gonkulair

Well, it’s Show Day. Sure we’ve had a bunch of them before, but this one is a little different, it’s in Dublin, the bands homecoming for the tour. Today is the first of 3 shows, catering to about 82000 people tonight. We arrived this morning around 8:20am and it was raining lightly. This is the reason I leave my hotel window and curtains open, I remembered to bring my rain gear. I make the trip to catering for breakfast taking care to not step on the glistening terraplast with anything less than respect. The terraplast is used to cover the pitch for heavy foot traffic, and it can be slippery when it’s wet, despite the tractive surface they try to give it. Breakfast was good, cereal and english muffin for me. Yesterday we had some caveats and today there are more. We don’t have parking passes, the fans are going to be in our tunnel on the way out and the electrical power is waning. Well, I’ve got to check the band and management areas for connectivity, so I’m off to work.

We started loading into Croke Park this morning. This is quite an interesting stadium, we’re expecting about 82,000 fans to show up for each of the three shows. Which means that roughly 1 in 16 Irish will see the concert, this is of course ignoring the possibility of foreigners and repeat attendances. The other interesting part of this stadium is that in 1920 the massacre against the Irish people known as “Bloody Sunday” occurred here. The band sings a song “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and I’m guessing that song will be sung and felt by all in attendance. I’m very anxious for these shows, because it’s a homecoming for the band, and the Irish get quite wild at these concerts. I’m also excited for the day off on Sunday after the first two shows.

Sorry readers, I’ve finally got a hotel room with internet access, I keep trying to make posts at the gigs, but I’m kept constantly distracted by users and internet problems. I’d be lying if I said that it’s cooler in Europe, but it’s not. It’s been really hot and London was killer. It was neat to see, despite not having but 6 hours of free time really. The stadiums have been kind of a pain in the butt, because of long distances and some of the gear we have doesn’t seem to like European power that much, despite the transformers we’re using. I think it’s the cycles, in the US we have 60 cycles per second or Hertz(Hz) and in Europe it’s almost all 50Hz. I think it’s because they have the metric system. OK, so I don’t really know why. The good news is, my powerbook loves it, it hasn’t had a single problem, nor has any of the great “backup gear” I brought. Back to the drawing board for our equipment provider. I’m posting some pictures, and since it posts them by the date they were taken, they will most likely be before this post. I’m going to start dedicating 20 minutes in the morning and evening specially for posting, so hopefully I can post more regularly. I’m doing fine and loving it over here, it’s great to see new things, even if it is from the bus or shuttle windows. I’m looking forward to the day off here in Dublin and I’m going with some friends to some cool places, I’ll definitely post pictures and descriptions, if they are PG rated. We have 3 shows here in Dublin, the band’s stomping grounds, so it should be interesting. I like this city very much and went for about a 6 mile walk today, but didn’t buy anything except dinner, probably because I only have US Dollars, because that’s how we get per diem. Well, off to bed for me, again.

just don’t have to wait, because I’m already here. Where did that beautiful aluminum jet fuel bird drop me? Brussels, Belgium in the good old E. of U. , That’s European Union. We’re playing at the Stadium in Brussels on Friday the 10th of June. It’s going to be awesome, but until then I’m hoping I can get some other stuff done. I went out a wondering, and as soon as I get my computer back up to speed, I’ll post some beautiful pictures from my first day in Europe. As for my brothers wedding, it was fun, stressful for some (not me) but fun. I’ll be retroactively putting up a couple pictures as soon also. Well, I thought I’d have more time, but the shuttle is leaving and I still have to walk half a klik to the office to grab my jacket. Auf Viedersehen. (I think that’s right)