The Duo was scheduled to play two shows (Tampere and Turku) last week with a Berlin-based band Eagle Boston, before both bands would perform at the Flow Festival 2008. As usual, it's hard to remember to inform everyone about every detail regarding these little trips. This time around Rami (our livesound person) only found out once he turned up at Kaapeli that we were touring with another band. But when he turned up at 4PM there was another more pressing matter: Antti from EB had taken one look at the van and noticed that one of the back tires was very flat and in no condition to be used. So the trip started with changing of the tire, which combined with Helsinki's 5 o'clock traffic delayed us for an hour. By 9.30PM in Tampere Eagle Boston looked like this:
It turned out we complimented each other nicely as EB have two bass players and we have none. These were some of the topics we picked for bonding that night: Your rider vs. ours, cool hand-pressed merch, Finnish history from Lalli to Mannerheim, Tampere vs. Manchester, Berlin, 9/11 & airbus accidents, education and jobs, state of Finnish music business vs. elsewhere, boots from Mexico, the desert god, measuring air pressure in car tires.
The next day Eagle Boston went to the Tampere market square for breakfast and some dancing. All I know about it is that they were happy and emotional afterwards with their raspberries and Yelka's impressive double CD by Pispalan Sällit. There were no lakes to be seen on the way from Tampere to Turku, but there was a long discussion in the backseats about longing and its different translations: Kaipuu jonkun luo...
And in Turku there was a very cold lake in which all the Germans swam while the Finns stood freezing and making sand ducks.
In Turku it was time to set up the merch table again, and to play.
At the end of our set we invited Eagle Boston on stage with us to play a six piece version of Bloc Party's SRXT. We were hoping someone would have filmed/recorded the song and stuck it in Youtube, but nothing has surfaced...it'll always be a classic moment in our collective memories then.We stayed up until morning (again) in Turku, and in a bizarre sometimes threateningly violent way it was worth it.
Everyone danced with Macke, to either Young Marbe Giants or to Pispalan Sällit:
At the end we were sleep deprived and ragged. We ended up driving to the festival area in Helsinki and leaving our gear there for the next day. The A.S Duo packed everything under the main stage only to find that the next day all the synths were wet and damp. At home I found a yellow Kimble piece in my purse. It's nice to have band affairs like this. They don't always happen.
