The Rasmus rocking the Holy House
‘The Rasmus - exclusive live gig in a church on Halloween’. If that didn’t sound promising! The radio station 1LIVE offered the opportunity to see the band in a completely different light for 55 minutes. Now you might say that that is not a long gig and probably not worth the money. You may be right, but tickets could not be bought anyway, they had to be won. So I listened to my favourite radio station non-stop in order to win an invitation for the gig. When I finally held it in my hand, I couldn’t believe my luck. I was absolutely convinced that the acoustics and the atmosphere of the location would make this gig unforgettable – and it was.
Never before I had the chance to come this close to the stage: there were no barriers; the intimacy being increased by the fact that the gig was held for 500 fans only, all of them competition winners and with that real Rasmus fans. At least that is what you would assume… While queuing, I noticed the first girl showing up with short skirt to get into the venue without having won tickets. With success. Now that was a big disappointment to me because a lot of my friends would have loved to join me there. But persistence and long legs still seem to pay off these days.
The next thing that annoyed me was the fact that the photographers in the venue took pictures during the first three songs so that we couldn’t see a thing. It was a real atmosphere killer. Thankfully they left to grant us the access to the stage that we’d been longing for ever since we entered the church.
The church – blessing and curse
The setlist contained songs of the latest album Hide From The Sun as well as the single releases from Dead Letters. Since the show was broadcasted live on the radio, there was not much time for long chats between the songs or experimenting with older tracks because the band had to fit everything into the tight timeframe. They still couldn’t be stopped to show how spontaneous they can be by taking a church book and performing a German church song called ‘Danke für diesen guten Morgen’ – Eero doing the vocals in very sweet German.
The performance was not the best they’ve ever done; I have to say that the show the night before had been so breathtaking that topping it would have been sheer impossible. In addition you could tell that the band was quite ill from the yellow fever vaccination that they had gotten the previous day. Still they managed to show what they were best at: Fighting! No matter how ill Lauri felt – which you could see in his eyes without a doubt – he never failed to give his very best to entertain us. The blessing of the location also turned into a curse at one point or two: the echo was very loud so that Lauri had some difficulties to hear the guitar properly. He put all his concentration into hitting the right note in the beginning of some songs which didn’t quite work out in his favour all the time. Immortal was one of the highlights without a doubt. The combination of electric and acoustic
guitar in these ‘holy halls’, how Lauri put it, reached from magic to almost perverted. My personal highlight was Last Generation. This almost hidden track on the album turns into a real burner with Pauli’s energetic guitar bridges. Truly amazing!
Verdict: The Rasmus were nervous, they were ill but they did not fail to turn the church into a jumping crowd of happy fans. Not their best show, but still a special event.
Dani