Concert review | Topmost offered a great and fun nostalgia trip in Savoy

Concert

Topmost 60 Forever at the Savoy Theater on Tuesday 20 August.

Beatlemania in the wildest times in the 1960s, even in Finland some bands were born, whose reference frame was no longer iron wire, but the era’s British pop, American rhythm & blues and soul. There was Jormas, Ernos, Islanders – and Topmost.

Topmost, who became Finland’s most popular pop group in 1967, was the coolest of the bands. It was founded in 1964, dissolved in the spring of 1965, assembled again in the fall of the same year. Before breaking up in 1968, there was one album and six singles, the finest achievement Seasick facea wonderful domestic version of the British band Procol Harum’s hit A Whiter Shade of Pale. Success and praise also came from Sweden and Denmark.

But Topmost’s story did not end there. It was assembled again in 1987 by the original members of 1966–68, and since then the band has been playing regularly and irregularly. Nothing has been lost in terms of music, because all the members of Topmost have created a career in one way or another in the field of music.

The latest compilation CD Topmost Years is from 2013. It has samples of the band’s career from 1966 until 2012.

Topmost is still calling Heimo “Holle” Holopainen (bass), Kristian “Kitty” Jernström (drums, vocals), Harri Saksala (singing, harmonica), Eero Lupari (guitar) and Vasiliy “Gugi” Kokljuschkin (vocals, acoustic guitar). The keyboard player who died in 2007 Arto “Poku” Tarkkonen already replaced in 2004 Tommi Lindell.

Few bands get to celebrate their 60th anniversary with almost their original line-up. Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is The Rolling Stones, whose ranks have already left three original members, Bill Wyman for their own roads and Charlie Watts and already dead in 1969 Brian Jones to rock heaven.

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I even chatted with one of the ladies sitting in the audience, who had had her first contact with Topmost at a school party in Hyvinkää in 1965.

A festive concert the audience consisted mainly of those who were teenagers during Topmost’s peak years. I even chatted with one of the ladies sitting in the audience, who had had her first contact with Topmost at a school party in Hyvinkää in 1965.

It was the school parties in the cities that were important to the Finnish pop bands of the 1960s, because on the dance stages of the countryside, which were taken over by tango, pop bands were not taken seriously.

At the Savoy Theatre, Topmost offered a great and fun cultural-historical and nostalgic trip to the time when domestic pop music really began. The most important things in the concert were the atmosphere and the joy of playing and music.

Software consisted of 1960s classics such as The Animals We Gotta Get Out of This Place and House of the Rising Sun, by James Brown I’ll Go Crazy and I Got You (I Feel Good)of the Spencer Davis Group Keep On Running and The Four Seasons Walk Like a Man and Big Girls Don’t Cry.

Harri Saksala, who was in a particularly good mood, kicked the gig off with a cool song Hold Out and continued at the same strong pace throughout the concert.

The highlights were the Sam & Dave classic performed wonderfully by Saksala and Kokljuschkin Hold on I’m Comingby Jernström I Got You and heard as the first encore Seasick faceto which the guitarist guest Timo Kämäräinen created a completely new dimension with his emotional intro and slide guitar playing. Kokljuschkin sang it almost better than on the original recording from the 1960s.

In addition to Kämäräinen, the guests were the lead singer of Topmost’s 1960s worst rival band Jormas Pepe Willberg, Olavi Uusivirta and Helena Lindgren. With Willberg, Topmost performed a little-known love song from The Ivy League (and later The First Class) Funny How Love Can Bewith Lindgren in turn John Lennon’s a song Grow Old With Me/Stay in the soul in the heartwhich Lennon did not have time to record before his death.

Uusivirta and Kokljuschkin pulled off a great song Went for renovationbehind which there is a song by the unknown British band The Young Idea.

Eero Lupar’s guitar played as fast as ever, especially Eric Clapton -in a spirited instrumental There Is No Action at the Stump Offices.

Interim after, the second part of the concert started with the subsequent solo production of the members of Topmost. Saksala and Kokljuschkin performed their songs in a Stadlian spirit very well To Tapulikaupunki and Big lessons in lifeJernström’s 1973 hit It’s time to sleep and Holopainen returned to the humor of the Hullujussi band in the 1970s.

Lindell, on the other hand, immediately cheered up the section with his own song, which told, surprise, surprise, about the band Topmost! Otherwise, Lindell took care of maintaining the atmosphere of the concert with his keys and his positivity.

While Jernström worked as a vocal soloist, Saksala’s son took credit for the drums Santeri Saksala.

Topmost The purpose of gigs like the 60th anniversary concert is to create good mood and nostalgia for the audience and to offer the players themselves the joy of performing. However, they are also intended to remind us of the continuum of pop music, which in different decades can produce very different results, but whose starting point is always the same.

The cornerstone of Topmost’s music is the base from which we started in the 1960s, but which has not lost its meaning or charm over the decades.

It has survived, even though it hardly gets any radio play anymore, and it’s great that “prehistoric bands” like Topmost, as Kokljuschki called poppoota at the beginning of the concert, keep it alive, enjoy it and bring pleasure and joy to the listeners as well.

Correction 23.8. 9.33 am: Brian Jones, who died in 1969, has also left the original members of The Rolling Stones.