Masters Of Rock

Back in Germany. We arrived early Wednesday morning to Laudenbach, our manager's home town. We had a hotel booked for the day so that we could sleep a few hours before hitting the road again. We had a big breakfast first and then went to bed. It was again me and Matson in the same room. We got up around noon, took a shower and generally refreshened ourselves. Some of us were already sitting around the table in the "biergarten" and we joined them for a cold beer. However, the hotel's landlady had to close the bar since she was going to buy meat for our dinner later. We finished the beers and went for a walk to find some more. We accidentally passed our manager's house. We tried to be quiet but he noticed us anyway. We were invited to their garden where his father grows all kinds of vegetables. So we ended up drinking his poor father's beers and eating his cucumbers and tomatoes. Maybe he was thinking that this is getting too expensive and decided to take us to a monastery up on the hill. They make beer up there. It was a nice trip.

After the dinner at the hotel we packed our stuff and drove to a parking lot of Lidl to meet the nightliner. We loaded ourselves in the bus and started the journey to Masters Of Rock in Czech Republic. We'd been driving like maniacs already a while and this trip didn't make any difference. 750km. Bus had two drivers so it wasn't really a problem though. The bigger problem was that although the bus had a nice back lounge with TV and surround audio system, it didn't have a CD/DVD player! We sat in the back for a while, some of us were drinking quite heavily, but I went to bed quite early only to wake up quite soon to realize that the bad luck with buses continues. This one had a leaking fuel pipe. This time I decided to not to worry and continued to sleep. Since the sleep rhythm was a bit off I woke up again at about 4.30 in the morning. My bed was in the front of the bus. The bus is quiet and I turn my head to look at the back of the bus. I was not wearing glasses so I didn't see that clearly but I was thinking "Is that a leg?". I just had to get up and take look. After just a few hours the back of the bus looked like the hurricane had struck it. There were two band members sleeping under the table. The other tried to raise his head and say something but I really couldn't understand what it was. And I have to point out that those two were not the usual suspects! I quietly moved back to my bed.

We arrived to the festival area in the morning. The area may not be as beautiful as Metal Camp but I love the people working for Masters Of Rock. Since the first time with them we've always felt welcome and I like to think that they like us too. They have to. How many times have we been there already? Winter Masters Of Rock once, Masters Of Rock Cafe three times and Masters Of Rock twice. Plus a couple shows in.. err... umm... Plzen and Pardubice. So that is... hmm... let me count... wait... yes, many times! All in less than three years. Nice.

This was the first day of the festival so everything was still very much in progress. We had plenty of time to do nothing, just watch the other people working, get some breakfast and meet friends. Martina from the festival asked us for how long can they take pictures during the show.
- "As long as you want."
- "How many songs can we film for the DVD?"
- "As many as you want."
She said that they can film it all so we agreed on the first four from which we can then select two for the festival DVD.

The first official program was the signing session at 16.20. Lots of people once again to meet us. Quite a lot of familiar faces again. I don't really remember anyone though. I always, not just with band, but always have the same problem. I meet a person who says "Hello" in this friendly way that suggests that we know each other but I have no idea who he/she is or from where I should know him. That's annoying. Probably for both. Sorry.
Photographing is usually forbidden during the signing sessions. The reason is that if everyone stops at each band member to take a picture it will take forever and in 30 minutes only a handful of people will get an autograph or whatever it is they want. Problem with us is that Jonne is too nice and can't really say no when someone asks to take a picture. Security tells people to move on, Jonne doesn't care and just poses and fans take pictures so basically everybody is annoying somebody!

The showtime was 17.45-18.45. There was a lot of extra stuff on the stage. We couldn't really for example get an eye contact to our monitor tech. On the other side of the stage there was a huge pile of road cases covered with an ugly green tarp. Later it turned out that their function was just to take space from other bands and make their stage set look worse. The cases were all empty and they were taken out of the stage just before Ministry. That's what it looked like at least. Maybe they belonged to Ministry. Or maybe they were Def Leppard's and Ministry realized that and demanded them to be taken away. Don't know.

We were waiting our intro to begin when we hear Paukku's voice in the monitors. "No intro today. No miniplug connectors here." So we walk to the stage and 1-2-3-4 Wooden Pints. Juho had problems with the accordion's wireless for the first one and a half songs until he was switched to a cable, so it was quite easy to pick the songs for the DVD. Numbers 3 and 4. Cottages and Tuli kokko. Once again it was a good show. I can never really tell if we play well or not but I can always tell when the show is good. The audience is a very good indicator and then again the audience is quite often the thing that makes a show really good. That's always been the case in Czech republic. Always. Thank you.

After the show we didn't have much time hang around. After showers and some food it was time say the goodbyes to all the nice people and hit the road again. The next stop was Evolution festival in Milan, Italy. We were there a couple of years ago as well but at that time the festival was somewhere up in north. for some reason it had been moved to Milan which meant that we had even longer drive in front of us. 1050km. It also meant that in was in the area where in the two-week period they had two big metal festivals (Gods Of Metal, Evolution) and Metallica concert. You can't get people to all of them.

In the bus it was the usual thing. Few drinks, chatting but also music from the "new" CD/DVD player that Paukku had "borrowed" from the bus company's other bus when they had stopped in their garage at night to fix the leaking fuel pipe. Cool. I was once again among the first ones to go to bed. The next morning was really nice. I woke up early and went to sit in the front lounge just to watch the scenery. We were just driving through Brenner pass. Beautiful. It was also hot. It was something like 10 in the morning and the thermometer outside said +38C. What do you in the situation like that? Stay in your underwear, get in the back lounge, set the air condition to full blast, put "Live After Death" DVD on and start drinking vodka with orange juice. That's what Tuomas and I did.

Next stop: Milan.

To be continued...