Munich...
Fri 20 Nov 2009 | Views: 2189 | Comments: 8
Hello.
We are now about a week into our tour supporting Muse around the enormodomes of mainland Europe. So far, we have been to Rotterdam, Köln, Paris, and Zurich, finding ourselves today in Munich (or München if you're from these parts)
It has been a fairly pleasant way to continue into Europe, after finishing our UK tour at Brixton Academy a week ago. We start our day with a light lunch. Sometimes the band will get soundcheck, but more often than not, there isn't time due to the doors opening at an early hour each day, and Muse's show requiring an awful lot of prep and checks before they're sure its ready. After the doors open, the band go onstage around 7.30pm each night, and are offstage by 8.15pm. After that, its time for dinner, and showers, before watching some of Muse's extraordinary show. Good times. It isn't really that relaxed though, it just makes us all feel a bit better to paint it that way.
Tonight, we start the first of 6-in-a-row... 6 shows in a row... Its probably one or two too many to be quite honest, but everyone is in agreement that its important to make these happen - the Muse show in Barcelona moved forwards a few days, from the 27th to the 24th, which slots in after our headline show in Köln...
Unfortunately, its a hell of a drive to get from Köln to Barcelona, but the band were adamant at not having to move or lose any further shows from the schedule. So we'll do our utmost to make it work...
So what else has been going down... Our evenings have been relatively relaxed... One night, we watched Bruno... another, we watched some shit horror movies... Most recently, we attempted to watch Max Payne, as it was the only thing on the tour-bus hard drive that we hadn't seen. It was shit, needless to say. After Paris, we went out for a few casual cocktails with the Muse guys (or, as casual as a cocktail can ever be, I suppose..).
In Rotterdam we had a reasonably early night.
So, nothing to crazy to report unfortunately. Most notably, has been the conspicuous absence of the outside world. The venue are all arenas, which perch magnificently on the edge of town, and are like little self-contained worlds unto themselves... Some even have their own streets named after them.
And so, we haven't actually seen a huge amount of the cities that we have so far visited. We travel overnight to Bologna tonight, where we eagerly anticipate a locally themed menu, of bolognese. My personal favourite variety of bolognese is currently rigatoni. Its far better than a penne.
After that, we go to Lyon, where there will apparently be 17,000 on the floor alone... You can fit 16,000 into the O2 Arena in London, including the seats around the side... so thats quite a lot of people standing in one area.
More updates to come, in which we hopefully liven the fuck up a bit and do something interesting, which I can report, on this very page. Time to scoot, as Muse are about to use their lasers, and we keep missing that part...
TMNeil.