The shortest festival ever, Pietarsaari Open Air 2022
Technical problems gave a big shake to the program of Pietarsaari Open Air 2022. Unfortunately, all Finnish bands were skipped, which was decided just before the doors should open. All due to technical problems. Would the old rockers from Uriah Heep and Deep Purple get their audience going, that was the question.
The last edition of Pietarsaari Open Air the band Europe was on the program. This time we went further back in time. with Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Access. The festival should have kicked off with Cyan Kicks, a Finnish rock band from the Finnish capital of Helsinki. The band makes combinations of popish melodies and electronic sound effects.
For the next band that was cancelled, we have to travel up to the home base Tampere, UNIKLUBI. The band got known via the music website Mikseri.net. One of their songs, “Love and Barbed Wire”, became a hit over there.
Next on stage was ‘the real thing’,. The British band Uriah Heep was next and the first after the cancelled bands on our menu. The band started 3 years after your reporter was born. Imagine that! That’s a long time ago. They are still playing strong and perform many times per year. Now as a warm-up band so they had to pull it off by themselves. Back on the train as well, as Uriah Heep was cancelled as well.
The next stop is cane from Germany, where the heavy metal band Accept comes from. They also started a long time ago and are still famous in Finland.
The last stop before the end of a day full of heavy music should have been the moment Deep Purple should have mounted the stage. The first cords on the guitar from “Smoke on the water” are legendary and would have sounded great. The tour brings them to 28 countries and has 84 concerts, one of them should have been in Jakobstad/Pietarsaari, Finland. That’s how it was supposed to go, as in real life it went totally different.
At first, the Finnish bands were cancelled and the doors should have been open at 17 o’clock, Time went by and it became later and later…….. Until the announcement came that the whole Festival was cancelled because of some missing parts on the stage, which made it unstable and unsafe.
Great respect for the Finnish audience that waited patiently till the doors should open. When that wasn’t going to happen everyone was surprised, a little mad but went all home without making a lot of fuss. The typical Finnish way, don’t show many emotions and stay calm at all times. The only sneak preview we have was made with a drone.
Unfortunately, there was no Pietarsaari Open Air 2022.
