Even more stuff!

October 22, on the bus at the truck stop close to Pamplona, 13:15

Long time, no writing. I haven't really been able to get myself to do that. For a couple of reasons. First of all, I haven't been able to sleep for a few days since my back has been a total wreck. If I was on my back I wasn't able to lift my head. If I managed to find a position where it didn't hurt and fell asleep I woke up after 15 minutes in terrible pain again. No fun. The other reason is that after Dornbirn, Austria we've moved to warm places and there is no fucking way that I am going to spend my day in for example Barcelona by just sitting at the backstage typing down my stupid ramblings for 20 people who are after all only mildly interested!

What have we been doing since Austria? The next show was in Milano, Italy. I Sometimes think of myself as a wise person although there have been many occasions where I've proven that wrong. The day in Milano was one of them. I hadn't packed any shorts, the day was hot, perhaps not in an Italian scale but in a Finnish scale at least and I was wearing fucking leather pants! Time to go shorts shopping. Not easy easy since the season was over. Found one pair that looks a bit too goth. And some of here keep telling me that they are women's model. Show me a goth chick with a 36" waist line! No, wait. Please, don't.

We played at Magazzini Generali. We were there also on the last Paganfest and that time we managed to get our bus in the yard. This time with a bigger bus it was impossible so we had to park outside of the premises. Mr. T told us that it's right behind the corner. After all it was not behind a corner and over a kilometre away! Bollocks. Venue itself is nice. Backstage area is bit too small, especially for a Paganfest, but we managed to fit in well.

We had received a preliminary questions from an Italian journalists for an interview. Sounds scary. Interview is about asking things so what kind of an interview requires preliminary questions sent via email. Yep, a difficult one. I am especially on tours doing most of the interviews so I read those through and realized that they are definitely directed to Jonne. So we decided that he'll do that. He never even read the preliminary questions and on the day of the show was nowhere to be found so I ended up doing an interview about the things that were done before I joined the band and that were in the vein of "What did you mean when you wrote this sentence in that song?" I did my best and once we were finished Jonne showed up for 2 minutes to fill in the gaps.

Now back to my favourite topic. Complaining about the Italians. I wrote earlier about the merchandise prices. Here's the final result. We've been to the countries that can not really boast with their vast amounts of cash. Still in Italia after all the extra payments and taxes we were getting the least money to ourselves even though the prices for the paying customers were the highest of the tour! So if you people think that bands are robbing you, think again. From the 25€ we had to ask the first 11 go to the taxes and the venue!

This is probably a reason why bootleg t-shirts are so popular in Italy too. There was at least 3 or 4 t-shirt sellers outside of the venue. Some of their prints were ok but some of them were total crap. The stolen designs were of course alright although the print quality sucked especially with some Eluveitie stuff. It was just too funny to see a purple Korpiklaani shirt. "Start wearing purple!" Through the afternoon we were figuring out different schemes to boot the bootleggers. The best one was probably this: get some native Italian on stage to tell the audience that if they can not afford the official prices they don't have to worry. The t-shirts sold outside of the venue will be free after the show. But be quick since there's not enough for everyone!

The Finnish girl who makes Jonne's stage clothes lives in Italy. Jonne got his new stage pants in Milano. The leather for those actually came from an old sofa owned by her Italian boyfriend's grandmother. It has survived a huge amount of sweat and farts already so that pants should be good for the stage use.

The show got mixed feelings from band members. Kalle said it was a really good one, I on the other hand couldn't really get into that so well. Maybe because in that venue the audience is really far away considering that it is after all a club. Most except me seemed to be happy so I guess it was good.

October 23, on the bus in Galicia, 12:30

We're on our way from Pamplona to La Coruna and we're running late again. Like me. It seems like I can not update the blog as fast as the things keep happening.

Anyway, after Milano we drove to Montpellier, France. This was a show that we already feared beforehand. Our manager called me a few months ago and asked if we want to do the show since the place is really small with the capacity of 280 and the stage is really small even for a club this small. The another option was to have a day off and since that is usually the worst option I said that we'll do it if Eluveitie will do it.

So there we were. In a club called "Secret Place". They had signs pointing to this venue so I guess it was not so secret after all. French! It was indeed small. Not the smallest we've been to but smallest in the last couple of years. The crew managed to get our gear on stage by leaving the bass amp out. I never used that anyway and Kay borrowed my preamp setup for this show. Eluveitie is the headliner on all French shows. We like the idea. The stage was so small and the audience was so close that there was no way we could move. I actually had keep my bass is such position that my left wrist started to cramp in the middle of the show. I guess it was a really good show after all. Sold out show and a really enthusiastic audience. Eluveitie had some problems there though since during their set there was a power cut. Everything went dark and silent. It was just a few seconds but it was enough to mess their computer/effects rack/whatever so that it took a while before they could continue. I think they were actually missing some of that for the rest of the show. Not sure though. Impossible to get in to hear them and never managed to ask them.

The next stop was Barcelona. I got up early, around 10:30. The bus was parked in front of the venue but the get in time was still hours away, so I check the location of the nearest subway station, figured out from the subway map which is a centre station, realized that "hey, I've been here before, twice!" and hopped on the train. Got off at the main square, Plaza whatever, crossed the square and found my way directly to La Rambla and the close-by network of alleys full of record stores. Paradise for a vinyl geek like Matson and myself, so I sent him a detailed message on how to get there once he wakes up.

I got some excellent breakfast at the local cafeteria. I didn't know before that the combination of coffee and pasta with pesto was acceptable and that it was actually really good. As was the Italian style pie with lots of cheese and these green things, herbs. Chicory, spinach, whatever. Excellent. I had an idea of being a tourist and seeing some places like the Sacrada Familia cathedral (or how ever it is spelled) but after all I ended up spending the whole day in that area. The other's joined me later, went to more record stores, a music store where Jonne almost bought this whatever local guitar kind of instrument it was, had a beer or two and returned to the venue.

Some bands have really loyal fans. We have at least one of those too. We've found the girl or the young woman to be precise in front of the venue for example in the freezing Moscow, Russia and now she was in Barcelona with an intention to see 3 out of the 4 Spanish shows. We've told her many times already that she does not have to buy tickets to our shows, we can always put her on the guest list if you just tell us in advance that you're coming. She's learning. This time she did inform us beforehand. On the day of the show. "I'm in Barcelona. Can you put me on the guest list?"

I myself liked the Barcelona show a lot. I had had a brilliant day in a sunny city starting from the early morning and the day ended up on a high note in front of an excellent audience. Although before the show I forgot to tell Jonne that we're not really in Spain so please don't say "Thank you, Spain!" Once I heard him mentioning Spain already in the first sentence of the show I remembered that. Well our set starts the way that I had no way of telling that to him except after the third song. Before that I could already hear someone from the audience shouting: "Catalunya!"

Yesterday I did remember that though. "Jonne, this is Navarra, not Spain." We were in a small village of Villava only a few kilometers away from Pamplona that is of course known to most people of their brutal, inhuman, barbaric treatment of animals. Bullfighting and the fucking bull run. At least some fucking idiots manage to remove their genes from the world's gene pool at the same time.

The city itself is nice and it was a walking distance away so why not go there too. I spent most of the day just walking around the small alleys of the old town. Actually when walking towards the city I tried to be clever and find a short cut since the road goes around half of the city centre before actually entering the city but instead of that I ended up ion a construction site, had to climb over a fence and jump down from a metro and a half cliff just to find out that I was back on the same fucking road I was originally on!

In the city I even went to two churches! I loved the words "proto-goth" when they were describing the style of the older one. I was now just a minutes ago listening to "Endemoniada" by Fields Of The Nephilim and that definitely is proto-goth too! The most of the guiding texts were of course in the language that no one except the locals understand so I had some hard times figuring out what the hell (pun intended!) had been going on in that church. I could read about the numerous renovations throughout the centuries but I still couldn't figure out the function of the extra arcs and pilasters. It even looked like they had changed the shape of the ceiling/roof in a really strange fashion. Couldn't get that. And I have a masters degree in construction technology!

Yesterday was a good one for me again. I liked the the show. I was having fun on the stage just like in Barcelona. The back has been better, the knee is not that bad and my mood has been just generally better. I haven't even been drinking that much. Not like being drunk, just some wine and maybe a beer or two. And really crappy local cider in the Irish pub in Pamplona.

Anyway, we're still at least on hour away from La Coruna, so I guess I'll just go and take a nap.