On the ground in London at 9am, only to find out that the transportation company had completely screwed up our vehicles for the 3-hour drive up to Donington. Major bummer! Within an hour or so, 8 people were sent off in one vehicle, an hour later another few went, and then finally, just past noon (after sitting here for over 3 hours), the last 3 of us got in a car to make the journey. Since I’m not "show-critical" I was one of the last to leave. No complaints here, because our ride was a huge, pimped-out Mercedes sedan with reclining rear seats. Sweet! I even managed to get in a small nap on the way up.
Stopped at a services area along the way, and I broke down and had my first Starbucks of 2010. Didn't really want to, but with today's schedule, it couldn't hurt.
Got to the Download Festival site around 2:30pm, because our driver Eddie was hauling ass. I checked the speedometer a couple of times and he was doing 100mph. That big Benz felt like it was riding on glass, though.
Sure wish we had more time, because I had probably 40 friends here today, mostly crew folks, but a few band guys, too. Would have been nice to have some hang time with them.
Dave arrived late afternoon, and parked a short distance away. I got him a backstage parking pass so I don't have to haul my suitcase all over hell and half of England when we leave from here tonight to drive down to his place in Dorset.
Tonight's the last show of the year for Rage. Seven shows total over two weeks is just NOT enough. I really love this crew, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that this band should tour more. But it is what it is…
Tonight's show is also the biggest of the tour. 98,000 in attendance, which looks like this…
Here's a shot of my buddy, Andy Meyer, our FOH Engineer, just before our show...
Murph (Patrick Murphy), our Stage Manager…
Shirley (our Production Assistant) and Spragoo (Monitor Engineer)…
Slim (Tom's Guitar Tech) waiting for the band to come onstage…
Slim's nightly, end-of-show catch of Tom's guitar. Unfortunately, this one signifies the end of the tour...
After packing up my stuff, it was hugs all-around, then Dave and I jumped in his car for a 3-hour drive to Dorset. Amazingly enough, I stayed awake the whole time. Miraculous, considering I was running on 30 minutes of sleep last night…
4 comments:
They look like ants from here...
The crowd rocks.
Great Blog! Please view mine and let me know what you think!
wow thats a lot of people, and bob i laughed my ass off when i saw that even your beard had an afro.
Post a Comment