Today was quite a day for the crew. First thing this morning, the lighting/catering truck went off the road just over an hour out from Belgrade. The driver lost control and the truck ended up on its side on a steep verge. Of course, this truck is usually the first to load in as the lights need to be lifted before the rest of the stage is assembled/set up.

The other two trucks arrived at the gig, unloaded and one of them drove back out together with Dave Hall (stage manager) and Pete Hillier (production manager) to retrieve the stricken cargo. This all took time and by 1:30 the cases were transferred from one truck to the other. The lighting equipment load-in finally got started at around 3:00pm, seven hours later than normal. To cut a very long story short, the crew were still line-checking just before the doors were due to open. Because of the hectic set-up, Glenn Saggers and the monitor boys (Kerry, Ben, Colin) had no time to properly deal with an unusually loud hum eminating from Mark's guitar cabs. Usually the lads find a way to rid the stage of the unwanted annoyance but this was discovered to be either of military origin or something to do with the hi-tech security doors in the venue. Incidentally, security here in Serbia is very tight, understandable I suppose; it's the first time I've ever been asked to put my bag through an airport scanner at the backstage door. In fact throughout the course of the day I calculated we put our bags through eight different security scanners.

There was a meet and greet tonight and as has been the case for the past few days, Matt and I took a verse of Caravan on twin Stylophones.

When we took to the stage, the noise was almost gone. Amazingly, Mr. Saggers had discovered a way of reducing it's level...if he held on to the other end of Mark's guitar cable, specifically the jack plug. He did this throughout the show, in fact I relieved him for a few brief moments during Sultans. He of course still had to tune all the guitars AND carry them out to the stage for the change-overs, think about it.

 



A couple of shots of Simon again since I'm concentrating on the lighting video film this week.



The mere fact we were able to do this show at all is another testament to the team work and tenacity of our crew and we talked about this in the car as we left the gig to fly back to Istanbul. Once on board the plane we were treated to a delicious Turkish Lamb kebab dish and some incredible cheese bread, not sure what it was called. We're lucky men indeed. One thing about the Balkan countries we've discovered is the warmth and enthusiasm of the audiences, and just like last night in Croatia, tonight in the capital city of Serbia they were absolutely fantastic.