The morning of the Festival (saturday), Rusty and I did a short rehearsal with the strings and horns, with Gunnar conducting and it sounded amazing…sorry, but don’t know any other words to use! Afterwards, Rusty and I went walking around and did some shopping around Copenhagen. When we got back, I took a nap from about 1pm to about 3pm. we had to be in the hotel lobby at 3:15pm and I didn’t get to sleep till 4am the night before…

I was a little hungover from that night before, which was a strange night indeed. Around 9pm, Bent took us (minus Arthur, who was in his hotel room amd minus Gene, who went to see SPIDERMAN with his 9 year old, Franscesca, whom he brought along cause she’s so cool!) to a great Thai restaurant near the “semi-redlight” area of Copenhagen. After we finnished our meal, it started raining and so we went back to the hotel and Bent rode his bike home (in the rain!). We had some more beers up in Chapple and Daddyo’s hotel room and then everyone got tired…this was around 12:30am.

THEN, rusty went back up (we had initially gone down to our room) to hang out with those guys again so I went for a walk outside then I stopped by the bar in the hotel downstairs and it was the bartenders last night so he gave me a free bottle of wine. So I took it back up to my room and then rusty walked in so, I’m like,”that guy gave me this for nothing” and we sat and drank that a bit and then had a semi-serious discussion about Anna Kournikova, my position being that I found it amazing she could still get $15 million a year in endorsements, dispite being bounced in the first round seemingly everytime she gets in a tournament. Rusty’s take on it was that, she’s FINE so who cares whether she wins or loses? You think anybody is there to watch her play tennis? And i had to admit, he had a damn good point. So we finnished off that bottle and called it a night. or at least that’s what i thought.

It turns out, the bartender downstairs had decided to throw himself a party and had about 12 people getting drunk with him and blasting the Beatles at 2:30 am in the morning. I couldn’t sleep and decided to take another walk out side. Now, remember, this is Copenhagen on a friday night so there were many people walking around…IN THE RAIN AND LIGHTNING!!!! by the time I returned back to the hotel, which had to be about 3;30, the music was so low you could barely here it. The guy at the receptionist desk told me someone had called to complain. Well, as cool as the guy was, it was a good thing someone called, I thought to myself, because our room was DIRECTLY above the bar on the 1st floor!!! Flash to the next morning, saturday to be exact, and Rusty and I get a 9am wake up call so we can rehearse with the strings in one of the hotels’ conference rooms. I told Rusty he must have slept throught the 3am beatlefest because i split. he said he couldn’t take the volume and called to complain!!! So he’s the culprit!

By 4pm our bus was pulling into the festival area and soon we were kicking back in our trailor (the strings had their own as well), drinking beers and chilling out. By 6pm, it was time to hit the stage and we sure as hell tried to rock the people and it seemed to me they wanted to be rocked. I thought the band was really tight, Daddyo just kicked ass and Arthur was in stellar form, even “instigating” an impromptu “Revelationesque” blues jam at the end of HOUSE IS NOT A MOTEL. After about 100 minutes, we left the stage. It was great to see so many people dancing, having a good time and not a trouble maker in the whole lot! (Milton Keynes, are you listening?)

Afterwards, we all hung out and then Erica Badu went on right after us and the crowd practically trippled (I think there were about 8 or 9,000 people to see us). A friend of ours, Lisa, who’s a Roskilde tech person, took Chapple and Arthur to the side stage so they could better see Erica Badu’s R&B/Rap?Jazz/soul set that the crowd enjoyed so much. Lisa normally works out of malmo and was at our show at the KB the month before so it was good to see a familiar face among strangers! Bent made sure everything went as smooth as possible (although my monitor mix sounded like shit AGAIN)…but alot of credit goes to Bent, who invited the Roskilde guy down to our Copenhagen show the month before at the Pumphauset, where he decided he wanted us in the festival. So, thanks Bent…

Anyways, we drove off around 10:45 (sorry, but I missed Aimee Mann’s set…dammit all…) back to our hotel and went to the bar and ordered some rounds from the new guy and we basically stayed there until this guy’s shift was over. To which, Bent took the liberties of bartending! And we weren’t worried about the guy at the front desk because he didn’t care plus he was in the back room watching TV. And we just got pretty wasted until about 3am. Gene and Arthur were already asleep so it was the band plus Bent plus our sound guy (forget his name!!), who was a character! But in a good sense! Then it was off to bed. but the other guys were staying till monday and I had to hop a flight at 8:55 am…ouch..

So you can imagine what I felt like getting a wake up call at 6:30am, getting in a car with a VERY cute Danish chick at 7am, who drove me to the airport and getting on a plane to Los Angeles. But here I am…and it’s been a damn fun trip. But it’s good to be back and see the family and friends and the hot weather and traffic jams and mexican food and freeway chases. Well, I have exactly 21 days to enjoy Los Angeles before we’re off to San Fransisco to begin the USA summer tour. Now, if I could just get a night’s sleep…

Mike Randle