April 28th

I never did all these blips and blogs before – while on tour – but this time Allan´s been twisting my arm for so long so here you go:

Lobby Call at 9.30 is a bit early for me but the weather´s fine so I´m not complaining too much… having my coffee, Jager and the First Cigarette of the Day outside. A short minivan ride to the venue with everybody except for DC, Sasha and Maria – have to check out the gear. A few technical difficulties – well, nothing and nobody´s perfect – but by noon it all seems to be working.

Crew stays at the venue while Andreas, Jonas, Allan and I are walking to a nearest café with a couple of local guys – it´s still sunny so we`re spending an hour sitting outside, chatting and enjoying a few cappuccinos.

Our dear singers arriving and we´re running through a couple of songs: the sound on stage is a bit muddy but Peter´s convinced that it will get better… alrighty.

Lunch at the venue: other bands and crews are showing up, some of them we´ve played with before – backstage area gets busier, the usual "war stories sharing" is everywhere, lunch´s tasty and Jack comes by.   

Showtime: the venue´s pretty much packed with very, very enthusiastic fans – wow, they´re loud! Sound did improved, we´re all pretty confident yet making tons of mistakes – obviously - but nobody in the audience seems to care: they´re singing every word of every single song and it looks like everybody´s having a ball. New songs are going down incredibly well so I´m adding a little bit of excitement by messing up the beginning of "Half Past Loneliness"… and nothing but cheers and wide smiles in return. These people are having one hell of a good time!

An hour and a half later we´re all in our dressing room again: first show of the tour so everybody talks like a machine gun… so much stuff to discuss! Generally we´re all pleased with the way the show went down and Party Time´s arriving: I´ll leave out all the details (remember Rule Nr. One – "what goes on on tour stays on tour"?) – but I´m back in my hotel room by 4 o´clock… Lobby Call 9.30! Thank you Greece (we´ll be back!) and good night.

André