/var/log/orava

Got back from Provinssirock at around 1am last night, the 400km drive is a killer – next time we’ll seriously consider the train, even though it costs a lot compared to a car. Driving five hours after a 3-day long weekend of alcohol & rock’n’roll isn’t a total party.

So, Provinssi. Not bad at all, I’m glad we went. A big thanks once again to friends in Ylistaro who housed us (and some other people, besides) and provided for excellent company, a luxury bacon&eggs + sparkly wine outdoor breakfast, and overall a fun (if a bit exhausting) weekend.

Friday had Tori performing in the big tent; a pretty good – and surprisingly heavy – gig. It was a bit too short and the mixing was slightly hit-and-miss, but overall good and at times pretty intense. Partly overlaid with that, Flogging Molly was raising irish-punk hell on the main stage – Janka was over there and reported the show as really good. I only saw the last couple of songs, which sounded like good, energetic Pogues-y type music. Never too much of that in the world.

We tried to sleep late on Saturday, having gotten to sleep somewhere between 3am and 4am, and failed miserably due to a certain house guest arriving a bit after 9am and deciding that it’s an excellent time to test the house jukebox. The jukebox won out over need to sleep, and we stumbled outside sometime before noon for breakfast and some life-affirming alcohol. The gang finally made it to the festival area around 5pm-ish, in time to see Patti Smith perform. Patti was really good, she oozed street cred and her voice is as distinctive as ever. Good stuff, very old-school rock’n’roll vibe going on – in a good sense. Not surprisingly, Patti proved to be the highlight of the day, with Velvet Revolver being a total waste of stage time; utterly generic stadium rock. Yawn. We spent most of the rest of the evening hopping between beer tents. PMMP was pretty fun but the crowd was too… crowdy for Janka, so we bailed out. Disco Ensemble was ok, what little we saw of them. Fat Beat Sound System sounded like it might actually be pretty good, but our pre-ordered taxi was arriving around that time (a bit past 1am) and we couldn’t stay. Oh well.

Sunday we again skipped the early-afternoon festival program and stayed in Ylistaro, eating a grill-breakfast-brunch thingy and lazing around (with some light acrobatics on the lawn thrown into the mix). When we finally got to Provinssirock we heard that the other main performer of the day, Amy Winehouse, had cancelled “due to medical reasons”. Because it’s fairly well know that she has an alcohol problem, there was (and still is) quite a bit of talk about exactly what sort of “medical reason” we could be talking about here, and if it might be related to the “medical condition” a lot of us had in the morning… A bummer in any case, I was looking forward to seeing her. With Amy a no-show, the day’s musical offerings slimmed down a bit. We watched Grand Slam play old Juice songs, not high art in any sense but a good bit of nostalgic fun. In a happy turn of events, the final big-stage band (Scissor Sisters) turned out to be very good; excellent show, and fun “gay disco” dance music. They (also) poked slightly evil fun at Amy Winehouse, with things like “we’ll dedicate the next song to Amy, it’s about drugs”…

Anyway, I was pretty amused to see the Provinssi big stage final show, which so often has been yet another testosterone-poisoned heavy metal posturing band, be dominated by a NYC-based gay disco band this time around. Everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun, the sunshine helped create a good party mood.

After Scissor Sisters it was “find car, bundle in, drive forever”. Thankfully the roads were pretty empty and we made good time, being able to curl at home among the attention-deprived cats before it was ridiculouly late.

So… another Provinssi. No absolutely amazing musical performances this time around, but some “very good” ones. Add lots of nice people, fierce sunshine, copious amounts of alcohol and good food to that, and the result feels like a vacation.

make it easy, make this easy
it’s not as heavy as it seems
wrapped in metal, wrapped in ivy
painted in mint ice cream

we could be bouncing off the top of this cloud
(i put on my silver)
bouncing off the top of this cloud

well you can stare all day at the sky
but that won’t bring you back, that won’t bring you back
you say you’re waiting on fate
but I think we decide, I think we decide
where we take our lives

– Tori Amos, “Bouncing Off Clouds”

I’m trying not to be overly optimistic, but it’s starting to seem like the Tori I love is back. The official site now features three tracks that you can listen to online. “Big Wheel” I had heard before, it’s nice but not spectacular. But after that we get “Bouncing Off Clouds” and it’s wonderful. Wistful/sad/hopeful lyrics layered over a pulsing dance track, quite lovely – sounds a bit like stuff from the To Venus And Back era, it has the same sort of intense flow that “Siren” (another favorite) has.

The third song is the album opener, “Yo George”, which makes Tori’s opinion about GWB quite clear.

In addition, hereinmyhead has some live tracks from Dutch/German radio. “Almost Rosey” and “Beauty of Speed” sound great, the jury is still out on “Roosterspur Bridge”.

In a recent interview Tori has said that she intentionally reined herself in for the previous album due to her young daughter, she was afraid that her normal not-always-suitable-for-children stage/artist persona would be too much to handle. Afterwards, it has become clear that the daughter in question can quite well distinguish between mommy and the for-adults Tori, which resulted in the new album being a lot less restrained. By what I’ve heard so far, I think I’ll like this one, maybe a lot.

Tuesday had us at the Nine Inch Nails concert, which I had managed to almost forget about until sometime that same day (somehow I remembered it being the next week). Ooops. I’ve always been some sort of NIN fan, Janka was bravely along as mascot even though she doesn’t much care for their music.

Well, what can I say; it was another excellent concert from them. I find it hard to compare this and Provinssirock, I maybe liked Provinssi even better but that might have been just because there I was among the crowd there instead of seated. NIN does very physical music, you feel a bit like an outsider unless you’re in the action. Very energetic show, with Trent and the guys bouncing around the stage, and the musicianship was again impeccable – very exact, very professional. They delivered their trademark “wall of sound punctuated with brief bursts of silence” sound with style. These guys are very good on stage. Not that they exactly suck on CD, either.

It showed that this was the last concert on their tour. Some goofing around, and all that. It must be quite a project being on one of these big tours, you’re basically on the road for months on end, performing to huge crowds nonstop. I can imagine it’s quite exhausting, mentally and physically.

The warmup band, Ladytron was in the “mostly harmless” category. I’ve seen worse, but have seen lots better. Some of the tracks probably work well as dance tracks (Seventeen, notably), but here not that much. Their lyrics were simplistic and stage presence so-so. Mostly harmless.

Anyway, looks to be a nice upcoming concert summer/fall, notable stuff includes:

• Sunday 27.5: Placebo (managed to get tickets via huuto.net, yay!)
• Friday 15.6 - Sunday 17.6: the Provinssirock festival, with Tori Amos, Patti Smith, etc
• Monday 29.10: Rush (if I manage to get tickets)

Holy batshit, Batman.

Tori Amos is coming to Provinssirock. I’m *so* there.

Seems she’s touring as a trio this time (with bandmates Jon Evans and Matt Chamberlain). The tour will be centered around the upcoming American Doll Posse album; only heard one song from it so far (Big Wheel), but already it promises to be better than the slightly disappointing Beekeeper. Tori’s at her best when she has attitude, and the new album is reportedly more confrontational and even somewhat political; it opens with the song Yo George – and you can guess which George that refers to.

We’ll see. I absolutely loved Scarlet’s Walk, so I’m hoping Beekeeper was just a glitch. It wasn’t bad as such, just mostly bland.

As an aside from the “don’t know if I want to laugh or cry” department: apparently many U.S. radio stations are refusing to play Big Wheel, because if contains the (repeated) refrain “I’m a MILF”… where MILF has the fairly established meaning of “Mother I’d Like to Fuck”. So welcome to the sad ol’ Puritanical U.S., where even abbreviations get caught in the “no sex please, we’re Americans” filter. Sigh.

With the album main promo image having Tori standing in a suburban driveway, with a Bible in one hand and “shame” written on the other, and blood running down her leg from under her skirt… this album might just contain some attitude. Here’s hoping.