Downstairs from real fame

Semifinal is the place where Streetcar's history kind of started in 2003 with Ville's solo Verve covers gig so this was kind of like coming home or going a full circle or some other stupid fucking dramatic metaphore. Semifinal is kind of like the high end of the Helsinki toilet circuit, just downstairs from legendary Tavastia. Kind of like. We had tried getting here before, sent some demos to Roudi (Semifinal's manager) but typically for us no one had ever bothered calling him afterwards so we had to slip in by the back door and get support slot from Flannelmouth, an oldskool Finnish pop band.

The evening starts well enough, we're not even in the building when we get mobbed by German fans. Or actually they're some German exchange students playing a stupid treasure hunt game. One task is to get a pic of Finnish rock stars and Streetcar happily play along, though they're probably mistaken for members of Hanna Pakarinen's (aah!) band. Hanna (uuh!) is playing upstairs at Tavastia today. Actually, after soundchecking and eating some great Tavastia food, the band encounter Hanna (iih!) on the doorway and Hanna (ooh!) says "Hi!". All except B, who had already left and is later green with envy. He has a thing for brunettes, but never mind that, it's not that obvious anyway.

Otherwise things are looking good: the soundcheck sounded great and for once there's a large enough stage to do all those carefully choreographed dance routines, steps and twirls that we've spent months practising in the reheasal room. Go go ballet Streetcar!

The time for live music comes and Streetcar gets a bit nervous. Should we go on stage while the last dj song plays or not? Ville tries unsuccesfully to form a group hug and the band lurch to stage tripping on cables. 'Satellite Town' starts and shit, the band sounds GOOD. Lots of respect to Semifinal sound man Lööbö, oh, and probably the months spent in by us in our rehearsal space weren't completely lost, either. Best Streetcar gig ever. An uptempo version of 'Laura' makes a triumphant return to the set list. B goes to grab a beer in the bar during 'Top to bottom' since he plays only in last chorus. Ville adds an extra number by suddenly starting 'Lonely skies' and dedicating it to Evan Dando who played a shit gig upstars a day earlier.

Almost perfect, though some technical problems bother the performance. Peppe's bass starts to fade in and out since one bass cord plug comes loose everytime he moves (luckily he is usually pretty static) and during the encore of 'Universe & Sunshine' Ville's guitar goes dead immediately at the start of the song. Here you can see that we're learning something about live performaces: a year ago we probably would have stopped the song but now Ville just mimes playing guitar during the whole song and Mara tries to cover the best he can. No one even notices, though U & S sounds pretty crude. Straight outta jungle. The audience would like to hear even more but now it's time for Flannelmouth to do their pop stuff and Streetcar stop.

Flannelmouth sounds great too and after that it's time to go home or to go and throw some water balloons on unsuspecting people, whatever turns you on the most.

After some careful consideration Streetcar decide against retiring at the pinnacle of their career and why should we, our next gig will also be here. Great. Today Semifinal, tomorrow...erm...well, upstairs would be nice someday. Oh, and now we have left a permant mark in Finnish rock history, we're on this page, squeezed in right between the internationally famous rock acts of Streamliners and Strikin' Case. What could be better?

Pics:

Looky! A big stage!	The rhytmic section: Peppe and Chewbacca	Ville gets all emotional
	Bartsi waves some rave sticks	Shwiiiing!
Lonely skies, probably.	Blastbeats	Our place in history