It’s always fun to see Steve’n’Seagulls live, so when it was announced that the band would be returning to the UK for a small run of shows about a year after their last visit, I knew there would be no way in hell that I’d miss them.
With only Steve’n’Seagulls on the lineup, it was clear that everyone was there just for them and the room filled with cheers as their introduction played out over the venue speakers and the band entered the stage. However, when they readied themselves to begin the show, as soon as the intro cut out the crowd was greeted with a sudden silence – essentially, the connection to the bass pedal board was quite dodgy and it took several attempts to fix it, including using a new wire, switching the ports and attempting to tape the wire in place but everything was clearly conspiring against Pukki, who eventually had to connect everything via another box so the show could go on and finally the band launched into the opening track of the night, Aces High, which was, of course, met with more loud cheers.
Indeed, it seemed like there were a lot of forces operating against the band, as practically every time Remmel touched a guitar it ended up losing a string – he lost three on his mandolin and one from each of his acoustic guitars, and each time it happened he’d laugh a little more – but needless to say, I witnessed a fair amount of (justified) yells of “EI VITTU!”.
Despite all the setbacks, the show was of course tremendous and there was a definite fun atmosphere in the room – it was a joy to witness how the band interacted with one another, and when a band is having such a good time onstage, you can’t help but have a great time yourself! The band powered through a set littered with many awesome inclusions, such as their incredible Self-Esteem cover, The Pretender (which saw drummer Puikkonen perform lead vocals and sing, which was surely no mean feat) and it was a pleasure to witness them play their very first original song, Fill Up The Tank.
Coming back onstage for an encore of Born To Be Wild, at this point it was probably just as well that Remmel only performs vocals for this track as none of his guitars appeared to be in a useable state any more, and it was the perfect ending to the set. One particularly amusing point in the song was when Hiltunen got out his flute, and ended up laughing halfway through his solo and had to start again!
Although it perhaps wasn’t the most polished of performances due to all the various mishaps, it was nevertheless an entertaining show – and one I’ll always remember with a smile on my face.
8/10
