Yesterday we went to see the “King of Soul” – James Brown – on L?ɬ§nsi-Auto areena, Espoo. Unfortunately, the experience was far from perfect: Purchasing beer or food was nearly impossible; The show was quite a lame; it started very late (ok, that was due to heavy snowing and not the organizers foul); and (like always in Finland) security guards managed to kill the atmosphere. On the other hand, Don Johnston Big Band played a great gig and they had much more time to play, when the King was sitting in the plane.
But, how it can be so difficult to organize working customer service in Finland! Again there were far too few girls behind the counters compared to the number of thirsty music fans in the arena and it would not help the situation that clearly the personnel had trainee level skills on selling a lot of beer fast. More experienced staff would have sold five times more drinks than what we saw yesterday. How it could be possible that you have to wait 40 minutes in line to get a beer?? Clearly someone did not want money…
And then to the main business; i.e., the performance of Mr. Brown. Yes, there were plenty of talented musicians on the stage (over 20 people), good music (every now and then), and good looking dancing girls. But, there was also a lot of boring bragging on how big star in on the stage, way too long phases when nothing really happened, only parts of the songs everyone wanted to hear, and (to be honest) old and tired main star. The Soul Man himself had still his voice and some moved, but the durability is not there anymore: I think he song like 3-4 minutes and then there was at least 15 minutes of all kind of unnecessary solos and side programs.
So in summary:
- Go to see Don Johnson, if you have a change!
- Never go to L?ɬ§nsi-Auto areena for concert
- If you want to see James Brown live, you may not have many changes left… But don’t expect great show
