So, another tour’s come to an end; time to go home and do laundry; prepare for the next one (I’ve got 14 days – seems like an eternity now).
We’ve seen it all, sun, rain, snow, wind. good travelling, bad travelling… But most of all, good shows.
The most memorable moments from this tour will probably be Obituary not making it to the London gig, and the Glauchau “incident”. The latter was a whole avalanche of weird events following eachother up rapidly.
First, our bus got molested by German people shouting – let’s call them ‘political’ – statements towards the bands and crew. Local police were called in, but heavily outnumbered (2 police officers to 10+ on the other side), being very reluctant to actually intervene, or at the very least, attempt to disperse our assaillants.
The side door to our nightliner had been broken by the aggressors, managing to break the hydraulic system, as they jammed the door while the bus driver attempted to close it after the last of our band and crew got on.
Police actually alleged we had broken that door ourselves.
With police being unwilling to intervene, we were now facing our next hurdle, trying to set off with an open door that was impossible to close.
Yours truly managed to improvise, as improvising goes, on getting that to be as closed as possible (and remember, this is the middle of winter, and cooooold).
Two leather belts, a bed cover, tape (there’s always tape involved; it’s what holds the unvierse together, after all) and many bin liners were used to achieve that.
As we were travelling in the opposite direction of where we should be going (towards the northeast, to a garage, rather than southwest to our next country), we got stranded on the highway’s on ramp (Can you believe it? it was raining ice, and we’d come to a full stop on the ramp, with no way to move either forward or backward, due to a complete loss of grip), and finally waiting again, we had a 1000+ km trip ahead of us, and had just lost a good 12 hours.
But don’t be fooled, we also had very good times on tour; the tour was made up of three very varied bands; every night, Maroon would open the show; a German metalcore band, who were very clear about their diet backstage ;), then it was time for Samael, Swiss industrial, danceable, gothic, black (?) metal band, that made all the crowd to “dance to a heathen tribe”. And it was Obituary’s honour and task to get the crowd to go completely nuts with their Florida death metal; and so they did, every single night.
So, thank you Obituary, Samael, Maroon (“Vegan poo smells too”), Bobo (“Jawohl”), Big Shirt (“Hit it!”), Kenny (“Don’t lose your brain”), Richie (“Apples are healthy”), Robin (“Where did you hide my loafs this time?”), David, Peter (and his endless number of 2nd drivers), see you all on the road somewhere soon again!
