THUNDER ROAD, Pavia, Italy 29 march -and the trip back home...

Gianrico explain the road trip for today..

...so.. time for the last gig of the short italian tour! Like always when we are in Italy it's bad weather, I don't know if it's us who brings it from Sweden... Anyway, we drove for a couple of hours in heavy rain, and went straight to Thunder road to load in.
Ida with her Alien head holder
When we arrived, we were personally welcomed by the staff of Thunderroad, which immideately gave us a good vibe of the evening!! We were impressed by the cool venue as well, it all looked very good. We just hoped that people wouldn't care about the rain and come to the gig..

Since we had missed dinner every other night, our tour manager Gianrico ordered dinner after the gig instead of before, so we could eat at least sometime during the night. Great idea!! So instead of waiting for dinner, we ate some sandwishes and went to check in at the hotel...

....GaaaAAAHHH hhhhh ..... the hotel was ... a 2 star hotel worth -1 star! It was a combined gas station with "hotel" and when we entered the doors we were struck by a horrible smell of old sweat and cigarette smoke, mixed with a taste of whiskey breath. We got our keys as quick as possible and then ran up to our rooms. Ida and Klara are happy in their nice room...
I shared room with Nicki again and we just went in through the doors and laughed, it was just terrible. We sat down on the beds and looked around, there was a balkony and window with view of the highway, and the sound of the heavy traffic was mixed with the rain hitting the roof. A cold constant draught came from the windows and the floor was ice cold, so it was impossible to walk without shoes on. The view from our hotel room

Since Nicki still was a bit sick she went straight to bed. Somehow I found the room and hotel pretty entertaining, it was just too aweful. It felt like being in a Psycho movie. I layed down under the bed cover and watched the swedish movie Let the right one in on my laptop, as the sky got dark outside. -trying not to smell the cloth of the bed.. After that I fell asleep and didn't wake up until both mine and Nickis cell phone alarm woke us up at nine. We put our stuff together pretty quick and went back to the venue.

This night it was a festival, with 7 other italian rock bands except from us. We got some time to watch the 2 last bands a bit, Tarchon Fist and Heller. Ida and Klara did an interview with italian Rock Hard magazine as we warmed up and tried to get in shape for the gig. Thunder road wins the dressing room price this time, Jailbreak was great as well, with fantastic service .-) but this was a bit bigger...! I was so happy when I saw that there was a shower as well.. but my happiness didn't last very long since there was a "flood" in the toilet and shower so it was quite impossible to stay in there... Of course I had to take a picture of the toilet, it will be posted here soon :-)

There weren't so many people from the beginning at the venue but at least it felt like there were more when we entered the stage. It was a fun gig, lots of well-known faces in the crowd and lots of happy new ones!! We played for about one hour, and I went of the stage still full of energy. I think it was because the atmosphere on Thunderroad was so good, and the stage wasn't that steamin hot like some other stages use to be, it was just perfect. Good sound as well!

After the gig I took my regular towel-and-water-bottle-shower in a corner of the room, trying to be quick since people ran in and out in the dressing room all the time. After putting some dry and a bit better smelling clothes on, we went out to say hello to the rockers. Then back to the dressing room for our d i n n e r! Mmmm... good hot pasta and some meat with mushrooms, the first real meal we had this tour!

In the end of the night there was just us and our italian friends left (http://www.crucifiedbarbara.it/) so we invited them to our dressing room for some drinks and to hang out a bit, it was a nice last night of the tour for us!!

Thanks to all the bands this night: LUCKY BASTARDZ, Salt Flats, Reckless, Charcharodon, Tarchon Fist and Heller!!!!
And thanks to Thunderroad, we'd love to come back again!

We came back to the hotel around 3.30, and had a small party in one of the rooms just to have a nice last night chat + birra.. but since we got yelled at, first by 2 dogs and then some people who tried to get some sleep, and threatened us that if we didn't shut up soon they would get "ten people"... so we decided to finally call it a day, we weren't really up to find out how THAT hotel's 10 people looked like..

We always eat breakfast in the morning, it's something we can't live without without turning to monsters, but this morning we just flied out through the hotel. I ain't that picky with things but when I came down in the lobby again and was hit by that horrible smell I couldn't just stay in there for one more minute, just took my bags and ran out in the rain instead, much better.
We drove for a couple of hours, and arrived to the airport around 11. Checked in and then had a meal at McDonalds.. Really sad to know that we've been in a country with such fantastic food culture and we didn't see much of it.. :´-( especially since we all are true food lovers... :-)

The travel back home to Stockholm went smooth, no delays. Våfflan, our stage manager was stopped and searched for drugs, poor boy, what a welcoming treatment ha,ha..

So now we're back home again, clean and dry with all the dirty stage clothes in the washing machine.. Now the regular after tour-recovering starts, to straighten out the body after all the hours in a bumpy car, trying to cover the darkness under the eyes, trying to comb the frizzy hair, stretching the muscles and sored neck....

Thanks to all of you who came to the shows during this italian tour, it was great to see you all and meet you after the gigs. And thanks to Gianrico at Getrocked.it who is booking our gigs, and to Davide and Marco for a great time and work together.
We have 2 gigs coming up in the summer, it will be published on our myspace as soon as they are confirmed. Hope to see you then!!!

Ciao with love and scarrafaggios,
Crucified Barbara g:m Mia

Siddharta, Prato Italy 28 march

Today we got to sleep extra long in the morning and a short travel which felt great! We arrived to Prato right after lunch time and checked in at the hotel.

Hm....

Our sound engineer Marco was sooo sweet and bought us A LOT of sweets!! MMmmmmm!!!!

Extremely tasty.....

Five minutes later..!

After some rest we went to the sound check at the Sidarta club which went pretty smooth, the sound is ok on stage and the venue is cool. When we had finished sound check we were told there should be dinner in 1 1/2 hours and since we didn't want to wait we went back to the hotel for some delivery pizza instead.... hm.... we've been waiting for 1 1/2 hour soon... Don't know what happened, maybe the portier ate the pizza...

Anyway, we're really looking forward to play tonight!! We'll be back soon :-)
Now I'm gonna keep waiting for the pizza so I can't write more...

/..../

Ida ordered a salad.. maybe not exactly what she had expected :-)
The pizza finally arrived.. not really the best pizza we've had but still something to eat.... After the late dinner we went back to the venue and watched some of the other cool bands that played, Vice Dolls and H.A.R.E.M. as we warmed up and prepared for the gig.
It ended up being a good gig, it was pretty packed with people!! Nicki had a fever in the afternoon but lucky enough she got better during the night, I think she replaced the fever with adrenalin during the gig... No signs of a cold afterwards! :-)

Thanks to HAREM and VICE DOLLS (nice caps, thanx :-) and SIDDHARTA alternative Club!!

Ciao, Mia & CB

self portrait after the gig

Nicki Frog in her regular pose

Sottottetto Bologna Italy 27 march

After six hours of constant driving in the white hellride car we finally got to our hotel where we could stay for 40 minutes before going to the venue for load in. Me and Klara shared rooms and since there wasn’t much time for anything we just laid down on the beds starting to talk about/dream how we can arrange the coming tours so we can afford to have a better tourbus with beds or at least normal seats so we don’t have to break our backs every time we go somewhere.

We arrived at Sottottetto some minutes after five in the afternoon. Our backline tech Våfflan had been there with Backyard Babies some months before so he knew the place already. The container outside that he said used to be the dressing room had been on fire so it wasn’t in use anymore, so our room was a shelf right next to the stage. Like always the work with the stage was delayed so we sat down in our “dressing room” and waited, there wasn’t much we could do.

In a great party mode..
The worst thing was that we had nothing to eat, usually we get some coffee and sandwiches at the arrival but there was absolutely nothing there, and nothing around in the area but green fields so we couldn’t go and buy something either. Since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast we started to become a bit grumpy eight hours later…
Klara is writing set lists on plastic plates...
At half past eight it was finally time for our sound check. It was a really bad sound on stage and we only got about 7-8 minutes sound check since it was so delayed, and the monitor tech just decided that we got one more minute to sound check.. Pretty pissed off because of that -if someone wants you to play on their club at least you want it to sound as good as possible?? -Shitty sound check

Anyway then we sat down and waited for the delayed dinner for almost 1 hour, had some pasta and then we had to hurry back to the hotel before the main dish arrived because we had no dressing room at the venue and we needed to get change and warm up before the gig.

Our dinner...

Stage Boss Våfflan
We tried to get some sleep just to recharge the body batteries ‘cause it’s always a physical explosion to be on stage. I was really worried because all the travel in the uncomfortable bus, the flight and two long days before had really made my voice rough in a bad way –it felt like I’ve been on tour for 2 weeks at least! I slept for a half an hour and then we got dressed and did make up in 10 minutes before going back to the venue. I tried to warm up my voice as much as possible but it was still not good. Unfortunately we missed almost both bands, Neronova had already played and we saw the last few songs with Rain, who just came home from their European tour.

Normally on the few venues that don’t have showers, I use to "shower" by pouring water on a towel and “shower” in the bathroom after the gig but now there wasn’t even a toilet or room to be alone, just an open shelf for us, and since I didn’t want to stay there naked next to the stage after the gig trying to shower with a towel and water bottles, I decided to not use my leather pants this evening. ‘Cause they make me extremely sweaty. Instead I just put on my working pants and sneakers because I was pretty pissed off at the whole day. But there comes something good out of everything, 'cause this night I learned how great it was to play in sneakers instead of boots. It doesn't look as good as boots but I play better and that's more important...

Then everything turned out to be a fantastic night!!! The gig was really good, lots of people and they seemed to enjoy the show. It’s so amazing for us to see so many people knowing all the lyrics and really singing along, and having a good time. That makes us play even better!! And my rough voice worked at least ok during the whole show. For me I was so happy to see all of my friends from Bologna in the crowd, I had been looking forward to see them this night and when I did, all the last irritation and anger ran off me and the whole night turned out really great. So we had a great time on stage and afterwards we went out signing cd’s and stuff, and I got to hang out a bit with my friends.

All the lovely crazy heads :-)

Gio, Våfflan and Manu

So in the end it went out being a good night and the venue was great, if we get to play here another time we will remember to eat something before arrival, and to bring a bath tub..

A short after party in our room... but ..butt...???
Our Italian friend Gio, also brought the new CB t-shirt design that she was asked to create for us. It looks very good so in a short while we’ll have some new hot t-shirts for you!!

Ciao // Mia Maschiacchio

Our italian friends Lorenzo and Roberto (www.crucifiedbarbara.it) are making secret plans in the dark.. or having a birra :-)

Jailbreak again..

Just want to write a few words after the show as well...to thank Jailbreak for a fantastic night and royal treatment, thanks to Davide who looked after us in the dressing room and made sure everything was ok all the time, and to all the staff at the club. And thanks to all you crazy rockers who showed up and made our first gig in Italy 2009 to a fantastic night!! See u soon again!!

Ciao :-)
Mia & Crucified Barbara

Jailbreak Rome Italy!!

Hi everybody!
Right now we are in Rome, at the cool rock club Jailbreak and just had a good sound check. We arrived to Milan yesterday and did some photosessions and a signing session in a music shop. Today we had a long drive, like 6 hours, and our asses are really flat and the backs are quite broken but now we have got some great food in the dressing room, and since also the sound check was great it is looking good for the night.

We are also happy to share stage with a really good band tonight, called Stick it out Looking forward to see them play tonight, it sounded great on the soundcheck.

So now we are just hangin out at the venue, waiting for the night to begin.. hope to see a lot of people showing up tonight cause we are ready to rock :-)

Cheers, Mia
Crucified Barbara

Friday 13

Tonight we're playing in Borlänge in Sweden. It's a great rock venue called S2 and everything's looking good for the evening. But since it's Friday 13 it couldn't just run perfect, so Vains of Jenna's trailer broke down on the way here and my amp broke as well on the sound check.. but lucky enough the guys got here in time and I can play on one of their amps instead. So now lets hope nothing more will happen.. we're looking forward to a steamin hot gig tonight together with Vains of Jenna and a band from around here: http://www.myspace.com/vietcongpornsurfers

Cheers, Mia and the Barbs

Swedish tour

Hi everybody!

Lots of things going on now! First of all, thanks for all the great response we get from all of you!!! The album has only been out a few weeks but there are already lots of great reviews and comments on our website/myspace, which feels fantastic!

Last week we started out Thursday with playing in the biggest Swedish morning news show, TV4 Nyhetsmorgon. It was a long night with driving, unloading, soundcheck, breakfast.. and then we did our first song 8 in the morning, and the next 9.. even though it was early I think we did ok. There's a video clip on youtube but me personally I'm too weak to watch anything from live gigs on youtube so I haven't seen it yet, haha... But if you dare, you can look it up!

Later the same night, Klara and Ida were still going strong and hosted their rockclub Metalheart, fun as always. (www.myspace.com/clubmetalheart )

Then we did 2 shows in Karlskoga and Västerås in Sweden during the weekend, together with our new friends; and great band, Vains of Jenna. We had a lot of fun both on and off stage!!






Tomorrow we're driving to Borlänge and then Sundsvall. We expect some crowded hot gigs -and lots of snow on the road..

Feels great to be back on the roads again!!
Talk later!

Cheers, Mia
Crucified Barbara