More than 90,000 celebrate Lordi and an end to Eurovision failure

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The long-awaited return to the stage by Finland's surprise Eurovision Song Contest winners Lordi took place in Helsinki's Market Square on Friday evening, when the monster-rockers played a short set in front of an enthusiastic crowd estimated at 90,000 or more.
      The entire square was packed, and the throng stretched back into the Esplanade Park, with their only chance of seeing the action being from large video screens erected for the show.
      Finns were clearly eager to celebrate an end to 40 years of Eurovision humiliation, and sang along with the winning number Hard Rock Hallelujah as though it was the spring's national anthem.
     
People began arriving in front of the stage, set up at the eastern end of the square, already in the early afternoon. There were already more than ten thousand present when the event got under way at 6 p.m.
      Warm-up bands and an attempt on the world's largest karaoke performance preceded the arrival of the latex-clad monster rock band, who played half a dozen numbers and closed with their Athens victory song and an impressive show of stage pyrotechnics and a fireworks display over the South Harbour.
     
There was an official presence from the very highest level, as President Tarja Halonen handed over a bronze key awarded to the band by the Association for Finnish Work in recognition of the members' triumph in Athens.
      Halonen then walked across the road to the Presidential Palace, from where she would have had an excellent view of the proceedings.
     
The police reported that the evening's victory party went off without trouble, although there had been concerns that there might be demonstrations against the gossip weekly 7 päivää after the magazine had published a photograph - sans costume and make-up - of the band's vocalist and front-man Mr. Lordi, a.k.a. Tomi Putaansuu.
      Police had earlier in the day cordoned off the area around the magazine's offices, but only a handful of protestors had turned up.
      The band themselves had appealed for the event to be a celebration, despite their obvious annoyance that requests for their privacy to be respected were not observed.
      In a quite unprecedented gesture, 7 päivää apologised unreservedly to the band for the lapse, as did another publication Katso, which had shown pictures of other Lordi members without their stage masks and costumes.
      A massive outpouring of protest on the Internet had followed the publication of the pictures (see attached article).
     
In a separate and equally remarkable development, some 15,000 French Lordi fans signed an Internet petition demanding an apology from French TV Eurovision comperes for what were claimed to be disparaging remarks about the artists during the Athens show.
      The Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast live to around 100 million viewers across the continent, and has turned Lordi - who won with a record number of points - into an international success story and prompted widespread international press coverage of the Finnish heavy rock boom.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Lordi fans furious at "outing" by gossip magazine (26.5.2006)

Links:
  Lordi Official Site

Helsingin Sanomat