Turisas 01/10/08 (Dragonforce were there too…) October 9, 2008
Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Music, Uncategorized , add a commentAfter a rather chaotic day where nothing much really went to plan we eventually managed to get on a bus and find ourselves in town, this was not before freaking out the rest of the bus with our loud talking on a whole manner of topics, the last of which was horrific porn… Of course, this was not the beginning of our reign of terror, before getting on the bus we had filled the “Rowdy gang of youths” role very well due to the fighting and throwing of biscuits going on.
On a side note, being part of such a gang of youths is quite a lot of fun. Good confidence boost to just be able to be silly and get funny looks from people.
So, once we arrived in town we headed to Rock City and found that people were being let in but that obviously hadn’t been going on long since our friends in the queue were not too close to the door. We easily joined ourselves to them and headed in.
From this point we spent a long time in a sort of oddly shaped circle, making people around us give us strange looks due to our various innuendos and fondlings and whatnot. During this, most of us got our faces painted in the Turisas red + black stripes. We weren’t alone in this painting, despite Dragonforce being the headliners there were clearly plenty of Turisas fans there. As time went on we gradually got more and more crushed by the crowd forming and had to push out a little to avoid just being swamped.
Eventually Turisas came on, with an epically awesome cheesy intro. I’m not going to try and recount the set list in order, that’s just a train to fail. However, I’m pretty sure these were the songs they played: A portage to the unknown, Battle Metal, In the court of Jarisleif (which was slightly extended, woot!), Rasputin and to Holmgard and beyond. They also did their little Fuck guitar solos bit and, for an extra treat, we got to sing happy birthday to their newest accordion player who’s birthday would be the 2nd of October, I do believe. According to their lead singer, she was only 16 when she started to tour with them and now is just turning 18. Pretty insane really, to be doing something so awesome as that so young.
During the performance I got jostled a bit round the crowd away from everyone else but somehow ended up back next to them at the end, through some kind of pure fluke. After that we ploughed our way out of the crowd and went outside. As expected, we were all pretty hyped up. A couple of my friends went back in to see if earlier promises of getting backstage to meet the band were possible. I hung back since I figured it was very unlikely but after a while we headed in and were met with a fun surprise.
Just as we were heading up the stairs back to the main room, two of the members of Turisas were coming out of the door to the Rig. My friends and I were actually the first people to jump at this opportunity and we immediately all got ourselves high fives from both of them. The two in question would be Jussi Wickström (guitarist) and Netta Skog (accordion, as mentioned earlier). After this I saw a couple of my friends at possibly the most excited I have ever seen them, both getting hugs and autographs from both of them. After this quite a crowd was forming with other people wanting to get autographs and such.
I guess the irony is that arguably the biggest fan of Turisas of all of us (me) didn’t bother getting an autograph. Why? I was happy enough meeting them, the thing about autographs is that I don’t collect them for a start but if I did get them I would simply end up loosing them. No one can take away the experience of having high fived them both though, that was truly awesome. It’s also that I’m a little afraid of asking for things such as this, what with my difficult to spell name.
After all this hubbub we all headed down to McDonald’s (as it is reliably open at almost any hour) and bought various different foods and drinks. I didn’t get anything myself as…well…I don’t really go for that stuff and wasn’t especially hungry/thirsty. Of course, our delightfully painted faces caused us to get some nice funny looks from people that we passed, that’s always fun.
Once we were done there we headed back up to Rock City and went in to find Dragonforce in full swing. We watched for a little while but none of us really like Dragonforce and nothing about the performance was interesting enough to stick at it. I can’t say that they were bad, just that I don’t like them and therefore had little interest in seeing them once I had confirmed that their solos weren’t laughably bad (they seemed to be playing alright, from what I could see/hear, although you can get away with a lot of mistakes in what they play) so we all left, barring the one of us that does actually like Dragonforce.
Halfway back to the bus stop, it was realised that we had left a jacket behind so a couple of party members went back to get it. We all just stood around waiting for them and eventually caught the bus back home again. The bus, incidentally, was surprisingly full for such a journey. Probably Goose Fair’s fault.
So that was that.
Another spectacular show by Turisas, easily upstaging Dragonforce but perhaps not if you’re a fan of them. Proof that you should never have Turisas as your support. All in all an awesome stuff once again, I can be sure that I’ll be seeing them live many more times whenever I get the chance.
