What a day. I'm up at the 'crack of sparrows' and Pete, the accomplished professional calls me at 04:08am, just to check I'm awake and will be downstairs at 04:15am.. I have my hand on the receiver (about to call him) as it rings. Pete very kindly offered to get up that early and help out, take photo's etc. My new good friend Vidar Ruud played the 2nd guitar in the performances and picked Pete and myself up from the hotel to take us to the studio. We were the first ones there but within 20 minutes things started to happen. We did a camera rehearsal and at 6:50 we performed 'Love is coming round'. Then it was a two hour wait until I was ushered downstairs again for my interview with the show's host. A 10 minute chat and then 'Inamorata'. Both songs were performed live vocal to track. Since Inamorata starts with the vocal line, the TV mix has some beeps on the front and the sound man is supposed to play them to me to count me in. After many rehearsals I had a feeling it wouldn't happen and sure enough, no beeps. The consequence of which was that I couldn't sing the first line. Ah well, they were all so apologetic and made Pete, myself and Vidar very welcome all morning. Thanks for having me on the show.

 Pete took all these pics.

LINKS to the day's interviews

We were back at the hotel for breakfast at 10:00 and after that I thought it wise to have a nap. Once the marching band had passed, I fell asleep straight away and pretty soon we were off to Bergen for the show.



We all remember our first trip to the Norwegian west coast in 2005 as being quite spectacular so I requested the jump seat in the cockpit for landing. High pressure over Scandinavia meant the weather was superb. Camera in hand I snapped away as our pilots Christian and Michal made their approach into the airfield of Norway's second largest city.

Our intrepid captain is Christian Fehr.

We were collected from the airfield by Mannfred and his team of drivers who had driven there from Milan I think..it all get's quite confusing re. the drivers. They seem to be everywhere at once and their ability to cover vast distances in the Mercedes' in order to pick us up is nothing short of mind-blowing. Unfortunately, as is the case in most towns and cities of the world these days, there is more traffic around than two years ago and our drive through the heart of Bergen to the North was hampered by a heavy flow. We eventually arrived in time for a quick sound check expecting to see the gymnasium we played in last time, only to be surprised at the huge aircraft hanger that is the venue this time.

I may have mentioned before that because of the distances from Oslo to Bergen and then on to Karlstadt, the back-line truck was the only one which could physically make it. This is because the Back-line truck is the first to load out after a show, the lighting and PA trucks take a lot longer before they're loaded and therefore it was thought wise to use local PA and lights here whilst our PA and lights travels onward to Karlstadt. The down side to all this is of course the omission of our lighting centerpiece and Simon's need to re-program the lights. The up side is that by the time the back-line boys arrive, the stage is up and running so they don't have the usual wait for the lights and PA to go up before they load in. Got all that?

The huge 'hanger' is configured so that there's seating at the front and GA at the rear. I'm told the capacity here is above 10,000. The temporary lights from 'felt G'.

The new blue suede microphone and stand.

 

 a not quite so late night in the room

showpics - Martina