Sometimes everything seems to go wrong, and when it does, everything happens at the same time. The major part of this trip was like that, even thought it all ended up fine.

 

When i was picked up at home by David and André the first backlash came right at the door: "i forgot my hihat at home, we have to turn back" said David. As we had enough time we turned back to Davids house and picked up his forgotten hihat. When we came to Arlanda airport our next backlash came: "i have forgotten the Painheads (the custom-made all-metal kickdrum-front) at home" said David. Now it was too late to turn back so we continued to check-in. It started to feel like "one of those days" but we keept our mood on top.

 

Then our flight was delayed, and it was very bumpy and we arrived way too late in Berlin so we had lost over one hour of our very tight (and almost impossible) schedule. The heat was killing us in Berlin and we were told it was about 35-39 degrees when we were picked up by our driver. Next strange thing was the fact that the festival had sent a driver in a normal car (not a big van as always) to pick the three of us up and drive us to Chemnitz. They must've thought we travel with just a toothbrush as we had serious trouble to fit all our gear into this car! The result was the three of us squeezed in the car together with two guitars, two bases, our bags, my rack case, Davids cymbals and so on. This couldn've been okay for a 15 min drive, but we had about three hours ahead of us. Oh well.. it is Pain after all. Reality - check.

 

At this point we were getting very hungry as it was about 8-9 hours ago since we had something to eat. Air Berlin refused to serve us any food at the plane even though we asked if we could buy... So we told our driver to stop for a dinner break. He responded that it was no time and our schedule was fucked up. We said we're not gonna play if we don't get any food so stop the fucking car! The driver called the festival and told them the scheduled signing session is not gonna happen and we stopped for a quick bite at a gas station. A few minutes later we were on the road again. The average speed was 205km/h.

 

When we finally arrived at the festival area we only had less than 60 minutes to showtime. We met with the rest of the team and shared travel stories as it turned out the other guys had similar issues as well. About 7 minutes before showtime my guitars had new strings and was in tune. The heat was crazy and we were all soaking wet before we even entered the stage. But we came on stage just a few minutes late and made a good show and had a good time. André and me jumped down from the stage in the middle of a song again and were standing headbanging in front of the audience at their level, even though i broke my toe last time i tried this crazy shit (Metal Camp last summer). Then we couldn't get back up on stage again so we had to run all the way around to the backside and find the ramp up. I made it exactly in time for the chorus so i could join in and sing "It's the end of the line", hehe... This time i had brought my snow white Jackson which i hadn't used for a while, just for the fun of it. It's a great guitar as well, just as all the others! :-)

 

After the show we headed out to see Suicidal Tendencies who played after us. The kicked ass for sure and i got reminded what a great live act they are! I hadn't seen them live since early 90's and i was so happy to see them again. I also met Dan Lilker backstage, had a quick chat and gave him a few beers from our backstage fridge. Then i realized, last time i spoke to him was back in 1989 in Stockholm when he was touring with Nuclear Assault. Shit, we're both getting old :-)

 

Anyway, the day ended well even though it started like shit. Now i am back in holiday mood again, but only for a few days as next weekend we have two Swedish festivals to conquer. Until then: don't eat yellow snow.

 

/Michael