Yesterday was a day off in Hamburg.
After a much needed visit to the gym Danny and I had a late lunch in the hotel restaurant and I have to say it was a treat. The Hyatt is fast becoming a tour favourite for all of us indeed Mark commented to me about the quality of the restaurant as he dined there last night. Most of the band went out for a Thai meal but Danny took myself and Richard to a family run Italian restaurant right next to the Reeperbahn which he had visited many years ago called Cunau. Really delicious, simple Italian cuisine and a cracking bottle of Chianti reserva to wash it all down with. We saw Stuart ambling the streets on the way back in the cab so we all jumped out and shepherded him into the 2nd nearest bar as the first one was a gay bar gay bar. Then back to my room for a few eclectic sounds (Sufjan Stevens, Praful Dave, Aretha, Don Drummond, D'Angelo, John Barry, Air, Clap your hands say yeah and the Chilli Peppers new album) and a relatively early night.

Later that day....


Hyatt hotel in Germany = Bircher Meusli. That and a coffee was breakfast then time to bundle up the djFletch NHT Pro's,(more on these amazing self-powered speakers later) shower and checkout. Shrimp salad and cheese (again) on the plane for a hop up to the conveniently located Stockholm city airport. Slide into an array of Mercs at the plane steps and glide into town anxious to visit the gym which I manage to do before a 5:00 departure for soundcheck. Entering the Globen is a thoroughly futuristic affair involving a series of electronic underground doors, a driver and a single security guard on the main gate. We step out of the shiny black car literally a few feet from our dressing room. Catering and the soup of life is a mere 50 feet away and the smell alone draws one to it. Soup and tea and off to the stage and gaze up into the dizzy heights of this VAST golf ball. Considered making a trip with camera up to the top for a picture but thought better of it. Meet and greet was fun. Stuart made a M&G debut on fiddle.

Bit of an odd show for us tonight. A few of us had a difficulty dealing with the sheer size of the Globen in Stockholm in terms of on-stage monitoring but still it was a fun show.
With a slight set-list change Glenn Saggers found that he simply had too many amp setting changes to do coming out of Sonny Liston into Bellestar so I offered to do Mark's guitar switch. My debut as a guitar tech...not sure if any of the audience spotted it....or indeed who would care. That was a funny thing about the show, there was so little feedback from the hall, we kinda felt isolated. But receiving this as I write, I go to bed untroubled.. nighty night

Thanks for the Stockholm show! From where I was sitting it was pure magic. Great sound too. I don’t know what you expect from the audience to feel happy about it, we don’t move around a lot, but I hope my delight hit you all from the eleventh row like warm waves. And thank you from the bottom of my heart for playing Shangri-La (missed it last time you were here).

 


Richard Bennett's amplifiers, two Vox AC30's and a CRATE 30 through which he plays the Rickenbacker steel on Red Staggerwing


my new thermal imaging infra red camera revals the contents of one of my suitcases
Grand hotel room view

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