Can you call three individual and very different gigs a 'tour'? Of course you can if it suits your purposes...

Private party in Meilahti 7.5.

Peppe's girlfriend Lissu had decided to end up her crrrrazy student days and enter the era of respectable adulthood ie. she managed to graduate from the university (congratulations!!!). To celebrate this she and her two also-just-graduated friends decided to have a big party in a wooden villa in Meilahti. And guess who was going to play there? Thhaaat's rrright, it was up to Streetcar to provide some entertainment for the poor unprepaired guests.

To make life easier for the guests (and harder for themselves) the band decided that perhaps now was the time to learn some cover songs for the first time. "My girl" was a horrific failure but two other selected songs, Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane" and Morrisey's "First of the gang to die" (Lissu's current favourite song) worked out much better.

So the band packed up their gear, paid a bottle of Jaloviina for the PA-system and relocated to this idyllic wooden building. The place felt a bit like a grandmother's house with loads of old furniture and heavy jugend lamps that refused to shake even when ultrabass was turned to maximum. Nice. Before the gig band got their biggest pay so far, a 1 1/2 liter bottle of Koskenkorva vodka. Very wisely the band decided to store this for a future occasion, nobody likes to see musicans crawling all over the stage and throwing up (we aren't very rock'n'roll, remember!).

The gig itself was Streetcar's best gig so far, people were dancing and band played red-faced pouring with sweat. Cool, if not really esthetically pleasing. "First of the gang to die" went down especially well, and the band had to play one extra number after the set list had ended, because someone demanded more and wasn't fast enough to cancel and run. Sweet. The evening continued with everyone partying their ass off and DJ Garganzo playing some wonderful emotional love songs like Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby got back".

Party pics:

The lucky winners	"Do we have to drink this now?"	Mara & Mr. DJ
Streetcar rides out again!	Bartsi ponders about drum sticks and stuff.	Ville starts to change color...
"Let's rawk!! ARGH!! ARGH!!"	Disco fever later in the evening!	B boogies down

By someone

Stella Star 12.5.

In our last gig in Stella Star we met an old acquaintance, Tommi from Tokyotapes, who asked if we would like to join the bill with them in Stella-Star again on 12.5. Funnily enough, the date was free in our busy touring schedule so of course we would! Other bands playing would be Autopilot from Pohjanmaa and a last minute addition by the wonderfully confused Stella-Star booking system: Casual.

This was actually the third time in our short live career that we have had these last minute additions or general häslinki with live lineups and so far we have been pretty lucky. All of our co-headliners have been, if not from the same genre then at least from the same musical planet as we are and even better, all have been nice people. No heavy metal, prog or hardcore bands and no irritating assholes. *Phew*.

Somehow Streetcar ended up bringing drums for this gig since we now rehearsed only a minute's drive from Stella-Star but luckily we still managed to squeeze all our stuff in one car. The band entered the Stella Star and again the place was packed with musicians from different bands setting up gear. Streetcar would play first because Casual's bass player was coming from Raahe and wouldn't be in Helsinki until 22:00. That meant that we would soundcheck last, so B set up the drums and the band relocated to Sture Jazz Club for some jazzy beer.

It took ages before Streetcar could even start their soundcheck and after the check was finished it turned out that the actual intended showtime was only 15 minutes away. But since the place was deserted that made no sense so it was decided that the band would start around 22:00. Again the gods of Stella were against us and the general feeling wasn't that great when the band started playing. No idea why, the setting was ok for a first band, there were even people in and so on. In addition there were some monitoring problems, Ville and Mara couldn't hear themselves very well.

To celebrate the fact that Lou Reed was playing in Tampere at the very date of the gig, the band played "Sweet Jane" for the second time. The first official public cover song for the band. All in all the concert went ok (though "Friday" was a bit slow), "Custom Clothes" was even the best version ever, but still it was a pale shadow compared to the last Saturday's gig. Some day we will rock Stella but not today. Or actually since Stella Star is now closing its doors we won't ever truly rock Stella, which is kind of sad...

After Streetcar Casual played some nice Strokes-influended stuff and after that the author of this little story (ie. B ) had to leave for Tavastia to check out The Bellrays but according to stories Autopilot played really loud and suffered from some big technical problems and Tokyotapes had a nice gig, too. (And The Bellrays were excellent!)

Stella pics:

Ville steps on a nail or something... (Mmm, the Orange sure looks good!)	Streetcar on the roomy Stella Star stage. (Notice the nice Orange guitar amp. Not ours, I'm afraid)	Peppe hits the spotlight. (Now it looks a bit like R2-D2)
Once again B is too fast to be caught on film	Streetcar - moving in the speed of light	That lonely Stella Star spotlight
Another hard day at the office

By Tor-Magnus (last one by Peppe)

Black Door 20.5.

Ville and Mara had been doing some acoustic jams in home conditions from time to time and had actually once before done an impromptu acoustic gig in an open jam session. A couple of guys we know were playing records and having a club thing going in in Black Door, a rock oritentated pub in central Helsinki, and since the place was way too small to host a standard Streetcar gig it was a great oppornity to put out an "official" acoustic performance.

So the guys confronted a small audience au naturél (but not naked, though...) without any amplification at all, there wasn't even a PA-system. This proved out to be a bit tricky since it was different from playing acoustic at home, to get heard you had to shout out loud and strum those chords like your life depended on it. So even the ballads changed to a more rock-orientated (acoustic) mode. Ville and Mara sang their lungs out and it was good, our song repertoire suited nicely for this kind of treatment. Sad thing that no-one brought a camera, guess we have to arrange this kind of an event again so that we can get some pics, too...