Usine, Istres, 9th of May

Another trip with the train and then we got a ride by car to the venue. When we arrived for the sound check there were no double kick or pedals so they drove us back to the hotel instead while they were looking for all the stuff we needed for the stage. Got some nice rest at the hotel by the pool together with Quireboys in the sun, and one hour of sleep before we could go back to the venue. It was a great place, big and nice stage. After a fantastic dinner we got a ride back to the hotel to change and rest some more, and then back again. It’s a lot of travelling back and forward all the time! This night Koritni opened up the gig, and after Quireboys it was time for us to play. By then the stage was steaming hot and the sweat started dripping already after the first song.. and we did 16..! I have never experienced a hot gig like this, it was unbelievable. I had some moments when I almost thought I should faint or fall down, but we made it, and the audience was really supportive this night as well. Afterwards I took a shower together with my stage clothes, they were just as soaking wet as myself, and then I just sat down felt like a hurricane had blowned through my whole body, empty and exhausted. But after 30 minutes I was ok enough to go out and say hi to the nice people waiting outside.. .I’m not really looking forward to see the pictures from that night though, no make up and just a red tired face.. but I don’t really care, we had a good night and a good gig. Signing lots of cd's for a contest...
Then we got back to the hotel and had some beers together with our new friends in Quireboys, and Koritni. At 3 in the morning I started to feel sick ‘cause I was so exhausted, so I went straight to bed. 4 hours later it was time to wake up again and drive to the airport, to take us back home to Stockholm again, -if you don’t like to get up early in the mornings I don’t recommend you to become a musician!!

Monaco, Le Moods, 8th of May

We were picked up very early in the morning, 8.30 and drove to the Orly airport. Unfortunately the flight to nice were very delayed but lucky enough they had massage chairs so we could re-charge our tired bodies a bit. In Nice a bus drove us to Monaco, through a fantastic landscape. The hotel was incredible, never seen anything like it, extremely luxury. The receptionists looked at us as we were dirt under a shoe, and asked our Dominique in French what he had dragged in. He explained that we were supposed to play at the club next door .

Our booking agent and tour manager Dominique da Man!

In the hotel

Then when they spoke directly to us they were extremely friendly. –oh make suuuure you try out our new pool and relax area on top floor and ohh you have breakfast between blabla and ask us if you have questions.. Well the rooms were incredible and the beds were out of this world. Right before sound check we had to check out their new pool as well of course…

The view from my hotelroom...

Klara and Nicki on topfloorThese cool rockers showed up early in the day!StageDressing room
The gig was awesome, great sound and nice venue!! It was pretty strange to have a audience sitting down eating shrimps and drinking champagne and headbanging, but it worked out really well. And we had a lot of cool rockers there as well, 3 guys had been waiting for us for many hours. It turned out to be a really great gig and night! Pictures with the rockersOur friend Lea is taking a pictureWall artOutside the hotel later in the night....Ugly but probably very expensive dress..
Afterwards we went back to our nice hotel for some drinks at my balcony, and since Tomten, our backline tech had to stay at another not so good hotel, I offered him my room instead and I went to share bed with Nicki, just to let him enjoy the nice view as well.

Me and Tomt'n

Tired rock-mumie with clothes on

Me and Nicki in the kingsize bed

We fell asleep around 3 in the morning, and 4 hours later we had to wake up again. It was a pretty nice wake up anyway, with the sun in the face and the awesome view from the balcony.

Sunrise....

Paris, La Trabendo, 7th of May

We were lucky this morning, got to sleep until 10! Then we took the train back to Paris. We had been whining before, that it was such a pain to go by train, carrying all the stuff and the big risk to loose something with so many stops.. But even though I lost one bag and one cap it was anyway worth it, ‘cause we saved many hours compared going in a van.

We arrived to La Trabendo and got amazed by the great venue, it was just perfect! After the sound check we said hello to the Quireboys who just arrived, then we went out to take some pictures for the biker festival we will play in September. For dinner we went to a nice place outside the hotel and ate some ribs and stuff, then back again to the venue to warm up and check out Dollhouse and the Quireboys. The gig was fantastic, we all had lots of fun and I think it was one of our best gigs in a very long time. Mostly because the audience was fantastic, it made us play good and feel great! So many people singing along, cheering, headbanging and even crowd surfing… And it was pretty packed. It was a totally awesome night for us. After we hanged out backstage for a while and then all of a sudden it was time to leave and after one good night beer it was time to go to bed, after a good, long day.

Morning view from the hotel as we had breakfast. AND there was hair in the food.. didn't eat much this morning..

Cheers. Mia and the Barbs

Chez Paulette – Toul wed 6th of May

A cab picked up me and all our instruments outside our rehearsal place 4.30 in the morning. Then we picked up all the other girls and backline tech Tomten at the central station, and then we headed off for Arlanda airport. Everything went surprisingly smooth. They didn’t even charged us for the instruments, just put a blue sticker on each and then let us pass through.
The flight went fine, and we arrived 40 minutes ahead of schedule and took 2 cabs to the Paris est train station where we had a quick coffee and sandwich before it was time to jump on the train to Nancy. After we arrived we had a short walk to the hotel, where we got a well needed rest for 2 hours before it was time for sound check. At 4 we were picked up by a shuttle and went to Chez Paulettes. We played there 4 years ago with American Dog so we already knew the place.
It took pretty long to sound check, we were using the support acts backline (Seyminhol; thanks for letting us play on your stuff! ) and it took a long time to set it our way. But as soon as the set up was ok, the sound check went fast. Then we went for dinner at a restaurant and then back again to warm up before the gig. Old memories from our gig here with American Dog 2005!!

It was pretty crowded at our gig and it went really well, even though the amp they had rented for us sounded like shit… After the gig we tried to cool down a few minutes but it was difficult, ‘cause our dressing room was just a 2 m2 big hole in the wall with a curtain, so people just walked in there all the time. Since there were no showers we had to wash ourselves with some stuff I brought with me, meant to wipe baby asses with.. better than nothing….

Then we went out to the crowd to say hello, take some pictures and sign stuff. Unfortunately we didn’t have any cd’s with us, because of misunderstandings between our recordlabels or something, any way out of our hands. It is always fun to meet the people after the show but this night it became a bit stressful, some people were really too much and I almost freaked out once. But then it’s great to have these nice people around as well who just takes it easy and behave good. We really appreciate that and it makes it worth to go out.

the nice people!!

If people continues acting crazy as some did this night, we won’t be able to go out and meet the fans after the shows ‘cause it’s just too stressful. We’ll see what happens tomorrow… :-) Paris here we come!

/Mia
Crucified Barbara

(more pictures will be added later!)