SunriseAve ITALY

SA DIARY 09 lug 2008: Summer Touring and Studio Work

We are flying from Bucharest (Romania) to Warsaw (Poland) for a day off. We started our trip this weekend by playing a show at the NRJ in the park festival in Berlin on Saturday. Everything seemed pretty ok that day. I actually had slept very well before the night before the take off in Helsinki and in Berlin the weather was just amazing. As the crew guys did the sound check and made things ready for the show at the venue, we were swimming and exercising at the gym / pool area of the very comfortable hotel.

The stage in Berlin was built on water. Very cool with the 20 meter catwalk but the only down side was that the audience was on the beach and in the water and they could not get close to us. They were maybe some 20 meters away at the closest spot. You can't really create a real contact with the crowd if you can't see and feel them. But the stage was really cool. I guess there are still pictures in the web at NRJ Berlin website. They took us to the stage with a "bay watch" boat ;=)

The show was very hard. When we started playing Chose to be me as the first song, I had to take off my earphones. The sound was so loud that I had almost tears coming from my eyes. Something just happened. Sami's ears are still not ok (after 2 days) and we hope he will recover. He can't really sleep because there is this high tone playing in his head. I had never seen Sami that angry before. Our monitor-guy missed his flight in the afternoon because the flight company had over booked the plane (so not his fault) so he was not there at the sound check. If the audience wouldn't have been that good, I probably would have walked off stage after the second song. It was very painful.

But we made all 6 songs and I hope it wasn't too bad for the crowd. These things just happen every now and then, I guess, and there's not much you can do about it when you're already there with your guitar.

The police had blocked the roads to Berlin after our show when the festival was over. They estimated we'd have to wait there at the beach for 2 hours before the cops would let us drive away. That sounded ok apart from the fact that our wakeup was at 05:45 to get the plane to Romania. Finally after waiting some 30 minutes the cops escorted us away. Cool.

Yesterday was the very first visit to Romania for all of us. I must give 10 points to for the city of Bucharest and the BestFest festival. Everything was perfectly organized all the way from the airport. The airport manager / chief let us go through a diplomat route to avoid delays and the privacy and peace when driving, at hotels and back stage was fantastic.

20 minutes before the show, there were maybe a 100 viewers in front of the stage and I was a bit disappointed. Of course when you go to a new country for the first time this can happen and you must still give everything you got on stage. But sure it's nicer to play for more folks. The area got packed full before we started and it was a very nice and enjoyable show for us. Hope for the listeners too. You all seemed happy.

We will definitely get back to Romania soon. Everybody was nice, the weather was 10+ and at the festival things went as smoothly as on the big ones in Germany. The only thing that we missed was Mr. Dracula, but I am sure he also clapped his hands inside his scary castle on the mountains in Fairytale Gone Bad. I hope our sound guys played it loud enough for him.

So…. Now we are flying to Warsaw and we will drive to Bydgoszcz (250 Kilometers) to play a show there tomorrow at the Junior athletics world championships at the Bydgoszcz stadium. Today we will have a day off and we'll probably go shopping and I'd also like to go jogging or to gym after all the driving and flights. It's a strange show tomorrow. We first play 2 songs and then they shoot some fireworks and stuff. After that we perform another half an hour for the stadium. Last time we were in Poland we drove around with a 12-meter Hummer limousine. Let's see what's our ride this time.

Greetings from Studio

Our "Sonic Kitchen Studio" is ready. There just some decoration stuff missing but it's fully operational and we have started working with PopGasm with full speed now. There are so many moving parts and all the equipment and it's just fantastic that there were no bad surprises. The recording rooms were built brilliant (that's what the professionals say) and seems as if the sound recorded, produced and mixed there will be great.

We have pretty much selected the songs for the album and it looks really good. It'll be a lot of works for sure but I am very confident that the next baby "PopGasm" will be in stores in January 2009. It's also great how the producing teamwork is still healthy between Jukka and myself even though we have been playing together now for a few years. I mean there could be a problem with authority, but no. He is the guy with the magic and I am very blessed having my songs produced and co-written by such great pro. Without him, I'd still be selling timeshare in Spain dreaming about being on these stages…

So as soon as we get home on Wednesday, we'll hit the "Rec" button again and get a few steps closer to our PopGasm again.

I hope you all are enjoying your summer as much as we are.

Samuelito from Poland