The 69 Eyes @ Puikkari 19.11.2009

November has already proven itself to be a busy month for us in seeing bands. Last weekend we saw Viikate and Amorphis (pictures coming sometime soon ;) and yesterday we drove to Kuopio to catch The 69 Eyes. I had access to shoot the three first songs even though there wasn’t a pit available.

Shooting the show was a bit more of a challenge than usual since I dislocated my right hand little finger last Sunday and now have a cast on my right hand (making typing quite annoying as well). Luckily Anna was with me as an assistant in changing lenses and later on in selecting and editing the shots today. Of course, she’s been a tremendous help with clumsy me all along…

We’ve been fans of the Helsinki City Vampires for quite some time (Anna from even before we’d met), but this was the first time we’ve seen them live. So we really didn’t know what to expect. From Chris Owyoung’s shooting notes I knew to position myself to stage right so that Jyrki 69’s left hand wouldn’t cover his face (thanks for the tip!).

What surprised me was that when we arrived at the venue 1.5 hours before showtime, there were just a couple of people there. Even at showtime the place was half full at best and quite a large portion of the crowd weren’t metalheads (at least based on clothing choices). Is the scene in Kuopio so different from Joensuu where a smaller band will get a larger crowd or was it just the time of week and venue. After all, the venue was a hotel nightclub and not all that metal :)

Jyrki 69 was a lively performer as expected, as was Jussi 69 behind his drumset. What surprised me was how much of a stage presence Timo-Timo had right in front of me. He really was the embodiment of a rock guitarist: spinning, duck walking, and running around.

While three songs was more than enough to get a good set of shots, I really would have loved to shoot the entire gig. So much of the audience interaction and stage antics are missed when the whole show can’t be photographed. Maybe sometime in the future there will be a chance to shoot their whole show…

More pictures in our gallery.