Electric and hectic

This week started with a gig at a venue called Thunderbird Lounge. After the show we stayed at the bar owners home outside the city. No one in the band are big fans of whiskey, but the bar owner managed to trick a whole bottle together with a few beers down our throats. So the day after we all felt strong and full of energy. We continued to the next venue called Secret Place. A few hours before the gig our french booking agency called and told us that the gig for the day after had been cancelled...crap... Soooooo we drank a lot and had a little after party, until 7 o clock or something like that, in the morning after.

We solved the gig problem and un-cancelled it. The problem was that the owner of the venue feared that he would lose to much money because of bad weather and people not showing up because of that... So to save money they cancelled us. Nice nice, so instead of losing money the band who had traveled more than 2000km from the middle of Sweden would have to pay for dinner and a nights sleep for 5, somewhere in south of France...and lose a lot of money instead.
Our booking agency talked the venue in to letting us play anyway, without payment... But at least we didn't have to pay for somewhere to sleep or eat.

So after repairing a broken window with duct tape on our tour bus, that I had somehow managed to break in the chaos I called "a little after party" a here above, we headed southwards again.

Just got to love those venues with PA speakers smaller than the speakers i got at home for my computer. Another good thing to do if you plan to have a live scene at a venue is to fix the electricity. We've played at several places before that haven't had enough electric capacity. Like one socket or something at the venue for everything. It doesn't take much to overload it when the air condition/heater, the fridge, the bar lights, etc is already on that circuit. Especially if you gonna plug in two full tube amp heads, one on 100watts and the other on 400. Then add a few effect pedals as well. And to top it up you add a PA system to that. Great success! :)
Now that wasn't the problem this time, so i should not complain about that right now. What actually was the problem instead was that none of the electric outlets was grounded to earth. Most times when you plug in a your instrument into an un-grounded outlet you will get small static shocks every time you touch the microphone, a cable or another instrument that isn't plug in to the same power source. Not very bad but a bit disturbing when you try to perform.
This time thought... MAMA MIA! If I were a few(or more than a few) years older and had like an pacemaker or something, my heart would have stopped on the spot. It felt like I had a giant version of one of those TV-shop gadgets, that gives electric shocks and are suppose to make your muscles stronger and build up them without you having to work out, all around my body. It's hard not to touch the microphone with your lips while both playing and singing. Lucky us, we had wireless sets for our instruments with us, so we could avoid any accidental frying or heart stops.

Enough with the Swedish whining for now!!! We have two days off before our last gig, before we go north again, home. The last gig will be in a town called Nommay, and we will play with a band called MADJIVE. Me and Tom watched a few of their music videos on Youtube this morning, real naj!
The two days until then we are spending at the home of a "facebook" friend of our manager. They are awesome nice and are letting us stay at their house for two nights. Real naj!:)
Today we did a little sightseeing in the village and came back with 45 liters of wine from the local producer.

Also on Friday our dear friend Miriam will come to the gig. We haven't seen her in ages. She was the one who tricked this very young rock band from Sweden to take a first huge step in their rock carrier with an cheap Ryan Air flight to Paris. We spent a week at hear place and made a few shows and a lot of scandals. Great time, a lot of crazy things happened. Too bad for you that this blog is about the tour I am on, and not the ones I've already done.

Bye bye time to die. No that was a lie. The die, part. Fart.
/Affe