Great concert yesterday. I came to Helsinki area friday at noon, then took my stuff to my brothers apartment in Espoo and we went on to go through the recordstores etc. in Helsinki. After he got off from work, Troubleshooter joined us and then we headed back to my bro's place - listening some music and killing time there, then off to the ice hall where the concert was about to begin.

Heep started at eight and played a bit over an hour. The whole band was in top form as expected, the audience started to rock immediately as the opener Easy Livin' blasted from the speakers. Me & Troubz were at the third or fourth row from the stage, and the feeling amongst the pumping fists and clapping hands was excellent. Mick Box played his own weird manouvres with his guitar, smiling widely all the time and singer Bernie Shaw did amazing job with the songs - this guy rises on my all time favourite singers list each time I see him live. Excellent. A tad too setlist with too many 'basic' Heep songs (probably because a new Heep best of has just been released in Finland...), but the band promised to come back for their own tour next year and do a longer and more varied setlist. Looking forward to that one.

A little pause, and on came Purple. Highway Star was the opener and again the crowd was well with the action right from the start. A mixture of Purple classics and a lot of material from the new album. Band did great job, Steve Morse and Roger Glover even put on a classy Tipton-Downing style dual axeswinging at some point, Ian Paice was solid on drums and Don Airey got the biggest applause of the evening by playing Sibelius' Finlandia during his keyboard solo. Ian Gillan was having a lot of fun, insanely hilarious speeches between songs were there, as well as countless of famous "I thank yoooooouuuu's".

Really good gig by them as well, played for an hour and half maybe... I kinda lost the track of time there

All in all a great event, though personally I think Heep was better of the two and would've deserved a longer time on stage. While Purple suffered a bit from too many solos (keyboard solo was really long, and Morse basically had at least two longer guitar solos if you count extended version of Contact Lost as a solo...) A couple of more surprise songs from both bands would've been nice as well. And where was stuff from Heeps latest albums and from Purple's Purpendicular & Abandon...? Not even Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming
...

OK, the setlists (not in the right order and might've forgotten something)

Uriah Heep:

Easy Livin'
Shadows Of Grief
The Other Side Of Midnight
Stealin'
Gypsy
Wise Man
The Wizard
Sunrise
July Morning
Bird Of Prey
--
Look At Yourself
Lady In Black

Deep Purple:

Highway Star
Strange Kind Of Woman
Silver Tongue
Knocking At Your Back Door
House Of Pain
Contact Lost
Doing It Tonight
Lazy
Space Truckin
I Got Your Number
Bananas
Well Dressed Guitar (solo)
Keyboard solo
Perfect Strangers
Smoke On The Water
---
Hush
Hit The Road Jack
Black Night

Afterwards John Lawton (ex-Heep) had a gig at some bar, but we didn't manage to get our car out from the crowded parking lot, so we had to skip that one.

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