May 19th, 2013
So, the last blog saw us arriving in Amsterdam. We’ve got a night off with some PDs* and we’re not afraid to use them. And use them we did! Go hard, or go home – that was our motto!
So we went hard!
……..and then after about an hour we realised we didn’t have it in us so we did, indeed, go home. After we had had a curry and a couple of drinks, we jumped in a taxi and went back to the hotel and I was in bed by 11.30.
Yes folks, this is rock and roll geriatric style …….
To be fair, we had been up most of the previous night on the trip from Paris when the mood was high and the the drink was flowing freely so an early night was probably always on the cards.
The next day was a show day and we left the hotel at midday to head down to the venue which was on the outskirts of central Amsterdam.
The North Sea Jazz Club is another intimate venue which is renowned for putting on shows by artists whom you would not expect to see in such a small room – hence the tickets costing only slightly less than a family car!
Sound check was at 3.00pm but, as any brass player will tell you, the first day and a half (2 hours – I’m exaggerating) is spent listening to the drummer clobbering stuff and the keyboard player moaning that someone has changed all his patches (whatever they are?) so Mickey and I decided to jump in a cab and go to the Rijksmuseum for a little cultural interlude.
What they didn’t tell us before we left is that Rijksmuseum is Dutch for “massive queue” so we didn’t actually get to go in there. We wandered aimlessly around the canals for a couple of hours, had a coffee and paid another million euros for a cab back to the venue. The best laid plans…….
So, back to the venue to discover that the acoustics were so dead it was like blowing into a wet duvet. By the end of the sound check we had resigned ourselves to the fact that it was going to be hard work that night.
Nice acoustics! – Walter Jacquis, Front of House Sound
Still, nil desperandum. We’re pros right?
Damn right! The gig turned out to be another blinder.
Due to an extended bout of laughing on the bus on the way up from Paris, Lisa was a little worried about her throat, which was clearly sounding a little husky before we went on. However, once we got started you would never have known anything was wrong. She wowed the crowd and tore the roof off. We had a great night. The band was tight and I discovered Vodka & Red Bull!
Jeez, it makes you play well!!
North Sea Jazz Club – 18th May 2013
We came off stage around 11.00pm to rapturous applause but the bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until 2.00am (we’ve got to time it right so we don’t arrive at the Berlin hotel before our rooms are ready) so we had 3 hours to kill. What were we going to do??
To be honest, I can’t remember a lot of what we did but I suspect it was fun because I had a sore throat and a headache when I woke up in my bunk outside the Radisson Blu in Berlin at 10.30 this morning.
As usual, there follows some photographic evidence that this blog is not a CIA plot.
Bis morgen……
*PDs – Per Diems – a daily cash amount given by way of subsistence but which is actually spent on moose heads!
Pre-show dinner
Post-show Mojitos
Our Hotel’s got a dirty great fish tank in the middle of it!