10/10/10
This is the first big ØSC tour, 6 concerts in 10 days plus one at Loppen when we get home for the Give your Brain a rest from the Matrix CD release party. I flew down to Zagreb to spend some days with my girlfriend Sue and to rest my back before the tour. The rest of the guys are driving to Croatia.
12/10/12
The guys drove for nearly 20 hrs to get to Austria and to crash with the guys from Go Banana’s the local band that is hosting the show in Salzburg on the 18th. The guys said they were all really cool but they were having a huge party and wanted to have a jam session but the band really just wanting to sleep. They hung out for a bit and then crashed out. The entourage was: Mogens- Synth, Jiri- bass, jocke- bass, Mathias- guitar, Nick- guitar, Birk- Drums, Sabine- photographer, sales person, roadie, and Dr. Space..
13/10/12
The guys got off to quite a late start and when Sue and I arrived at the Medika venue at 17, the Fjodor guys were not there and the guys said they were not going to arrive until at least 18. The sound guy took Sue and me to a German style beer bar and then he went home. We had a really nice fish and chips dinner with some local draft beer that was really good and then went back to the venue. 18:30, the band said they were in Zagreb but hopelessly lost. It took them about an hour before they did arrive at the venue. Everyone was really relaxed and so it was not a big deal but still they were very frustrated after doing around and being lost. We really needed a GPS but no one owns a car and wants to put out the money but we are already paying the price and Fjodor said these other countries are much more difficult without one. At 19, the Pitsome guy arrived with the long sleeve tour shirts and wow. They turned out really fantastic. I am very satisfied with them. Niko from 7that Spells also dropped by for a bit but could not stay.
21:40 We are finally soundchecking and all is going well but it takes a long time. Quite a few people already showing up this is nice. Fjodor guys are all cool and just getting high and waiting for their turn to soundcheck and play. The vegan food everyone said was really excellent. Sabine and I have set up all the merchandise but I wonder if we will sell anything??
22:15 We finally finish a very long soundcheck. It is insanely loud on the stage. Not sure what we are going to do about that. This will kill our ears if the whole tour is like this. They are multitrack recording the show tonight as well and I have set up my mics to record as well but it is quite a booomy sound at the back of the hall.
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| Fjodor |
24 Fjodor played a great concert and it was all just jamming and they had a different keyboard player from the last time they played and also a guy playing a Cajun (drum box). They really spaced out and played very intensely. It was just 3 tracks for about an hour. The room was really packed with people as well. Good crowd. We set up really fast since it was all the same gear almost.
03:15 Wow.. What a fucking intense concert! We really blasted them and got into full trance mode at the end of the show. Nick really played some killer guitar riffs and Mathias some cool spacey stuff. Jiri and Jocke switched off every other jam or so and Bark was amazing. He really had the groove and knew how and when to push and pull. People really dug the concert and were dancing like crazy in the front. Sabine shot some video at the beginning of the show and lots of pics. I think we played like 6 jams around 2hrs. I also recorded the show from the audience.
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| OSC Zagreb |
11:15 I arrived back at the venue and the guys were all packing the van and did an amazing job. Wow, Jiri… great work. They are all a bit tired as well but everyone is happy and in a good mood. It is totally grey again. I have been in Croatia for 4 days and never seen the sun.
13:06 We are driving through Croatia on our way to Serbia It is all pretty flat right now with some forests and small towns here and there and farm land. Highway is pretty good and we are just cruising. Not sure what is playing on the CD player but there are only speakers in the front and they sound like crap anyway. Birk has his own music and headphones one, Mattias is sleeping, Mogens tries to sleep as well. Only, Sabine, Nick, Jiri and I are awake. Jiri looks really tired though… We are still not sure if we will crash in Serbia or not. NO word from the guys in Belgrade.
14 We are half way to Belgrade now. Jocke is driving and we are listening to Ozric Tentacles. WE just had a coffee and tea break. Paid 40 kuna for one tea and 6 coffees. My back is feeling pretty good and we are making good progress.
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| Serbia Border Crossing |
16:16 We finally get out of here. We had trouble also finding the car registration which they wanted to see. We heard some of this Sakso band and it was not our type of music. Someone said it was like Pet shop boys or something… We made it through like 2 songs.. That was enough. They also gave us a cd by another young Macedonian band called Culture Development.
18 We are in the center of Belgrade. The drive in was really beautiful across these bridges and you could see parts of the city. It is a big city with a river running through the middle like so many European capitals. Yonico from Temple of the Smoke is coming to the bus stop where we are stopped to meet us in his car and then we will follow him to his place. The sky is really strange here like a mixture of smoke, pollution and mist or fog. Does not smell really terrible.
20:00 we are all relaxing and had some beers. He brought back like 10 beers for less than 2€. That was cheap. We have ordered some pizza and lasagne as people are hungry. Some of us will stay here while others are going to go into town with the Temple guys who are supposed to meet an Australian music promoter who does gigs in Europe and Australia. We take it really easy. He has a nice apartment and plenty of space for us to sleep. Everyone is in a good mood. Pity we could not have a gig this night.
21:00 Wow.... we watched that crazy Austrian guy Felix jump from 38km above the earth and land in New Mexico. That was insane... We will have to dedicate a song to him...
Day 3
8:30 We are all up and soon Mogens and the others will arrive to pick us up and we have to repack the van. The Serbian guys from Temple of the Smoke are super cool people. We had a comfortable place to stay and everyone is doing ok. We need to set off for Bulgaria as soon as we can. Not sure what we will do for breakfast but I think we still have some things in the van. My back is ok but I need to get it up and walk around now. I did some stretches.
9:25 We are on the road towards Nis which is half way to Sofia, Bulgaria. Mogens has downloaded a detailed map of this area now so we should not have a problem with getting super lost. We will see. We need gas so it will be interesting to see what that will cost.
9:45 We paid about 90€ for 57L of gas. I wonder how the normal people afford that? It is pretty expensive considering that everything else here is so cheap. Crazy… Jiri drives really fast so we will make good time while he drives. half the band is sleeping now and we hear no music, which is a bit strange. I need to have music if I drive. Mogens downloaded a detailed map of the region to his Iphone so we should not have as many problems now. It strangely shows where you are even when the phone has no internet connection, which is a bit creepy..
11:30 We are making good time and are in Nis, Serbia for a lunch break.
12:39 We had a bit too long of a break now and have 162km to Sofia but still have to pass the border. The food was cheap. Paid like 27€ for 4 coffee, tea, two cokes two sandwiches, and three like meals with French fries, sausage, or chicken and some veggies.
13:30 Fantastic autumn colours and really beautiful drive at the moment. We are listening to Korai Orom and it is perfect for this scenery. Roads are getting pretty rough now. We also heard Tommy Bolin and friends earlier and Stone The Crows BBC sessions Disc 1. Only 82km to go.
14 We are now at the Bulgarian Border and had to park the van. See how long this will take.
15 It was slow but it all went fine. Seems my passport was the only one that got a stamp.
16:30 We are a bit late but Cvetan is about to meet us at the National Football stadium and he will take me to the Bulgarian National radio to do a live interview that will be streaming on the internet. His girlfriend will take the rest to the club to set up and do the soundcheck.
18 Wow… that was a trip. Did a fun interview with three young Bulgarian girls. two asked questions and one did the translation. They were very well researched and asked good intelligent questions. I was really hot and sweaty and thirsty but I think it went well.
19 We had a nice soundcheck and the club is really nice but has no backstage room. Sound was really good
on the stage but I only recorded 5mins of the soundcheck. The guy doing the visuals has a very nice set up and it looks great so far. He incorporates a lot of stuff from our record covers, logos, etc….Sadly we cannot start too early and some friend of Cvetan (Paolo) will do an electronic set before us for like 45 mins.
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| Surbahar (Pavolet) |
00:30 We played a really fantastic gig for about 1hr and 45mins just before midnight we had to stop. People really enjoyed it. I guess there were about 100 people. We had one crazy guy who bought 3 shirts and all the cds and one LP as well. We actually sold quite a lot of stuff considering. I was pretty happy. Met so many nice people.
02:00 We got the 300€ for the gig now as well. The entire band are staying at the Art Hostel that was near the restaurant while there was no space left there so Sabine and I get to go to a hotel. I am really surprised as it is like a super nice three star hotel. We have separate rooms but the entire band could have slept in one of the rooms. It was a long day and I am quite tired.
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| Mattias |
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| OSC Sofia |
Day 4
10:00 Slept well but still not enough sleep. Sabine and I will go to breakfast now. Cvetan will come get us at the hotel and we will drive back to the hostel and get the others. We have to be on the road by 12:30 at the latest. We are supposed to be in Kumonovo for the gig by 17 if possible.
11:30 Had a huge breakfast with ham and cheese omelette, fresh fruit, juice, croissant, etc.. Sabine had one piece of bread with butter and coffee and they took all the food away and closed the buffet.. She was too slow.
15:46 We got some gas and all went well to the border but now, it is totally crazy. They say we need to pay 210€ for insurance for the vehicle to drive in Macedonia since our insurance will not cover us. This is an insane amount of money and we won’t pay that. We only get 100€ for the gig. We called Vlatko and talked with them and nothing happened for hours. Then we got a really nice guy who explained everything and it seems that the rental company screwed up and did not issue us this green card for the vehicle. He said we should be able to get them to pay the 50€ that we had to pay now. Anyway, we can finally go.
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| Band at Macedonian Restaurant |
20:00 We finally got to the club and we just loaded all the gear in and Vlatko and his friends took us out to a traditional Macedonian restaurant. They served us their local schnapps, beer, huge platters of veggies, sausages, bread and this amazing spicy Ivar like stuff. It was the best I had ever had. I had no idea that they were into spacey food in this country. That is great. I wonder if they have a Macedonian restaurant in London? We had a really good time and were in a good mood for the show.
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| Nick on Guitar |
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| OSC Kumanovo |
02:00 After the gig we had to drive about 20km out to the middle of nowhere to this motel to crash. It was an interesting drive, glad that Jiri was driving and not me. Crazy bad roads, dark, a bit forested, lots of corners, etc… Anyway, it was a cool place. I crashed out right away but some stayed up drinking with the nice people from the gig. what an experience.
Day 5
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| Band in the nature in Macedonia |
12:30 We had some coffee, tea and breakfast (cheese omelettes with some tomatoes) and it was very expensive, 1800 Macedonian dinar. like 30€)… We were ripped off for sure.. Oh well. Amazing weather. We took a band photo by the stream.
15:37 It went pretty fast at the Macedonia- Serbia border. It is a nice drive through the mountains in Serbia but so slow going. We still have like 60km to Nis on our way to Zagreb. We took a really nice break at a small place called Tagovisa in Serbia.
17 We are stopped about 200km from Belgrade, so that is still till Zagreb. It will be very late at this rate.
20:21 We are waiting at the Serbian border. The customs guy was really funny and joking with us. We need this stamp on the ATA carnet document and he told us we had to do it like 10km back, but it was a joke. Anyway, we got through quite fast. But now we have to pass the Croatian border now.
22:10 We are in some small Croatian town and going to an Italian restaurant as we are all starving and have not had any real meal since lunch. We are surviving on nuts, fruit, chips, sometimes not that healthy. Still 150km to Zagreb.
23 The pizza in this place was really good actually. I paid the bill for everyone. 260 kuna. It is about 1-1 to Danish kroner.
01:45 We are finally near Aljosha’s mom’s place. Mathias, Sabine and I are sleeping with one of Aljosha’s friends. His apartment is pretty disgusting. Has not been cleaned up in years and he has a cat that apparently just pees, poops wherever it likes as it really smells strongly in this place. We will leave the window open all night for sure! That was a hell of a long drive and day...
Day 6
8:15 Fuck… We had no choice but to get up as we have to get to the club by 15 at the latest for soundcheck. People are quite tired and were really cranky the last evening as we were in the van for 12 hrs yesterday. That was a hell drive. I am really tired.
10:15 We are at the Slovenia border and it took some time which I did not really understand why it was so slow. That was the last time we had to deal with the ATA carnet. Sunny day and a lot of discussion in the van about the bad show in Macedonia since no one could hear each other well but we accepted that we were really to blame for not taking the time to get the sound right, when we could have if we had just taken the time. People were too tired, had too much to drink at the dinner, etc… let’s see the recording says? We have 300km to go.
12 We stopped for gas close to the Austrian border. 83€ to fill the tank with gas. 200km to go. This was an amazing drive through the mountains in Slovenia towards Austria. Wow..
15 We drove through these amazing mountain landscapes like out of a postcard (as Matthias said). There was fresh snow on the ground when we came out of one of the mountain tunnels and everything was white which was quite a shock. I am wearing shorts! We arrived 1hr late and the BW guys are soundchecking first since we are late. Oh well. What a totally cool theatre in the basement of a church. First time we play in Church. This part of town is really amazing and they have done a lot of cool things to decorate the theatre. Baby Woodrose guys are in a good mood and had a great show the night before in a sort of Christiania like squat place in Wien (Vienna).
17:15 We finished a quite difficult soundcheck. The young guy doing sound is very inexperience. This is only his third time doing sound. He basically does not really know what to do. I think it will be totally pointless anyway since Go bananas will set up now and chance everything. Baby Woodrose played Disconnected and Volcano at their soundcheck. Had a nice talk with Guf and the guys and Henrik, who does the driving. I decided to record the show from up front and not at the back as the sound was not good. The PA speakers are not that good and are spaced too far apart. Go Bananas guys are so nice. Hubert and Wolfmaster as so cool. They said that some people in the world if they could have any band in the world come play for them they would choose Metallica or someone like that but for them, we are the band! They listen to us every week. Wow.. that is so fucking cool.
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| Go Bananas (psychedelic stoner rock) |
20:15 Go Bananas have a really cool visuals and play pretty cool melodic, spacey heavy stoner rock stuff with a lot of cool parts. Sound is not very good though unless you are close to the stage. I guess there are 100 people here now. They clearly have a good local finding. Baby Woodrose are at the hotel and most of the band is outside hanging out and smoking. Nick has not eaten anything in nearly a day.
21:45 Baby Woodrose are rocking the place right now and the people are really into it. Very cool and totally different visuals. I had not seen BW for a couple of years now and they still sound great and it is cool with the dual guitars. They have a more full sound. Anders has really improved the sound. They played a lot of songs like opening jam, What a burn, disconnected, drowning man, volcano, baby woodrose, You own it, Bullshit detector>long jam plus many other songs. It was a 75min set. Crowd loved it.
01:15 Even though BW gave us some extra time, it was complete chaos setting all our stuff again and the young sound guy did not know how to give us any monitor sound, etc.. Nick and Mogens were very slow getting set up and we were all standing around waiting and Mogens had this annoying buzz in his line. I had to run out and get Anders from Baby Woodrose to take control and help this guy out. Within 15mins, all was fine and we could actually start to play on a few mins later than planned. I think we played 75mins only though as this all took way too long. They had really cool space visuals, a lot of people took pictures, etc.. 50% of the crowd was gone now probably as it was a Thursday night.
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| OSC Banana Space Festival, Salzburg |
02:00 We are finally at the place we will crash about 20km away. Again. Mattias, Sabine and I will had a real house while the others are in the rehearsal room of Go Bananas. I feel a bit bad but it is for sure best for my back to have a better place to sleep. The guys will be able to get shower at the place tomorrow.
Day 7
10:30 Had a small breakfast and then we had to get going. We are now at the Go Bananas rehearsal place getting the other guys and then back to the venue to get the gear and stuff. pack and go. Amazing weather today and the view of the mountains and the colours of the trees is just fantastic.
12 We were at the store buying some food to eat in the van on the way. People are in a good mood even though this was the 2nd day with only 6hrs sleep. Some can sleep in the van but I cannot so it takes it’s tool. Nick bought no food. Has already had two beers today. Not sure how he does it.
1:06 The traffic getting out of this area was crazy and lots of road work in Austria all the time. took 1hr to go like 20km. Now we can finally getting going.
2:25 We just had a break and have about 200km to go to Feldkirsch. We are passing through Innsbruck and it is amazingly breath-taking here. So beautiful. We have heard Seun Kuti and Korai Öröm 95. Great stuff.
16:20 Wow…we are actually early for a gig and did not get really lost either! Amazing weather and this was the easiest drive for sure. The gig is in a basement. It will be really hot in there.
19:10 We are finished with the soundcheck and it took some time. I had to take the soundman to go pick up the mixer and he said it was 10mins but it was like 20km away in the countryside and the van got assaulted by cows!!!!!!!!!!! They just came out of nowhere. One smashed into the side of the van and made a small scratch with its chain on its neck. All is cool. The soundman was complaining that we played so loud but Mogens and Jiri were out in the room and it was not that loud. He has too sensitive ears for this job. The guys from Stator who open the show and run this cool underground club are super nice people.
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| Stator |
21:15 A decent crowd but Stator has still not started yet. I am really tired and since is is so smoky down stairs I am mostly hanging out upstairs in a backstage room. We have plenty of food, beer, fruit, water, etc… We had a veggie lasagne that was ok. Filling. Mathias is playing some guitar for us in the back stage stuff like Funky 47 by James gang, All Right Now vby Free, etc… We laugh and joke quite a lot. I think Sabine gets a kick out of it that we are not so serious. A bit mad, perhaps.
You can relive or hear the show for the first time here!
Day 8
9:45 People are slowly rising up. Nearly everyone agrees that last night was the best show pity it was not one of the ones that was mulittracked or filmed. Funny, but last night there was not a single person taking pictures or filming besides Sabine. I did not see one. No one on cell phones, people just into it and having a good time in the local club. Another beautiful sunny day but I splet terrible. I will need some coke today for sure. Coke a cola, that is….
01:00 We just had the last break and are about 120km from Würzburg. Weather is amazing. I spoke to Horst on the phone and all is on order and the soundman will be there at 16 latest. The bad news is that Kozmik Klaus had to cancel his light show and there were only like 50 pre- sale tickets but we hope more people show up. Thierry and Wah wah TV people will film and multitrack record the show. That is great. I hopoe we will play well tonight. Vibravoid open the show. We have heard Jefferson Airplane and Kansas today in the van. Pity there might not be any visuals tonight, especially when they are going to film the show.
16:05 We arrived fine ad are setting up for the soundcheck. Horst will be here about 16:45. It is really hot in the club. We have a great place to set up the merch tonight as well.
18:15 Vibravoid is soujdchecking now. They are really nice guys and wer are sharing the drum kit and bass amp and they will let us use some of their visual projectors but not all of them. The pizza will arrive in a few minutes. The mood is good Soundcheck went pretty well.
18:55 Vibravoid are playing and fuck, they are so amazing. They opened with Astronomy Domine by Pink Floyd. I guess about 50 people are here. They did not play some of the songs I expected and they ended with a long freakout version of Mother Sun by CAN. Amazing band.
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| Vibravoid |
01:00 Well, that was the last show of the tour. We started about 20:30 and the first stet was more or less a disaster. Mogens was having huge problems with his gear (monitor died, his delay unit is fucking up). Nick was in a strange stoned-out of it state and could not get enough volume, broke a string and just walked off in the middle of a jam, which was really annoying. He could have waited until the jam ended. He was in his own zone and did not think about it was being filmed and recorded,.. just left… We have an ok opening jam but it was not that good. The 2nd set was when we really got going but this was also when Mogens had to replace his delay. The sound was finally good for everyone on the stage. The crowd was really digging what we were doing, especially Horst, who was really so happy we were there playing for him again. He even invited us back to the Psychedelic Network Nov 6th, 2013. We will be the first band to play twice! Wow… People are really buying out records today and also shirts. So nice.
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| OSC Cafe Cairo, Würzburg |
The 2nd to last track in the 3rd set was one of the most amazing pieces of music we played on the tour, Nick played just a mindblowing beautiful guitar solo. I was blown away and then Mathias tried to follow and was also brilliant. The sets on my recorder were 65, 72 and 51min but my recorded had stopped so I am sure I missed some of the end. Horst he also recorded the show as well as the multitrack. Lots of other pics and video were taken as well. It was a great night a fantastic venue to play. It was after 2 when we crashed at the hostel. I was totally busted.
Check out this cool long show.....Here..
http://www.archive.org/details/OSC2012-10-20.FLAC
Day 9
We were up at 8 to get on the road to catch the ferry to Denmark from Germany at 18:15, one of the few times that I could book as they were all booked up.
10:00 We are just leaving now, 30mins later than we had planned I will drive fast. I always drive first as it is good for my back and I am usually fresh tos tart the day compared to the others. No one has been drunk or hung over the entire tour but they smoke way too much and this probably takes several hrs out of our days, playing time, etc… It would be so nice to have a tour with no smokers.
14:00 Sabine is driving into Hamburg. We are about 120km away so this is good time. We need to leave her place for the ferry no later than 16. A bit before if possible. Listened to Pothead, Justtreb (new band from Niko from 7 that Spells). Amazing weather today. The fog in Würzburg was intense and also in some of the valleys….
It was a fantastic time and tour and we could not have managed without Sabine. We really owe her a lot. We hope to make some sort of tour DVD from all the great pictures and video she took. You can see more pictures on our web site listed below.
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