Your Light Eclipsed The Moon Tonight

08:00 - Heavy rain and the kind of sky you know will not lighten up during the day.
16:00 - Doors on Finnair Stadium opens. C leaves the office.
16:30 - C orders a taxi for 17:10
17:10 - Taxi doesn't show. C gets pissed off.
17:30 - Rendez vous time. Deb steps in and collects people.
17:35 - Taxi arrives.
17:55 - C arrives at Finnair Stadium just as music by the first warm-up act starts to emanate from the stage. Still raining.
18:05 - C, Deb and David have secured themselves a beer, and the singer sounds an awful lot like my previously mentioned hero Ken Stringfellow.
18:06 - The singer IS Ken Stringfellow.
-> Good times for all!

So no, I hadn't done my homework. When I lost track a bit of Mr Stringfellow's escapades a year and a half ago, it was because he started spending extensive time in Norway to record with a new band that I never in the end checked out. Yesterday they were, quite randomly, one of two opening acts for R.E.M. Well, not quite that random, off course, the last time I missed Mr Stringfellow on stage it was when he opened as a solo act for R.E.M. on Ullevål in Oslo. And he's been touring with them for years... it just didn't register in my mind that The Disciplines was his new act. It was great. He's always great. Wherever I am asked to list my favorite quotes, you will find Ken Stringfellow.

Editors were great too, when I found out they would be playing they quickly became my number one reason for going to the concert. The lead voice is gorgeous and the selection of songs they played was small but good. Even threw in two new tunes. It was still raining.

R.E.M. are not by any means my favorite band. I've seen them once before, in Oslo Spektrum, and that was... ok. The sound was rather poor and he went on this long, political rant about George Bush. No political rants yesterday, just a short mentioning of their commitment and that was it. The concert as such was good, they played all my favorites except Leaving New York, but they lost me during some of the more rarely played tunes - and it rained and it rained and it rained.

All in all, rain or no rain, yesterday ended up as a brilliant day of music with very happy people walking out of the stadium. Don't have any more concerts in my calendar now, so I'm hoping bands will continue the good going-to-Helsinki trend I've seen so far this year.

Next week I'll be going to see Hellboy II, and after that the Love & Anarchy film festival is starting with a bunch of interesting music films. Also want to catch Wall-E, and need time to watch the rest of Dexter and Heroes season 2 on dvd. Phew!