A beautiful early summer day saw an 80's night in Sauna Open Air festival in Tampere, Finland. I'm typing a review basically since ESTRANGED asked me to do one about WASP, and I'm such a nice guy that I do what I'm asked to.
The Finnish Eurovision song contest winners, "monster rock" band Lordi opened with their masks, bombs, flames and easy-to-listen melodic 80's heavymetal choruses. Their show is still somehow boring with all those extra things because the monsters themselves can't move on the stage with their outfits.
Next up was W.A.S.P. who were my first taste of heavier music after Elvis back in '83 or '84. I kind of stopped following them after The Last Command, and although I have listened to those first two albums regularly during all these 20+ years, it was only this millennium that I picked up The Crimson Idol and Headless Children. I don't know who the other guys with Blackie were, but they did a good job and good show, seemed to enjoy being up on the stage. There were no "Where's Chris Holmes?" signs or chants!
WASP started early! What is that all about? They were supposed to come 6.30 PM local time, but they were on the stage a good five minutes before that. I didn't exactly keep track what their exact setlist order was, but they opened with On Your Knees and Chainsaw Charlie, played LOVE Machine, Sleeping in the Fire, Wild Child, Widowmaker (Blackie said they haven't played that in 20 years?), The Real Me, The Idol, and of course I Wanna Be Somebody, and the encore was Blind In Texas. They didn't play Fuck Like A Beast, though.
"My" WASP still had Blackie on bass, although I know he switched on guitar a long time ago. But this was the first time I saw them live and pretty much the first time I saw them at all (videos and stuff) after he switched on guitar. He plays a mean six string too!
Next up were Twisted Sister. They were my "next step" after WASP in '84. Stay Hungry rocked so much that nothing until Appetite rocked that hard - and still today Stay Hungry is a great record. I can still probably recite all the lyrics from Stay Hungry by heart... well, actually I can do that with every TS song from every album. I wanted to see Twisted Sister in Finland in 1986 but my folks thought I was too young for that Midsummer festival, which I probably was. They did return to Finland last year, but then they played too far away and I wasn't really interested in travelling to see them. But this weekend, almost 20 years after the "original" Finland gig that I missed, I was able to see them right in my hometown!
And man if you haven't seen them live... well, I don't know what then, but they were absolutely great. I know Dee Snider has said some comments about Axl which put him in the fag-has-been category among the hardest hardcore GNR fans, but he is just an amazing frontman. Axl has that some sort of odd mesmerizing charisma that forces you to look at him, and maybe Dee lacks that, but he makes up for it with all the mad energy. Seeing him work the stage headbanging and doing what he does it just incredible - he's supposed to be over 50-years-old but watching him on stage it's just impossible to believe it!
The crowd was good when WASP was on, singing along on I Wanna Be Somebody, but the people went absolutely mad during Twisted Sister's set. Not only the obvious I Wanna Rock and We're Not Gonna Take It got the crowd singing along, but songs like Captain Howdy, Come Out And Play, The Price, I Believe In Rock 'N' Roll, and S.M.F. did that too. The band looked sort of surprised and extremely happy to see the crowd being so into their set. "We should have come here a long time ago!" I was pretty front up there, but sometimes I almost wished I had been somewhere farther back just to see the ten thousand people jumping and waving their fists in unison.
Twisted Sister was just fucking great. Go see them if you have the chance. I don't know about the younger people but us 30+ years old the songs are just so much part of our youth that only the nostalgia part is amazing. But I guarantee it's not just about nostalgia: the band just puts on a very loud and heavy high-energy show.
I already mentioned a few songs from their setlist. They opened with What You Don't Know followed by The Kids Are Back and You Can't Stop Rock'n'Roll and ended with S.M.F. In between there were those other songs I already mentioned plus The Fire Still Burns, Burn In Hell and Under The Blade.
Later on that night a local cover band from Tampere played a club gig playing all sorts of 80's stuff, and WASP's lead guitarist and drummer joined them for a few songs. The guitarist did all the WASP numbers in the set, but the drummer played other stuff too, like Van Halen's Jump. I wasn't there to see this gig, only heard about it afterwards.
I also blatantly put a website here which has some video and photos from the gig. These are not mine, but the camera seems to have been right behind me!
http://www.kolumbus.fi/kennet/ts/So, three weeks and then it's two back-to-back nights of Guns N' Roses - the band that I moved on to after WASP and Twisted Sister. Man, this is just an incredible summer in Finland!
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