We played in Vaikkola. It’s a small city an hour from Helsinki. It was after my show in Tenho in Helsinki. Both shows went well. The audiences were enthusiastic, attentive and crazy in a way that only Finnish people can be.
Anyway, I met the dudes from Beats and Styles. B and S is an electro-rock-pop band from Finland. They have some solid hits like “Renegade” and “Dynamite” (check ’em out, you lazy fool).
We were in Azmo’s battered and well-worn little car (lead singer of Beats and Styles) on the way back to Helsinki when the cops stopped us. They did drug and alcohol tests on him. He had ritalin in his system (which he takes due to his ADHD – at least that’s what he tells me … hahaha). He had to search through his glove compartment to find the papers to prove that he takes ritalin for his ADHD. Eventually he found it, the test results appeared and we were able to leave.
Luckily, they didn’t know about the 10,000 tabs of LSD in the trunk!
Kidding. Gawd!
But still… being stopped by cops in Finland at 3am – not a pleasant experience. I have enough experience with cops to know that the best thing is just to remain calm and be compliant. Azmo said the same thing. He chatted with them in a friendly, jovial fashion, slapped them on the back, shook their hands… and then eventually we left, happy and not-arrested.
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So one cool thing about this tour is that I started playing my only Finnish song, “Kiitos”. I got the crowd to sing “Ole Hyvva!” (“you’re welcome”) in response. It was super fun to do it again.
I also broke out a song from my Synthpoperetta entitled “You Manipulated Me”. It went over well, far as I could tell. Nothing like adding new songs to the mix to keep things fresh.
Here is IMPPU and Mirva’s fluffy cat… with me:
and this is the note I woke up to this morning… I like notes like this:
And of course, pictures from my show in Lahti:
Don’t forget, my live album is now available through Bandcamp. Sixteen songs to rock your world.
stephenpaultaylor 