After catching a movie, “The Last Samurai” i took a walk to Nosturi. For once I was there at the right time, arriving around 8.40 and warm-up band Five Fifteen started around 9 PM. Just enough time for one beer, I’d seen 515 before so I knew what to expect. OK Zeppelin-influenced band - nothing more, nothing less. Exactly at 10 pm HTP wandered on stage and kicked off with the song “Hold On” from their latest album, the band was a bit different from couple of years back. JJ Marsh was still on guitar (and overall did a great job with the classics) but drummer and keyboardist were new faces. Thomas Broman (John Norum among others) was on drums and a guy called Kjell Haraldsson on keyboards. I have to say Haraldsson looked exactly like (latter day heavier) Jon Oliva from Savatage. With his beard and big presence behind the keyboards, you could have been fooled to think it was Jon up there! Three other HTP songs followed quickly with couple of them featuring Turner on guitar. The sound was OK, a bit muddy in places and right away I noticed the vocals especially with Joe Lynn weren’t loud enough compared to drums and guitars, the band noticed this as well and during the first few songs Glenn kept pointing “up” several times. Sound indeed improved later on and i’ve heard a lot worse in other concerts over the years. The first classic of the evening arrived as JLT left the stage and Glenn introduced the next song: “From Deep Purple, the first piece of music Ritchie (Blackmore) played to me, this was before David Coverdale joined the band.” “Mistreated” was extended to roughly 15 minutes including guitar solo with snippet of “Black Night,” and Glenn’s vocal showcase where he took the microphone, and went on weeping and screaming for few minutes. Quite impressive. Couple of Rainbow gems "Street Of Dreams" and "I Surrender" had audience screaming and arms were raised all over the place. Later on “Gettin Tighter” had Glenn playing some funky bass lines and this also included a drum solo which luckily was a short one (drum solos generally bore me for some reason) lasting about a minute or so. Glenn dedicated the song to late Tommy Bolin saying “Tommy was a beautiful boy when he died, I want you to remember him when you leave this place.” In mid-song they broke into A200 instrumental from “Burn” and some unfamiliar song that Glenn titled “California Jam” from stage. The highlight of the whole set (IMO) followed when Glenn announced “this is a song I wrote with David (Coverdale) and if you want to sing along, I’d like that very much.” This of course meant it was time for “You Keep On Moving.” The band put in excellent performance here, tight and powerful with Glenn leading the charge. During this song his vocals soared to awesome highs. Brilliant! Before next song they invited the crowd to sing “Happy Birthday” to a soundman or a crewmember called Jonas, apparently it was his 42th birthday. Glenn: “Jonas is 42 years old today, which means he’s two years older than me!” Later on Glenn added “God, it’s been 42 years since I stopped drinking..” JLT returned to stage (after being gone for what seemed like ages) and launched into “Death Alley Driver,” one of the faster rockers from classic Rainbow, during this one JLT again had some serious vocal monitor problems. He kept pointing out to the soundmen that he wasn’t hearing himself – towards the end he seemed a bit pissed off. The final song of the main set (with JLT again on guitar) was another Purple classic, someone shouted for “Might Just Take Your Life” but we got “Stormbringer” instead. This one got a good response from the crowd. Encores followed with rest of the band on stage but JLT again missing, Glenn explained that they had some sound problems and Joe was clearing things up with the crew. The band played some Spanish folk song while waiting and Glenn shouted” Joe come back down here and I’ll kiss you!” Soon they began playing “Devil’s Road” from HTP1, JLT returned with a new vocal monitor and things were OK again. Powerful “Spotlight Kid” (JLT shouting “where’s that spotlight? I wanna see it!”) followed and evening ended with “Burn,” which is always great to hear. There was a mistake halfway through the song which almost made the band stop playing, I believe it was Marsh who screwed up since JLT looked over at him quite nastily and after JJ kicked off the guitar riff again, Glenn made a remark “you got that part, now?” Anyway, the rest of the song went without problems and after taking their bows the band left the stage for the last time. Glenn Hughes did most of the talking to the audience, at times it even seemed like his show as JLT spent a huge amount off stage. Much more than the last time they played here. Glenn did take a backseat during the Rainbow numbers but most of the time he was the frontman here. I have to say the crowd was surprisingly lame compared to the last time HTP was here (fall 2002). The new songs were obviously unknown to many and it took until “I Surrender” to see and hear what I would call a proper reaction from the whole place. There was even an older guy who kept asking during “Stormbringer:” “What song is this one? I’m not familiar with this new stuff..” The set-list was almost exactly the same with few classics (Highway Star, King Of Dreams etc.) dropped in favour of new songs, “Getting’ Tighter” was the only “new” song from DP/Rainbow era this time around. ------------------- Anyways they were gone (exept JJ Marsh – some people still stayed and waited for him) and I left in a hurry as well. Fortunately i made the last train, went to sleep by 3 am, up at 7 and a bit tired now. But all in all an excellent show! Also took over 20 photos during the show, i'll post best of them here if they are worth looking at. Ok to wrap it up here’s the set-list: 1.Hold
On |
HUGHES
TURNER PROJECT |
NOSTURI,
HELSINKI 30. 03. 2004 |