Rock City, Notthingham, 3 sep

Kl 17:00 Rock City
The gig went extremely well yesterday, a crowded venue and some cool headbangers in front, singing along with the old songs, and screaming when we played the new songs. It was the first time we played 4 songs from the upcoming album and it was so much fun to finally try 'em out on a crowd. -They seemed to like it!

After the gig we went back to the dressing room, had some wine and a shower. We have 6 more gigs in a row so no one was in a real party mood, we just chilled out and had a nice time. Backyard Babies did a great show!

Later when it was time to leave the venue we were really hungry since we hadn't had time to get dinner earlier. After some crying Dregen saved us lost souls by ordering some extremely tasty Indian food from a take away place. So 30 minutes later a small man in a small car came and delivered a huge bag of food that we threw ourselves over back in the bus. After finishing the food I got extremely tired and went straight to bed. The other girls stayed up 'til 5 in the morning, playing poker with Backyard Babies.

20:13 prison cell dressing room
The soundcheck went really good today as well, besides that I got an electric shock from the microphone and Ida's bass amp just stopped working all of a sudden. But after figuring out the right connections it all started working and I could continue lickin the mic..

Now we have just finished a big tasty meal; sausages, cottage pie, yorkshire pie, HP-sauce etc.. Now it's just to keep our fingers crossed that it will sink in a bit before the show, so we don't have to stand on stage like 4 swollen cows burping in an hour.. But it will be alright..!!
They say it will be crowded tonight!

UK tour day 1

Kl 03:00 Pub Anchor, Sveavägen Stockholm
After a pretty tired evening with metal quiz and Metallica songs all night, we have to drag out all our bags and stuff back out on the street again. Begin to walk towards the central station but after too many stops and bad jokes that slow things up we catch a cab. We get on the airport bus in the last minute. A kid is screaming for more than 20 minutes and I'm glad I brought the big pack of earplugs..

05:20 Skavsta Airport
We arrive at the airport and get a fast check-in. Well there we meet half of the Backyard gang, and the other half will meet us at Stansted. As soon as we get on the plane, everybody falls asleep as little pigs..

08-something, Stansted Airport
We arrive at Stansted, take our luggage and we sit down and wait for the bus that is an hour delayed.

09:40 Stansted
The buss arrives, a nice nightliner! We say hello to the rest of the backyard boys, peeping out from the beds. All of us get one bed of our own, so we crawl into them and fall asleep pretty immideately. I've been counting that if we really want to , we can sleep at least 19 hours a day when going with a nightliner. But that wouldn't be much for a tour diary so we'll try to stay awake a bit longer.

14:00 -somehere on the way to Birmingham
2 hours late, some problems with the trailer and then the bus. We jump of and go to get a burger. It's incredible how good it tastes everytime!! We don't dare to tell that the bus problem must be a result of the Curse of The Crucified.. Things like that always happens to us. On the motörhead tour we had to spend one night in a toe truck god dammit.. But maybe it's just the Curse of being on tour.. Now the bus is working again, after some "jump-startin" so we're rollin.. Hope to be there on time.

19:47 Carling Academy 2, Birmingham
Just finished soundcheck. It's a small, cool stage and it will be hot, loud and wild gig tonight!!!

Last days in the studio!!

So.. we're finally done recording! ..actually we finished it already on June 2, but after that we had to hurrt down to Sweden Rock Festival so that's the excuse for being late :-)

It has been some bisy days -and nights- in the studio. But also this week we had some nice visitors; Adde from Hardcore Superstar came by to secure that Nicki hadn't stop practicing the drums even though she is done recording! He seemed to be pleased!

I have had some lonely nights in the studio with myself and the guitar, to finish everything on time. It has been an interesting experience. Most of the time me and my guitar went along well...

...and here am I with Jockes Gibson Baryton guitar, taking pictures of myself.. because it's a cool guitar and I don't know when I will see her again!! :-) And here are the other beauties that you'll hear sing on the album..
..hope no one gets a chock to see the acoustic guitar in the middle. But she was so happy to finally get the chance to participate on a CB recording so I just had to put her there.. And she IS makin noise on the album so you better prepare to hear some different tunes as well ...

It started out well, just changing strings..

But of course that damn white little shitty thing broke.. But it ended out well, Klara ran to a musicstore and got some new ones for me.
After all the guitars were recorded it was finally time for the vocals. It went all good and was really fun, couldn't get a better coach than Mats Levén .. !! I'm a bit sad there aren't any good pix at all from the vocal session but I guess I scarred everyone away from the studio room with my angry screams so no one dared to go in there. Nicki did some good tries at least, she's a brave girl!!

We're honoured to have Mats MAXX LAXX on backing vox ..and who knows what more..!!??

..And on the last day, we requested some guests in the studio, guitartech Våfflan and live sound engineer Mattias-Tobias was called in to add some final backing vox and listen to some new tunes that they're gonna hear 'til their ears are bleeding in the future to come..

..and Mats brought a cake to us the last day!! SWEET!
..well.. it's not really done yet.. Jocke and Mats have just began the hard work putting all the noise together tryin to make music out of it! The mixing will be finished in about 2 weeks, then it's time to start rehearse again for the live gigs hell YEAH!!!

End of the studio diary, next report will be from the best rock'n'roll party in the world; Sweden Rock Festival!!!!

// Mia and the Barbs

Day 17...

The songs are taking form for real now, and I have finished the vocals on 7 of the songs and will be done by the end of the week. Yehaa! We're really happy about the Jocke Skog and Mats Levén team working hard to help us in the making of the album of the year.. The sound is so good already that we almost wet ourselves everytime we listen to the songs :-D More pictures to come..!

Cheers, The Barbs
Mia

Week summary!

Saturday night, in the studio ...so excited I can't hardly breath here all alone, how will this end, will Charlotte Perelli get any points in the Eurovision Song contest..!!!??? HOooooOOOooooo!!! But at the moment Sweden is no 20 of 25 so it doesn't look good. I definitely need to get one of those diamond covered microphones like she had. Or one covered with old teeth, then I wouldn't be mistaken for being Paris Hilton.

Today Klara finished the guitars of 2 of the 4 songs she had left and we'll finish the last ones tomorrow!! Klara gets an extra star in the book for her skills in leaving her guitar in different strange positions... and it could be fine unless someone else mostly passes by...and most of the time it's enough with a breath take to make it fall. Strange enough the guitar is still in 1 piece and in pretty good shape.

Yesterday we had a reporter here in the studio from DN, swedens biggest news paper. She did an interview with Ida that will be out on Friday.

..and here comes a picture summary of last weeks recording and visits!

Our best rock'n'roll friend Laura came to visit us, with a bag full of fruits, cookies and wine.. She now a days lives in BULLET land and it was great to see her again! Some of our swedish -and Italian fans have also met her, she use to help us out selling merchandise at some gigs. Pluppi rocks!!!!

Last thursday me and Ida had the unique opportunity to jam out with 2 members of the rap-metal kings Clawfinger... Jocke and Bård!!!

I found handsome Pontus from Bonafide at the central station so I invited him to the studio and gave him something to eat, and somewhere to spend the night as well ... :-)

This is the castle at the moment..

Ida is done with the bass.......we're still working on some lyrics..

A guest musician came by as well one day to add some percussion to one of the songs. We weren't really satisfied with the sound 'cause the paws ripping the skin of the drums wasn't really what we had expected. He got upset and ate one of Nicki's drumsticks. Lucky enough she's got endorsement so it wasn't a big deal. ...Jocke have lots of favourite lots-of-fat-strings-monsters hangin on the wall and this strange one is one of his favourites I think.. As passionate as in this picture we've never seen him, even though he is rockin out hard every day!!! :-D and here is the album, a bunch of new heavy CB songs taking form....

Take care of each other out there!! We'll be back soon again!
Cheers and Good night,

Mia and Crucified Barbara

Late night..

Life is damn unfair and unpredictable. Our thoughts are with the family and friends of Michelle Meldrum. Colleague in rock, friend and the greatest guitarheroine. Rest in peace Michelle.

It has been a while since we updated the studio blog, sorry for that. But since I'm the one who has been starting this blog thing and I have been bisy recording and doin stuff 24 hours a day there hasn't been much time to even make the other girls write something.. But after this message I hope someone else will take over .. Anyway we're done with drums and bass, and me and Klara are workin hard to finish the guitars now. I think we will be done by tomorrow! The songs are taking form for real know and we are really excited about the massive sound just with rough drums, bass and a few guitar ads. So it's all looking very good..

We'll upload some more pics from the recordings during the weekend, when our men in charge have their days off and there might be a few hours to kill..

/ Mia and Crucified Barbara

Day 7 - setting up the guitar sound

Today we started out early in the morning with a visit to Stockholm Aquaria and watched their 2 new strange sting rays.
Then we began to set up guitarsound for the 2 guitars.

In rock music today it's important you find your own original sound and we don't have any limits when it comes to find the right one. Marko from Sonata Arctica came by and thought that the guitar sound was a little bit to "TOTO"..

..Klara fainted from the shock. Ida was flirting with Tomas Haake like always...
...and Mia ate all the choklad by herself...

..and then went back to work....when Mats 'MaXxLaxX' told her to.. always respect the producer!!
PS Don't worry, Maxx Laxx and Joxxe Skoxx won't let any TOTO guitar sound pass through in the mix.