Saturday, November 12, 2011

Ripping it up Romanian style!


Euphoria Music Hall - Cluj Napoca, ROM - 2/11:
Mr tour manager a stroke today. After he recovered he cleaned the whole bus on his own in order to avoid further damage to his mental state. Somewhere in the mess, he found Johan Volturyun's computer too; appearantly he didn't forget it at some bar, he just brought it into the bus by mistake. Johan's chances of still having a job after the tour just increased with at least 5%.


Cluj is the second biggest city in Romania - but maybe not a big-big city. Meeting Ms Elly who promoted the gig first thing she says is "I heard a rumour you guys did the city tonight?". Ok? Could be.


The Euphoria Music Hall is not what you would imagine the ordinary romanian concert hall to be, being new since one year and quite modern, almost in central Cluj Napoca. Everything was very well fixed with great catering waiting for lunch, great dinner etc. - thanks to the awesome crew of EMH and Hatework!


Volturyon ripping it up!

The gig was great, with very strong support from the metalheads of Cluj. We didn't use the backdrop today due to practical reasons - the club then took the chance to run some ciggarette commercials from a projector through our whole gig. Shouldn't we get at least some free Camel packages in return?

Since it was a Wednesday, most people attending to the show disappeared right after we stopped playing, leaving the tour people alone to handle the post show duties. Said and done, we packed the (cleaned) bus, continued there and the rest is history... Hope to be back in Cluj soon again.

Bus/road/back to normal...


Club Fabrica - Bucharest, ROM - 3/11:
Ok, everything is back to normal. The roads of Romania has thrown everything around in the bus again, tied to their places or not. Back to harmageddon, the huge popcorn-machine filled with vodka bottles, beer cans, shoes, towels, socks and anything else you can (and cant) imagine. Tour manager gets his second stroke, and to make it even better most of the people are for some reason sick. Martin, Pablo and Sverker are sick and Johan is Johan. The only healthy in the band is the youngster Freppa.



We start the day with pissing in the children's playground, then check out the venue and set things up. It's a cool place with breakfast waiting for us. The sound guy looks like a droogie but is doing an awesome job. Actually, our very good friend Costin is part-organizing the concert this evening, although the man himself had to leave Romania to do some art exhibitions in America during this period - well done man.

The security...

Our backstage room is guarded by a dead rat, that keep the ladies off our backs (they often become a problem without decent security). The concert this evening was a great one, with a very good audience supporting us. Things worked out good on stage, although half the band being sick. Unfortunately once again most of the people fucked off after the show, but we kept the flag high, and moved down to some bar to celebrate the victory. After having pissed in the children's playground again, we left Bucharest towards Sibiu sometime around 05:00...


Various things that could be thrown into the bus toilet: shit, piss, puke, toilet paper.

Things that maybe doesn't belong there?: paper rolls? socks??


And please don't piss in the children's playground.


Bohemian Flow - Sibiu, ROM - 4/11:
Arriving in Sibiu around 09:00 in a good bohemian flow or at least mood, the last personel finally throws in the towel. We were actually supposed to be at the venue at 11:00, so we are a bit early as always, but it's not until 17 that we are let in by the owner of the place (!).

Whatever, 6-7 hours here or there is not that much of a big deal over here. And it even gives us some extra hours of sleep, or check out the city, or whatever... Having realized that the concept of local guiding is a rather good one, judgeing from the Cluj Napoca experiences, we had some kind of equal set-up here too. Unfortunately things didn't turn out equally good this time.


The place is the smallest so far on the tour. After we set up the stage, we went off to eat some traditional romanian food and therefore unfortunately missed the support band EVERGREED. SLYTRACT did a good gig again, these hungarians are doing amazingly well every day coming in their van with no sleep (?), while we relax in the nightliner. Maybe it is the 200 beers a day that does it. Great shows anyway.

Martin "backstage"!
Slytract warming up!

When we played, the place was completely packed, and the bohemian flow on. We had some sound issues in the beginning (when a girl from the audience actually comes up on stage telling Sverker "don't play anymore until the sound is fixed" - then you know for sure that things arent top notch), but after two songs of kaos the pizza solved everything, and the show could go on.

Afterwards we stayed at the venue for some Friday night duties, and especially a half naked half crazy guy doing drum kareoke did a strong impression on all of us. But around 03:00 we had to fuck off to Hungary and say bye to Romania for this time, after some four awesome days.

Hadderajat, soplinca! (?!)