Statler and Waldorf

Monday morning at 8.30. We're parked somewhere outside of New York City just waiting for the traffic to clear. The venue for today is in the heart of Manhattan so I would have wanted to be there earlier and go sightseeing.

Yesterday we played at Jaxx, in West Springfield, VA. The venue didn't have any kind of backstage, dressing room, shower or toilets. Well, of course they had toilets but we had to share them with the customers. All this usually gives me the right to call a venue a shithole. Jaxx just was otherwise so nice that I can't do that this time. For the first time ever I heard our sound tech say: "Well, the PA-system is so fucking powerful for the venue of this size that it just has to sound good." The venue's monitor tech was a true professional as well. And we saw one of the venue's own guys shouting to our tour manager and basically telling him to fuck off. "I work here every fucking day of the year and you come here for one day. You really think you this better?" Serves him right. He's a good tour manager but needs to be told to fuck off every now and then. He does that to everybody else anyway.

Jaxx was in the middle of nowhere about half an ride from Washington D.C. but there was still plenty of things around like Starbucks and this mall called Whole Foods that actually sells lots of different vegan, vegetarian and organic foods. I went there and filled the fridge and freezer. That was nice.

Yesterday we did a soundcheck again as well. Not really for the sound but we rehearsed Pine Woods (ie. played it once). We dropped Metsämies from the set and added Pine Woods and changed things around a bit as well. In my opinion all this made a better set. We also played our best show so far last night. As usual, we are getting so much tighter show by show when we're on tour. The venue had a sort of a balcony for the staff and bands where they could sit and watch the show. Ville and Markus of Goonmorrow sat there the whole show and looked exactly like those two owls on The Muppet Show. Were they Statler and Waldorf? Can't even check since the internet is not working here. It works with the telephone network and apparently this parking lot doesn't have the connection. Anyway, they looked like those two who always ridicule everything:
- "Did the band finish?"
- "No, but someone should finish the band!"
I am not really sure if they were owls. I thought that they were something called "huuhkaja" in Finnish and now I found out that it is Eurasian Eagle-owl in English and they only live in Europe and Asia (hence the name) so I doubt that they had them on an American TV-show. Whatever.

After all, the venue did have a shower. It was raining like hell when we finished so I just stood naked behind the bus for 10 minutes and washed myself. Didn't even get arrested.

Yesterday I again did some interviews. One for the radio and one for Washington Post. I thought that the Washington Post thing was brillian. A really long, deep interview for a fucking Washington Post. C'mon, how cool is that!

Now I'll make myself a nice vegetarian breakfast.