Today was simply fantastic. Even though we were late for the Stratovarius concert, it was so far the best concert i’ve been to for a very long time. Songs like Rest in peace or Higher we go (just to mention the first two that came to my mind now) made me shout at the top of my voice (i was actually surprised i could keep up with Kotipelto’s range), so after a gig it was pretty hard to talk, but it definitely worth it, this concert would’ve worth quite much anything! My first really good metal concert for a year, and this one was simply ecstatic. Because we were late (so sorry about that) i don’t know if they played Dreamweaver or Hunting high and low, my two favourite songs, i can only hope not—i could hardly forgive myself for being late then. The concert was for short: perfect. It was finally not overamplified like most of the gigs i’ve been to in Japan. And i had a great experience… After the last song, Kotipelto asked if we could count to four in Finnish, for them to bow after that. Naturally silence among the japanese, when i realised that i could count to four in Finnish! “Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä!” I went shouting out, visibly surprising the band, but then they saw that i was “apparently a westerner”. So fun! I want to learn Finnish! (And i think that’s the only language i ever wrote with a capital letter here in the blog.) (If anyone interested, i learnt the numbers from my father and the Nils Holgersson book, where the geese were named with Finnish numerals if i remember right.)

In Kichijoji’s Silver Elephant there’s a series of concerts every year, titled Progressive live. In may i went to a concert there, which headlined the same band as yesteday’s: TEE (The Earth Explorer), a japanese flute-fronted progressive rock band. Yesterday the other two bands were the japanese Baraka and their friends from France, Eclat.

TEE was as good as expected, they played a new song as well, and they had the only vocals on the whole evening, in Col de l’Iseran (though not much of lyrics, but vocals anyway). Baraka was a surprise for me, i expected something louder and wilder than TEE, but instead got a really quiet, more jazzish, more Pink Floydish music. Eclat were really as pro as Yoneda Katsumi, the guitarist of TEE said they would be. They had a lot of fun on stage, they played great and longer than i’d have guessed from the japanese standards.

Naturally the whole evening was just as over-amplified as expected in this country, but after stuffing half a tissue in my ears i could avoid permanent hearing impairment (?). This evening definitely worth the money and the time – great concerts.