Arrived in Stockholm at 12 am. The idea was that we’d leave early for Stockholm, have time to wonder around the capital for sightseeing and shopping. My back started to hurt and my left foot started to cramp pretty bad after a walking around with crutches a couple of kilometres so I had to sit down for a while and let my bulgioning, veiny and manly muscles recover for a while. First thought was to catch some dinner somewhere, but then it occurred to me, "Fuck, let’s get a tattoo". And so I did. About and hour later, I’ve got an all black, wireframe, graphic style tattoo of the Lunar Path symbol on my left arm. Veerry nniice, jagshemash.
As the Di’Anno crew apparently had a hard time keeping up with schedules, and they’d had some problems with their trip today too, so we deliberately arrived a bit late to the venue. Well, still we were the first on the scene, again. They finally arrive, about 4-5 hours late. The regular house tech wasn’t available and the stand in was "some" guy that apparently wasn’t so familiar with the tech side of the PA. Ok. Di’Anno’s band got their gear hooked up and then they waited an hour before the soundcheck could start. Why I do not know, my theory is that the FOH guy was probably in the backroom reading the manual for the mixing console.
Doors were open when Di’Anno’s band started their check. We had a small audience when we did our check, I think the time was around nine pm, doors opened at seven.
The main reason why a band would like to soundcheck in their own privacy is to prevent confusion for the audience. For example, now when we had to check with the venue open, a few of the audence members came up to us after the check, asked for autographs and congratulated us on a nice gig. They probably thought that they catched the end part of the show or something. On the bright side, more bang for your buck if you can see the same bands do two sets, and if that works for them, then great!
Everything was sort of ok, The FOH didn´t apparently know or the logic to learn the basic hand gestures for soundcheck, monitor levels etc.. "Vad är det som er gitarrist vill?"... So we basically had to stop the song every time to adjust monitor levels. Well, fuck that, it´s like that sometimes. Check ended, everything was sort of acceptable, monitors and their balance were shit but thats ok, nothing unusual. Then waiting...
But the fun didn´t stop there. Pete´s tooth went to shits and got inflamed, no antibiotics around. Mild painkillers, beer and a whole lot of traditional Finnish sisu (spirit, not the drops). We didn´t have a backstage or any storage room, so we had to keep our stuff in the corners of the venue. Yay.
Then showtime. I plugged in my guitar, did a last minute test line check and the signal was dead. It sounded like someone was farting faintly in the other room over a telephone. Nothing. The intro tape was already at full blast. As a last resort, also to check if it was the amps fault, I plugged the guitar direct to my amp, bypassing all the effects, it worked. Then challenge #2. I play live with a Peavey 5150II, and for those who don´t know, they´re fucking awesome, but very prone to feedback slightly noisy. Now my gate, tuner etc was bypassed, so we were riding bareback. So to prevent a delightful CHUGG CHUGG -HWEEE CHUGG CHUGG HWEEE, feedbacking at every stop, I had to do some volume trickery during the whole show, turning the volume up and down. Very distracting. And I could´t tune up either, so I just had to rely on my sevenstring that it would stay in tune. Luckily I beat the shit out of my guitar playing live so it´ll probably stay in tune just fine. Hehehe., That´s irony, eventhought it actually did stay in tune perfectly!
Then my amps channel switch slided slightly out of reach for me (as my foot is broken, I sit and play), and I had a hard time switching channels. My guitar mic switch was fucking with me also, sometimes cutting the volume in half. Elmeri stepped on my cord a couple of times, knocking the jack out of the amp.
Halfway through the show, Elmeri´s bass poweramp died. Luckily the signal went also straight to the PA, so the stage volume was the only thing that went to shits after that. The monitor sound was shit, nobody heard anything, so there wasn´t a lot of choices other than to mosh like hell, play the shit out of everything, hope the audience hears everything like they should and that they don´t realize shit has hit the fan on stage.
At the latter part of the show I experienced a Spinal Tap escue moment. There was this guy in the front row that had a really good time. He had a black Nikki Sixx style hair-.do, and had a awesome rock n roll attitute so I wanted to salute him with the heavy metal horns sign in the middle of our last song, as a thank you..Long story short, I accitentally flipped him the bird. Because I had a pick in my hand, my index finger was stuck to my thumb holding the pick, as a reflex I used the finger next to them, the middle finger. Oh shit, nonnononononoooo! The guy smiled with a slight confused look, and gave the finger back laughing like "ok hehe yeah fuck yeah fuck you heheh!". Well, if that guy reads this, sorry! 'I´ll buy you a beer sometimes! :P
After the gig, having no backstage or any privacy, we packed our shit and headed to the hotel. Then Di´Annos tour manager mr D. said that we have to ask the venue for gas money for DiAnnos tour bus or else they would not get to the gig tomorrow hence not perform... A. How that is any of our business, B. How the hell don´t they have money for gas. C. Why isn´t he doing his job? The answer is; I do not know. As a favor of good will, Janica got them the money they needed eventhough mr D-A tourmanager, the big D (not Dave),should have gotten the bird and not the fan in the front row. Everybody makes mistakes and miscalculations of course, but this wasn´t the first llast minuteshenanigan from his part. Well, enough of that shit, if you´ve got nothing good to say then don´t say anything, right?
Olof (aka Elmeri), myself, Mårten (aka Pete) and Sven (aka Tuukka) went to the hotel to catch some sleep and recharge our batteries. My broken foot had swollen from all the sitting. With the cast, it looked, and felt, like a ripe zucchini showed up someones ass, and it hurt like a motherfucker. So sleepytime and rest for us. Gunilla (aka Janica) and Per (aka Peik) went downtown for a drink with Skinny (Deathstars bass player).
The cherry on top of this shit sunday was when we arrived back at the hotel. I sat down on my bed, loud crack, the bed broke. Good night.
/Håkan (aka Jonas)
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