The Adventures of a Superfan: part 1

The Date: 14.7.2005
The Place: Tampere, Klubi, Tammerfest
The Album: Signs of Life

My day started brilliantly. As I was passing the Klubi somewhere around 6.30 p.m, I spotted the guys outside. It was pure coincidence that they were there that moment when I was going to my friend’s place to drop off some things. Naturally I stopped and went to say ‘Hi!’. That hi turned into a half an hours talk with Mark, I interviewed him for a indiezine that I was part of then.

After that talk I stayed where I was and after a while the t-shirt sellers (edit: Petri and Mako)came to talk with me and then Ollie appeared, with a motorcycle helmet in his head (helps him to wander about unnoticed:). We had a really nice talk and then guys had to go to haul their stuff up to the stage.

The timetable had gone a little awry, so the soundcheck was played when the audience was already in. But you don’t hear any complaints about that from me. The soundcheck was quite short for obvious reasons, but Mark did sang a little Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Under the Bridge and I loved it!

Humane wasn’t all that bad, harmless good-natured poprock, I kind of liked it. After that I surged to the front row and earned a couple new ‘friends’ as I used my laced fan to ease the feeling of some girls. It was like sauna there and a breath of cooler air was a life saver. Then Satu, Tiia, Perla and Jack-Of-All-Trades appeared and the gig started soon after that.

We were all blown away by that fact that Lift was a first song to be played and all of the albums songs after that, including Maybe Tomorrow is a better day. It was really refreshening, like a whole new show. I had my fan with me the whole time to ease the hotness and sure enough, Mark snatched it from me a couple of times. First time he used it to make dramatic poses with it and second time he cooled himself and all the boys as well with it. He had earlier commented that it was very beautiful and now he said to the whole audience that it is very useful as well. I just laughed my ass off.

New additions (since I last saw them) to the show were a kind of showdown with Mark and Ollie. At some point when Ollie played his guitar, Mark staggered backwards like the music was hitting him and vice versa.  Also new clapping patters and yells were introduced by Mark (hey hey, ho ho, Tampere, Poets of the Fall) and the audience was happily doing what he asked.

After the gig the Chearleaders and I formed a line to hug Mark and after that we went to get a table. The DJ was playing really good music and my legs (my whole body actually) wanted to dance. It had been almost 6 moths since I had been able to really go out and dance in a club and I was so loving it! Satu was like ‘what the hell you have been taking woman?’ because I was all over the place. Only water, one long drink and a whole lot of PotF.