Another off day and Detroit

Wednesday, September 19, 0:45, in the tour bus lounge, Detroit, MI.

The second stop on our long journey across the continent wasn't in St. Louis. That was a bit disappointing. Bus driver told that he was planning to stop in Rolla, MO so I went to check what's interesting in there. Obviously the only interesting thing there is a half-size replica of Stonehenge. However, in the end we stopped a bit earlier in St. Robert, MO which had even less interesting things to see. The most interesting was an USMC memorial with an M60 tank. And that isn't seriously THAT interesting. We parked our buses on the Walmart parking lot, went shopping for vodka, ice and everyone's choice of mixer. Mine was the usual, cranberry juice.

Even though we were abandoned basically in the middle of nowhere for a few hours we still managed to have a good time. Drinking, talking, watching Big Lebowski for the umpteenth time. Some of us even took a cab and actually went somewhere. "Somewhere" is a word that will not be explained any better. This is after all a TV show for the entire family.

Today we had yet another terrible drive to Detroit, MI. As usual, I woke up really early but for some reason managed to go back to sleep. I finally got out of the bunk around 3 in the afternoon and we still had 200km to go. We arrived late and there was the usual hassle of a local promoter adding local bands to the schedule that is already too tight. Whatever. The venue was the legendary Harpo's where obviously everyone has played. However, it has gone through the same demise as the actual city of Detroit. The place is huge though. PA is from the 70's. Huge. Like physically huge. And the stage was so high that the audience was standing at the back of the venue to see the bands. One part of the hall had a dance floor with lovely colour lights under it. I was watching Moonsorrow's show there when someone turned the lights on. Suddenly it was "Saturday Night Fever" allover again!

The area is bad. We were explicitly told not to go anywhere. "Don't walk anywhere, do not cross the street, do not stand on the street corner. You will get shot." In fact, the area is so bad that people do not go to the shows anymore. There was more people in than in Billings, MT but not much more. During the other bands quite a big part of them were actually even sitting on their seats. Jonne managed to get them up on their feet and at least come down in front of the stage so it didn't feel so empty. We played a decent set except Tuomas' wireless problems. We were cut short though. We didn't know that there was a curfew. If we had known that, there wouldn't have been local openers like that. We skipped two songs so it wasn't that bad, but still annoying.

And now you're up to date again.