I was having a phone conversation with my brother talking about music when he mentioned that isn’t Jean-Michel Jarre playing in Helsinki this evening, a short walk away from where I was.
I didn’t believe it, but as I checked and realized his concert would start in half an hour and there were still a few tickets available, I bought one instantly and made haste to the parking lot where the concert would take place.
Like many others, I had to take one photo of the Jarre concert.
Now it must be said while I like his style of electronic music and he is a legend, I don’t really know that much about his work, even though I have a few of his albums in vinyl. I just thought it would be interesting to see how he performs live.
Once I got there he had already begun his set a bit early. Jarre’s concerts are known for its visual splendor especially with lasers, but those effects were rendered useless on a sunny evening in Finland. He even acknowledged the fact straight up that his stage technicians might struggle a bit today. Understatement.
But that put more emphasis on the music itself. He played a lot of known tracks and while they sounded great, he didn’t really improvise, extend or even transition between them. Once a track was done, he did a small speech before moving onto the next one.
What he talked about ranged from introducing the next track to educating that electronic music originates from Europe as a natural evolution from classical music. He also preached about technology being neutral and that AI and such shouldn’t be demonized (“synthesizers got a lot of bashing at the beginning too”).
The concert’s visuals here poorly done with AI generated videos and even a clip where Edward Snowden talks about caring about privacy. It all felt very dated and a distraction from enjoying the music itself.
The show lasted one and a half hours. While I was glad I saw him live, the outdoor venue on a bright day, low quality stage screens and a quite lacklustre set list didn’t exactly blow me away. It was also a pity I missed Tangerine Dream as the warm-up band. Later I read it was actually better than Jarre’s set.
Heavy metal gathering
The very next day while bicycling from work back home, I noticed a lot of people heading towards the Olympic Stadium wearing Iron Maiden t-shirts. So today was the day Iron Maiden plays in Helsinki, I thought. The very concert that was already sold out when I learned about it too late last year.
Yet back home when I checked if there are tickets left, to my surprise there were! So I bought one without much thought and headed towards the stadium.
Now Iron Maiden is a special band to me that they were the first heavy metal band I learned about when I was still a child. Their second album Killers is also the first heavy metal album I listened to and still rocks for me. The band’s other albums from the 80s were okay, but from the 90s onwards I really haven’t payed much attention to their music.
On this tour the focus was on their early material and to my delight, they started their set list with three tracks from the Killers album! Already during the first notes of Murders in the Rue Morgue, I instantly became 30 years younger, five beers drunk and couldn’t stay put by getting up from my seat, waving, moshing and singing along the songs (the others being Wrathchild and Killers).
From this distance and angle, sometimes I forgot there was a band on stage while enjoying the music.
After that I calmed down (perhaps to the relief of the spectators sitting beside me) yet continued enjoying tracks like Powerslave and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but some tracks were indifferent to me (yes, even The Trooper) and the final track Aces High even felt a bit uneasy given the recent developments around the world.
My seat in the stadium was pretty far away from the stage, making the band ant sized and no matter how big the video screens were, they didn’t exactly engulf me. And like Jarre yesterday, the singer Bruce Dickinson also complained about the bright summer evening (though was happy it was at least cloudy).
The only merchandise I bought was a bottle opener, as the 50 euro tour t-shirts didn’t really appeal to me. I have enough band t-shirts anyway (though no Iron Maiden one).
So, two concerts in the space of two days on a very short notice. Sure did beat the alternative reality of sitting at home staring at the television or surfing the net. I got lucky.