Road trip and Dame

On Saturday 30.9. at midday started the duo from Aittalahti Street their rubber foot (car) and headed for Jyväskylä. The intention of Lasse from Downstairs and me was to navigate our way there through small winding roads. When thinking which road to choose we chose the route based on the weirdest names of small villages. It’s useless to give any example here, because they only work in Finnish. We drove some absolutely incredible small roads, which was far from getting bored. We had the chance to see lots of idyllic landscape and sympathetic villages on our way.

As this psychedelic song was playing the main act of the night, Dame, stepped on the stage. The first song “I can’t sleep in a tour bus” kicked convincingly right from the start and the same strong touch continued throughout the gig. The biggest star of Dame is singer/guitar player Emppu, who is well known in Finland from a girl band Tiktak. Her stage charisma has developed during the years in good condition. The solo guitarist is a wizard called Masi, who also plays in a band called Feiled. He’s known to play several other instruments too, fagot among others. The drummer is said to be the best metal drummer in Finland at the moment. He’s better known from a band called Diablo. The man behind the bass guitar is Vammala’s own little big man Antti, who nowadays lives in Finland’s capital Helsinki. I’ve trained wrestling stuff with Antti when he still lived in Turku, for the man has trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu both in Turku and Helsinki. Antti is also widely known as the keyboard player in Portrait of John, where I play bass (our activity, however, has been rather low for quite some time now) and from UAVO where he plays and sings anything. He has also made wicked stuff cloaked in the alter ego of Sigurd Lapveteläinen, who’s production we’ve also heard in the Finnish TKD Championships when a song called La Attraction Turistica has escorted a certain fighter to the ring. Antti and Masi used to live as roommates in Turku and during this time this crazy couple made some classical music diamonds, which no one has probably had the chance/been forced to hear. Dame rumbled through the whole material of their first album “So was it worth dying” with a very tight touch. On this record Emppu plays all the instrument except the drums herself. The band offered the audience also four new songs, which actually where the best stuff in the set. Could it be that the boys’ joining in the group has effect but for sure these new ones rolled over the listener like Paul Germain on his best days. Concluding from the screams of the audience I’m probably not the only one who thinks this way. All in all Dame seemed to enjoy being on the stage and the playing went as you might expect from professionals. A bit weird was maybe the fact that Emppu’s voice was a bit fluey and she covered some high notes with death metal growling. On the other hand this goes to good live-feeling, but when used too much any special effect of course loses it’s edge. After the last song we changed a couple of words with Antti and Masi and paid a short visit to the central of Jyväskylä. The best thing to remember from this was a high-quality chilli hot dog. After that we got back to accommodation and started Sunday the trip back home after goodnight’s sleep.