Los Angeles – House Of Blues… on the Sunset Strip baby!

So LA is known as a pretty rock and roll type town and it did not let us down!

We made our way to the House of Blues to catch the end of the Tarja sound check as usual. It was a really sunny day in LA and the vibe was good, the only daunting part was some local act was opening, leading to four acts being on the bill with 10 minute change overs, this in my mind was a bit silly but what can you do! We did our change over in 9 minutes even though the opening act were taking their time getting their gear off, yes these guys were not really in my good books, a bit to much piss farting around for my liking but what can you do… worth mentioning that after the show they tried to steal my pedal board which was quite rude, I found it under their roadies arm in the back seat of their van, they then processed to try and convince me it was a mistake, yet there gear was on the opposite side of the stage, so first night in big bad LA and I feel like a small town sucker but at least I got my gear back.

This was our last night with Tarja and her crew so it was of course great to be in the house of blues but sad that the fun would stop here! The place was really full this evening and the crown was great, one thing I can say about Tarja’s crowds is they were open minded and took the time to check out the opening acts and we sold all our cd’s and most of our merch on this tour so from a promotional point of view this was really working well for us being our first time in America & Canada.

So we did our thing, gave it our all one last time and left the stage with some affection from the crowd, it was great to know that now for the first time in 6-7 weeks we were about to finally have some time off, we had been on the move non stop since we had been in Australia, so some time to get our energy up and prepare for our last few shows being Mexico w/ Anathema and a Show at the knitting factory in LA. We had planned to be in mexico for our break, but the whole swine flu put a damper on that so LA seemed like a warm and sunny choice until we could work out our situation in mexico.

It was nice also that Tarja thanked us on stage for doing the tour with her, so another chapter of the world tour wraps up, I look back I see Japan, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Canada & Traveling across the usa, seems like we have experienced a life time in such a short time, so many people, so many cultures, all because we made some music, Ill never forget this tour in a hurry and all our new friends and fans, on a tour so much can go wrong and we were lucky enough that nothing major did, sure the ocassional dodgy promoter, car hire mix ups and hotel fuck ups, but nothing major and for that we are lucky, we have made it from one end of the world to the other in one piece (minus a guitar player) but I feel we are so much stronger…anyway no need to get all sentimental now because it aint over yet, next week we fly to mexico and support Anathema, should but fantastic! – Mark