TOUR DIARY
HEAVEN's BASEMENT
European
Tour Diary 2009
16th
Feb
Current mood:Continental
First day of the tour.......we're in Vosselaar in Belguim today. We arrived here
yesterday morning about 11 o'clock after travelling straight from ilkeston on
saturday night (well done Mr. Rob and Pete!). There didn't seem to be much going
on in the town so we just spent the whole day moving from bar to bar trying to
find some life. We had drinks in various Belgian bars sampling the different
beers and chatting to the locals (luckily everybody we met seemed pretty fluent
in english). We ended the night at an irish bar in the square listening to Josh
Homme, drinking guinness, smoking cigars and watching the united v derby game.........well
we did stop off in one more bar on the way back to the bus but that was only
because we were lost and thought another drink might help our sense of direction!
We're at the venue now setting up, getting ready for soundcheck. It's cool to
see the thunder lads again, i definitely think this tour is going to be a great
one, we've got a great set to play and can't wait to get up onstage and see what
the european rock fans think of us. Over and out for now, we'll update you all
again tomorrow and let you know how the first night went.
Tot ziens
17th
Feb
Day two! Uden in Holland. Last nights show in Belgium was a blinder! To
be honest, it couldn't really have gone any better for the first night of the
tour. Great crowd, great sound, great lights. We were only supposed to play for
half an hour but the set ran to 38 minutes, so we were told. The Thunder guys
and crew are really cool though, they said we can go on a little earlier and
play for longer if we want. This is the set we played.......
Tear Your Heart Out
Can't Let Go
Misunderstood
10 Minutes
Reign On My Parade
Mirrors
Executioners Day
The plan is to mix it up a bit every night and play different songs if we can (saying
that, it did go pretty well so i reckon we'll do the same set tonight again and
see how it goes). After we played we went and hung out with Pete and Mr. Rob at
the merch stand and had a few drinks (Hoegarden was the order of the day!). We
met loads of cool people and there was also quite a few familiar faces that we
know from previous shows in the UK. It was good to see Wendy and Pascal again
who we met on the tour with Wired Desire last december. Thankyou for my gift
Pascal, i laughed for hours and then slept like a tree trunk! ;-)
After Thunder had played we went and chilled with them in their dressing room
for a while, Ben was making us cocktails which went down a treat! We stayed at
the venue for a couple of hours (they don't kick everyone out as soon as the gig
has finished like they do in the UK which is a much better way of doing things!)....we
left about 1ish i think and drove straight to tonights venue.....All in all, it
was a pretty sweet first night, I can't wait to get onstage later!
One thing i noticed about Belgium is that all the toilets seem to be unisex,
well the ones i went to anyway. Just an observation.....I'm getting called for
soundcheck now so will report back tomorrow!
De
Ballen
Jonny
Day
3 - Feb 18th – services outside Berlin
Last nights show was fucking ace, a step up from the first show in Belgium I
think! same set as we played in Belgium which is working really well for us at
the moment..Great crowd aswell, its nice to see a few Heaven's Basement T shirts
in the audience! (also, thanks to Wendy for the beers, Babs for the drum stick
sock!) You always know its a good show when everyone comes back into the
dressing room pouring in sweat and totally fucked after the set.
We set off to Berlin after the show last night, it's a 9 hour drive so Rob and
Pete cracked on through the night (excellent work lads!) We are just outside
Berlin at the moment, we can't wait for our first ever gig in Germany tonight,
the Kato is going to get fucking destroyed from us and the guys in Thunder..we
have a day off tomorrow so also looking forward to havin a few beers with the
guys tonight!!
..that's pretty much it for now, time to go find a shower! remember to keep a
check on bitchinrockphotos.com for updates and live photos each day or so.
Rivers
Feb
21st - Just come off stage in Bochum
Tonights show was fucking ace, we had a great time it was wild as fuck, EVERYTHING that can go wrong 'technically' in a show went wrong, such as snare drums breaking, amps breaking, guitars breaking and leads breaking haha!! I wouldn't have been surprised if a fucking plane crashed on stage or a JCB tractor decided to roll on and destroy the stage at some point, it was one of those nights BUT we cracked on and all had a great time, probably our fav night of the tour so far!! great crowd too!! the set ran great (we managed to 'fix' things mid song
....Oh
yeah, Rob Randell set the fire alarm off in the building about 5 mins
before Thunder came on stage (we found that quite funny)
Thunder are on stage right now and sounding great!! Not sure the plan for
tonight, we might stick around for a while I think then move onto the next show
at some point..
anyway, thats all for now.
(2.1 to the reds - good shit)
RIVER
Feb
21st - Backstage at Matrix, Bochum
The
last few days have been some of the best I can remember. Berlin is now one of my
favourite cities and holds some great memories. We played at Kato on the 18th
which was a cool little place under a train track.....good vibe in there and it
sounded nice and loud. It was Mark's (Thunder's Tech) birthday so after the show
the guys gave him his present we ventured off into the city. We went to some
great bars and met some awesome people from all over the world. A special thanks
(and apology) has gotta be given to the nice bar-girl that took me in after
getting dettached from the pack, and for one by one as everyone found me, let us
take over her bar.....we had fun.
We made it back to the bus just after sunrise and decided to go sightseeing.
We were parked right next to the Berlin wall so checked it out, it was a
sobering experience. There's a photo of it up in our gallery. A cool touch was
out of all the thousands of writings on it Robbie stopped right next to one that
read "Such Is Life".
That night we went to a punk bar to check out a band then set off for
Hannover.
We had "pig" at a petrol station.
Hannover was cool, friendly crowd and a good stage. (Hi to the two women
from Leicester). We were in a quiet area so after the gig we set off for Bochum
to catch the end of the club there. Everyone was pretty fucked so MrRob, Pedro
and I went in for a couple of drinks to wind down to some German industrial
metal.
Thunder are soundchecking now so I'm gonna go get my stuff together.
I'll finish up later....
Sid