UPDATE AFTER "FEW" DAYS

Hi there,

So, the UK-tour came and went and we decided to choose the blog-lazy wheel, so it´s been quite quiet here... :)

We played still 4 shows and they were Glasgow, Nottingham, York and London, and everyone of them was ace!

Feb. 9th - London, Barfly
Especially the last gig in London was a night to remember, because the gig was in London Camden Town and the big market place of Camden just burned down during the evening.
The athmosphere was quite HOT as the next block was on big fire and the venue was really really sold-out and too full. But it was indeed one of the best gigs we´ve played as the crowd went really wild on that one and we had a nice party again with the DT-guys, now for the last time on this tour as they left back to Sweden with bus and we went to hotel in London and flew back to Finland. Lots of cheering to both ways, manly hugs and future plans were made of and hopefully we´ll do this again soon with the swedes, as they´re the best!

We also learned on this last trip from hotel to airport, that it isn´t the best decision to go with London Underground with all your band gear with you... :) Eerik has also some tasks to do before police letting him to fly away from UK, because of his lost passport. He went to the police station to get some "id" and he get a nice paper where were description of the situation: "A loser was playing a gig in York and lost his passport there at the venue...." :)

Feb 8th - York, Fibbers
York was a really cool old town and this time we had a lot of time to spent on tourist activities as we were already early in the morning on the city. We visited some restaurant pub which was formed in 16th century, so we assumed that they have had enough time to learn the secrets of cooking. Ehh, but no.. Because the food didn´t satisfied our needs, we decided to take some promo photos on the same pub, but ehhh.. It didn´t worked either. On this venue it was first time to do the first movement towards our beloved tour blog, as you might have read over a month ago on the last update... :)

The venue was quite small but it was really packed full and the audience was really enjoying our set. Maybe from now on we should only do shows in UK, nowhere else, and with Dark Tranquillity because this combo works!

Eerik decided also to lose his bag for the 4th(!) time on this trip and this time forgetted the bag to the venue for good. So, he haven´t got anymore the passport... Nothing else to do here than have a bus lounge party again with line-up Finland vs. Sweden, and the competition was hard. The winners were again Harri of OG and Martin B. of DT, who were the last ones (lying) in the downstairs again.

Feb. 7th - Nottingham, Rock City
Familiar place, we played the Nottingham Rock City venue also on our last UK tour in 2006 and it was a blast. Eerik and Markus were first to awake in the morning and headed to the city centre to have a true and evil english breakfast, and found also Thin Lizzy and Yes dvd´s on the trip to save the evening in the bus. The day was also saved by the shower that was the first shower on the venue backstage on this tour!! We also met the promoter of our last tour, Karina and Ade of Black River Project, the support band of the last tour, so it was nice to meet friends after some time and they came to see the show.

The gig was again amazing and it was veeery hot and sweaty. After our gig there was a BIG metal disco on the Rock City upstairs and we tried to start the party engine but failed. The evenings parties were little bit peaceful than yesterday due to the hangover because of the yesterday... :) Markus and Aapo tested the Kentucky Fried Chicken and it turned out to be better to use with the garbage can, so we really recommend it!

Feb. 6th - Glasgow, Barfly
We had also nice time doing some tourist activities on the city before and after the soundcheck as the bus was quite early on the place. This ment some pub culture research with the scotsmen, though we didn´t understand many words what the scottish were speaking. At least they were really happy people so it was enough, don´t need to understand anything just smile.

The gig was again a good one, and the crowds were going bigger and bigger all the time - this package really works! After the gig we had a strange family meeting with The Purdons and purdon related friends, as our bassists Eeriks father is a true scotsman! So, the scotsmen handed us a plenty of beers and spirits in pub near the venue. Father Purdons friend was then exposed to be the legendary actor - Michael Caine. Or at least we decided that he is, because he looked really like Mr. Caine.

After this the two Martins of DT were asking us to join them and going to casino, but we decided to be boring and just had a big bus party with the rest of the DT´s and crew. Maybe we should´ve to go with the Martins as when they came back they had pockets full of pounds they had won there. But we had the great boogies on the bus with the swedish and the expose or ressurrection was the Beowulf, Mikael the bassman of DT, who changed to beowulf when he had some booze. His on/off switch were switched on and he showed some real finnish loud drunken action and friendly wrestling to be a swedish! :) We also found out that nobody on this bus aren´t a real metal head, there were found Rush, Yes, Genesis, Massive Attack, Air, Porcupine Tree, Depeche Mode etc. fans on both bands and we spend the night listening and dancing with this music til we passed out...

Blog Update FInally...

Sorry guys the delays with the blog – it sure hasn´t been much of an up-to-date tour diary since because of technical problems (first four days) and general lazyness (second four days) we haven´t been able to write anything here. To compensate for this, here´s a mega-update on what has been going on with Omnium Gatherum for the last few days in the UK!

Friday

We left stormy Helsinki around 1½h late because our flight was delayed due to terrible weather. This extra time we spent consuming a couple of beers at Helsinki Vantaa airport in a quite excited mood about how our tour is going to go. Apart from the delay our flight was pretty okay with a some minor turbulence here and there. We landed to cold and breezy London around one hour behind the original schedule and then it was time for finding our way to our hostel. Our original plan was to leave most of our stuff to Heathrow airport since Dark Tranquillity & co was about to pick us up at the airport next morning. However, we found out that airport luggage safekeeping is as expensive as hell (six pounds for one piece of luggage!) so we left only the biggest and heaviest stuff there and headed to our hostel with rest of the stuff.

Here´s a good advice for you kids: transporting the equipment of a band with the underground is not cool! After we arrived at the hostel (the interior of which looked pretty much like a spacecraft from a 60´s sci-fi movie), we headed out to the London nightlife in the attempt of finding some fish & chips. Got what we wanted and headed back to the hostel for some sleep- which was a luxury we didn´t really get to enjoy since a couple of gay guys were fighting in a L O U D voice in the room next door. A brilliant start for our tour, eh?

Saturday

Saturday morning we had some toast & coffee -oriented breakfast at the hostel, packed our stuff and headed for Heathrow airport with our stuff – only this time we also had a 20kg parcel of merch with us for the tour. It took a little creative logistic imagination from us to drag this heavy piece of sh*t to the airport but we managed to do it – victory!

Dark Tranquillity guys along with the tour crew were waiting for us at the airport with the bus. We loaded our stuff to the bus and so the we got the whole caravan rollin´! Our first gig was in Cardiff, Wales, and we while driving there we made first contact with Hans the tour manager, Jimmy the backliner and some of the DT -guys.

In Cardiff we had a couple of hours time before the soundcheck so we spent it doing some sight seeing around Cardiff and we also made a short interview along with some cool band pictures taken in front a castle! During the sound check we had a minor set back as Markus noticed that the circuit in his Tube Screamer was somehow broken and not even good ´ol duct tape magic could give it life. He managed to get a decent distortion out of the Peavy 6505 DT guys had brought with them. The sound on the stage in Cardiff was somewhat shitty but hey, we as professionals don´t care about these minor details!

The venue in Cardiff was pretty small but by our gig it was really packed and there was a good heavy metal spirit going on! We played a 35min set and at least observing from the stage, the crowd seemed to like it so you could say we had a good start! It was a kickass show! No major problems during the concert except that Markus lost almost half of his hair when it got stucked the headstock of my bass.

After the concert there was a nice party going on with the rest of the guys and DT guys, I myself went to sleep pretty quick because I was feeling like shit. Another good advice for you kids out there: drink enough water before and after the concert, dehydration sucks!

Sunday

On Sunday we played our gig in Liverpool. During the drive from Cardiff to Liverpool we enjoyed ourselves by spending time in our ”nests” (the beds of our nightliner, that is), playing Fifa Street and talking general bullshit – the three of which have formed out to be our favourite pastime so far.

The Barfly in Liverpool was situated in a rather shabby looking neighbourhood in Liverpool which got at least me thinking that the reason behind Beatles´ success must have had something to do with getting away from the place as soon as possible... Okay, just kidding! Again we spent the extra hours we had before our show doing some general sightseeing and we also enjoyed a nutritious meal in Chinese restaurant with all the guys except Jukka who was sleeping. After this we had a coffee in a local pub and headed out to make our soundcheck!

The venue in Liverpool was bigger than in Cardiff – apparently some kind of old industrial building or something – and the stage was also a lot bigger there. We managed to get a pretty good sound on stage during soundcheck and had a couple of beers on the bus before our show. Me and Markus got a little frustrated for not having a shower in for a couple of days so we used a little bit of our improvisational skills and created a ”shower” by using a sink, a tea water boiler and a wet towel – isn´t the life of a rocker on the road luxurious? It was not very difficult to draw some kind of parallel here with Spinal Tap... Anyway we got our hair washed so that was something at least... The traditional Omnium Gatherum -luck with our equipment continued as right before the soundcheck Jarmo noticed that he had lost an important part of his pedal. However, he managed to fight the concert though like the true heavy metal warrior he is!

The concert was great and the audience seemed to enjoy our show! After the show Markus run into a sleazy old guy and his pal in a dark corner of the venue who shouted something in the style ”What are you looking at?!” to him. This guy turned out to be Jeff from Carcass his friend being Jamie from Anathema. The guys joined us for some backstage drinking action and also came to the bus with us to have a couple of beers. Jeff explained us of his visions on future Carcass gigs and told in detail how his bass was going to be out of tune on the gigs... Weird, huh?

Monday

Birmingham was the next stop after Liverpool. Heading towards the home town of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest we had the best possible start for our Monday as the bus driver pulled to a service station and told us we would have a chance to take a shower there! There was no need for extra contemplation on that, we just grabbed our towels, soap, conditioner (of course) and ran into the shower! The Liverpool – Birmingham way was pretty much of the basic bus stuff – Fifa, nesting and bullshit. We also tried to watch Caligula but never finished it.

The venue in Birmingham was probably (at least to my eye) biggest so far. While waiting for the soundcheck, Jukka, Markus, Harri and Jarmo headed out for an instrument shop to find a replacement part for Jarmo´s pedal and a new Tube Screamer for Markus. A couple of hours, a couple of taxi journeys and +200€ later the guys had got what they wanted! This time I stayed in the bus with Aapo concentrating on some extreme Fifa action.

Before the concert in Birmingham we had a pasta + Swedish meatballs dinner at a B&B place nearby which was a really nice change after all the beer + chips -diet that had been going on for three days.

On the concert, we rocked the hell out the place as usually and again the audience seemed to be pretty into it! The couple of first shows the band may have been a little lost on stage but now I think we really started to look good as there was actually room to move and manouver around the stage!

As far as the afterparty goes I can´t really say much ´cos I ran almost immediately to bed along with Jarmo but I presume the rest of the guys had a good run of beer and general heavy metal ´til the early hours of Tuesday morning!

Tuesday

For Tuesday´s concert we had to make a hell of a long way from Birmingham to the far North of the UK, to Aberdeen that is. The night was as cold as anything on the bus as there was a lot of draft going on all time and I think most of the guys in our band and DT caught some kind of cold on the way. Anyway, a little cold is not enough to bring down a group of Scandinavian vikings like us so with the aid of some painkillers here and there, we continued our journey!

The bus had some kind of a problem with electricities so we had to pull in to a Mercedes Benz garage in Aberdeen. We spent this time trying find something to eat (the result was actually pretty tasty chicken burger from a shitty looking burger van) and after this it was again more Fifa, nesting and bullshit.

The venue in Aberdeen was pretty much in the center of the town so we had a nice sightseeing trip around there waiting for our turn in soundcheck. Here´s another good tip again for you kids out there: if there are two bars next to each other, it is a good idea to find out which the venue you will be playing at is. We found this the hard way with Markus after we had dragged a fucking heavy bass cabinet up a very long set of stairs and the place turned out to be a pool hall... It was the door on the left then!

There could have been more people at the concert but we stilled rocked hard and heavy as usual! We also got some very positive feedback after the concert so it is not just me who thinks that we´ve played good shows on this tour! A little personal setback for this concert was that because of my cold I was feeling like shit and was nearly vomiting a couple of times during the concert but I just took a little more of an John Entwhistle -type of approach to playing this show and everything went well without any unnecessary onstage vomiting.

More info and interesting stories on such characters as Michael Caine and Beowulf coming up soon so check back here during the next few days!

Tour Blog Now Online!

Greetings there, dear OG-enthusiastics and people who have been so unfortunate as to randomly wander to this blog!

The purpose of this blog is to shed some light on what happens behind the scenes on Omnium Gatherum´s voyage on The Great British Fiction Tour 2008 with Dark Tranquility. We will try to write some stuff here as often as we can during this tour when we find an access to internet. So crazy stories, wild pictures and insane action is to be expected to find in this blog during the next one and a half weeks!

Meanwhile, here´s our gig dates:

Feb. 2: Cardiff (Wales) - Barfly
Feb. 3: Liverpool (England) - Barfly
Feb. 4: Birmingham (England)- Barfly
Feb. 5: Aberdeen (Scotland) - Barfly
Feb. 6: Glasgow (Scotland) - Barfly
Feb. 7: Nottingham (England) - Rock city
Feb. 8: York (England) - Fibbers
Feb. 9: London (England) - Barfly

-Eerik / OG