ECHELON Tour Review: RIGA

May 16th, 2012

Riga, Latvia – November 2, 2011

By Karin Künnapas

I attended firstly the show on the Lauluväljak in Tallinn, Estonia on the 21st of June 2011 and also the show at the Arena Riga in Riga, Latvia on the 2nd of November 2011.

In total I’ve seen MARS live twice, but I sincerely wish that I will be able to increase that number. And considering how many times I have watched YouTube videos of their live shows, it actually feels that I’ve seen them live more.

I traveled to Riga, Latvia as I live in Tallinn which is about 300km away. I even took holiday from work especially for the concert as I knew if MARS is coming so close to me, I have to go there!

As the concert in Tallinn was my first MARS show and it can’t be overdone, I will write about this concert mainly.

It is so hard to choose a favorite song from the show. The concert is a whole and every song, every note, every beat is a part of the perfection. If I had to choose one it would be semi-acoustic version of “The Kill”. It seriously brought a tear to my eye and I was covered in goosebumps the whole song. Actually, I was covered in goosebumps the whole concert. Anyway, to me it was the most beautiful moment of the concert when the lines started “What if I wanted to break…”.

What I still remember from the concert in Tallinn how Jared could wrap the more than 12 000 crowd around his little finger with just a few words. I’ve been to quite a few shows of other international artists in Estonia and I’ve never seen all of the crowd so invested in the whole show from so early on in the show. It usually takes a while for the Estonian crowd to warm up, but I think this rule does not apply to MARS. It was so amazing. When first Escape started playing, then Shanimal and Tomo came on the stage and Jared started singing and the crowd started screaming for the first 5 seconds I just stood there with my mouth open trying to absorb all of that just looking around. Then I realized that wait, what am I doing? I should be jumping and screaming with them. So I did.

So, what do I remember the most about their performance? Is definitely that you could see that the band enjoyed being on the stage. The thrived from the energy from the crowd. Everyone wanted to be there, everyone loved being there and they showed it. The whole experience is so hard to describe, you just have to be there and feel it. Although it has been almost 6 months from the concert, when I close my eyes, I can still see it, feel it, when I listen to MARS I can hear the crowd singing along and see Jared, Shannon and Tomo in front of me giving us their all.

I have to most memorable moments from the concert that are not connected to the songs, but the interaction with the crowd. So first of all, I loved when at the concert in Tallinn Jared started the acoustic set and said that he wants to do something fun as a little movie clip from Tallinn. He asked all of us to be really quiet and told that he will turn around and talk to the camera and say something along the lines that they’re in Tallinn, but the weather is crap, so nobody showed up and then when he’ll turn around we have to scream our asses off. So, he talked something to the camera which faced away from the crowd, we couldn’t make it out specifically, then said to the camera “This is Estonia!” and turned. You could see from his face that even he was surprised by the reaction as he didn’t say a thing for a while until “Holy shit, Estonia!”. I’ve never heard anyone group of people screaming so loud and not wanting to stop. It was above epic!

And the seconds most memorable and the funniest moment was when Jared asked everyone to scream. After a very high pitched and mainly girls voices stopped (I think we can just scream louder then the guys), then he asked all the guys and the men “to make some noise” followed by a very manly roar from the crowd to which Jared said: “I just got a little excited”.

Echelon is a cult and I’m so proud to be a member for around 6 years already. MARS will be a part of my life forever. I have even tattooed “Provehito in Altum” on my foot to have it with me all of the time.

Never forget. Never regret!
Provehito in Altum!

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