The Finnish band’s success in Budapest – summary of the Sunrise Avenue concert including photos
The Finnish rock band celebrates its 10-year-anniversary, while they’re touring throughout in Europe with their latest album called Out Of Style. Finally, Budapest was on the list of their tour destinations. They put on an unforgettable show on 6th March at Dürer Club where both the audience and the band had a blast.
The time before Sunrise Ave hit the stage at 9:30PM, the supporting act, Jim Kroft and his band had been entertaining the attendees for about 45 minutes. We may say, that they also got the interest of the 400 people present; however, most of them were there to see Samu Haber and the guys from Sunrise Ave.
Although the audience didn’t number a lotta people, the enthusiasm reached the sky. The guys started up with the song Out Of Tune and they continued with Sex & Cigarettes, Forever Yours, Angels On The Rampage which were followed by the hits I Don’t Dance and Destiny. The musicians and the fans crystal clearly understood each other from the first second to the last one, the mood was unbelievable in the small room. You could get the feeling that you’re having party together with the guys instead of watching a concert as an outsider.
The band did some jukebox also, that is shorter and longer covers could be heard from Rod Stewart, Queen, Inner Circle, Bon Jovi, Scooter, Backstreet Boys and from many more. The audience was singing along these little pieces together with them.
When they started to sing a few lines from Bon Jovi, part of the public went totally mad as Sunrise Ave gained some of their current Hungarian fans, when they were supporting Bon Jovi with a massive success in Austria back in 2008.
During the show we could get a proof that all the band members can sing very well. Samu passed the opportunity more times to the others to enjoy the particular attention of the public, so the guitarrist, Riku Rajama, the drummer Sami Osala, the bassist Raul Ruutu and the keyboard player Osmo Ikonen all could get their very own part of the outstanding success.
The band was having fun all along the concert. Samu was joking a lot between the songs. Guitar picks were thrown to the public from time to time, but even empty water bottles and wet towels were flying in the air when there was an expressed demand on those. At a point, Samu happened to get a camera and he was taking pictures of themselves and of the public also. Then some of the fans, standing in front rows, could get a hand from Riku while he was walking up and down amongst them.
After the song Destiny – with the special jukebox part in it – the setlist continued with Stormy End, Welcome To My Life and then with their biggest hit, Fairytale Gone Bad. Here they tried to say goodbye but we, fans were claiming for encores, and got two of them! First encore started with Sweet Symphony and then Hollywood Hills was performed. At the very end of the show Dream Like A Child was played including a jukebox again.
The guys were on stage for about 90 minutes, having their whole heart in it, and we had a blast together with them. Even, we could keep on having party for another 90 minutes.
After the show we stayed at the venue together with a bunch of other fans as we were hoping for a common photo with the boys. We didn’t have to get disappointed as after waiting almost 2 hours, Samu came out and was taking pictures with anybody who asked, was chatting friendly to everybody and also signing everything, whatever was handed over to him. All this happened in an easy manner as if he was the fellow guy from your next door. This kind of behavior definitely strengthened our clearly positive impression that we originally had.
Next day Samu wrote on his Facebook blog the followings: „It’s so amazing that even here in Hungary they have played Fairytale Gone Bad already years ago and everyone knew how to sing Hollywood Hills from start to end. Why the hell haven’t we been here before? Well, good that we’re here now. Thank you all for a great great evening and from the bottom of my heart I hope we’re back in our “language cousin” country soon. Thank you Hungary!”
We just can hope that after all we don’t have to wait for ages until they come back to our country!
Translated by: Zsuzsi H.