Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

Yumm, the self indulgence of wanting something and having it come to you is a wonderful sensation. Such is the case with many things and one of those things is room service. Oh the anticipation, what delicious delectable's will appear on the push cart covered in metal caps.

With expectations nearly as high as the prices, surely a feast fit for a king will soon arrive as of course I am the king of this rent-a-room for at least another 4 hours. The unveiling occurs, stunned my heart skips a beat, behold upon thine eyes the magnificence.

Where to start and how to proceed races through my mind as I find myself devouring the radish chip. How could they have known that I love fancy cut radishes on slightly soggy chips and poached egg balls on micro toasts?

Today we play Amsterdam, or more accurately Nijmegen (pronounced nigh-megen) and I was slated for an hour plus van ride into the gig but there has been a change of plans and the vans won't be coming. With the 'main show' crew already onsite and myself doing a bit of straying from the roadie herd into the band camp, it looks like we will be taking an alternate form of transport over the traffic jam.

I love adventures and have been in these things several times but they never cease to feel like they are about to fall out of the air. Noisy and a bit of motion sickness but view was wonderful. Next stop, rock.

And there she blows, full double hung V-Dosc rig plus side hangs totaling 90 of the big boxes pushing sound from the main stage. Plus loads of subs!

And a few our friends that came to listen

Some people get a better view of the show than others and if you look in the lower left of the picture above the picture above, it looks like our pal in the hat is going to get the short end of the stick. But not for long as mini super hero Scott the Lampi points out the predicament and rally's the FOH'ers to grab a few road cases and some plywood for a fix.

Then, a few days after the gig, our friend in the hat sends Scotty an email, I guess he does some video work and is known as the Rolling Dutchman.

If you have looked at a lot of show photos, you may notice something a bit different in the shot below.

For some of the shows on this tour we have added full motion video screen in front of the sound system. These "soft," flexible and fairly transparent video screens do effect the sound a bit but the cool look factor is huge.

Night night, good morning! Wake up time and fly to Belgrade, Serbia. I admit I expected some surprises entering a land I have never been to

But it did catch me a bit off guard to find out that they do not allow dogs to smoke cigarettes when cats are nearby.

Next episode, lets take a look around.

Dave Rat