Monday 20 January 2014

MAN-EAGLE TOUR 2013: Blog [Part 3]


Day 3… “Sunny Afternoon”

We wake up sweating our tits off in our tents!! It's so damn hot... Sunny afternoon is an understatement. Luckily for us we're camped backstage next to the festival cabins & facilities, where there is an outside tap fully equipped with hose. We put that to good use immediately! We're not sure how it's going to be playing in this heat in a few hours time!! It sure is good to no longer be stuck inside that van though!!

We're onstage around 2.30pm, it is easily the hottest gig any of us has played. Ever. Constant sweat pouring off our faces, fingers dripping, slipping from the strings and sticks!! Literally!! After successfully pulling that one off we feel ready for anything, any gig anywhere would be a piece of piss after that one!! After we come offstage it's straight back to the Hose…!!

Whilst wandering around the festival site we discover Langos, a kind of tomato garlic bread (there's garlic in EVERYTHING over here!! Lucky we all love garlic...) It totally sorted us out though…! The bar is token only, so we have to predict how much beer we're going to consume & hand over the equivalent note (which in Slovakia is next to nothing, less than 1 Euro a pint!!) There's going to be no sleep for us! We learn our first Czech word in context - "Pivo!" (beer) This easily becomes the most used word in our vocabulary, along with "dobre pivo!" - good beer! (and "curva dobre pivo!" - fucking good beer!)

Some people befriend us from the hippy/alternative stall (which has some cool clothes, and other things). There's this one woman in particular who speaks absolutely no English whatsoever, but she loves us and keeps talking to us - we somehow manage to communicate by mime - Hilarious..!! She buys us loads of shots of a Slovakian liquor called 'Slivovice' and we head off into the rave tent...

Phrase of the tour - "WHAT GWARNS ON TOUR STAYS ON GWARN"
This punctuates the whole trip from here on in! (Maybe you had to be there...)

Here is a picture of a futuristic style cigarette booth we found amusing, like something out of Blade Runner!

You wouldn't see that back in the UK! We feel strangely privileged.

As the night draws on we head back to the main arena, Pete has told us about some of the bands on the bill who are big names in Czech Republic. Sometime later we're sat stageside and we’re pretty wasted, the one headline band have left the stage, stopped playing. We start talking to them about what’s happening and it seems to be something to do with their payment. They're not going back on til they see the money! Now we’re worrying about OUR payment, as we've not had our money either, and this is the bulk of what will cover our costs for the tour... Plus if they've not paid them, and they're a well known band... (This turns out fine though! Phew...)

>>>> Click here for Part 4 "All Day & All Of The Night" <<<<<


TO BE CONTINUED...

Sunday 12 January 2014

MAN-EAGLE TOUR 2013: Blog [Part 1]

VAULT OF EAGLES + MANSIZE ON THE ROAD TO SLOVAKIA


Soundtrack – The Kinks

*First lesson learned from tour!! (And not by any means the last, as you'll see) - relying on an ipod, the van we ended up with had NO AUX IN so just 1 cd for the whole journey (well ok it was a double album so there were technically 2 cds)...

DAY 1: "Dead End Street"
[20 - 23 JUNE – On The Road from the UK to HRKO fest - Slovakia/Romania border - journey time: 36 hours]

BAAAAAD start as everything seems to begin to go wrong before it's even really started..!
First of all we're waiting for hours wondering where Pete The Czech is with the van, then when Pete finally arrives with the van it has problems. So we have to take it all the way back to (Walsall?) before heading back over to Worcester. By this point we're wondering if we're going to have to cancel everything. We've already had to accept our ferry would have left without us... :-0

Tour quote No. 1: [Mari] "Bullshittery!!!"

Finally though, we're all in the van leaving Worcester just after 4pm (5 hours behind schedule) and heading for the later ferry, Rob's cracked open the bottle of Aldi's finest champers, and we're ON OUR WAY!! :-D

>>>>> LINK TO DAY 2: "Waterloo Sunset" <<<<<<