Monday, April 14, 2014

SA:On the road:Pariah’s Child World Tour / Europe part 1

Wednesday 9.4.2014-Travel Day
So just a bit under two weeks at home and we’re off again. This time the 15th anniversary shows are over and we’re embarking on the Pariah’s Child World Tour. First up (as usual) is a flight to Helsinki and an overnight stay in order to be ready for the morning flight to Dusseldorf. Beer & Burgers was the theme for the night and it was great. Masi came out and had a few beers with us which was very nice. I also had to say goodbye to my trusty old suitcase, it couldn’t do the job anymore. I was actually about to buy a new one back home when Ari the pyro maniac called me up and he mentioned that he had an old suitcase which was too ugly to use in public. So I packed my stuff in the old green goblin (pictures below) and at the hotel I just threw my stuff over to the new one. Luckily Masi took the old one for use as a backdrop bag or whatever so I didn’t have to throw it away, which would of course have been horrible, given our many years of touring history together. Anyways, enough about the fucking bag already…

Thursday 10.4.2014-Travel Day + Eindhoven, Holland
I hate these ”fly in the morning, play in the evening” kinda things, however after this day, it won’t be a problem for the rest of the tour. Nevertheless we got up at 0500 with a 0530 lobby call. The usual hassle with the gear etc but we got it done and off we went towards Dusseldorf, Germany and our bus…..with our bunks…in which you can sleep….took a short nap on the plane and well on the bus I went straight to my bunk to try to rest as much as possible. Did I mention that I love bus tours already ? Well I do, mainly because you don’t have to be at the airport every fucking morning, you only have to pack your stuff once, when you’re done and go home….and you can sleep more than enough every day. This will be awesome.

During tonight show we played Blood and Half a marathon man for the first time live. Since we didn’t have any time to rehearse, we’re now practising new stuff during soundchecks and when we feel comfortable we’ll add them to the set.

Friday 11.4.2014-Durbuy Rock, Belgium
A nice little festival with us and Stratovarius. So needless to say we had a good time after our show, watching the Strato guys rock out and having beers. Our backstage was in some dudes living room, which was a bit weird but also nice in some way. We did just hang around in the bus and at the backstage for the whole day. Our set was only 75min so it was a bit hard to choose what songs to play but I think we managed to get a decent set.

Saturday 12.4.2014- Off day, Amsterdam
What do you do on a  Saturday in Amsterdam ? Well you have beers and get a tattoo ;-) We also went out to dinner and I met a friend from back home so we hung out and partied.

Sunday 13.4.2014 Amsterdam, Holland
Back to work ! We practised What did you do in the war, Dad ? during the souncheck but we’re not playing it tonight, it still needs some work until the song is in shape to be performed. I think we might play it tomorrow. Anyway we changed some of the songs in the set and will probably keep on changing things up for this tour, to keep ourselves and our fans entertained. Spent the day doing checking e-mails and doing nothing….a nice dinner and then it was time to rock out !
The show went pretty ok, we played Sing in Silence and Paid in full instead of In the Dark and Victoria’s Secret. Tomorrow we’ll hopefully play What did you do in the war, Dad ? It remains to be seem. I actually managed to take some pics but still no pics of my rig, I’ll do that later tonight and try to get them uploaded asap.


A fan tattoo after the show in Eindhoven !


And another one...cool stuff !


Pasi is always very happy :-)


Leaving Kemi and the snow behind...


...another view...same shit...


Part of the off-day breakfast in Amsterdam...so this would be what I ate today part 18 or something..


Tero is confused at the airport in Dusseldorf.


My former bag, not in too good of a shape anymore....


bye bye my trusty friend....



That's all for now, 
cheers,
Henkka





31 comments:

  1. Damn, poor green goblin really needed to be retired!

    Pasi is always very cute :3 Also he's wearing an MCF Hair of the Dog hoodie and I NEED THAT. Do you guys still have some old merch kicking around?? *bambi eyes*

    And, you got yourself new ink? C'mon, show it off! :D

    I sure hope at least Half a Marathon Man is gonna stay in the setlist until South Side. It's been my running song since it came out, it's great!

    (btw, I've been wondering - your show in Italy is kind of in the middle of nowhere, was it just a promoter decision or did you finally cut ties with the Alcatraz? I hope enough people will manage to come....)

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    1. I don't think we have any old MCF merch around ;-( and I will keep my new tattoo a secret for now....The show in Italy is up to the promoter and our booking agent so we really had nothing to do with it...we just play y'know ?

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    2. Nuuuu :( I had been meaning to ask since I'd discovered you actually made some merch for HotD but....ah well. That's what I get for becoming a fan too late! ;)

      Yeah, I imagined, but since you guys had some "interesting" problems with the Alcatraz and the Italian bookings back with the DVD debacle (I am still ashamed of it all, ugh), I was curious. It's probably just because the Milan inner-city noise curfew has become ridiculous lately. If I think of the shows that go on till 2/3am around here...LOL good thing I emigrated!

      Secret ink, uh? Fair enough ;) hope it doesn't hurt/itch too much :)

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  2. (wish I could one day show you guys my partially Sonata tattoo too....but I'm pretty sure none of you would be very happy if I took off my shirt when I meet you. LOL)

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  3. Hi Henkka! You guys were, as always, awesome in both Eindhoven and Amsterdam! It was also amazing to meet you guys, and I really enjoyed our talk about keys! Thanks for taking the time for that!

    And thanks for posting pics!

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    1. How did you meet them? Just wait after the show at the fence? For some reason, I'm never that lucky to meet someone... I bet I'm doing something wrong here :P

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  4. i want those tattoos too! well, maybe in the future right? ;)
    have fun and ENJOY! see you in finland (maybe?)

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  5. You rocked the house in Amsterdam!! \m/^_^\m/ Glad to see you guys again!
    Curious about the tattoo now too :)

    Ahhhh I LOVE What Did You Do In The War Dad and sad i just missed it :( Blood rocked ass though! Glad to hear at least that one live!

    And tell Tony sorry for all my fangirling last night. Was a bit hyped :P
    Cheers from thatonecrazyfanyoukeepseeingafterdutchgigs ^_^

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    1. In fact we haven't played What did you do...still so everyone has missed it. Let's see about tonight. (fingers crossed).

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  6. Henkka, thank you so much for keeping us updated about the setlist changes, it's always very interesting to know it and I hope you'll keep on doing it :)

    One question: if you are going to play another new song, will you drop anything or will you just add it?

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    1. We're gonna keep the lenght of the show around 90min as usual so if we add stuff we'll drop something else. At the moment we have a lot of songs that we like to play so we're gonna keep on changing stuff on a daily basis....

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    2. Cool, I wish you could play longer then. I see you guys excited to play always new/different songs! Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated:)
      Cheers!

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  7. hii henkka i see you have placed my tattoo it's awesome man! see you soon greetings from the netherlands mate :D bye Ger.

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  8. Lost it at "...another view...same shit..." lol
    Besides What did you do in the war, Dad ? do you have plans for another new song on the setlist or you don't want to make too many spoilers? :P
    Cheers! drink some beer for me, I can't buy a shit in my town at the moment...

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    1. Yeah I think we gonna add some more new songs as we go along but as always we have to learn to play them first ;-)

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  9. Your show in Eindhoven was amazing ;) best of the 6 shows I've seen so far! Thanks to you and the rest of the band for signing my guitar after the show! Have a great tour and see you guys next time!

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  10. Thank you for the great shows in Eindhoven and Amsterdam, you really rocked again! Awesome you guys played White Pearl, Black Oceans as well!
    It was really nice to meet you after the Eindhoven show, thanks for taking the time!

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  11. Hey Henkka,

    Thanks for two amazing shows here in the Netherlands!
    It truly was great to see you all again do some old stuff as well.
    It was also great that you guys changed a couple of songs around, seen you guys 21 times now and for me it was just the first time to finally hear "Sing in silence" that was amazing!

    I also have a couple of questions.
    I was wondering if you guys ever consider putting a festival or something as a bonus dvd with new albums, seems Nuclear Blast does this a lot with other bands but not yet with Sonata.
    See, I thought if there is not going to be an entire livedvd recorded this tour maybe a festival show of an hour or so would be a cool extra with Ecliptica 2014 or a PC special edition.

    these are just ideas of a fan of course and we always want more ;) I realise that, but seeing you guys play twice now this tour I must say that I really am hoping for a dvd with this wellbalanced but killer set of old/new songs.

    Also wondering if there is a change that Dream thieves finds it way back in the set at any time in the future?

    Have an amazing tour!!

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    1. We haven't done any festival bonus dvd stuff yet but it could be done at some point I think, why not ? Eventually we're going to do another DVD but at the moment we don't have any definite plans.... Dream Thieves ? I wouldn't count on it...it's a killer song though...

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    2. Dude we've heard Dream Thieves live in the Ankkarock bootleg and it sounds simply amazing! Please play it live again someday !

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    3. Yes it is, Henkka!! Especially live, I did see you guys play it a few times in 2005, hopefully in another tour ;)

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  12. Hi Henkka :) It's good to read you always! Maybe i'm overthinking the situation and / or overprotecting you in my mind but... maybe you all had had the shortest vacacations ever... Too much travelling, flying, bad resting and pretty sure, bad eating too. I know I kinda sound like your mother Henkka haha, but we all want you guys to be ok, enjoying gigs as you always did and showing us the whole potential of the band.
    Have a nice tour! See you next year :D

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    1. Yeah, we haven't really had some proper time off since the Stones Grow Her Name World Tour...just a week here and there but our summer looks quite easy so we'll get our rest then, no worries.

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  13. Nice pics of those fan tattoos. I want to get the Unia band logo on my forearm at some point, as well as Sing In Silence on one wrist and Blinded No More on the other. A lot of your songs are very inspiring and just make me happy. One inparticular that I have had on repeat lately is Caleb. It's so good! Sounds like you guys are having a blast. Good to see it. Maybe one day I'll come see a Sonata show overseas.

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  14. oh yeah i forgot to add: if tony and elias still break their heads about that one nightmare-to-pronounce word we told them about. Here's the answer :) http://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2011/09/23/gezelligheid-gezellig/
    Would love to hear tony use that word at a show once! ^_^ hahaha

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  15. Hi Henkka!
    Is there any chance you put In the Dark back on the setlist next saturday in Bochum? You would make me very, very, veeeeeery happy with it, because I simply love this song so much! Please think about it! :)

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    1. We might or might now play In the Dark...we decide on the setlist for the night after soundcheck on each day. Yesterday we played In the Dark.

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    2. Henkka, has anything really funny happebed to you guys on stage this tour? Or any other tour? Like a weird fan gift or something?

      P.s is playing the keytar hard to learn? I've been playing piano for nearly 20 years and I want to learn so me and a buddy can start a metal band.

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