Garden Party at Hietaniemi Beach, Helsinki.
A brand new outdoor concert launched by Live Nation, which tries to sell itself as a festival. It advertised itself from this years headline, which was Charlotte Gainsbourg (announced months ago). Very curious what her live show would be like with the musicians Beck choose for her, we got our tickets early (back then there were no info about the exact location or anything else just that she was playing in Helsinki).
The event grew over time and became a wannabe 1 day/1 stage festival with Regina Spector as the new main headline. Also including the revamped The Shins, Swedish electro band Little Dragon and local French Films. With all these band added, the 52€ paid to see Charlotte Gainsbourg felt better, but was it really worth it?
First of all the location of festival is quite good, next to the sea and the bands playing in a tent. The site was pretty well organized and decorated, and luckily the sun was there. Then as in many festival if you become thirsty or hungry, your wallet will cry. 7€ for a beer, 12€ for a plate of deep fried fishes and frozen potatoes...
And the music?
Had to skip the French Films. The event was first sold as a concert before it turned into a festival, so unless you are a student, on holidays or unemployed it was hard to make it for 15.30.
For some reason The Shins and Charlotte Gainsbourg sets were rescheduled 15 to 30min earlier, so the Shins started at 18.00. But was this really the Shins we listened to in the early 2000's? Maybe not, as only James Mercer is back, after his Broken Bells adventure. They started with new songs, quite ok but not that catchy. Making it easier to follow the gig from the bar. By the end of the set they played much more oldies from "Chutes to narrow" like "Saint Simon" and "So Says I", and these songs still rocks!! And to our surprise - we were gratified of an extra encore! Pretty rare in a festival to be noted, the band played some very energetic songs having real fun. For their first gig in Finland it was well done.
About 30 minutes to wait for Charlotte Gainsbourg, time to visit facilities of the event. Actually there was a decent amount of prefab toilets and the queue was pretty fair. Meanwhile the 3 guys from Little Dragon were mixing in the small tent.
So now people were left to wait 2 hours with poisoning food and expensive beer for the Regina Spector gig. Personally not a fan and disappointed we headed to entrance to claim our money back. Of course it was impossible, but the funny thing was that still 15minutes after headline was cancelled tickets were still sold with no mention of the cancellation, people being just warned once they got in...
Many people like us went home early on that day, thats a sad story. Live Nation seems very interested in money but not in respecting its public and artist. Sad sad world.
from the vault