Newsgroup(s): alt.music.type-o-negative, alt.fan.jimmy-jazz Sub: Review: Type O Negative in Helsinki, Vinnland Date: 27.11.1996 First I would like to give a very big Thank You to Anna K. who read my article where I complained about my poor situation: Type O Negative had sold out Tavastia club and I had not bought the ticket early enough. Anna arranged me a ticket, for which I am very grateful to her. I have promised to too many people that I will write this review, so now I must keep my promise and sacrifice 15 minutes to this article. I came to Tavastia about 10.30 PM and I think that I was late, because the band called Manhole started to play and right after them TON came to the stage. I heard that there would have been three bands altogether, so I must have missed the first one. Anyway, this Manhole was quite funny: they projected the upside-down pentagram to the wall and the singer song something about Nosferatu and such a things, so I got a few good laughs. If the first band was even more funny than this one I must say that it is perhaps good that I did not arrive too early after all. Yes, they played well, but I have never really warmed up to those "Love Satan and let your hearts be black" - bands, except the ones who do have some humour with it, like King Diamond, Slayer etc. Type O Negative started to play. The sound was very good, because they had their own massive PA system with them, which was a very good solution, because Tavastia club's own PA sucks badly, and I must say that the last time I have heard better sound in Tavastia it was Marillion on stage...you know what I mean? The sound was clear and even the very fuzzed bass came out well. The drum sounds were very good and you could hear the keyboards, but sometimes I did not catch what the guitarist was doing, expect him singing very well from time to time. I did not know that he sings, too. Anyway it was too loud. Even if I had hearing protectors in my ears which I had plugged in so tightly that my forefingers had touched each other and I was standing by the side of the mixing board which was located at halfway of the hall, I was able to tune all my guitars, basses and my Chapman Stick when I arrived home, because my both ears gave me exact 440 Hz. This was bad. About the gig? Yes, I enjoyed it very much. They played mostly "Slow, Deep..." and "Bloody Kisses" songs. I read from somewhere that Peter said that he is totally full of those "Bloody Kisses" songs and that he had played them too many times. Anyway we heard a lot of them that evening. There was also some material from the new album, but I think that not so many. I do not mind about this, because I like them all, but not #1 in some parts for the reason I might explain later here - perhaps not. They were playing "Cinnamon Girl" and also also another cover song - I will not tell you what. Go and check it out yourself. Peter has lost as much weight as the keyboard player has gotten new hair. I have done some weight-lifting myself so I know about these things, so it looks to me that Peter has lost about 10-15 kilos (20-30 pounds) of mass since the last time I saw him in the same place two years ago. Now I understand the rumours about he being sick or something, but I can say by my own experience that if you are in a great stress and you do not have time to practise 3-4 times a week, which is very understandable especially when you are having a new album in your hands and you are getting a lot of success, you automatically loose weight. I have had three bigger breaks of training within the last four years and I can say that the weight comes easily back right after you start the regular training again. Right now I am practising such a event where it is a benefit that you are not too massive, so I am not even sure if I will continue weight-lifting. But let's go back to the concert. They crowd were acting very stupid, they threw pints around and to stage (thank God, they were plastic and most of them empty when they arrived to their goals) and Peter looked like he was highly pissed off to this because he threw the full plastic bottle including 1.5 - 2 litres of water straight to the crowd when he left the stage. I think that this was not an act that I might have expected from the professional musician. I advise to you all to keep your eyes widely open when the band starts to play "Too Late: Frozen". I think that what happens then is the most beautiful part of the concert and I and Anna digged this very much - I am not telling you anything more: try to beg me, try to threat me, try to buy me off (a rare TON stuff would be nice, perhaps some live bootlegs or songs that have not been published officially), try to torture me - I will tell you nothing. They played 62 and half minutes - Peter told this when he came back to the stage after they had finished their set. He thanked the warm-up band(s?), the audience about the band's success and then he left. No encores, nothing. Perhaps he was in a hurry to finish that bottle of Red Water that he had very near when he was playing? Because the ticket cost 142 FIM (I do not have a currency table in my hands but you can check this out, if you want to know how much money it is in your country's currency) and the band played 62.5 minutes, and their normal-price CD costs about 130 FIM in the shops and the newest TON album includes 73 minutes of music you can calculate from the formula 73 x -- = --- 130 142 where x is the amount of time that they would have to play live if the price of the gig would be equivalent to the price of the album, then x is about 79.7 which means that they could have played about 17 minutes more which is about 3-4 TON songs so they could have played one or two encores as well as they have come up here to the north and built up the stage already. You can use this formula when you want to calculate if you want to go to the concert or not. I think it was O.K. I saw them, but personally I felt a little a bit cheated, because the set was so short. By the way, you can check out the map and notice that Vinnland...sorry, Finland is surrounded by the water and its capital Helsinki is just on the southern coast. This means that if the band comes to Vinnland they must calculate two extra days to this country. Why? This is because they cannot drive in the night time to the next country. The bands must wait the next ferry to Sweden and next one leaves next morning and it arrives in the evening - and then it is too late (:frozen :-) to build up the stage and so on. It is not wise to let the tour staff do nothing two days, because the money is very expensive when you are in tour and this is because all the Big Ones (like Yes, Rush etc.) have not played in Helsinki. Well, we had Metallica just last week here two evenings consecutively and also so did TON, because they played the next evening in Tampere, which is about 200-250 kilometers from here. I heard that these concerts were the starting points of this tour - this is also understandable and many bands do so, because they can test their equipment here and it is cheaper to go from north to south in Scandinavia - I will not explain this here, you can ask this next time you meet me, perhaps with that rare TON material in your hands that you are about to give me :-). But I would surely appreciate if someone could explain me three things: - what is this "Vinnland" in the song #12 in the newest album, the humour bit "The Glorious Liberation of the People's Technocratic Republic of Vinnland by the Combined Forces of the United Territories of Europe"? Our country is called Finland...has TON something to do with our coutry, perhaps friends in here or what? I have even one true story about this. I will write it later here in the newsgroup "alt.music.type-o-negative". - about the flag that is in the rear cover of the CD: our country's flag is white and it is having a blue cross in the middle. You can check this for instance in URL http://www.mousesupport.com/jjazz/colossus/ - what did Type O Negative do in Helsinki, Finland about 1994 in the role playing party playing in front of about 20 people playing two sets: first of Black Sabbath and the second of their own music??? I was not there, because when I heard of the party my friend told me that "There is a band playing Type O Negative covers" - hell yeah, covers indeed! I did not come, but my friend had a wonderfull time doing head banging about two hours about two meters from the band! OK, this took me 20 minutes. Never mind. If you want to practise your langual skills and learn some Vinnish you can check out my version of Type O Negative in URL http://www.mousesupport.com/jjazz/musiikki/Type_O_Negative.html . -JJazz --- NewsNet: alt.fan.jimmy-jazz LibNet: The Glorious Liberation of the People's Technocratic Republic of Finland by the Combined Forces of the United Territories of Europe