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Mike Randle

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“What day off? You gotta rehearse!!!!”
May 21 2002

It’s monday morning and our day off. Arthur’s somewhere walking around this beautiful city, Stockholm, taking in the sites and things like that. Gene took the other guys sailing in the harbor and i decided to walk across the bridge and have myself a nice cup of coffee at “Cafe Nova” and write this instead. besides; i get sea sick! Unfortunately, a Bryan Adams songs was playing on the radio. But then an Aimee Mann song came on after that so it was small price to pay to here a great Aimee song! Rusty and I were singing backup on her new record (she’s still working on it, i think. we did some stuff with her up until we left for the trip. and i have to say that it was an absolute honor to be in the studio with such a talented individual).

So today’s a holiday in Sweden and there are people all over, walking around plus quite a few american tourist (you can tell by the white socks!) and it’s a sunny, breezy nice day. The theatre we’re playing tomorrow, Sodra Teatern, sits right on top of a huge hill that overlooks the city. The view must be spectacular. The city is so colorful and alive. This is my 3rd trip here and Stockholm still has that charm that makes it a pleaseure to visit it over and over again.

So, today we will do rehearsals with the 8 peice ensemble of strings and horns and do some of the forever changes material. I believe we meet with the ensemble arranger, Gunnar Norden, around 2pm, and we’ll work on the music well into the evening, with a dinner break of course! The original score to Forver Changes was somehow lost by Electra Records over the years so Gunnar wrote out the music by ear simply from listening to the record. If this comes out well, i think i’ll buy him a beer!

I’m not too certain how the crowd will be tonight. I remember in ’96 it was a very energetic crowd at the Gino Club here in Stockholm. but this is a theatre so we’ll see what happens. That reminds me, when gene, rusty and i left the knitting factory to go home (after the show), there was a note on rusty’s car. It said,”Rusty, you guys were so good i want to sleep with both of you! Love, Alia.” Of course, Alia is like one of our closest friends so we all had a good laugh. Maybe she laughed the loudest? Alia, if you are reading this, we all love and miss you very much, ok? Now Rusty is putting you on the next flight out…Syke! (american slang meaning,” Ha Ha, fooled you!”, for our friends abroad…)

Also, my aplogies on some of the sloppy entries. it’s not always easy to make time when you travel this much and have people like Bent and Gene telling me what to do every friggin minute of the day…but i do my best. And i’ll try to keep it nice, although i promise nothing!

Tomorrow, strings and horns and forever changes shakes off 35 years of dust!

Mike Randle

Love


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