VAUHTI KIIHTYY is the name of a new series of festivals taking place in various Finnish cities. Many of the artists perform at most of the events, but each city seems to have a few exclusive acts. The line-ups are very diverse, following the ”something for everyone” principle. There’s pop, rock, traditional dance band music, punk rock, rap, metal... We attended the Turku festival with our focus on the rock acts but also some others too.

FRIDAY June 12th

The festivities began with one of the main attractions for us, Finnish rock legends POPEDA with their new frontman Olli Herman (of Reckless Love / Crashdiet fame). The band’s original singer Pate Mustajärvi is a much-loved character and when Olli was named as his replacement, there were a lot of fans who weren’t too pleased. However, over the last few months many of the nay- sayers seem to realized that band leader Costello Hautamäki knew what he was doing when he chose him. Anyone who has seen Reckless Love live knows that Olli is a force of nature, a frontman from the David Lee Roth school of Showmanship. He also has the pipes to deliver the Popeda songs with the necessary amount of grit and force. Popeda’s 1 hour set was way too short for them to include all their hits and fan favourites. Then again, they didn’t mess around or slow down, apart from a ”Popeda karaoke” version of ”Punaista ja Makeaa”, sung by the crowd and Costello. The song was dedicated to Pate, who had his 68th birthday on Friday.

We took a break from the festival at this point, because the rocking kickstart by Popeda was followed by a few artists from the rap genre (or rap-pop crossover, something like that). STIG is a producer/singer-rapper who has actually worked with Popeda, but his own music something different: hip hop, r’n’b, even country. The artist himself has a decidedly awkward image. Next up was PETRI NYGÅRD, a foulmouthed rapper with songs mostly about booze and sex. He does have some choruses tailor-made for a summer festival full of more or less drunken people, I won’t deny that. MIKAEL GABRIEL is another rapper with a ”bad, yet sensitive boy” type of an image. Some of his hits rely on hooks from old Finnish hits, which is quite common these days.

KEIINO was the only international artist of the festival, all the way from Norway. Their most well known song is ”Spirit In The Sky” from Eurovision Song Contest 2019 (ranked 6th).

They have three singers, Alexandra Rotan, Tom Hugo and Fred Buljo, who sings ”yoik”, a traditional form of music of Sami people, who live in the northern parts of Europe. It is somewhat similar to chanting of Native American cultures. The band performed with a live guitarist and drummer.

Although most of the people weren’t familiar with them, Keiino had constructed their set quite well. They played a few covers that everyone knew, Lady Gaga’s ”Shallow”, A-Ha’s ”The Sun Always Shines On TV” and closed their set with Abba’s ”Gimme Gimme Gimme”. Some of their own material was quite catchy too.

PORTION BOYS seemed to be the most popular artist of the day, and it’s easy to see why. They are one of the most energetic bands I’ve seen, and they have a selection of highly infectious songs. Actually, the name of the festival, ”Vauhti Kiihtyy”, is the name of their breakthrough hit. Obviously in the setlist.

Like many of the artists before them, they rely on backing tracks, as there’s only a drummer and a guitarist on stage, along with the four singers/rappers in the frontline. On lead vocals the band has A.P. Vuori, who looks and sounds like a hard rock singer, even though their music has more in common with 90’ies dance pop. The massive hooks and crunchy guitars do add a bit of 80’s rock vibe to it though.

There’s never a dull moment on stage with this band, and even though one of them (JaloTiina) was in a wheelchair due to a recent injury, it didn’t slow them down. The band’s main songwriter and producer ”El Meissel” did most of the speaking between songs, expressing gratitude for their success and I do believe he was sincere. The band’s party-vibe, not-so-serious lyrics and easy-on-the-ear choruses have not made them popular with critics, but the audiences all over Finland love them. This critic was thoroughly entertained by their performance and I’d be happy to see them again.

The last artist of Friday was ERIKA VIKMAN. I had no expectations really, as I had only heard a couple of her songs. Initially we thought we’d check out the first few songs and head home, but we stayed all the way to the end, she was that impressive. Erika won the prestigious ”Tango Queen” title in 2016, but her career really took of in 2020 when she had ditched the tangos and schlagers and re-invented herself as a strong pop diva. Her first major hit was her entry to Eurovision Song Contest, ”Cicciolina”. She didn’t qualify for the actual competition but the song became a huge hit, followed by an album that topped the charts. Her most recent number one hit is ”Ruoska”, a collaboration with Käärijä. Erika had a three-man band backing her up, and I was positively surprised how much they rocked. If someone was hoping for a tango or two, they were bitterly disappointed, as Erika and her band served us a cool set of rock-pop-dance crossover. Erika had a strong stage presence and her vocals were strong as well. A few of the songs were ”featuring”-type of songs, with the guest stars’ vocals piped in. The drummer did take care some of them, like Käärijä’s parts in ”Ruoskaa”. I find that approach better than vocals from a HD, live is live...

SATURDAY June 13th

Saturday’s first few of acts played quite early and weren’t really our cup of tea (traditional dance / schlager band YÖLINTU, reggae artist JUKKA POIKA and humour/rap/dance duo PASI JA ANSSI), so we set our sights on seeing JANNE HURME and the rest of the acts following him.

Janne Hurme scored big with his first album in the mid-nineties. Originally a rock singer, he found a new audience singing melancholic pop songs and ballads, many of which were covers of Hari Mata Hari, a band from Sarajevo. In 2004 he released a hard rock album with HUMAN TEMPLE, where he was the main songwriter. Two more albums followed.

Recently Janne’s pop/schlager career has been on the rise again, and this summer he’s been busy playing gigs with his band Rakkauden Apostolit. He recently collaborated with an artist called Faija, singing on a remake of his early hit ”Tinasormus”, and this version has been streamed over a million times within a few weeks.

Janne’s setlist focused on his first album, with the crowd singing along very loudly to the mega- hits ”Kirje” and ”Tinasormus”. The more recent and very AOR-esque ”Kaksi Matkaa” was one of my personal favourites. The band even got an encore, which seemed to take them by a surprise.

And then to the next ”artists”... BAT & RYYD. From the darkest depths of the eighties, these two superheroes are still going strong. Or at least going. Ridiculous costumes, cheesy Italo-disco with chipmunk vocals, extremely stupid lyrics - who could resist this? I have no words. Absolutely the best band of the weekend, out of all the masked bands who wore pink tights anyway.

After the madness of Bat & Ryyd it was time for one of the few real rock bands of the weekend, punk rock veterans KLAMYDIA. They had a lot of fans in the crowd, the number of Klamydia T- shirts was respectable and the drew a huge number of people to check them out. Their set kind of progressed from the angry, straight-forward songs with a lot of attitude to the more melodic and dare I say sensitive tunes at the end of their set. Vocalist Vesku Jokinen commanded the stage with his strong charisma and seriously impressive stage antics.

So what would be the strangest type of an act to follow a punk band? Maybe YHDESSÄ (”United”, but definitely not Rock), a union of 4 stars who were big in the 60s and 70s! Marion Rung, Markko Aro, Lea Laven and Kai Hyttinen are all in their seventies, and they sang their biggest hits from 50 years ago together and separately.

They had a live band which was nice, and these legends of Finnish music still had more or less decent voices, but that’s about it for me. Their songs didn’t push any nostalgic buttons for me, but I was in the minority I guess, as they managed to create a ”letkajenkka”, a conga-like dance that went around the field. A mosh pit for the elderly?

NEON 2 were up next, a 90’ies pop band that reformed a few years ago. They were originally marketed as a duo of two pretty boys with long hair and romantic songs. The hair is pretty much gone but songs are still romantic and melodic.

They used the video screens to show their old videos and other material which was visually interesting. It didn’t help those who were staying in the back to see what was happening on stage.

The band has a handful of good pop songs and not all of them are old ones, their recent hit ”Pieninä Palasina” proves that they can still come up with the goods. I wasn’t really looking forward to seeing them but they were okay.

The headliner of the day was BATTLE BEAST. The band is a well-oiled metal machine who hasn’t disappointed us yet, and we should know, we’ve seen them quite a few times during the last few years! This time they played without drummer Pyry Vikki who recently became a father, but his stand-in guy (whose name I didn’t catch) did a fine job.

The BB setlist was pretty much the same as it’s’ been for the last 3 or 4 times we’ve seen them. It’s a good selection of songs from the second chapter of the band (after the split-up with Anton Kabanen), but I hope they start mixing it up a bit. So, no surprises songwise there, and unsurprisingly the band was full of energy, Noora sang like a metal goddess and the crowd went wild... okay, the sound wasn’t the greatest where we were standing but otherwise it was a very good BB gig.

So let’s see what’s the total outcome of the festival for us, positives and negatives:

+ location - 15 minutes’ bike ride from home, couldn’t really be better. No need for paid parking, no traffic jams - awesome.
+ well-organized - no long lines anywhere, smooth operation in general.
+ a very diverse selection of artists - got to see artists that weren’t too familiar to us but surprised us positively.
+ ticket prices - 2 persons and 2 days for 50 EUR was a bargain. Next year it’ll be 60 EUR but that’s still a great deal if there are at least a couple of good acts.

- Just one stage. A second stage would allow more artists and a continuous flow of music, no waiting between bands.
- a very diverse selection of artists - some of the acts were so out of our comfort zone that we skipped them.
- the drinks and the food was apparently very expensive. Luckily for us, we weren’t there to drink or eat, we were there for the music.

As you see, the negatives are pretty minimal. If next year’s festival is held at the same location and the line-up is at least equally good to this year, I believe we’ll be there again!;

Review by Kimmo Toivonen
Photos by Mira Suutari-Toivonen
Neon 2 photo by Kimmo Toivonen

More photos: RockUnited.Com @ Facebook