Tour Diary

Wednesday 7. 11, Cologne

Up at 6.30, shower, no breakfast, into van. I trade with Heikki to get the backseat, I sleep two hours more. We eat yesterday's backstage pizza for breakfast (charming), and get some coffee from the gas station. Klaus is the only one who smokes a lot, and he starts getting pissed because we refuse to have smoking breaks all the time. Some tensions in the air.Cologne is 600 km away, so we keep on going. It's been raining for two days and it still does. We arrived at Cologne Underground around 3 pm. Lovex fans have crowded the front again. Schedules get slow, soon it's six and nobody's done soundcheck. Little panic. Lovex takes 7 minutes to check and runs to a picture shoot, we do five minute sound check, and all of a sudden the rush disappeared. Back on time. The local staff is very helpful and friendly and nothing seems to be a problem. The hotel keys are sent to us with a taxi, catering is good. The guy from the Gun records is selling Lovex shirts next to me, when I take out Manzana merchandise. He says he can sell our stuff too. Very kind, thank you!
We go backstage, which is on in the other building, and chill. Henkka hurt his finger while carrying the stuff onstage and he's bleeding. That's gonna be true rock to play with blood dripping from the strings...
20.15 we go to the show-building, and 20.20 on stage. We steal 10 minutes more time by accident, we were supposed to play at 20.30. Oh well... We were too anxious to go already so there we were.
Mac is working great now with the back up interface, nothing like yesterday. I go on, and we open with Pain. I'm wearing my hoodie, as usual, it is less scary because they don´t see mee immediately. I think it's the same thing with half of the Finnish boys with their black hats! The whole place is packed, and it is very hot. The audience seems intense, but not dancing. I'm a bit worried that they won't like us and try not to pump it too much. When the song ends, they scream. Wow. What the hell... I take off my hoodie, and they scream. I say " We´re Manzana from Tampere Finland" and they scream. I feel like crying. We're gonna have some fun with these folks.
And we did. One of the best gigs we've ever had. When I said " Thank you Cologne, we love you", I spoke the truth. I always say what I feel, and usually get in trouble because of it, but not this time
Only mishap that happened, was during FNM cover Digging The Grave; I stepped on Henkkas guitar cord and it dropped. It was just the part in the end of the c -part, where Patton screams like hell, so I yelled it out bare on the top of only bass and drum....but after that song we got the biggest applause ever on Manzana history, so it was worth it.
Maybe we should get cordless systems... hmm.
Lovex pulled a great show again, and people seemed happy. After the gig we hung around the place and sold albums and met a lot of nice people.
On backstage we drank beer and chilled and had fun, but Vivian and Theon started doing interviews and other stuff straight from stage. "There is at least one good side in not being the headliner", crossed my mind while opening the third beer...
I'm not worried about my voice anymore. I think I'll be fine.
Back in the van and off we go. We drive quite far, and drive back and forth the streets but don´t find the hotel. The street name is right, and the number, but no hotel. Mikko goes into a local bar for advice, but nobody knows anything. We are all quite tired, all sweaty, starting to get cold in a car. We call Lovex not to come, there's no hotel here. Marko sounds happy.
We go back to the city, we meet Lovex at the Burger King, and together we find the right hotel, thanks to Marko and GPS! The street address is exactly the same, but not the postal code. Basic inter-rail mistake again.
The youth of Manzana and some Lovex put up a party at somebodys room, I don't know anything about that since I dropped out. Tired and happy