HIM @ The Wiltern & signing session @ Hot Topic, April 23rd

One of the highlights of BogFires’ trip to LA was seeing HIM, Finland’s most successful band in the U.S., perform here at the sold out Wiltern theatre with Dommin and The Fallen opening. HIM had a signing session at Hot Topic on Hollywood and Highland mall earlier that day. Coincidentaly the ASCAP EXPO 2010 was held the same day at the Renaissance Hotel nex door and many of the music industry people got to witness the massive following HIM has here in the U.S. A purchase of a HIM- CD or t-shirt and the Hot Topic- card was required in order to get a wristband that entitled you to meet the band. You could only get one item signed and no photos were allowed. Later that afternoon Hot topic had sold out all their HIM CD’s and t-shirts. The line outside Hot Topic started forming early on and by mid-afternoon it was already on Highland Avenue. I joined the line at 4 PM, when the band arrived, and the line was already on Hollywood Blv by then. Accoring to Hot Topic personnel, only the cast of Twilight was able to atrract more people there recently. Most of the people I spoke with in the line didn’t have tickets to the sold out show. After waiting in the line for 2 h and 30 min I finally got to meet the band and have my t-shirt signed. The guys seemed to be in a good mood, and they were joking around in Finnish. The signing session must have lasted at least three hours all together.

The doors at Wiltern opened at 6.30 PM and before HIM started their set at 9.50 PM the opening bands Dommin and the Fallen performed. The front of the stage was packed even before Dommin started their set. BogFires already catched Dommin live twice when they toured with HIM in Europe. According to Roadrunner Records, touring with HIM has been both pleasant and rewarding for Dommin, who are doing a headlining minitour across U.S. on their way from NYC, where HIM finishes their tour on May 9th. The Fallen is another interesting group, playing melodic hard rock/light metal, with the 2008 american idol finalist Carly Smithson as the front figure vocalist and former members of Evanessence in the band. Good shows from both of the opening bands and the audience loved them. Both of the bands had an 80’s cover song in ther setlist, Dommin with Cutting Crew’s I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight and The Fallen performing Madonna’s Like a Prayer.

By the time HIM started the athmosphere at the venue was sublime. The band did not dissapoint their loyal fans this time either and it was yet another perfect night for the HIM fans. Setlist was similar to the setlist on the European tour, with few additions, as Killing Loneliness from the Dark Light album and Bleed Well from Venus Doom were also performed. HIM has some major celebrity fans here in LA who have helped the bands journey in achieving the massive following they have here. The most significant of course being Bam Margera, who was spotted at the show with his wife Missy. Another big fan of the band is of course Kat Von D who advertised the show at her tattoo shop in West Hollywood.

Photos from the show available at

http://www.heartagram.com/tour/2010/04/23

Another live review available at

http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/live-review-him-the-wiltern-los-angeles/6749222

BogFires would like thank HIM & Seppo Vesterinen for the collaboration.

Project Metal Nation

Check this out! A very cool and ambitious project, spreading the word of Finnish Metal in a novel and creative way:
http://www.projectmetalnation.com/

Conference report: Musexpo 2010 / April 25-28 2010 / Los Angeles

by Toni-Matti Karjalainen

Musexpo is an annual music industry event in West Hollywood, organized this year for the 6th time at the exquisite London West Hollywood hotel. The conference gathers together an impressive line-up of industry people (music industry executives, managers, label reps, marketing experts, game industry people, etc.) in the format of interactive panel discussions and key-note presentations. The expo, in addition to the annual sister event in London, is probably the best place to get an overview of the industry development and valuable insight shared by the industry leaders. Moreover, the atmosphere is extremely relaxed and inspiriting.

Even though the event is characterized by talks and more talks about the industry logic and trends, the music itself is really put to the forefront. Not only are music presentations included in the lunch pauses and between sessions but also is the tonal and visual pleasure offered by a number of showcase presentations by artists and bands from all over the world, taking place during the four evenings at the Viper Room and Whisky a Go Go. Also this year, the first but certainly not the last one for me, I met a bunch of open-minded people and managed to do lots of networking in the London hotel and nearby conference venues. This year’s event hosted some 30 artists from 14 countries and delegates from three dozen countries on five continents.

The origins of Musexpo, as explained by the organizers, stem from the roots of the A&R Network networking dinners in Los Angeles. These exclusive dinners were organized by A&R Network and A&R Worldwide architect Sat Bisla with the purpose of bringing together friends and like-minded relationships from the global radio, A&R, film/TV music supervision, publishing, new media and artist management communities to engage in creative dialogue and establish fresh business relationships. It was the positive culmination of these organic networking dinners that spawned the creation of the four-day event, still successfully hosted by Mr. Bisla himself.

The conference program started with a keynote panel, moderated by Nic Harcourt, a highly acknowledged music writer in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The panel, one of the interesting ones in the event, consisted an impressive lineup of industry leading executives: David Glick (Edge, UK), George Ergatoudis (Head of Music, BBC Radio 1), Harvey Goldsmith (Harvey Goldsmith Presents), Jim Urie (Universal Music Group Distribution), Steve Schnur (EA Games), and Jim Hollingsworth (Gracenote). Impressing and interesting was also the Global Managers Forum that followed. From this discussion, we received insights from highly experienced music managers such as Jeff Jampol (e.g. The Doors), Jonathan Shalit (e.g. N-Dubz), Rob McDermott (e.g. Linkin Park), David “Beno” Benveniste (e.g. System of A Down, Alice In Chains), Robert Reynolds (e.g. The Killers), and Ted Chung (e.g. Snoop Dogg). After the nice lunch, served by Gordon Ramsay Restaurant at the top terrace of the London hotel, discussions continued with focus on music publishing and marketing.

The 2nd morning of the event, following the also interesting Global A&R Forum with the focus on the future of artist development, was highlighted by the interview (by Kevin Wall) of the industry’s living legend Harvey Goldsmith. He is really a person who has personally experienced the development of rock music industry from its early years to the present time. His stories with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteed, to name a few, as well as organization of the Massive Live Aid and Live 8 concerts were truly fascinating to listen. During the following lunch break, Mr. Goldsmith was also acknowledged with an “International Music Person of the Year” award. As a personal note, it was quite nice to shake hands with this English gentleman.

Tuesday afternoon then consisted of more discussion panels on the topics of “connecting the virtual and reality worlds”, “music for the masses”, and “the future of music”. The tight morning of the last Musexpo day was packed – perhaps a bit too packed in fact – with discussions stressing the sponsorship issues in the “music in visual media & consumer brands” panel, insights on the selection of music in films and TV by the Chop Shop corporation, experiences about music and gaming by the EA music team, as well as examples of music integration ant the NBC Universal TV.

In overall, despite inspiriting talks about creativity and future possibilities in the music industry, a slight flavor of cynicism colored many discussions. And despite several reminders of the importance of “good” music in the core of all actions, Musexpo really stressed the business aspects and, at times, music itself and its integrity were left at the background. Which is of course understandable – this is a music industry event anyway. Nevertheless, the current focus on building super stars, mass market attention, and global recognition could be shifted onto other kind of realities as well. Super stardom becomes reality for a very few; there are thousands and thousands of artists with a smaller but often loyal fan base, perhaps a local one, which often is a good ground for a sustainable and long-term career. There are possibilities to make a satisfactory living out of music without breaking big time. And it might be more relevant for many participants to get ideas of how to build, nurture and manage such success stories cases through different media than to listen to per se amusing stories of star building. New distribution methods and technologies were also embraced with too little self-criticism. Social media, stream applications and new gadgets are yet cool, of course, but guess what, there are still genres and countries in which consistent albums, tangible CD’s with rich visual contents still make a big difference for the true music fans.


Altogether some thirty bands and artists played in the showcase evenings. I was able to check the most of them on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There were many interesting presentations by very talented musicians – not many of them particularly targeted to my personal taste, but interesting indeed – as well as some less distinctive ones. In addition to the memorable shows by Sissy Wish, Laleh, Dúné, Ingrid Olava, The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, and others, I was personally moved by two presentations: The Australian Birds of Tokyo in the Whisky on Monday and Danish Mads Langer in the Viper Room on Wednesday. A specific impact was made by the Birds singer Ian Kenny who I was very surprised to see playing this band as well. Only few weeks ago was I knocked by his charisma as his better known band Karnivool played a killer show in Helsinki. It was also a pleasure to meet this nice guy personally after the show. All in all, I felt an additional rush of emotions during the gigs, particularly in the Whisky a Go Go, by the fact that many of my 70’s through 90’s heroes had really performed in this very place.

Home sweet home, for now, and certainly back to Musexpo L.A. next year.

http://www.musexpo.net/musexpoLA10/
http://musexpo.wordpress.com/

Finns conquered the Sunset Strip: Sonata Arctica (April 24), and Swallow the Sun, Moonsorrow & Finntroll (April 25) at the House of Blues

Prior to the Musexpo 2010 in West Hollywood, BogFires had a chance to see a bundle of Finnish metal export hopes at the House of Blues. Both of the caravans, one with Sonata Arctica onboard, and another one comprising Finntroll, Moonsorrow and Swallow the Sun, had already done a number of US cities on their tour bills before hitting the Hollywood hills.

Thanks to the Volcano in Island, my post-ash trip to the U.S. became realized few days later than planned, which meant that I did not even except to catch the Sonata show in time. But surprisingly, against all the odds, the master of the air handed out an extra reward and my flight touched down at the LAX airport over one hour ahead of schedule. Perfect! A quick cab to Santa Monica Blvd, check-in to the Ramada hotel, and hop hop to HoB. Sonata was playing “Juliet” when I entered the venue, so half of the songs were still left in the set list. Unfortunately, I missed the opening acts Powerglove and Mutiny Within. The later is one tha I would have especially liked to see, as their recently published debut album is kind of a nice piece of technical metal, visibly acknowledged also by the Prog metal authority Mike Portnoy.

Sonata did a great show that was more reduced in terms of gear and visuals than for instance the three previous shows I have witnessed in Helsinki, Gothenburg and Tokyo. This was because of the lighter backline and smaller size of the venue in which audience gets quite close to the band. Although Tony Kakko and the rest of the band are able to create an intimate and positive atmosphere in any place, at the House of Blues the show was even more down-to-earth, even in terms of the sounds. And the crowd, perhaps a few hundred heads, enjoyed it as well. After the show, we had a good time with these jovial guys from the dark north at the legendary Rainbow and their tour bus. Warm thanks to the band!

By sheer accident, also the following night at the House of Blues was booked for another bunch of Finns, a larger one this time, as the Finntroll-headlining “The Finnish Metal Tour 2010” stopped by in the angel city. The evening had a bit of an unfortunate start on my part, as I only saw two last songs of the opening Swallow the Sun. The show had started half an hour earlier that announced on the web page, and I did not know that the original opening act Survivors Zero was excluded from the entire tour (due to Visa problems).

Anyhow, the two STS songs were cheered by the audience. A praising comment that I got from a local guy who was hearing the band verified this. And band itself also felt having played a very good show, as was reported after the gig. Already now it also seemed clear that HoB offers quite good sounds. Moonsorrow that followed was a new live experience for me, and a very positive one. The band put out a very energetic set which was welcomed surprisingly well by the audience. The band’s previous visit to the venue on the Korpiklaani tour a year ago had done the trick. Regardless of the Finnish lyrics (and sense of humour…) Californian kids liked what they saw. And much liked was Finntroll too. Mosh pit was immediately set in motion and did not stop until the final tune was played by the intense band. Neither in the Finntroll case, the Swedish lyrics do not seem to lessen the interest of the band’s devoted Yankee fans who may have been slightly smaller in quantity in comparison to Sonata but much louder and furious. An interesting evening. And it was again prolonged in Rainbow as the bands and a number of their friends populated the bar. Such a large representation of Finns in is probably something that is not often seen in Rainbow.

TMK