This is a report by Claus Berninger Manager at the Colos-Saal in Germany. I shortened, translated and used it without permission.

Event-Manager - a dream job. Spending half of your day in a comfortable office counting money, phone a bit and in the afternoon meet your friends at the tennis court. F*ck - why does that never happen to me? Here are three days from my life:

Monday October 26th, 4 pm, Colos-Saal
Time to leave. The next few days are going to be exhausting: The New York Voices, David Sanborn, Molly Hatchett, Paddies and the Jazz Crusaders are going to perfrom in our club. Suddenly: a fax from Paris. "David Sanborn is going to arrive one day earlier" A short sentence that changes my day. Addtional hotel rooms have to be book, transportation for the band and their luggage has to be arranged...

Tuesday 27th
The New York Voices have just arrived and turned out to be a bunch of sweethearts. In the middle of the hearty hello a phonecall from Budapest arrives. The caller seems to be the tour manager of David Sanborn with bad news: Don Alias lies ill, some of the luggage is lost and David Sanborn has a chronical stomach-complaint. That's all I can understand, because a) the guy is speaking with a horrible Scottish accent and b) the drummer is fooling around with his snare.

I tell New York Voice that David Sanborn is going to arrive earlier and was invited to come to their concert by me. That was a mistake as I soom learn: some time ago their keyboader's wife cheated on her husband with one of the Sanborn clan. Sh*t, if anyone is bruised tomorrow I'll know why.

9.30 pm, main stage
The New York Voices are performing, my mobile phone rings. The plane has just arrived but the band's luggage are search through at the airport. Sure, musicans and drugs, what else?Five minutes later: Wullie - the Scot - calles again. the luggage is okay, but David Sanborn needs papayas and pineapples tonight. Searching in the kitchen, I find a single, battered pineapple. Organisation is everything.

But Wullies calles again, complaining about the fierce rain. "Your weather is dangerous." As if I could do anything about that. "But you're the manager" Is that British humour?
He also has further instructions about the menue for David Sanborn: fatfree vegetables, unspiched turkey, salad without dressing. If I had to eat that, my stomach would be complaining, too. Then the busses with the musicans arrive: everybody is hungry. A call from the hotel: Sanborn senses tariyaki sauce in food, if we wanted to kill him? Out chief is angry, he doesn't even know how to spell tariyaki. But shorty after, Wullie calles: Sanborn is both alive and content.

wednesday 28th
Sanborn's backline arrives via truck, but suddenly the stage manager is unable to find some of the luggage, very important pieces, in fact. We search everywhere, but they are no where to be found. "We must have lost them at the airport" Great, I phone Frankfurt and try to charm the lady at the airport into sending the luggage. She alone, I tell her, can save the concert of a saxophone legend. She is melting.
6 pm
Time for the sound check, but when we learn that the rowdies have lost luggage before, we decide not to increase the unemployment rate of the USA and make up a technical problem.
When the luggage arrives, everything else is just routine: sound check, press conference, concert and then David Sanborn's handshake: "You guys have a preatty nice club with a lot of atmosphere. Thanks for your hospitality". Tomorrow I'll buy a box of pineapples and papayas - just in case.