Today was nice
and lazy. We didn’t have to board the boat until 7pm so there was time to change
strings, go to town again etc.
I can’t say I would recommend the Hotel
Scandic to be honest… it’s the only hotel in the port area and it suffers from “
monopoly-itis” (I can’t think of another word) but the people had a bad attitude
and the hotel had some extremely weird policies… I’ll say no more!!
By the time the hotel had finished pushing
everyone out of their rooms we gathered in the lobby and moved over to the ferry
terminal to our “private and well-supplied VIP lounge” which was full of total
strangers and had plenty of cold coffee!! Doesn’t really bother me but people
really shouldn’t make promises!! But the trash can in the toilet was fully
automatic… honest!
It didn’t take long to get on the boat,
though we had to dodge a lot of extremely drunk people who were trying to get
off of it!! Apparently, this ferry, which runs from Stockholm, Sweden to Turku,
Finland is a popular week-end “getaway” thing where people plan to get as drunk
as possible for as long as possible and stock up on duty-free liquor at more or
less the same time. As I recall we saw something similar on the ferry from
Stockholm to Helsinki but don’t get me wrong… I am not judging these people, God
knows I have had enough of my own “moments” in life but it’s a sorry sight when
you see it with a clear head!! And it taught me something too.
No one was really sure what the order of
things was so I retired to my cabin to rest for a while… it was going to be a
very late night!
My siesta lasted about 45 minutes and then we
found the artist food area and snacked for a bit.
The boat was jammed with bands and people
trying to look like they were in bands but it seemed everyone was ready to have
a long rock & roll party so I was looking forward to the show with a mixture of
the usual anticipation and a bit of trepidation, mainly because of the apparent
lack of organisation and solid information about sound checks and stuff like
that.
And of course it all started to run late
which didn’t help much.
We were assigned a nice room to hang out in
and prepare for the show but sound check, at least as I normally know it, was
obviously out of the question and we ended up waiting (we’ve done a lot of that)
for our gear to be set up so we could check everything out… in front of a lot of
people. I’ve done this before and it’s never easy or entirely satisfactory but
Magne and Petter had done a good job of setting up, running line-checks etc. so
there was hope!
And finally we were ready… and so was the
audience. We blazed through the first few songs and by the end of July Morning
the place was genuinely rocking, assisted by the movements of the boat of
course!
They clapped, stomped and sang along and it
was a really great show, if a little rough around the edges! After two encores I
had no voice left so we scurried to our room/hiding place and had a small
celebration.
We had finished at 4am and there was still
another band to play before a break in the action and the first band of the
“next day”.
The boat was sold out and that meant 1750
paying customers and they made a lot of noise! Good noise when we were playing!!
Add to that about 300 musicians, accompanied by important looking hangers-on
with all sorts of irrelevant laminates (some of whom were wearing t-shirts with
profound messages on them like… ”legalize murder”) and you probably get the
picture!!
Petter told me that the boat had made a stop
on the way to load up more beer!! I don’t doubt it…
I enjoyed this. I had never played on a boat
before so that’s one more for my personal history book. We were told by some
sober people that this was the best concert of any of these cruises and that was
good to hear. Not sure if I believe it but that’s irrelevant really.
After an hour or so of winding down I
couldn’t stay awake any longer so I crept to my cabin and got to bed around
5:30.
I would
think a lot about this event… but that’s for tomorrow!!
