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When we woke up the bus was moved to the other side of the building. Almost everybody was already awake. The weather was fine and sunny. Around noon we could enter the JB’s and took a look around. Catering wasn’t ready…Luckily SEVEN WITCHES singer Wade Black had his own stuff and offered us sandwiches. Thanks mate!Since we are just guest, there wasn’t catering for us, but we wouldn’t have expected anything.
Meanwhile we had a little chit-chat with Jack about the SAVATAGE tourwhere Claudia & I were working for VICIOUS RUMORS, but that’s another story! Some wanted to make a trip to Birmingham which was just 9 miles away to get to Starbucks for a coffee. I guess England finally got me hooked to that stuff.
Jack was talking about taking a cab. We didn’t want to wait and so Claudia, Brian Craig (drummer of SEVEN WITCHES) and I were taking the bus to B’ham. The bus took about 35 min. to B’ham city center. Enough time to talk about anything and everything.
Arriving near Snow Hill station we first checked out Starbucks at Bull St. (if I recall the streets name right), but it was closed on Sunday afternoon… No problem, passing the cathedral, Cherry St. toTower Road and the Starbucks at Martineau Plaza was opened.
Brian invited us and we had a coffee and some muffins, etc. at their terrace. Sitting in the sun was pretty relaxing.
I still struggled with my English, but I could already participate in more parts of the conversations than with SAVATAGE.
Afterwards Brian wanted to check out the Virgin Megastore, but they didn’t have SEVEN WITCHES…If it wouldn’t be a Sunday afternoon and if we would have had more time, we would visit Reddingtons Rare Records at Digbeth, a store which is heaven for vinyl fans! So we caught a bus back to Dudley.
Back at the venue we decided to walk over to TESCO to buy some food for us, some guys of the crew ask us to get some stuff for them too. Unfortunately we couldn’t find their stuff in TESCO, but got some sort of dinner for us and had another coffee before heading back.
When we returned it seemed that everybody was a little bit under stress and we decided to get out of their way before some more people decide to use us as punching ball.
We needed some hot water for our instant noodles and because we weren’t allowed to enter the catering we sent DEBASE guitarist Sigge to get some for us. As we asked him he looked a little puzzled, but then he turned and complied with our request.
Having finally food and a quiet spot it was time to leave the crew working and some good books helped to kill time. While we were sitting on the stairs next to the nightliners first a security guard came to check what we were doing there, but left us alone as we told him our story. You have to know that in the U.K. almost everything, every place is observed by CCTV.
It got cloudy and windy and Micke, singer of DEBASE got worried about our health and brought us some blankets. A few minutes later BigBig saw us sitting there slightly shivering in drizzle rain, walked over and chased us back into the venue… There we found a place where we could stay out of everyone’s way and read. But not for long. A local crew member was bored and tried to entertain us. Since we are not stupid, we found a very good use for his wasted energy and we sent him to get us a coffee. Brian joined us when we got our coffee served and we four had some silly chit chat.
A little later we had to leave, coz it was time to open the doors.First time we saw the Swedish quintet live. Okay, we had a glimpse of them yesterday, but we didn’t really know what to expect. I was blown away by the energy. The band of singer Micke soon convinced us and also lots of the fans at JB’s. More about their live set in a concert review though.
After they were done, we helped them taking their equipment off stage and so SEVEN WITCHES could start their show.
Next change over, this time everything was brought to the trailer and got loaded. The break last a little longer, but then the Canadian / US-American quintet entered the stage. Decent set with songs from their debut to their latest release Waking The Fury.
At the end of the set during Alice In Hell, Joe Comeau had problems with his microphone and changed it several times.
While some crew guy tried to solve the problem Joe used Jeff Waters’ one. Not a perfect show, but still a good one!
Today no party! Meanwhile some had fun driving cart and had a little race at the parking lot.We where leaving again around 2 a.m. and while we where on the way to the motorway a kind of bus-band meeting took place. Things had to be sorted out, not our business and Claudia and I separated us to talk about the past days.
We were on our way to the British capital….
(Written by Claudia and me)