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April 17, Muenster
When not repairing my fuzztone, Francesco has other things to maintain...
The Hot Jazz Club in Muenster.
Last time we played here it was summertime and it was, indeed, a very hot gig.
Ah, such is fame: this is the mensroom door
A colorful dressing room
Brothers:
Loading into the van after the show...
A long drive tomorrow - we won't go all the way to Switzerland, but will go 6 or 7 hours, then stop in France,
leaving a short drive the following day.
The venue in Pratteln is yet another unusual one. A club located upstairs in a shopping mall.
But sound is good, people are friendly (well, not the proprietor of the pet food store across the hall ... he's complaining of the volume
at soundcheck, and I wonder if that's a daily occurrance here... I see the last band was called
Inner Pig Dog... I can't believe they weren't loud!)
Great chairs in this club ... it's like a living room...
Nice night for us, and another place we've visited for the first time.
So, tomw. we head off to Istanbul for the final show of this tour leg.
April 20, Istanbul
Well, we're not there yet. Today will be one of those a day in the life trips.
Because it involves a flight, morning finds us outside our Pratteln hotel, rearranging
things in our luggage to try to minimize the overweight charges!
Then arriving at Basel airport
Nice and early... so we wait...
Soon enough, we arrive in Istanbul...
not really 'soon enough', because the flight was delayed an hour (I'm noticing a theme here!) and we were cutting it
close even without the delay.
We arrived to Istanbul airport at 7pm - soundcheck was supposed to start then, at 7pm for 9pm doors open and 10 pm show ...
Traffic here is such that it's an hour or more to get into the city...
Quite a spacious bus for us, though!
and we arrive at the venue, scurrying in to setup, knowing we don't have time for our normal soundcheck.
The show begins, pretty much right out of soundcheck...
Not a lot of people in Istanbul know about us, but it was a very appreciative audience that came, and we managed to scramble
together our sound, during the show... so it was another fine night for us. I'll hope we get to return to Istanbul on a
future tour.
The day not quite over for us -- by 1am we had signed cd's and posed for pictures with those who stayed, and the gear was
packed up - time to go to the hotel.
By 1:30 we're heading for our rooms ... lobby call is... 3:45 am(!) for the 5:45am flight to Germany, then connection
to the flight home. One of those
memorable road days for sure.
This brings to a close the European leg of our Stick Men Spring tour.
It's been a lot of fun, and we're very grateful to
Francesco Grieco, who put it all together and drove most of it too!
And to Robert Frazza, doing our sound every night, and
much more.
Also to each of the local promoters, who took a chance on booking us, to help us bring our music to different areas.
And most of all to the great, supportive audiences, who make it all worthwhile!
Before long we'll have a downloadable recording of the best of the performances from this tour - we've already begun going
through the many board tapes of the shows. I'll put that link right
here when it's ready.
Next up for us: we're trying to arrange shows in Russia in June, and in the U.S. in the Fall. Those will be up on the main
page of this site as they become confirmed.
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