keskiviikko 17. lokakuuta 2007

Essen, Turock / Eindhoven

Ahh, I recognize these hoodz! We played this venue last year with Dark Funeral, so we have a good idea about the backstage and surroundings. There's this big-ass army/rock/goth shop close by, where the guys immediately run to as soon as the load-in is finished. Niko buys himself a pair of nasty latex pants for 10 euros, nice! It's in these pants (and a killer cowboy hat) that he'll climb on stage later that night to introduce Drone, who we are all good friends with by now.

We hear that there's some "important" media in the audience tonight, and decide to rip their faces off with our best gig ever. Well, in the words of our main man Ice T: "unfortunately...shit ain't like that!". I have never had this many problems on stage as tonight. Before we even finish the first song, my sound starts to fade in and out, and finally my rig just goes silent. I try to go through all the possible cables and connections to find the problem, but it's no good. Juffi and Ykä jam on some funk licks while I try to get some, any, sound out of the amp. Finally we get it to work again, only now I have no pedals to work with, nessessary stuff too like my tuner or a noise gate. Oh well, I'll manage. A couple of songs later, I break a string, and have to play the rest of the gig with Silver's backup seven-string, which feels really foreign in my hands and I play like shit because of it. I can't wait for the set to be finished... Worst gig ever, at least for me. The other guys seemed to do ok, so I can only hope the crowd forgave the technical difficulties and had a good time.

Can't really comment on the aftershow madness, as I had some important email business to take care of for the rest of the night, and add to that the crappy feeling from the gig I decide to take a night off from partying. The rest of the bus handles that part like the champs they are, so the nessessary rock n' roll balance is kept. I just find it refreshing to hit the bunk as early as 1am for a change...

-Ben

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Eindhoven
Now, do you know what I really hate in the morning? Waking up in a bus with 20 sack-gagging metalheads? Nope. 20 drunken idiots screaming in the back lounge? Nope. 20 white guys just outside the tour-bus pretending to be black, and having a fukkin’ congo & bongo & whatever tribal drumming lollapalooza for hours and hours, while you’re still trying to sleep? Well... the the last one is the winner. And that’s exactly what happened today.

After crawling out of the bus I realized there’s a huge marathon-happening going on in the city (Eindhoven), and the tribal drumming was supposed to raise the spirit of the participants or something. Sounded more like summoning some evil African gods to me. On top of the cake, there was some bad-ass wrestling match going on in our venue, and people were cheering when two guys dressed up in their underwear were throwing each other around in the ring. Straight to the dome biaaatch!!! Anyway, the weather is damn fine. Like t-shirt-fine. On comparison, it was snowing when we were sitting at the airport 2 days ago in Finland.

The venue today is pretty killer, and we have plenty of time to do soundchecks and make sure that everything is fine. I’ll get back to ya when the gig is over... right now I have more important stuff to do. Like waiting for the dinner to arrive and blast some electro-music backstage with my man Niko...

...booya! The gig went fine, and damn it was hot on stage! I had sweat running into my eyes, which almost made me cry like a baby. Frank from Pearl Europe had come to see the shows, so I was chatting with him whilst cheking out Norther. They seemed to deliver a tight gig!

Back in the bus we had a nice little party. The intoxication was getting little out of hand though, people were acting like some damn monkeys or something. At some point I found myself in the upper lounge, where I passed out. Luckily I didn’t get any paint on my face, like Marcelo from Drone who got black marker all around his face the second time on this tour already. Maybe he will learn, and crawl into his bunk from now on...
-Juhana

1 kommentti:

Unknown kirjoitti...

Ai saatana, kuulostaa aika nihkeeltä alotukselta teikän kohalla... Missä oli tech eli tekki? Sano jos tulee äärimmäinen hätä nii nappaan 4 vitunmoist skebaa(punanen,valkonen,vihree ja keltanen) kainaloon ja lennän mestoille spinen
koneel ja tuun tekkaa iha vitun täysii...
Mut terccui!
T: Tekki suomest
Ps. Huomen saigonille
PPS. Teiän gimuleilt terveisii, ne bunkkaa mun luona sen aikaa ku ootte rundil... oon pitäny hyvää huolta niistä siitä asti ku lähitte...