Saturday, May 31, 2008

Travel Day to Netherlands

First show was last night in Madrid. It was one of those really late Euro festivals – Rage went onstage at 1am, came off around 2:15am.

Just before the band went on, there was a bit of celebrating, as it was guitarist Tom Morello's birthday. Cake, singing, the usual bit. And a bottle of really good 18-year old Scotch.

After the show, Javier Bardem, the actor from the movie "No Country For Old Men", wound up back in our dressing room compound. Turns out he's a big Rage fan. Nice enough guy.

We finally left the venue around 4:30am for the approximate 30 minute drive back to the hotel. Lobby call to depart the hotel for the airport was 6:30am, so there was no sense in going to sleep at all.

So here I sit, writing this in the Madrid airport. It's now 8am, I've been up for 24 hours, and our flight doesn't leave until 8:50. We're flying to Dusseldorf, Germany, where we'll be met by our bus (there's only 12 of us in the crew party, so just one crew bus). After that, we have a 110 km drive to Maastricht, Netherlands, near the sight of tomorrow's show, the Pinkpop Festival.

I'm hoping to get some sleep during the 2.5 hour flight, and the 2 hour bus ride. No plans for today, but I'd like to go to bed tonight at a somewhat normal time.

Fat chance.

Here's a photo of a pretty cool building that I spotted on the way to the venue yesterday:

The Madrid Electric Festival stage from ground level:

From above the FOH mix position:

And here's what I'm looking at right now – these totally wack lighting fixtures here in the Madrid airport.


Finally made it to the hotel and fell out for a 60-minute nap. Groggy as hell when I got up, but I promised Spragoo I'd meet him downstairs for a couple of beers and a bite at 6pm.

A few other crew guys passed through, but it was pretty much just he and I for a couple of hours. Ordered some food at the bar – I had a killer caprese sandwich, consisting of fresh tomato, mozzarella, and basil on a baguette, and a side order of pomme frittes with mayonnaise. Rockin'!

A bunch of other folks showed up later, between 10 and 10:30. Hugs & mugs time. Headed upstairs just before 11pm. Gotta get some sleep…

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Duke's Mayo???

Keep the reports coming. I got to see Rick Richards play last night. So there. And watching racin' right now. Smoke just made it back out on the track, but I'm it recorded, not up to live right now.