The last time I was on Finnish soil
proper though was actually the first time too. The first show we'd
ever played outside of the UK with Speedhorn was in Helsinki, in
2000. We'd driven all the way from the UK, a journey which took two
days. By the time we got to the venue we were all a little dazed
since the last leg of that journey was spent on the overnight ferry
crossing from Stockholm. It had been quite a night. Within an hour
of being on the boat we clocked on to the fact that the place was
actually a giant, floating nightclub, full of pissed up
Scandinavians. We of course, duly joined them. We were on tour with
Biohazard and this being the first show of the tour, we'd never met
them, but just as we did, they stuck out like a sore thumb on the
boat and we soon found each other. A few beers at the bar around
five pm quickly escalated into drunken karaoke, in-band fighting,
sleeping in corridors unable to find allocated cabins, a puking
incident involving our merch guy and a bottle of Jack Daniels and our
tour manager being locked up in boat jail having gotten into a fight
with the Norwegian rally team. I didn't even know that such a thing
as boat jail existed.
On that occasion all I'd managed was a
quick stroll around the harbour in Helsinki, since the venue was
right next to it. Today should provide ample opportunity to make up
for that. I usually hate getting up early, hate it. But even though
I'd risen with the cockerel's crow this morning, well I would have if
there were any cockerels in Sumpan, I was in good spirits. Getting
out of bed at five am is certainly made easier by the sun shining
brightly through the bedroom window...
I'd sat on the sofa watching the early
CNN bulletin on tv, debating with myself whether I had time to put
the kettle on and make a cuppa, when my phone beeped at the incoming
of a text message from Andy. “Oi Brit, put down your cup of tea
and make your way outside, we'll be there in two minutes”. It's
almost as if the big bastard had read my mind.
The flight from Arlanda to Helsinki
only takes forty-five minutes. You literally take off, get up to
cruising height and then come back down again. One big arch over the
water. Despite only having slept for five hours, I felt pretty good.
Well, awake anyway. My back felt far from good. The night before,
as in any other night that precedes and early rise, I had a hard time
getting to sleep. I'd lay on the sofa until half past midnight,
nursing a glass of single malt and watching the film on tv, the
Forty Year Old Virgin with Steve Carrell. I lay they wondering if
Johan was doing the same thing, since he's the same as me when it
comes to both rising early and stupid films. I asked him this
morning what time he went to bed last night, he smirked and told me
he'd been watching the film.
Whether it's a lack of sleep, a
hangover or any other shit circumstance, I always feel better knowing
there's someone in my company that's feeling worse. Today, as is
often the case, that someone is Jon. When I'd awoken this morning at
five am, Jon was already in the middle of an epic night. In fact,
it's been a bit of an epic week for the poor bastard. After playing
with Victims at Strand on Wednesday, he then travelled up to play the
Peace and Love Festival with Nasum on the Thursday before flying down
to Leipzig on the Friday to play the Full Force Festival. Nasum were
on stage at the un-Godly time of two-thirty am, as in this morning.
They'd played the show and then Jon and Keijo, along with Hannes and
Antti, their two Finish sound crew, had taken a festival shuttle to
Berlin for an eight am flight to Helsinki to meet up with us again
and play tonight's show at the Tuska Festival. Just thinking about
that lot makes me fucking snoozy. I have no idea how he's coping. I
remember going through a couple of festival seasons in Europe with
Speedhorn, and as much as the shows were often big and a lot of fun,
everything else around it was a fucking drag. It didn't take me long
to become disillusioned with festival touring.
It's just past nine am by the time we
touch down. Jon is still in the air and won't land for another hour.
An old friend of the band, Petri, is working for the festival this
weekend and he's here to pick us up and take us to the hotel. Petri
managed a tour that had a line up of Victims, Rotten Sound, Trap Them
and The Ocean a few years back, shortly before I joined the band.
He's going to be out with Nasum on their European club tour at the
end of the summer, which will be the very final leg of their mammoth
round the world trek, ending sometime in early October. After
greeting Petri he asks us if we want to stick around and grab a
coffee at the airport whilst waiting for Jon, of if we'd rather he
took us to the hotel directly. Apparently most of the bands are
staying at a hotel near the airport but for some reason we've been
moved to one right in the middle of the city. We unanimously decide
that we'll meet Jonny boy later. With that we head off.
Petri swings by the festival site
before dropping us off at the hotel. There we leave our merch with
the festival sellers and obtain a brief look around the place.
Unlike Hellfest, Tuska is bang in the middle of town, set up on large
asphalted parking lot. It reminds me a little of Maryland Death Fest
in Baltimore, only on a larger scale. Two main, outdoor stages stand
side by side at the far end of the compound. Flanking them to the
left is the merchandise area, to the right, a little further back,
the bar area. The bar area, which is fenced off, creating a barrier
between those old enough to drink and those who are not, is almost as
large as the crowd standing space in front of the two stages. Andy
laughs at the thought of bands playing on the main stage, across a
barren no-mans-land to the bar area on the other side.
There is a smaller tented stage which
lies opposite the bar area and then further back still, to the
immediate left of the entrance is the building that houses the stage
where we're playing tonight. The warehouse like building has a large
stage and it's own little, cordoned off bar area in the far left hand
corner. I wonder if this building is a venue in itself during
non-festival times...
I have no idea how the show will be
tonight, if it rains I guess we'll be in luck. The line up is a
veritable hotch-potch of Finnish goth and war metal, along with some
international acts like Megadeth and Ministry as well as the odd
hardcore band like ourselves and Napalm Death. We'll see. I'm glad
for the asphalt though, much more civilised than the muddy bog of
Hellfest.
Petri drops us off at the hotel a
little after ten am.
My back has now become completely
rigid, so that I'm walking around as if I have a broomstick stuffed
down the back of my shirt and jeans. I can't even be bothered
thinking about how I'm going to manage the show later. I console
myself with the fact that it's the last show for a while, after which
I'll be able to get it sorted. We dump our bags in the rooms, nice
hotel by the look of it, and walk about the city centre looking for
some coffee and a spot of lunch. I need a pharmacy, but I need
coffee and food first.
We end up walking about a large
shopping centre in vain search of something decent to eat. The
options are looking slim. We spot an Irish pub and decide that some
pub grub could probably do the trick. We walk in and pick up a menu
that is stood on the bar. The menu only has beer in it though. We
laugh, making stereotypical jokes about Finish people and alcohol. I
wonder aloud if they have the same laws concerning alcohol here as
they do in Sweden, as in, you can't sell booze without serving grub.
I doubt it somehow. Johan assures me that they must have food in
this pub though, picking up a different menu a little further down
the bar. This menu only has cider on it. Four pages with nothing
but cider. “Fucking Finns!”, Johan chortles as we exit,
continuing on with our search.
Our ambitions for lunch slowly quashed,
we settle for one of the shopping center cafés. Although the
queuing system seems a bit fucked, with disgruntled locals pushing in
from all angles, the menu offers a few decent looking veggie options.
I order a brie and mango bagel with a cappuccino to accompany it.
Unfortunately the picture on the menu in no way represents the food
on my plate. The chunks of mango in the picture are in reality a
sugary mango flavoured jam. As my dad would say, “It's probably
never seen a mango!” The cappuccino is all fluffy milk and no
coffee.
Not entirely satisfied, we eat up and
leave in search of a pharmacy. The pharmacy has far more to offer
than the café and I come away with an assorted bag full of salvas
and pain killers for my back. I imagine this is how it feels to be
Jon.
It's around noon by the time we arrive
back at the hotel. With nothing to do between now and four pm, when
Petri will come back and transport us to the festival site, we decide
to retire to our rooms and relax. I would like to explore Helsinki a
little more, maybe check out Janne's Combat Rock record store, but
I'm tired and the store moved to the other side of the city a couple
of years ago and the hotel bed is calling me to it. I leave Andy and
Johan and head to the room I'm sharing with Jon. I find him fast
asleep on his bed, that awful Nicolas Cage film National Treasure
playing at low volume on the tv
set. I crawl into the twin bed beside his and watch the rest of the
film, my eyes fading into shallow sleep every now and then. Has Cage
done a decent film since Wild At Heart?
Petri
arrives at four pm as planned and we head off to the festival.
Hannes, one of Nasum's crew is in the van with us along with Petri's
girlfriend and another friend of hers. Hannes is going to do
monitors for us tonight. Antti, Nasum's sound man, will be doing our
front of house. We'll meet him there later. We chat away amongst
ourselves as we tour the streets of Helsinki. We're planning to come
back here in January and play some shows with Rotten Sound. I really
do hope to get a better look around the place then.
We
arrive at the festival a few hours before our stage time. We load
out the gear into the back stage area of the warehouse building.
It's a simple set up. Behind the stage is a large black curtain,
behind that a couple of sofas, a table with a few bags of crisps
spread about it and a couple of fridge's with beer for the various
bands playing. We'd loaded in through an adjacent room where five or
six people were sat washing used plastic beer glasses from the
festival bars with water hoses. It's a pretty depressing scene. By
their expression on their faces I'd guess they've already been here a
while. The room is decked out in beige tiles, there is a drain in
the floor, although it doesn't seem to be doing much of a job given
the pool of water we have to walk through whilst loading in the gear,
and there is a large, stainless steel table where plastic bins full
of dirty plastic glasses are awaiting a hosing. The whole scene
reminds me from Solway Foods back in the day. I hope these guys are
being well paid.
We
drop of the gear beside the stage, meet the stage manager, who
immediately asks us if we want a bottle of booze, I don't remember
it's name but Jon excitedly gives me the lo-down on it. A genuine
Finnish treat apparently. Johan politely declines his offer and
tells him we'll take it later. Along with Avgrund, who play before
us on the same stage, Napalm Death are the only other band I'm
interested in watching today, and they're about to start. Some of us
are hungry though so we decide to cash in our meal tickets and grab
some scran and then catch the second half of the Napalm set.
I
myself am not that hungry in truth and I'm only eating now for the
sake of time. It's no idea playing a show on a full stomach... When
I view the food on offer my appetite recoils further, like a scared
dog backing into it's kennel. The vegetarian option is a lasagne
based on pickled beetroot. I kid you not! I'm far from being a
picky eater, in fact I'll eat almost anything that didn't once have a
conscience, but pickled beetroot is where I draw the line. I've had
a phobia of it since my days at infant school, where on one nightmare
inducing occasion we were forced to eat a dinner consisting of: one
hard boiled egg, one mound of grated, tasteless white cheese
accompanied by a side ration of pickled beetroot. Everything on the
plate stained like a disease by the beetroot's purple juice. I've
never been able to eat it since. In fact, for a while there I
refused to go to school, for fear of that disgusting so called meal.
My parents were even brought in for a talk with the teachers who were
concerned that I was being bullied, such was my depressed
disposition. Up until about a year ago, I couldn't even eat fresh
beetroot, but Jenny taught me, or actually, went on a mission to
convince me, that fresh beetroot was a whole other thing. She was
right about that, and for her efforts I'm grateful. There is,
however, no fucking way I'm touching this pickled beetroot lasagne.
What the fuck is that all about?
Johan
has a theory that the Finns take the same approach to food as they do
to music, in that they throw any old combination into the pot. Like
techno and death metal, or symphonic synth and math metal, lasagne
and pickled beetroot. He also asserts that they never put salt on
anything.
Anyway,
I end up with a plate of sauce-less white rice, a few leaves of
lettuce and a few fallafels. No sauce on them either. Hardly the
finest meal I've ever eaten. We're soon done with it and we head off
to watch Napalm. The sun is shining on the boys as they power
through their set, playing the same mix of old and new they had a
couple of months ago when we played with them in Antwerp. I always
enjoy watching Barney perform. I have to laugh though, as Andy had
indeed predicted, there are just as many people stood way back in the
beer area watching them as there are down in front of the stage. All
the same, there are still a lot of people watching and despite the
sound being the typical crap outdoor festival fare, it's still a good
show.
We
don't have much to do but wait around for another few hours until
it's time for us to play. I string my guitar again. Getting to be a
regular occurrence these days. An hour or so before show time I
douse my lower back in Tiger Balm and crack open a can of Kharu beer.
It tastes better than I remember it tasting at Carmen, where it's
still the beer of the week, same as it has been since I moved to
Stockholm. I have another as I watch the Avgrund set right before
ours.
From
what I can hear from the side of the stage, the monitors are more
than up to the job. It sounds great from where I'm standing. There
doesn't seem to be a lot of people watching them although to be fair
to the guys, they put on a really energetic show. I'm not the
biggest grindcore fan but if it's done well, like it is here, it's a
lot of fun to watch. It all stems from punk at the end of the day
anyway. I can't help thinking as I watch the Avgrund set that it's
too bad the Hellfest show wasn't our farewell show for the year. I
soon put the thought out of mind though. As long as my back holds
up, I'm going to enjoy this show as much as any other.
It
started well enough. For a kick off, the room was almost full.
There must be about eight hundred people in here. I figure it must
be raining outside. The sound on stage is perfect and for the first
few songs the energy alone carries me along like a surfer on the
crest of a wave. The crowd are going for it and we're playing full
throttle. And then about five songs in, it starts to really fucking
pound in my back. At the Strand show the other day I hadn't thought
about the pain until after we'd come off stage, when the adrenalin
had died down. As great as this show was turning out to be though,
adrenalin wasn't enough. This has happened to me once before, years
ago on tour with Speedhorn. On that occasion we were on a twenty
date tour of the UK and I'd pulled my back somewhere in the middle of
it. It all came to a head at a show in Brighton and I was forced to
play most of the gig sat on a monitor, almost paralysed from the
pain. Tonight wasn't as bad as that, but I could barely do more than
stand still in one position and nod my head to the beat from Andy's
snare.
Even
so, the gig was still a lot of fun. There was a full on pit for This
is the End and I hadn't even
noticed that we were running short on time. The stage manager
appeared by Jon's side and was telling him we only had three minutes
left. I was actually disappointed because we'd been planning to play
For We Are Dead, a
song we don't often play these days. But in the end we had to cut
that and abruptly finish with Circles/Scars. I
almost didn't want the gig to end because I knew the pain in my back
was only going to get worse once we came off stage.
Pissing
with sweat under the heavy stage lights, packing my gear up as
rapidly as I could manage, I heard someone shouting my name. I look
into the crowd and see a face I haven't seen in a long time. It's a
girl called Chrissy who toured with us in the States back in 2005,
when Speedhorn played a doomed tour with Nile and a bunch of other
metal bands. Chrissy sold merch for Decapitated and Hypocrisy for
those seven weeks and we'd all became good friends. I'd forgotten
that she'd left the States and moved to Finland. I jump down from
the stage to give her a sweat-drenched hug and chat for a few
seconds. I have to get sorted but we agree to meet up at the VIP bar
later. Before I can jump back on stage some crazy old punk, who
looks like one of the alkies that hang out by S-Grillen in Sumpan,
starts shouting at me in some weird mix of Finnish/Swedish/English.
He's waving a cd of our Killer album,
and I realise he wants the band to sign it. I try to explain to him
that I have to pack up first and then I'll get it sorted, the rest of
the guys by now have long since packed up and left the stage, but he
doesn't seem to understand. He just keeps waving the cd in the air
and shouting “Please! Please!” This goes on for the next five
minutes whilst I pack down my gear, and after offering the odd
apologetic shrug of the shoulders his way, begin to find the whole
thing funny and it ends up with me and the festival stage hands all
laughing. Crazy Punk doesn't give a piss though, he just keeps on
waving the cd. I finally get packed down, take his cd, go back stage
and get it signed and then take it back to him. “Thank you
please!” he rejoices whilst kissing my hand. Chuffed, he stoats
off.
My
back is really fucking killing me now and the Tiger Balm and pain
killers I bought earlier aren't up to the job any more. I take
another beer and a few swigs of that booze we'd been offered earlier,
Jon had now been given the green light to go and retrieve it, and
Johan asks me if I want some of his special shit, being a fellow
sufferer he has such things. I rub in a load of this special balsam
and within five minutes I'm pissing sweat like I've just gnashed down
a Bradford vindaloo. It does the job though, even if it is a little
uncomfortable.
There
isn't a whole load more to see at the festival. Sabaton are amusing
for about two minutes but that's about it. The joke soon wears thin.
I catch up with Chrissy and her Finnish husband Ossie over a beer at
the VIP bar, it's good to see her and Ossie seems like a really nice
guy. We say something about meeting up again in January, if we come
over and play those Rotten Sound shows, and then I catch up with the
rest of the guys. We're all in the mood for a beer to celebrate the
last show of the year. Weird being that it's only June. After a
beer in the wooden shed that is the VIP bar we contact Petri and ask
him to come get us.
After
settling with the merch people we head back to the hotel and drop our
gear off before heading down to Tavasti, a great music venue that has
a decent restaurant beside it. We sit down to a meal of veggie
burgers and fries, the burger is awesome by the way, made of chickpea
and mint with a tzatziki sauce, before settling into a few pints of
beer, the odd Jack and Coke and even a Balvenie 12 year old single
malt. We pay for the night with the merch money. There is a
festival-after-party going on at a bar near the hotel but this is far
better, just sitting down with the boys at a restaurant, chilling out
over a few drinks and shooting the breeze.
It's
must be one am by the time we leave and we're all getting a little
sauced up, although in a very low-key manner. We decide to pop into
that bar with the after party on the way back anyway, since it is
literally only a block down from the hotel. It's a small bar with a
dance floor in the cellar and it's absolutely packed. We get a round
of beers in. They have Brooklyn Summer Ale by the bottle which turns
out to be the only good thing the place has going for it. Compared
to the chilled out atmosphere of the restaurant this feels like Bips
Nightclub in Corby. We drink a couple anyway, the four of us stood
tight up against the back wall. At some point, it's getting a bit
hazy by now, some young girl who has been sat next to us, chatting
with a friend, looks at me and says hello. In English of course. I
say hello back and she asks how long we're in Helsinki for. She then
asks me if I want to go and dance downstairs. I barely manage a
reply, just kind of carry on talking to the boys, a little
embarrassed. The girl is obviously hitting on me and I'm absolutely
useless in such situations. I'd never make it in the singles world.
Or, more like, if I was ever plunged back into the singles world I'd
probably stay there for the rest of my days.
We call it a night
shortly afterwards. Well, all except Jon, who decides to stay on and
hang out with Hannes. I barely remember crawling into bed and I'm
not woken by Jon whenever he returns. I hadn't felt that drunk until
we'd left the place, but then instead of going straight to my room
I'd tagged along with Johan and Andy to there's, devouring the
peanuts from their mini bar and opening a bottle of Lapin Kulta,
although I barely drank a drop. Goodnight boys, their mini bar
ravaged I fuck off to bed.
I wake up around
seven am, dying for a cack and with an agonising pain in my back. I
make it to the toilet and carefully lower myself on to the seat.
When I'm done the realisation hits me that my back is so fucked I can
barely reach around to wipe my arse. In a brief moment of panic I
think about calling through to Jon to help me, but quickly reconsider
it. I get the job done eventually but it's fucking excruciating and
I have to hold on to the sink for support. I finally drag myself up
and crawl back into bed, the only consolation to this horrid state of
affairs being that check-out is not until noon...
Posts
Brilliant as always Gaz! I hope your back is OK now! Andy x
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