Global Balalaika Show

leningrad cowboys

We got to see a terrific show on Saturday night in Helsinki: The Leningrad Cowboy's Global Balalaika Show. There is a mention of the show being webcast after Tuesday and televised on YLE2 on New Year's for those who missed it. I took a few pictures with the little Canon Elph I have since I didn't want to lug the big camera bag around with me in such a large crowd. The lighting was a bit on the dark side, so much so that even the video crew had problems at times getting a good shot. The photo in the Sanomat was a better photo than I would have gotten. The smog machine and the lighting made it very challenging, even for the pros, to manage a decent photo.

In the early afternoon we went to have lunch and walked by the square to see if it might already be crowded and found it mostly deserted. The t-shirt vendors were setting up so we took the opportunity to buy a couple before the rush. After a few beers at a local pub I ran back to the apartment to walk HB and drop off a bunch of stuff along with the nice camera while the guys snagged a good spot on the steps of the church.

The warm-up band was an Eminem wanna-be rapper dude who seemed to be a favourite of many of the teenage girls in the crowd who were singing along and waving their arms to the music. Mercifully, they only played a few songs. :) Not long before the main event, someone announced that Helsinki was out of power. The Sanomat mentioned it was the first time in 2 years Helsinki had lost power but the show went on since they had generators and the outage was brief. The annoying part of a power outage is coming home to all clock equipped appliances blinking 12:00 and having to remember how to set them all, especially the ones with a horribly unintuitive UI. Why aren't modern appliances able to use NTP via the power lines to set the time? You can get every other bloody feature these days but the LED clocks are still stuck in the 1970s? *Grumble* ...but I digress.

The first half of the show was terrific and I was nearly convinced that the lead singer was Tom Jones in costume. A hyperactive smog machine unfortunately blotted out much of the Red Army Choir most of the time and I salute them for being able to sing with the cloud hanging over them. My only real disappointment with the show was that choir was not as much a part of the show as I had hoped. Hearing them sing "Sweet Home Chicago" made up for a lot even though it made me a bit homesick. It is a bit disorienting to hear it in downtown Helsinki being sung by a Russian Army choir. It's like popping out in some alternate universe briefly and noticing Iraqis singing "New York, New York" in downtown Baghdad; interesting, entertaining, cool and weird simultaneously. :)

When the musical guests from around the world came on in the second half of the show it became obvious why "Global" was part of the show's name. There were steel drums, African drums, samba dancers, Russian folk dancers and dancers with torches that added some not-terribly-local colour to the spectacle. Two of the guitarists had a jam duel which ended with them both smashing their instruments. Big Chief "Bo" Dollis performed "Papa was a Rolling Stone" and really added a dimension to the show since Soul/R&B artists aren't here very often that I've noticed.

"Stairway to Heaven" afforded the opportunity to light my Bic and yell "FREEBIRD!". It is at this moment that you realise that your self-amusement and brief excitement at this time honoured tradition is a signal that you've earned one too many grey hairs to be sitting with 60,000 people at an outdoor concert. Well, that and thinking that the kids should turn the volume down a bit. "Ghostbusters" was the finale, complete with fireworks and a stage full of Russian, Caribbean, samba and go-go dancers all gyrating and yelling "who ya gonna call". If I told a shrink I had dream like this, I'd probably be in a padded cell by now. :)

Anyone who went to the show expecting it to be like it was 10 years ago would likely be disappointed since the band has changed a lot over a decade and anything that could be duplicated over that span of time would already be a tired cliche. The world has changed since the Total Balalaika Show and they choreographed this new show with that in mind. I only hope we don't have to wait another 10 years for the next one. :)

The list of guests and songs is pretty impressive. I highly recommend checking out Angelique Kidjo as she has an absolutely amazing voice.

Guests:

  • Angelique Kidjo (Benin)
  • "Coto" Antomarchi Padilla Juan de la Gruz (Cuba)
  • Wild Magnolias, Big Chief "Bo" Dollis (New Orleans, USA)
  • Johanna Rusanen
  • Tulikansa
  • Yamar Thiam & Galaxy Drums (Senegal/Finland)
  • Kirsi Tykkyläinen
  • Figurantes de Cuba

Concert Playlist:

  1. Blackhole sun
  2. American woman
  3. Sweet Home Chicago
  4. Like a virgin
  5. Land of 1000 dances
  6. Those Were the Days
  7. Bad
  8. Easy living
  9. Stairway to heaven
  10. Pennies from heaven
  11. That's the way I wanna rock n' roll
  12. Afirika
  13. Americano
  14. No woman no cry
  15. Pretty Fly (for a white guy)
  16. Papa was a rolling stone
  17. La Cucaracha
  18. Kashmir
  19. El Quarto de Tula
  20. Tumba
  21. Life is a carnival
  22. Eloise
  23. Rockin' in the free world
  24. Coochie Molly
  25. Ghostbusters
star 25 Aug 2003 at 1:22, Helsinki

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