A few years now it’s been something like a tradition for me to travel abroad to watch SAVATAGE or JON OLIVA’S PAIN more recently. Besides, I’ ve never kept hidden the love and appreciation I have for Jon Oliva both as an artist and as a human being. And I’m pretty sure that, musical taste aside, everyone that has met him in person has just the best things to say about him. The chance I had this year was more than exceptional! I had already planned to be in Denmark for reasons concerning music and by a very pleasant coincidence the day I’d be done with my other obligations, JON OLIVA’S PAIN would play in Copenhagen in one of the 17 tour dates of their spring euro tour in promotion of their latest opus “Maniacal Rendernings”.


This time I thought I’d be a bit more organized about this trip and after the necessary phone calls and e-mails I got myself a bunk in JOP’s tourbus. I won’t say much about the Copenhagen show since I was kinda late to arrive at the venue and until I got everything setup JOP were already half way through the show. I gotta admit though that I didn’t like seeing the venue half empty. “I haven’t been in Scandinavia for quite a while and that ain;t good” Jon told me later on. “People have to see you more to remember you. Things are a lot better in central Europe where we tour more often”. Joining JON OLIVA’S PAIN on tour were DIONYSUS and NOSTRADAMEUS, two rather typical Helloween-ish power metal bands which aren’t exactly my cup of tea. After the show was over I grabbed some beers sat a while in the tourbus lobby with Kevin (Rothney-bass), Chris (Kinder-drums) and the crew members Rig and Hanneke and we talked a bit about how the tour was going so far and of course a lot quite amusing stuff.




Next stop of the tour was the beautiful city of Hamburg, in the northen part of Germany where the band had the day off so we had the chance to stroll a bit around and enjoy the sunny weather. I’d been in Hamburg again in 2002 for the Wacken Open Air (to see...SAVATAGE again!) but I had stayed only a couple of hours so I didn’t see much. This time was a lot better. We also ate in a great Indian restaurant and the truth is that it took a lot of walking around to be able to go to sleep after all that food!!

Kevin & I strolling around in Hamburg


a nice view


the indian restaurant...after the war!




The show in Markt Halle was special for one more reason. Hamburg is where AFM has its central office and that meant that a lot of the label’s main persons would be there to watch the show. One more event was also scheduled for that night: the winner of the competition that was going on in JOP’s website would be there to perform with the band in “Jesus saves”. The lucky guy named Karl Svinson traveled all the way from the US with his family for that experience!

Hamburg



Karl!



But let’s come to the show...simply one of the best I have ever seen in my life! Unbelievable setlist including 6 new songs from “Maniacal renderings”( “Through the eyes of the king”, “Maniacal renderings”, “Push to the limit”, “End times”, “Evil Beside You”, “The answer”) , 1 from their debut album “Tage Mahal” (“All the time”) and also (take a deep breath) a HUGE “Streets” 'medley' (“Streets”, “Jesus saves”, “Tonight he grins again”, "Strange Reality", “New York City don’t mean nothing”, “Ghost in the ruins”, “Agony and ecstasy”, “Somewhere in time”, “Believe”) plus “Hall of the mountain King”, “Gutter ballet”, “Sirens”, “Edge of thorns” (!) while they opened the show with “Warriors” (!!!). I remember Jon Oliva telling me 3-4 years ago that he always wanted to do a tour where he would perform the “Streets” album in its entirety since he always said it is his favourite SAVA- album. So finally here it is!(Or at least the closest he could get until the Pestpop setlist some days later). I doubt that the 2 hour long set left anybody complaining but the truth is that we never get enough of JOP. The band as expected was ultra tight while Jon was in an exceptional shape and it would be no exagerration to say that he was better than some bootlegs I have from the actual “Streets” tour. Matt LaPorte is the closest one can hear to Criss Oliva as far as sound and playing go. He also said once that he was taught a few tricks from Criss himself when he was accidentally guitar teching for him in a show! Chris Kinder and Kevin Rothney made a great rhythm section and in combination with John Zahner on the keyboards made the whole result just classy! I have to add that the absence of Shane French made the whole thing sound even more like old school SAVATAGE.Cool stuff!!

Hamburg again!









After Hamburg I had to skip the Essen show due to some other stuff I had planned those days and my next stop would be Belgium and to be more particular a small town just outside Brussels called Aalst where every year Pestpop festival takes place. JOP would play their final european shows there, an acoustic one on Friday and the electric one on Saturday. The first thing that seemed kinda strange was that JOP performed in this festival last year as well which made me wonder about the promoter’s thoughts on that (the most usual thing would be for a band to play every second year at the same festival but anyway...). Next thing that kinda struck me badly was this: while last year JOP had played a very unique and intimate acoustic show in a record store, this time the promoter chose to put them play at the same venue with the electric show, which was the Octoberhallen, a huge hall like a basketball court of a 2-3.000 people capacity, which in my opinion ruined the whole atmosphere of such an event. Nevertheless Jon & his boys didn’t seem to bother and despite some minor sound problems, they delivered a great show once more. The 1 ½ hour long set included songs that they don’t usually play in the regular set like “Stare intio the sun”, “Stay”, “Still I pray for you now”, 2-3 Beatles covers and more goodies. Thus the night was over and I decided to take some rest so I’d be ready for the last big night of the tour!
Crappy Pestpop pic


Some bands that were performing in this year’s Pestpop were CHRIS CAFFERY, CIRCLE II CIRCLE, KOTIPELTO, MY DYING BRIDE. DEATHSTARS among others.I’m pretty sure that the promoter (and the fans of course) were praying until the last moment for a jam between all the Sava members that would be there during the festival but this didn’t happen although we were lucky enough to witness some “surprises”...When I entered the venue around 4 there about 700-800 people in there and I don’t think there were more than 1.500 by the end of the day. Caffery was up onstage pretty early and I’m sure he misses his Sava-days when he would headline such shows and the crowd would go nuts by a move of his hand. I must admit that he did some serious efforts to get the crowd going but with no great results. I don’t think that we saw his best performance there and also the fact that he included 2 cover songs (from BLACK SABBATH και MICHAEL SHENKER) in such a short set isn’t a credit in my opinion.
More crappy pestpop pics...




KOTIPELTO was next and with a nice set he kept us good company for a while. Especially the more hard-rocking songs from his last record worked better live than his older stuff so we moved next to see...CIRCLE II CIRCLE! CIIC were a lot better than the last time I saw them. The fact that the line-up hasn’t changed for the last coupla years has made them very tight and having released a great album like “The burden of truth” also gave them great confidence onstage. The light show was also very good and made the view even better. They based their set mostly on “B.O.T.” and Zak as was expected incuded some old Sava favourites. “Taunting cobras”, “Conversation piece”, “Nothing going on” and the first “surprise” took place at the end of the set when Chirs Caffery joined them onstage to play “Edge of thorns”. Alright!






“Wait to see what will happen tonight” Jon Oliva told me a couple of hours before JOP hit the stage. “I’ve been saving all my strength since yesterday. I had a good night sleep, I haven’t drank anything, I didn’t smoke and now I’m gonna rock the s*** out of everybody!” And so it happened! The setlist was more or less the same with the one in Hamburg except for a few changes including...more songs from “Streets” this time!!!"A little too far", "Heal my soul" and "If I go away"!!Plus my favourite tune out of the new album “Timeless Flight”(thanx Jon)! His performance was even better than the one in Hamburg and especially during the “Streets” stuff he would send chills down my spine! What was really funny was that every time Jon would hit a really high note he would turn to the side of the satge where everybody from CIIC, Chris Caffery and crew was standing and would have a huge grin like he was saying “can you pull this stuff off??”.In between the songs he would tell the good ol’ known stories with the typical Oliva style and would make the whole thing even more amusing and the crowd would go nuts! The second pleasant “surprise” of the night was when Caffery joined JOP to close their set with “Hall of the Mountain King” with everybody attenting screaming their a**** off!Just a piece of advise to everyone that’s into melodic metal and is/was ever into SAVATAGE...simply DO NOT MISS JON OLIVA’S PAIN when they come back to Greece because there are some rumors about them coming over somehwere around October…MADNESS REIGNS!!!







MY DYING BRIDE came out next but the time was past one o’clock and a lot of people had gone home. The doomsters from Britain didn’t seem to bother and having 2 new members in their line-up in drums and bass did a great show and the gloomy light show made the whole performance a lot more doomy. They played quite some stuff from their last album “A line of deathless kings” without skipping their old classics. Having in mind this performance it seems even stranger the fact that they’ll play at the Rockwave festival first thing in the afternoon...

After MDB were over it was time for me to say goodbye to the guys and pack my stuff for my trip back home...Oh well! Next year we’ll be there too!


P.S..: Special thanx go to the JOP gang : Chris, Kevin, John, Matt, Anett, Jan, Greg, Frode, Rig, Fabio, Hanneke and of course big J.O.! C ya next time folks!!



P.S. II:I saw the SAVATAGE reunion alright!