Hi Everyone!
Update on the first half of the British Music Week tour in Germany!
I have to say that the whole trip was absolutely brilliant! Germany is a a really cool and happening place. They certainly know their music there! It wasn’t just the gigs that were amazing, the journey over was great too!
We drove to Newcastle on the Wednesday afternoon, caught the ferry and sailed through the night to Amsterdam. When we saw how cramped the cabins looked we thought, “Right…..to the bar for a few loosners or we’lll never get to sleep tonight!“. I was well prepared for this eventuality and packed a cheeky bottle of Gin in amongst my t-shirts……RESULT! Life on the ocean wave was suddenly quite appealing!
We drove from Amsterdam at the crack of dawn through to Cologne on Thursdaymorning. We arrived at the venue (the Prime Club) after many hours on the road, to be greeted by the best rider we’ve ever seen! Loads of different cheeses, cold meats and bread for us to feast on before sound check. I knew from that point that
The Hedrons would get on well in Germany. Food and drinks = happy band! Whilst we were hanging out backstage we met the other bands that we’d be touring with; The Others and The Wombats. The guys in the other bands were really lovely and we all got on great which made for a brilliant week all round.
The gig in Cologne was pretty good. I really liked the venue. It was a proper wee rock n roll den. A decent sized crowd turned out to see us and they really got into the set which spurred us on! I have to say that the sweat was dripping down the walls that night. It was 27 degrees outside and you can imagine how hot it
must’ve been in that club with no air-con. It was torture! We survived to tell the tale though.
The next day we drove to Hamburg. It should’ve been a 3.5 hour drive but it ended up being a 7 hour drive! We seemed to hit roadworks all the time. The fact that it was so warm outside meant the journey was really uncomfortable. However, I remembered the playing cards so we played about 50 games of Gin Rummy or Spanish (there are loads of different names for it) to pass the time.
We played at a venue called Molotow which is in the Red Light District of Hamburg. It sounds saucy but it’s not really. It’s in that part of town that a lot of the cool music venues exist. The Beatles first gig was played at
Indra which was just a few doors along from our gig so we knew the place wasn’t that dodgy! Plenty of Gerrman rockers turned out to see us and there was a great atmosphere about the entire night.
On Saturday, it was time to go to Berlin. We were all really looking forward to this as Radio One in Germany were covering it. After another long drive (about 8hours) and many more games of Rummy we arrived at the venue called, Lido.
The sun was splitting the pavements when got there, so a few German beers had to sampled whilst we waited to sound check.The people at the venue also provided a BBQ for everyone so…not being shy.,…we got stuck in!
The venue was pretty big and we knew that there had already been 400 presales for the show so we were raring to go! The punters arrived in droves and we couldn’t wait to go nuts on the stage! It was packed out and the crowd were going mental! I thought there were going to be injuries down the front with all the crazy moshing! We came off stage after a 30minute stint, grabbed CDs and T Shirts and set up shop at the front of the hall. The CDs went like hot cakes and when the badges ran out there was nearly a riot!
Tippi and I then went off to do an interview for Radio One which was great laugh! The presenter was obviously speaking in German first and then translating everything into English so it was twice as long as normal interviews! After that, our work was done so we went into the backstage area and chilled out with the
other bands. The Pigeon Detectives joined us for a gig on this night and we ended up getting on really well with them. We partied with them for ages and got a look round their tour bus (stole their beers). A cracking night was had by all.
That’s about all my wee memory can deal with so I believe The Rosie is going to fill you in on the remainder of this tour.
Catch you all later!
Soup x
*hopefully I can track Rosie's part 2
down...*