From reading the Diaries, you may get the impression that all we care about is eating. Well, that’s only HALF of it. Problem is, unless it’s your day off, you may not get a decent meal so imagine having 3 to 4 shows in a row. The food you may get is a catered BLAH meal from the venue or a cash buy-out that leaves you in a situation where you have between 6pm and 8pm to find a resteraunt, relax and then eat. And if your in the ensemble, that leaves even less time because those guys (and gals) even (chuckle) PRACTISE before a show!

So you can imagine how happy we were to have a nice big (FREE!) meal in Athens the day of the show. Normally, it would have been the day before the show but the damn Frech at Ryan Air went on strike the DAY we were supposed to fly to Athens from Dublin (via London) and we wound up at some Heathrow hotel eating wonderful British hotel food (yeah, right!) But when we got all checked in to our hotel and then it was a 1 minute walk to the restaurant where Greek Promoter, George, brought us out some red wine and appetizers.

I think things like that make the show THAT much better cause everyone played better and everyone was happy. So next time you see (violinist) Ketil or (bassist) Chapple walking around beore a show, share your sandwich or something like that cause we really are hungry and every little bit helps…..I went to get coffee this morning and didn’t realize I was wearing a LOVE F.C. tour t-shirt and my unltr-rare LOVE touring jacket (a gift to us from Gene) so you can imagine how embarrassed I was to notice several people eyeing the LA WEEKLY May 30 Royce Hall Ad and then eyeing me!

It’s a nice, half page Ad and it’s nice to see people checking it out. That show is a little more than 3 weeks away. The Swedes fly out the day before so we’ll have to show them a good LA time that night. Because we’re flying to every show, we actually have a day off in S.F. on Sunday (June 1) and a day off in Chicago on Monday, the next day. And I’m just thinking of Uno’s pizza right now…and if there’s time, maybe some Mediterranean food with Fritz before the show? Gee, all this talk of food is making me hungry…

Mike Randle