03-05-2008 Olavi Uusivirta

supports: Soma; Venue: Tavastia, Helsinki (Finland)
By: Nina Mende

My third time in Tavastia, ever! Well, ok, maybe 5th. But still I haven’t been there as often as to some other places, yet do I feel home there somehow, especially because of the friendly staff. Tonight I was there to see Soma and Olavi Uusivirta.

Tavastia was filling up quickly and was quite full in the end with all kinds of people. There were young and old, rockers and poppers, girls and guys, just every kind of person. The upper floor of Tavastia was closed. At around 11pm Soma started playing. Soma is a Finnish band singing in Finnish. Soma are four nice guys, very friendly and talked quite a lot with their fans. Their show was very powerful and passionate. Soma played nice pop-rock, not too fast, more melodic yet good to dance and rock along. The singer was also playing acoustic guitar. Soma played for almost an hour, the audience was cheering for more and they got more. Soma is a great Finnish band, touchy vocals and great musicians.

Next was Olavi Uusivirta, a Finnish guy who also had just released his third album. The new one is called “Minä Olen Hullu” which means “I am crazy”. He released his first album in the age of 20. Olavi learnt how to play guitar, piano and drums at the theatre academy and just recently played in a Finnish movie. Shortly after midnight the band entered the stage and began rocking it big time. The sound and the light was just amazing, so was the whole atmosphere. Everybody had a great time, sang and danced along, and was amazed by Olavi’s performance. He has a great voice, a nice sense of humor and a nice way of being: very friendly and “boy-next-door-ish”. Olavi was jumping around quite a long while the rest of the band was more calm and just playing their parts. The bass player and Olavi himself seemed to be the youngest in the band, the drummer, keyboarder and guitar player seemed several years older. But they all performed well together and fit together perfectly well. The singer was talking a lot with the audience and played many songs from each album, played guitar for some songs, sang pop songs, rock songs and even ballads where you could see that he really can sing. While singing he always opened his mouth quite a lot and squeezed his eyes together, a cute look that made him even more simpatico. Olavi jumped off the drums a couple times and for the song “Minä Olen Hullu”, which definitely is a crazy song and you could think he’s insane when watching the performance of this song, he got up a girl from the audience to play an instrument just spontaneously. For some songs there was only the keyboard player on stage and Olavi, the light got dimmed and so there was a quite romantic and very passionate atmosphere. A really great show, I was amazed and totally loved it. Thanks to both bands for that gorgeous evening at Tavastia.