Waiting for Suzanne Vega and Bob Dylan at Pori

Here the Pori Jazz Festival is just getting started in the early afternoon. People gather on the lawn and lay out their picnic gear listening to different artists taht alternate on the two stages.

It all takes place in the open air on a small island very close to the centre of Pori. This year the organisers were extremely strict in their interpretation of the alcohol legslation - normally it has been ok to bring your own wine with your picnic basket, but this year you could not bring in only closed non-alcoholic beverages - and not even those to the area where they served alcohol. So we had to buy all the beverages from the restaurant - and ended up sharing a bottle of white wine called N'Tisu - tisu standing for tit in Finnish, hah!

Otherwise everything was very nicely organised so that we did not have to wait in between bands or artists. It almost felt that one followed the other too fast even - we were hardly given time to digest the emotions that were awoken before the next one followed.

Suzanne Vega was her true unpretentious songwriter/performer. Bob Dylan was surprisingly energetic, though his lyrics should be simultaneously shown to the audience just like they do at the opera. He has so much to say and so much of it gets lost during performance.

Kevin Eubanks and his orchestra was a nice surprise, too, but my all time favourite was Dumari or Tuomari Nurmio, whose gig was the last one, ending at 1.30am. He has got a message in his lyrics as well, and he offered us a nice set from the 70s up to this day. We were back in Tampere close to 4am by a charter bus, tired but happy once again!