02-04-2006, House Of Culture, Helsinki, Finland

Black & White 050505

Setlist:

01. Intro Music
02. Stay Visible
03. Home
04. Love Song
05. The Book Of Brilliant Things
06. See The Lights
07. Big Sleep
08. All The Things She Said
09. Waterfront
10. Hypnotised
11. The Jeweller (Part 2)

12. Underneath The Ice
13. Someone Somewhere In Summertime
14. Speed Your Love To Me
15. Don't You (Forget About Me)
16. Dolphins
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17. Different World [TAORMINA.ME]
18. Seeing Out The Angel
19. New Gold Dream [01,02,03,04]
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20. Stranger
21. Glittering Prize
22. Alive And Kicking

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Comments (e-mail your concert review here):

Review by Jones from Finland (THANKS)

The Helsinki gig wasn't a perfect one. If I recall correctly, House of Culture wasn't the original venue of choice for the band but thanks to poor interest and ticket sales they were transferred there (now, if Minds were a metal band they might've gotten themselves a BIGGER venue). This wasn't good since House of Culture is designed for acoustic music only. There were technical difficulties when the band first got on stage. I don't remember what the problem was but the band wasn't at ease: for thirty seconds we only heard Charlie trying a few chords every now and then and Mark looking rather puzzled, as if there were something wrong with the keyboards. I believe we eventually heard the intro for "Sleeping Girl" for about three to five seconds before it was cut. After a minute or so Jim apologized and promised us an extra song (which we didn't get, they played the standard 22 tracks). After a few minutes the band got back and the concert finally started. The acoustics, not designed for loud rock, instantly failed. With earplugs, the band sounded muffled and without them, VERY distorted. In both cases Charlie's guitar was way too quiet in the mix and Mark's occasional drum loops ("Hypnotized", "New Gold Dream") drowned Mel's drumming. Still, it was an uplifting experiment and the audience loved every bit of it. We didn't remember lyrics to any of the songs, but were eager to participate whenever the songs contained wordless "la la" parts ("Don't You", "Alive and Kicking"). I believe "Waterfront" and "Alive and Kicking" were the most well received songs, even more than "Don't You" (maybe it has something to do with The Breakfast Club not being so well known movie around here?).

There were some funny audience moments. This one guy was anxiously reaching out at Jim during the first half of the concert. Jim took note of it during "Speed Your Love to Me" and when the band got to chorus, he approached the man, kneeled down and pointed at him while singing "Speed your love...", after which, when he sang "...to me", he slowly turned his hand to point himself. The guy calmed down pretty quickly and stopped doing his antics.

A pair of women, I guess they were in their early twenties, were ranking the band members by their looks. They were commenting pretty loudly, too. I remember one of them saying "toi kitaristipoju on aikas söpö" (that guitarist boy is kinda cute).

My step-father also noticed an older man standing near the mixer table, looking very proudly at the stage and smiling. He bore a striking resemblance to Jim. My step-father believed it was Jim's father, although I wouldn't be so sure. I later showed him a picture of Jim's real dad and he still says it was him.

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