Bericht: Ruisrock 2008

As we all might know Ruisrock is one of the oldest uninterrupted rock festivals in Europe. It also might not come as a surprise that the original founders of Ruisrock were inspired by Woodstock, thus the first festival in the beautiful nature of island called Ruissalo was held in 1970. Already on the second year there were 100,000 visitors during the weekend which was headlined by none other than Canned Heat. But times change and Ruisrock almost faced bankruptcy in the beginning of the millennium. Therefore it is nowadays organized by a different company than in the early years. The financial issues are long gone and the festival is running better than ever. Greetings to the Vantaan Festivaalit Oy.


I personally have enjoyed many huge acts on the stages there during the past 14 years. Aerosmith, Faith No More, Jethro Tull, Nirvana, Bon Jovi, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, David Bowie, Metallica, just to mention a few of them! And the list really goes on and on. After the financial difficulties in the end of the nineties there has been a significant change in the festival's line-up. The biggest change is the increased amount of the domestic acts and the lack of the true mega stars like what we saw in the nineties. For me as a person living in Finland, it's a change for the worse. I don't want to see the same bands all around the year and all around Finland on every festival and club gig. On the other hand, for a person traveling to see damn good Finnish acts it must be a dream come true!


As we arrived to the festival area with a nice little VIP boat, we had been checked by the security personnel three times already. Umm then again it must be so very damn harmful to bring your own little bottle of vodka inside the area that they must touch our private parts and go through our bags all the time. No wonder 'cause the beer there is a total rip-off, 6 euros for a crappy little plastic mug of piss tasting yellowish and bubbling dishwater they call beer there. Well, Niina and I had some tricks on our sleeves so that part of the trip was covered well. Hooray!


To mention something about the bands, there's no doubt about this year's domestic headlining group. HIM had its place again as a last act of the Saturday night. I myself couldn't bother to stay to see them, for I have seen them many times enough and there were much better live performances to see the whole weekend. Mentionable ones definitely were Disco Ensemble, Stalingrad Cowgirls ( I want to see them again!! ), Bullet For My Valentine, weirdly I liked Lapko this time too and The Ark (with the huge beard hanging from Ola Salo's face). Disappointments truly were Hanoi Rocks, The 69 Eyes, super boring 22-pistepirkko, Interpol and Poets of the fall. Poets have always done damn catchy tunes, but they are a bit boring on the stage. And the style they have doesn't really rock my boat at all.

I guess that's enough talk about the music. You can read reviews of the bands everywhere, so I'll continue by bitching about the organizing of the festival. When one locates a festival far away from the city center, one should also take care of the adequate transportation. That failed totally as I heard from the upset customers called Maija and Jenni. 30 minutes intervals were promised on busses. True gaps between busses were more close to two hours. Well, this is all hearsay, but hey: it definitely sucks butt big time! Other thing I find pretty weird is the camping area. It's like on the other side of the freaking town! As if anyone would like to travel on an over crowded, stinky buss for some half an hour to get to lay down on a rocky tent bed after a long day full of jumping, drinking and walking in the sun. Oh, and you of course get to pay extra for that. Why don't they just rent some empty abandoned field next to the festival area and fill it with tired rock loving festival people? Well, to be honest there is a perfectly good reason for that.


It just so happens that the lovely island of Ruissalo is very important historically and it's nature mainly reserved. Ruisrock itself is held on a beach called Kansanpuisto. So it's no problem to invite 70,000 celebrants there to stomp the sand, but everything around shall not be touched. Usually the same area is inhabited by geese, barnacle geese to be exact, which have to move somewhere else for the noisy weekend. The environmental protection board of the town of Turku (where the island is located) claims that the nesting of several species suffer greatly from Ruisrock. No doubt about that. As a result of that there is an ongoing debate about the destiny of the festival. For the time being Ruisrock may be held once a year, but who knows what the future holds. One thing I know for sure, Ruisrock is also a big part of the cultural history of Ruissalo and should therefore be reserved itself.


In the end festivals like Ruisrock are not only about music. They are about people, love and a damn good time. To summarize, as it was written on the original Woodstock poster: 3 days of peace & music. I surely will go back next year and find many more reasons to complain about.

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