Christopher Cross isn’t exactly the kind of music I usually listen to, so I hadn’t heard any of his songs before, even though he has won several Grammys.

People are still arriving slowly at the gig while the show has already started. There are still a lot of empty spaces, but at least a nice bubble of fan has already formed in the front. Though there isn’t too much interaction from the crowd other than some polite claps at the end of each song. I myself quite enjoy the chill vibe that Christopher Cross is serving, as well as his vocals.

While the band’s performance is rather stationary, they score through their skill, and I’m not really missing anything from them. The only negative point I have to mention is that the show did not leave me wanting more. I enjoyed listing to them, but after their 55-minute set, I also felt ready to move on to the main act.

After a short break, where it felt like every person on the seating part of the arena went to grab a bite from the vendors, it is time for TOTO. The first two songs fly by in what feels like seconds while I’m trying to take my pictures from the photopit. Then during the third song, ‘Rosanna‘ the mood of guitarist Steve Lukather suddenly chances, and he starts screaming to “Fuck off” which gives me and the other photographers quite a shock and left us wondering if we did something wrong to upset him like this. Upon further investigation of the situation it appears as though he isn’t addressing us, but someone in the crowd, but it is still unclear what agitated him like this. After the song, while I make my way to my assigned seat for the rest of the gig, he explains how annoying it is to have a camera in his face during the whole gig and that he think you should take a couple of shots and move on. So maybe his anger was about the current trend of people filming almost entire gig with their smartphones.

Luckily we all, including Steve Lukather, find a way back to being in a good mood after a little while. Lead singer Joseph Williams earned a lot of screams from the crowd when he said “We really love Finland” and the crowd happily followed his lead when he asked to repeat what he sings starting with a doable ”Oh-jee-jeijei-jee” and then a more challenging ”Arrivederci”. But when he next represented a full sentence to repeat, the crowd stayed rather quiet, but that didn’t dampen the mood in the slightest.

Next up is the song ‘Pamela‘ to which singer Joseph Williams tells us that he wrote the song about an ex in hopes to make up with her and although that didn’t work they at least got a good song out of it. After this, it’s Greg Phillinganes time to shine with a long keyboard solo that reminded me of ‘The Long and Winding Road‘ from the Beatles.

During ‘I Won’t Hold You Back‘ the arena is lit by several phone lights and some lighters, which makes for a really nice emotional atmosphere. One thing that came to my mind is that the stage was surprisingly low and close to the fans for a band of TOTOs calibre. I’m sure that was appreciated by the fans. Another thing about the stage set up that I liked was it’s simple but effective design; by adding three rows with 5 light fixtures each, the stage not only was very well lit, it also made the stage appear bigger than it actually was.

After the show continues with ‘Angel Don’t Cry‘ and ‘Georgy Porgy‘, Dennis Atlas gets a chance to showcase his own skill and serves us a keyboard solo that overtime morphed into something that sounded like a spaceship flying trough space. This seems to really wake up the crowd, and there’s a lot of clapping and encouragement to continue.

TOTO has been coming to Finland since 1982 and according to Joseph Williams “Finns are some of the most beautiful people on this earth. Even the ugly ones are beautiful”. This of course earns him more applause and some laughers. During ‘I’ll Be Over You’ the flashlights are back up in the air and this time Singer Joseph Williams is also holding up his phone’s flashlight before taking a short video of the crowd with it.

The next one to showcase his skills alone during a long solo is drummer Shannon Forrest. Afterwards we continue with yet another hit, ‘Don’t Chain My Heart‘ to which Greg Phillinganes started dancing a bit whenever he had time to do so between is parts. Afterwards guitarist Steve Lukather started introducing the band and the entire crew. While it was certainly a nice gesture to thank everyone in the crew by name and giving us some backstory on how everyone in the band met, the introductions were getting a little long. Luckily, this lengthy process was loosened up several times by them playing snippets of songs that they or one of them had worked on outside of TOTO. Among these songs were Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, ‘Hakuna Matata’ from The Lion King and ‘Power of Love‘ by Huey Lewis and the News, in which bassist John Pierce used to play. One person that hasn’t been mentioned yet in my report is the multitalented Warren Ham, that Lukather described as “the Swiss Army knife of the music world”. 

Finally, saving the best for last maybe, the set closes out after almost 2 hours with two of TOTOs biggest hits, ‘Hold the Line‘ and ‘Africa‘. A memorable ending to a great gig as well as this tour.