Antwerpen, Paris & idiots

On the bus to Lyon at noon. Yesterday we played in La Loco, Paris. The venue is located right next to Moulin Rouge so it's right in the heart of Parisian tourism. Which is nice. The downside of that is that there are no parking places for tour buses so once we got there at 11:30 or so we had to get all our stuff that we would be needing from the bus to the backstage. Once all the stuff was in the the venue the buses left and arrived to pick up us and the gear again at 3 in the morning.

We had a really long day to spend in Paris since it was a late show and our show time was at 1. Which by the way sucked since those who live outside the metropolitan area had to leave before our show time or even Unleashed's show time to get home by last trains. We had a great audience anyway so in the end it didn't suck so much for us but I feel sad for the people who payed 30€ to see us and managed to see only the first 4 bands.

Anyway, the day was for tourism. Me and Matson spent 5 hours around the town once I managed to get us subway tickets from "French only" machine. We went to Notre Dame cathedral. Surprisingly, the lightning didn't strike a pagan so we survived. Next stop was the latin quarters where we found an Irish pub that had Strongbow on tap. Nice. Then we went to check if there's a huge waiting time to Eiffel tower. It didn't look so bad so we decided to go there. I've been there before but only at the second floor since the top was closed for some reason then. We ended up waiting for a fucking half an hour down there to get to the second floor and another fucking half an hour to the top from there. Then we spend 5 minutes at the top and another 30 minutes to get back down. What a fucking waste of time. Korpiklaani Travel Agency does not recommend. Ok, the structure is nice. Really nice. With a degree from civil engineering I can appreciate that. But in the end it's just a fucking observation tower and definitely not worth the two hour waiting.

At one point we decided to head back to the venue since we thought it would be a dinner time. There we realized that it was a buy out day and got 15€ for food. Didn't go to eat though. We sat a while at the venue and had a couple local beers. 25cl bottles, with 4,2% alcohol. You can drink a case of them and not get drunk. Doors opened and the people started getting in. Once they realized that it indeed was us we had to leave since our table turned into a signing and photo session. Matson was keen to see Pére Lachaisse cemetery. I had been there before but I can always go there again to say "hello" to Edith. Swashbuckle was already on stage when we left and travelled in a sweaty fully packed subway something like 13 or 14 stations there only to see that in France they close their cemeteries at 18:00. I didn't know they did that. So we just got back to venue and spent the long night there and at the Corcoran Irish pub next to it.

The show was pretty damn good. The audience was crazy. And just to make things more difficult to Andreas the light tech we keep changing the set every night. We've mostly been closing with Ii Lea Voibmi but yesterday we closed with Hunting Song. We have mostly been switching between Huppiaan aarre and Tuli kokko. Yesterday we did both. To keep things interesting or something.

The German merchandiser doing us, Unleashed and Reiter is an idiot. I'll get back to that later. Now we're at the venue and WE have to start counting our merch. Bollocks.

Ok, the merch is counted. And the merch guy now knows that we think that he's an idiot. Which I think is not unfair since all the other bands think the same. Including Reiter, his own band. The idiot is not keeping any track of what he's sold. And someone even bigger idiot booked him to do an international tour when he doesn't speak any real language.

Back to Antwerpen for a moment. I wached the entire Moonsorrow set again. They did the same as in Dortmund. 45 minutes, 2 songs. That's musical brilliance. I think they were even better than the day before. In Dortmund I remember telling Reiter vocalist Fuchs that Moonsorrow is the best band on the tour and he was watching them as well and seemed to enjoy that a lot. When the show was over I noticed that their guitarist had been watching the end of the show too. He came to me and asked "they are coming to do a third show as well, right" so I think he was hooked as well.

But we kicked some serious ass their as well. I guess I can clearly say that it was our night. It's been difficult to match Reiter in Germany and Antwerpen was the first that I can honestly that it was our show.

Idiots of all idiots

18.50 in the bus. Of fuck this shit! The place is fucking dump and then they are also complete fucking idiots.
- the show has been advertised as "all ages"
- their advertising has said "Doors at 7PM"
- their website says "Doors at 8PM"
- they told us they will throw every minor out at 22
- we were thinking about cancelling the whole thing since there's no point in throwing half of the audience out in the middle of Primordial's set.
- however, we decided to do the show so that every band will play a short set and Swashbuckle starts really early, so that the minors will see all bands
- Swashbuckle started at 18.15 and played of course to an empty hall
- then we realized that now they are not letting the minors in at all
- so, all schedule changes were for nothing
- what a fucking bunch of idiots

Winnipeg idiots

9.00 in the bus approaching Regina, SK. Weather looks beautiful, but is actually freezing. I want to go to California!

Was yesterday's show better than cancelling it? Not really sure. The venue was shit. Gear was shit. Turnout was shit. But there were people wearing Moonsorrow and Korpiklaani shirts and they got good shows so I guess it was worth. The original promoter had probably known already for a while that he's not going to organize the show. Practically no advertizing and even the venue had posters of the Testament show happening on the same day, but not Paganfest posters. Oh well, live and learn. In Europe we've grown out from the venues like that but obviously there's still some ground work to be done in some parts of the world. Luckily the venue was in the same building with a motel. Woohoo! Shower!

Oh yeah. Not a day without an idiot. This time it was four of them. Already from the early evening there were also four motorcycle gang members in the venue. Or some other gang, maybe not motorcycle but still wearing the gang vests. When we were about to start our show and Cane walked in wearing his "Happy Little Boozers - Beerland" vest those idiots surrounded him and started to push him around asking about the gang he's in. They couldn't understand that it's not a gang, it's a band. Suddenly one of them approached him from behind and just tore the vest off. I can only admire Cane keeping cool. In the same situation, someone attacking me, I would've gone berzerk. I am a nice, calm person, but touch me and you're dead. Maybe with the four idiots it would have been me dying so it was good it was Cane. All this added a nice little touch to the show. Are we going to be beaten up after the show? Later I heard that they had been harrassing also our merchandiser Nick because of our common "Korpiklaani - Finland" skull t-shirts. What a bunch of wankers.

Today's venue is the smallest of the tour. Do they have shower? Do they have internet? I can only hope.