The Rebels in Recklinghausen

We are back on the road again. Arrived to Recklinghausen yesterday after a smooth and easy flight (not in business class though but oh well you cannot have it all. At least not all the time.) We are here to do 6 shows at the Ruhrfestspiele and rumor has it that our shows are sold out! Liking Germany very much already!

Not much going on in this town on a Sunday evening.

Not everything has been going as smoothly as the flight and the sold out shows.. When we came to the hotel last night we were kindly told that all the twin-bed rooms were occupied (even if something else was promised us in emails ) so we would have to manage with double beds. If it would only have been the double bed problem things could probably have worked out between us and the hotel, but it was also about broken windows, rooms so small you couldn´t fit a suitcase in it and trains passing by so close you woke up to the snoring of the train passengers, if you by any chance had manage to fall asleep in the over-heated rooms while the hotel manager was out in the lobby solving his problems with a load and clear voice. So after one night we said thank you and goodbye and moved to another hotel. 

Oh yes and in between this there was the incident with the receptionist wanting to call the police since we didn´t want to pay for two nights even if we stayed for only one. Let´s just say we are not welcome there anymore. 

This is our current hotel and we love it! And by the way, did I mention it is so sunny and hot and we will all be red as a crayfish tomorrow (directly translated from Swedish).

Soundchecking. Well actually having a small beer break. But working hard nevertheless.

The festival staff seems very nice and already invited us to a barbeque party tomorrow. (I guess they haven´t heard about the hotel incident...)

Here are some ideas on what to do when you are in Germany and go out with good friends and get some glowing sticks in your drinks.

Glasses.

Weird mouth.

Even more weird mouth.

Chong-what?

Chongqing, China. That´s where we spent last weekend, in one of the biggest cities in the world with approximately 32 millions habitants. Why, one might ask? Well it all begun with a phone call from Finnair with the very common question "would you like to perform on an airplane on a flight to Chongqing?" To which we answered "yes, of course. Chong-what?"

First there was the soundcheck. The sound system on board an aircraft is of course slightly different to what we are used to and as you can sense on Gregs expression he is not totally convinced.

At least the loudspeakers were nice looking and easy to carry on...We had four of these which covered about ten rows at a time.

Backstage. There is always time to pose. This time the time was limited because just as we were ready to start singing the Captain turned on the seat belt sign because of heavy turbulence and we had to go back to our seats. The guy in the seat next to me gave me a very strange and a bit scared look...

Performing up in the air. Our audience had literally nowhere to run but luckily they didn´t seem to mind at all. We divided the aircraft into five sections and moved our "loadspeakers" between every performance. And as always the wildest party was happening in the back of the plane.

Afterwards champagne. Of course. In Finnish designed glasses. Of course.

We arrived to Chongqing early Thursday morning. The city is a mix of high technology/high fashion/high humidity/cars/people/more people/Chinese language/ spicy food/ grocery stores where a woman actually chops the hen´s head off before you put it in your Louis Vuitton bag on your way home/blinking lights/ very load pop music from not so good loudspeakers/friendly people/not so much English/local people taking pictures of tall giants from Europe with big noses/ very few Europeans.

We had time to do a short cruise on the Yangtze river. We took pictures of the city, the Chinese took pictures of us.

We had some very delicious local street food, no idea what we ate but it was good! I did try to show that I wanted chicken, with the moves and everything, but maybe the chickens move differently in Chongqing because the Chinese cook just looked at me like I was insane.

Yes, we did work as well, we had a concert at a party arranged by Finnair. In the beginning the audience was a bit like question marks even if Jonte did his absolutely best to speak some fluent Chinese but when the second set started people where up dancing and singing along. Did I mention it is humid in Chongqing?

Greg had his own groupies. Look at his happy smile.

When it was time to fly home Finnair had a surprise for us. Business class! It is a quite mean thing to do because how can we ever fly tourist class after this?

Happy people flying home to Helsinki. Thank you Chongqing and Finnair.
Next week we have some Casino shows in Helsinki and then we are off to the German Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen!

Spring poses

It´s been a busy week. After a month of laying low we finally had a concert at Sellosali last Thursday. It felt awesome to perform again and a big Thank You goes to the great crowd in Espoo! But before we got this far a couple of things had to be done...

Here is a quick update on what has been going on:

First Jontes wife had to give birth to this wonderful little baby girl. She is already giving Jonte a hard time: "who are you and what am I doing here?".

Then we met at our new rehearsal studio. Yes, now we finally feel like a real rock-n-roll band. It might not be as pretty as our former studio but we really love this space. And Greg says the acoustics is so much better. I wouldn´t know.

Then there was the soundcheck. Someone is trying to lift up the spirit a bit. In the front you can see one of the staff members from Sellosali helping us pull some cables. The staff there is the best!

Then there was the show. Oh, did I mention that we have been practising some Tai-chi. This is Kaspers verison of the Golden cockerel.

Here we have the Grasp the Sparrows tail á la Jonte.

This is Anna doing the Snake creeps Down.

And finally the White Crane spreads it´s Wings by me.

In two days we are going to Asia. Maybe we should practise a bit more on our tai-chi poses before showing them over there. Or?