measured a lot.
Since you are able to read this report now, you know I am back to the new countries of internet. Read more soonish on helz-design.de and helz-design.com.

August 2nd, 2017

Concert startet more than two months before the date, precisely on August 2nd 2017. That was the day when they started to sell the tickets for clubtour of Sunrise Avenue.
This is pretty hot. A club tour with a band, who is able to fill halls with a capacity of 12,000 +. Clubs have approximate room for 1,000 to 2,000 people. Tavastia Klubi in Helsinki, which became immediately my favorite locations of all locations of this tour leading from Finland via Sweden, Danmark, Germany, across all of Europe down to Barcelona, has room for 700 people. So a very limited amount of tickets.
Can you imagine how thrilled, how nervous I was these days around the 2nd of August? I was a kind of pain in the neck of my besty the whole weekend. She was brave enough coping up with me. Thanks so much hun.
And here we go. 11 am finnish time was the date when everything was going to start. I had exchanged mails with the organisator Contramusic beforehand. They advised me to establish an account on the site of the finnish distributor tiketti.fi. Contramusic was going to redirect everybody to the local ticket distributors. My paypal addy was read just to be copied and at 10:59 i queued up int the virtual queue. 99% already done.

I can still feel it. The excitement, whether I would be going to make it! And than it happened, around 5 minutes after the sale had started officially I got my ticket for Tavastia Klubi in Helsinki.
All shows in Finland had been sold out after 10 minutes and similarly the shows in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
I believe my son is still baffled by the outburst of joy of his mom that very day. I danced around as if there would be no ending, shouted more as I did when the final goal in the world championship was made. And I can be a total freak with football.
My ticket didn’t found me immediately, so tiketti.fi and me exchanged some very friendly mails and then I got a pdf of my ticket and also a text on my cell.

Still hyperventilating 😀 Now I had to get myself a flight and a place to sleep.
My very dear friends Sanna-Leena and Bijay wanted to spend some weeks in Nepal during that time. My dear friend. Suvi allowed me to stay with her for two days in Kallio and I found a very nice AirBnB in Toivola. More about this soonish.
Today is concert day:

11.10.2017

Queuing up
I have to admit this is my very first club gig ever, if you won’t count the gig of the Scottish artist Fish (my ex was a huge fan) I was able to watch while being very very pregnant down in the 1990s. That gig was not entitled with queuing up and waiting and pushing forward. My ex would have never done that and I was right behind him these days, pregnant.
Anyway, Sunrise Avenue is different, and Helsinki is even more different. But having heard about some gigs in Germany, I am again more than happy having been in Helsinki for the gig.
Big question: when to leave for the concert? I had to move that day from Kallio to Toivola. But it was not a big deal. Managed to go over to Toivola, getting read for the gig and then back on the roads.
According to the ticket doors would be open at 8pm – ovet klo 20. I made it at 5 pm to Urho Kekkosen katu. At that time around 30 fans had queued up in front of the doors of Tavastia Klubi.

OK, I will line up behind them. Preparations: look for a toilet, get some water! Toilet can be found in Ostoskeskus Kamppi, close to the cafe Espressohouse. And water is sold e.g. on the lowest floor at supermarket Alepa.
Now I am ready to queue. We are still close to the entrance of Tavastia-Klubi.
Nearly three hours left until doors will be open. Somewhat stupid to stand here all time. Nothing more to do than watching people.
At some point an elderly lady crosses the street and asked me curiously in finnish, what’s it all about. I told her: „Tänään illalla on konsertti.“ – „This evening there is a concert.“ She wants to know about the band, an information I can provide easily.
Cards are set! I am not sailing with the German flag!

Once again, I need to visit the neighborhood of Espressohouse, so I asked the German girls behind me, in English, if they would watch my place 😀 Worked fine.
I don’t know at what point the queue finally ended, all I was able to see, they were standing around the corner of Annankatu.

It was cold, it was fucking cold, so I was quiet happy having my winter jacket with me.
Doors open
Finally me made it to 8 pm, doors of Tavastia Klubi opened right on time and we were allowed to walk in. When entering the doors of a concert I am always quiet nervous. What are they going to check? Will they take something away from me? May I take my cell inside? What’s about my camera?
Helsinki suprised me as always. They checked nothing at all, just the ticket. I got a kind of blacklight stamp on one of my hands, and that’s it!
Now off to give away the jacket, managed everything well as well. „Missä vessa on?“ Where is the toilet? Or in more fancy English: “Where can I find the bathroom?” Still not sure what the friendly guy behind the table told me, but I was able to find the bathroom! So all went well 😀
Certainly I wanted to be as close to stage as possible. I am not the kind of girl who uses her elbows as weapon. Nevertheless, I managed to stand second row! There was a barrier in front of stage which got a special foot to stand with, and I was standing on that foot!

Right in front of me where two ladies with crutches, which was fine. Not so fine, these ladies used to rammen their crutches quiet often into my body. When they were holding themselves at the bar, they ram their funky behinds or lets better say their asses always into my body. That was more than reckless.
To speak frankly: nobody has more or less right to be somewhere! We all payed the same amount of money for the ticket, we all had gone through the same procedure queuing up and freezing our asses of etc. So it would be fantastic if fans would deal each other with respect. Some fans try to tell these so called “just Samu Fans”: „Respect the whole band!“ –this is rude! Just because I like a person or like that person more than the rest of a group, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I am disrespecting the whole group or band.
To like somebody and to respect somebody are two different things. But maybe you need life experience of about 40 lived years to understand these facts. Maybe we are expecting to much of our teenagers and the teenage-fans to understand these facts.
To be honest: I think Sami, Osmo, Riku and Raul are doing a fantastic job. They are great guitar and bass players, wonderful drummers and especially Osmo is a kind of musical multi talent, whom I admire to the bottom of my heart. I am Sunrise Avenue Fan and I am Samu Fan, that’s why I shot a lot of Samu pictures! Period!
But back to reckless behavior.
It is also quiet rude, just to impress the band, to hold up balloons or big posters at certain songs. While performing the band has not the time to read those posters. They are performing! But all the fans, standing behind those with the balloons or posters, are not able to see and enjoy the band. I am at a gig to see and experience the band, if I don’t want to do this, I could listen to a CD! And no, I don’t want to be patient anymore to grant other people more rights than I seem to have. This behavior is rude and arrogant and cocky and it needs to stop! I don’t want to waist my life anymore to be patient with these rude fans! Life is to short and precious to waste it on rude and stupid people!
But it is this sometimes very arrogant and cocky behavior, which some German fans show on and on, which makes me to understand no German while being in Finland, to speak English with the little ones and to raise my hand when Samu on stage: „Kuka on suomesta?“ – “Who is from Finland?” This night I was a Fin in my heart and proud, enjoying every minute! Special highlight: I understood everything, which Samu told in finnish!
When will the show start?
8:15 pm and we where waiting in front of stage. Show started around 9:30 pm. So again: waiting, waiting, waiting. What you are gonna do in such a situation? Looking around, taking pictures and try to get the literally asses from first row from your body!
When you are that close, you can see the crew bringing water, tune guitar, glue set lists to the floor, open energy drinks and water bottles, placing everything at the right places, and finally testing muted the mics. To me this was highly interesting.
You can also have an eye on the audience. My pix are not that great, I am sorry, just got this small 8 MP casio Exilim, my iPhone, which is also just around 8 MP and a Nokia Phone, which has a resolution of 12 MP. But due to closeness to stage the pix are so much better than they had been last time!

Finally – Sunrise Avenue on stage
Yiha, finally, here we go! And a super plus for a club tour! No supporting act. When they start, it is my band on stage, not anybody else!
Stage is dark, and then there are the first sounds. I am not so sure what they were actually playing, but as far as I remember all of the new album Heartbreak Century, besides „Flag“ – which I appreciate, coz I don’t like that song at all – and unfortunately “Never let go”. They also played Hollywood Hills and my alarm song Lifesaver. Everything was fine.
According to my videos, set list must have been:
Somebody like me – crazy
I love this song, it is kind of subversive. My besty, who is as nuts as I am, and me consider this song as “OUR song”
Two twisted minds
They think alike
It’s way more fun to skip the warning signs
My restless soul
It was all alone
But here with you I kind of feel at home
nothing more to say 😀

Afterglow
a wonderful, beautiful song. I hate the composer (guess Samu was involved here), because this song is very difficult to sing, maybe the most difficult ones, next to “Nothing is over”
Text wise it tells you about a broke up but not yet finished love affair.
How to let a former partner really go? Get him/her leave your life finally.?
I’m tryin’ to make room for love,
but it’s crowded inside me –
sometimes it is also crowded and messed up inside me.
a wonderful song for Samu’s voice.

Beautiful
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but when I look at my own reflection in the mirror, tired, fed up, being very close, right with my nose on the mirror, even more close than any other human being will be to my face or your face ever be, beside the fact he/she is kissing you, at that moment I just see pure mess.
And I can’t imagine, that somebody won’t realize this mess.
Sometimes it would be interesting to see yourself with the eyes of somebody else.
This song is really encouraging.
Don‘t you ever change,
you magic little thing 😀
… promised! never ever!

Lifesaver
one of my favorite songs, not to say the hymn of my life. That’s why I wake up with it every morning. Guess I heard it about 4000 times the last 4 years, and finally I got an idea for a picture here as well. Some things take their time.

Question Marks
this is a very interesting song. What the hell are you doing, when you just see question marks? All over! I see a lot of them in my life, and there is always the question: what do they mean? what is life going to tell me?
I also think that the start of a romantic love affair, which ends up in nowhere due to different expectations is more than thrilling.
Go back to the start
with nothing but question marks.

Room
this is something I would love to experience one day!
A hot guy is watching you from a distance and decides to act 😀
How thrilling!
A friend recently told me, that this would never going to happen, to much Hollywood!
A wonderful, calm, telling song.
It all could change tonight
– this is it! A night, an evening, and everything is changed!
Wo doesn’t dream of this?

Heartbreak Century
We’re not a movie with written lines,
Still we’re chasing the perfect pretty lie
Two lines that cover up perfectly the dilemma of the 21st century!
nobody is perfect, but everybody tries to stage him/herself, we are the century of selfies.
I really like this challenging, good-mood-music, which makes me wanna dance every time!

Hollywood Hills
this is the good old one.
At first I didn’t liked it so much, but then suddenly it clicked in.

Let me go
I am still mixed up with this song!
It is not like Flag on this “I can’t stand it list, but I am mixed up.
Just these lines hit me, with the words and the music!
Escaping through the light
‘Cause this place can’t be right
You’re wonderful, you don’t deserve to cry no more
Don’t mind if I break
It’s a mess that I’ve made
You need to move on

Point of No Return
When I read the title of this song for the very first time, I had had some kind of naughty thoughts.
But: do you really know when it is time to split up? Or does it catch you by surprise? Or do you go over the Point of no return without changing anything or realizing it?
Let’s burn the bridges all behind
You know inside
When to say goodbye
Samu made some fun, that they had never been able to play this song properly, although I guess no one in the audience would have been able to judge, what the proper version would be. There were some bets going on, and if it wouldn’t go right, somebody, apparently him, would have to do something stupid that night. Nobody knows how it went. Shame on you! 😛

This was the official end of the set list, band leaft tage and the audience wanted more:
Help you hate me
first single of the new album
This song is great and ironic, such evil words hide themselves underneath light music, but if you let them, they will find their way to your consciousness. Slowly, honest, taking!
We all have had them, these slightly murderous thoughts after a break up. When this guy, this woman would just stop to exist, what a relief it would be, at least for a couple of minutes. To get comfort and than to proceed with life!
I know you wanna see me falling out
Falling out the window
I know you wanna see me crashing down
Crashing with my plane

Home
This is the most beautiful, thrilling song of the whole album, the whole show.
It reminds me of a country song, but I yet haven’t found its name again.
Samu’s voice goes directly under your skin, into your heart. This song makes me cry all the time.
Home lays inside of us, it’s what we really need.
Home to me is Helsinki. The thoughts of this city, when I walk virtually the well known streets, makes me feel comfort and home.
A friend once told me, that he hates the yellow light of the finnish street lamps. Seeing this yellow light makes me feel at home and right where I need to bee.
Helsinki is home to me
Cause home is where ever I am
When I feel you with me
They’ll never take that away
Cause you are home to me

Samu was standing about 5 meters apart from me on stage. It is so thrilling, never have been that close.
I am not going to write a critic about the concert. I am kind of biased. I am just happy to be here. I like the songs, the music, I am dancing, as much as it is possible given the limited space. And I am singing. Quiet simple. No security shows up telling me to sit down, as it happend during the last concert in Berlin.
Yes I love the concerts in Helsinki.
Pix are not at all chronological. I am so happy about the three different cams, but chronological sorting with that huge number of pix just freaked me out.
I got around 85 pictures plus 12 videos from the gig. Helsinki all in all gave me around 1800 media! Any questions?
Yeah I am a Sunrise Avenue Fan with focus on Samu, therefore most pictures are with him.
It was a blast, I enjoyed every second.
Hearing his voice was the best of all. His outfit: I could kill for this jeans with the wholes in it 😀
But I am also again and always impressed how well the band is playing together.
When the album was released, I liked it immediately! I got ideas for pictures for many songs, right from the scratch. But I also thought: hmm, well, nice country, folk, pop. Easy listening. Open and honest words! But rock’n’roll? Not really!
And now on stage: rock’n’roll! Fantastic guitars, great percussion, wonderful keyboard and the voices: wow!
Everybody had had fun, which includes the band!

I am more than grateful, that I had had the opportunity to see this band in such a small club. So we had had some “Back to the roots” together.
What I didn’t liked, at the end of the gig, when the last tunes of Home vanished, Samu said Kiitos Tavastia and then it was over. No Good bye how we all knew it from the big concerts, no bowing in front of the audience. That was a pity
And all of a sudden, everybody wanted their coats back. So I took chance to get myself a coke at the bar, and than headed for my coat. I also was able to ask the guy at entrance about saturday: Lauantain Disko.
We will see.
Kiitos Sunrise Avenue ja kiitos Samu ihanasta konsertista
© Song lyrics & Music all by Sunrise Avenue/Samu Haber
© Pictures & Videos all by Helz-Design.com