for some reason i always feel tired and demotivated before a gig, same this time. while i was driving up there i got the call from our bassplayer – they wanted us to start an hour early. we were booked to play from 20:00 until midnight and now we had to start on 19:00 but still play til 0:00. great. we really weren’t sure if we’d be able to do the set as planned in the first place because – as i mentioned before – we hadn’t seen each other in eight months. so basically this meant to put together an additional set of songs out of thin air. usually no problem but with such a long pause…quite a challenge.

so we stalled them until 19:30 :-) played our show and in the end did another five songs to close the time gap. this worked out pretty well, no one noticed and we could finish without losing our faces. hey, creativity is part of the job and besides it’s just not ok to want an additional hour without paying for it. but those guys book us more or less frequently so no chance of letting them down…

anyway, the gig was a bit harder than usually because we had to fight memory loss the whole evening. look at this picture to see what i mean. so not only caring about saving energy to last 4.5 hours, precision and power but also standing the heat around and on the stage (i drank only 6 bottles of water, for some reason not as much as usual) plus remembering all those lines. i’m used to sing free and kind of improvise because usually i can count on my memory but after so long…. it was thrilling alright, i felt like a newbie again – ok, not quite. maybe an experienced newbie…..uhm…..oh well.

the mixman was a real pro, woohoo. it’s hard to find people who know what they’re doing (not only at mixing boards). he did an extraordinary job. we had a perfect stage sound and some neat effects as well…

but the audience was the same as always, not people-wise…moodwise. you start to play at 19:30 when there’s not many people there and those who already found the way to the venue aren’t really motivated at this time of the evening. so you’re playing maybe two hours until they finally begin to warm up, maybe longer. now when they’re as hot as you want them to be, the gig is almost over and they won’t let you stop because for them it has just begun – that’s when you’ve played for four hours already…

we were lucky this time though because it was open air and the permission to be loud expired at midnight. the crowd was really satisfied, we gave some autographs (don’t ask me why, we’re as unfamous as it gets…), some women hit on us – business as usual ;-)

i’m looking forward to the next gig on august 30th, it’s a wedding so no official crowd but better food :-) i have to say though, i’m feeling kind of tired and demotivated already…