Paganfest adventures
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Wow, the last few days have been such a whirlwind that it's kinda tough to figure out where to even begin. Tuesday I took a half-day at work and headed up to Cleveland around 2 pm, arriving about 4:30. There were already a fair number of people in line which was a good sign. I headed up to the front and met up with Kim, and we chatted a bit with some of the other front row fanatics (there's some at every show). The Pittsburgh crew arrived: Chris, who had a final the next day at noon, Stephanie, who loudly cheered for Pittsburgh even in the heart of Cleveland, and Mike with his formidable array of cameras (including a Canon SLR that I am increasingly being sold on). I saw some of the Korpiklaani guys at the bar before the show began, so Kim and I went to go meet them and chat for a bit.
The first band to take the stage was Swashbuckle, which was pirate-themed thrash with everyone in full pirate regalia. It was a pretty entertaining set and while I wasn't so much into the style of music, they did have a fun show with lots of PirateSpeak. Canadian act Blackguard was next, and they were surprisingly good for an opening act - they put on a high energy show and really rocked the audience, even to the point of going out to stand on the floor and play from there! I really enjoyed their music as well; it reminded me of CoB or Wintersun. Plus, female drummers are completely win!
Moonsorrow was next up - what can I possibly say to illustrate how mindblowing it was to see these guys live... somehow they managed to pick six shorter songs that would fit into the alloted time frame (an eight minute song is a quick little ditty by their standards): Sankarihauta, Kivenkantaja, Ukkosenjumalan Poika, Pimeä, Pakanajuhla and Sankaritarina. And each one did in fact measure up to the Epic Wall of Sound characteristic of their studio versions. Janne Perttilä was great as a live guitarist - also a nice guy and enthusiastic about developing a Deep South accent for some reason, which was hilarious when attempted by a drunken Finn in a cowboy hat. I really hope they come back as headliner so they can play a longer set... they seemed to be really well received and at the Covington show I spoke with one guy who had driven six hours from Alabama to see them - can't say I would blame him for that kind of investment; I'd have probably done the same.
Primordial was next and I have to say that while they had an interesting show, they were the only band where I was kind of disappointed. I'm not familiar with their studio stuff besides what's on myspace, but all of their songs seemed to have the same rhythm and get kind of boring after awhile. It was the only part of the evening where I found myself looking at my watch. Maybe it was because I didn't care for the guy's vocals - the music was good but it would have sounded better with growls instead of wailing. Maybe it was because their set seemed a bit boring after the previous bands - the singer had some cool makeup on, but just kind of stood there and posed in various angry metal gestures instead of actually moving around and engaging the audience like the other bands. A lot of people I talked to seemed to have the same feeling in not being able to figure out why Moonsorrow played before them in the program...
But last was Korpiklaani. I don't even think I have words to describe the elation of seeing this incredible music on the live stage, its infectiously danceable momentum amplified by a millionfold, but I did find a video from Monday's NYC show of one of their instrumenals, Pellonpekko:
Click to viewAt both shows they seemed to have a lot of technical problems with monitors being either broken or nonexistent, so they had a hard time playing without being able to hear each other - but the more that seemed to go technically wrong, the more they proved their technical capability by still sounding fantastic even with crappy sound equipment and giving an insanely high-energy performance. Jonne did his "Beer Beer" shtick where he shook up a bottle and sprayed the audience with it - he handed me the rest of the bottle in Cleveland which was just as well since I was thirsty as hell by that point.
But when I saw them the first time at a Tuska after-hours show in 2006, I knew right away that they were one of the best live bands I've ever seen, possibly the best - only Sonata Arctica could possibly tie them for that title! The mic stand made by Seppä Tervarauta looked fantastic and even the normally reserved Hittavainen was smiling and throwing up the horns.
OK, so the show alone would have been well worth the time and gas money to go from one end of the state to the other. But what really made the whole trip worthwhile was how great the guys were - all of them, from all of the bands. After the Cleveland show Kim and I were talking with Jarkko who invited us onto the Klaani bus when it got too chilly to stand around outside, and we drank some wine with a silly printed-out Eläkeläiset label and they gave me a current issue of Soundi to practice reading Finnish. :) I remembered the Irish pub where we went with the Children of Bodom guys, and got Jarkko and Hittavainen to go as well - the Irish guys from Primordial weren't up to it, suprisingly, but I suppose they can go to an Irish pub any day of the week. :) It was about a 15 minute walk from Peabody's, and we talked about all sorts of stuff as we went. We saw the usual Cleveland-at-3-am street folks and some kids drove up to us and asked if we had any shrooms - "Welcome to Cleveland! Got any shrooms or loose change?" Kim and Jarkko seemed to hit it off pretty well, and I wonder if we'll plan in a day trip to Tampere on our own Finnish Tour next month (Next month. I'm going to Finland NEXT MONTH. Panic!) When the bar closed down for the night we lost Hittavainen when he went outside to have a smoke - a minute later and he was nowhere to be seen. As the bus was leaving at 3 and it was 2:30 by that time, we wondered whether he would make it back in time, but he must have asked someone where the club was because he did show up about 10 minutes after we got back. We thought perhaps he might have made some friends with the shroom guys and wandered off with them. After they left I crashed at Kim's place for a few hours of sleep before she had to go to work the next day...
I drove back to Columbus in the morning, along the way I saw an Amish guy plowing a field with a horse-drawn plow and some dogs running around his legs. I got home and took a much-needed shower, then grabbed some fresh clothes and earplugs, a bag of Tyrkisk Peber I keep around for celebratory occasions, and headed south for Paganfest Round Two. Before heading to the venue I stopped at Cork n' Bottle, the only place I know where one can buy Sabra, an Israeli chocolate-orange liqueur. Some of my Dayton vikes had pointed the place out and since it was about eight blocks from the venue I thought it would be a convenient time to pick some up for myself! Alas, the Sabra was out of stock, but I gave the guy my number for when he gets more in stock so he can hold a bottle for me later. I ended up getting some Bärenjäger instead, another drink introduced to me by Dayton vikings...
The venue itself is right across the river from Cincinnati, in an area of town that somehow manages to look friendly, quaint, and walkable but also be composed entirely of pawn shops, booze outlets, check cashing places, and titty bars. As luck would have it, there was an Irish bar there too, just a couple of blocks away. It was a strange part of town and sometime during the show a cop was apparently shot some 2 blocks away... the venue itself was even smaller and more ghetto than Peabody's - it looked like someone had set up a stage in a rentable event hall. The sound and lighting were terrible and it seemed like a very small crowd, which I expected would contain no faces I knew. But I saw a friend there who had been in Cleveland for last year's Paganfest but was now stationed in Kentucky for military assignment - I had emailed him pictures from last year, and promised him this year's batch once I had gone through the hundreds of photos I took...
Before the Covington show I ran into Hittavainen again and gave him the bag of salmiakki - which was promptly crushed and carefully brushed into a bottle of Finlandia for some homemade salmari. We stuck it in the freezer on the bus so the candy could dissolve and be ready to drink after the show. A couple of the guys wanted to eat some of it too so I think next time there will have to be one bag for eating and one for putting in vodka... Then I mentioned I had found an Irish pub in this town too, for those who had missed out yesterday, and I ended up treating four Klaani guys to dinner - I told them to save their money for Chicago, they'd need it more - but for drinks they were on their own, since there was no possible way I could afford their tab. At some point the rest of Klaani and some of the Moonsorrow guys came there too, and for a few hours the Irish bar became a Finnish bar - sure, they were going to be on stage that night, but it could have been a scene from any metal bar in Helsinki, a bunch of guys in metal shirts sitting in front of their beer glasses and ashtrays talking in rapid-fire Finnish and throwing in a couple of dick jokes.
After the show the salmari was ready to drink - and half gone by the time I even got a swig! On the bus Jonne was giving an interview in his underwear and the CD player was blasting Klaani's new album due out next month, and I was excited to hear a couple of songs (it's going to be heavier and more aggressive then any of their other albums yet, but will make for some killer live songs). Jarkko and I brainstormed a bit about a possible video for one song, Kultanainen, which is based on the story from Kalevala about Ilmarinen's golden bride. I thought they should get Tervarauta to play the part of the smith in the video and Jarkko thought it would be great to have him hammering in time with the snare beat... we'll see what they come up with! The guys from Primordial and Swashbuckle had gone off in search of bars still open and the Finns were trying to decide what to do when someone burst onto the bus saying they'd found a titty bar still open. By the time we got there it had just closed, but someone knew of another one a couple of blocks away - but at that point it was after 2:30, and even if something was still open they'd only have about half an hour before the bus left. So everyone just kind of stood around by the buses and drank what was available, Ville from Moonsorrow pissed in the street, and the huge burly guy from Swashbuckle beat up a parking meter. If I hadn't just been to their concert it would be any group of newfound crazy drunken friends at any metal show either here or in Finland. Janne from Moonsorrow and I were talking about zombies, and I told him about World War Z which I just started reading and recommended highly, and coached him on his Southern accent, which he was trying to cultivate since Kentucky is the tour stop furthest south. I believe he also spontaneously sang the blues with a random black guy who wandered too close and was absorbed into the sidewalk party, and he was completely tickled by that: "How many of us Nordic people can say they sang the blues with a black guy in Kentucky at 3 am?".
Eventually, all good things must end, and we went our separate ways. I ended up driving back to Columbus instead of staying in a motel, although I did require a rest stop nap. Once I got home I crashed hard and woke up around 1 pm. My neck is going to be punishing me for days, as it always does after events like this, but I don't think I'll ever be too old and creaky for this stuff.
So tonight the drunken metal party buses stop near Chicago, and though I would have been welcome to go with them, I said that it would be a little problematic if I was in Chicago and my car was still in Kentucky when I had to be at work in Columbus the next day. But there's always next year, next tour, and next Paganfest...
I do hope I got some good photos; I had to use high ISO for almost all of the shots or end up with blurs so I suspect they'll be a bit on the grainy side. I took most of the pics in Cleveland which was just as well, since my camera wouldn't have picked up much with the crappy lighting in Kentucky. But that's a project for another day...