12.12.2009 Saturday

The day of hardships. Traffic in Rome gets to the top three of shittiest driving and traffic jams in Europe: London, Paris, Rome. Sun was already descending beyond the horizon when I got up from the bunk. It felt that we had been closing in to Rome for an eternity and more and more traffic lights and jammed intersections just kept coming. Finally we made it to the venue. With the aid of two Ron Jeremy –looking policemen and half an hour of desperate trying the driver was finally able to park the bus to the entrance.

If weather had been rather harsh last night it was surely mild now. There were palm trees growing in the garden and the overall atmosphere was totally different. No wonder, we had made our way almost a thousand clicks south last night. We loaded in and StS made the sound check.

At this point the gloomy reality caught up with me. Ville Friman had been in high fever last night, and he certainly wasn’t looking any better now. In fact, he hadn’t gotten up from the bunk even when we had loaded in, which is very uncommon for him. Due to my daytime job I have some medical expertise that can be valuable the road. I did a quick check on him, and concluded nothing less than pneumonia. He was doing poorly, had high fever despite the normal painkillers he had taken and he could barely stand up. I doped him up with a sledgehammer amount of antibiotics, some anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers. It was obvious that he couldn’t play, so he stayed in bunk without questioning. I knew that if he would still have fever 24 hours after the first dose of antibiotics, we would have to take him to a hospital and that would be the end of the tour for him.

Despite the setbacks and hardships the tour goes on like a freight train. We had the whole of two hours before OG would hit the stage, and Markus Vanhala would be the only guy on this tour ingenious enough to be able to jump into Friman’s boots in that time. That request in that time is quite insane, but with extreme dedication and non-stop playing he was able to pick up six songs for our set. I assisted the best I could and we cut some corners wherever it was possible.

The venue wasn’t crowded at all. We had two local opening acts, but I did not hear a single note of their sets, I was too busy medicating Friman and having rehearsals with Vanhala. OG pulled a decent show despite the lack of audience, about 30 people scattered around the venue. Then a quick change-over and we hit the stage with our new line-up. Intro was already playing when Niilo tested his bass and mentioned that he has somehow a distortion in his bass tonight. It sounded weird. At the same time Vanhala noted some strange noise from his guitar cabinet. Yep, their wireless transmitters were on the same frequency. Great. Markus dashed up to stage to switch the wireless to a cable. He was ready no sooner than last second. We played set of thirty minutes and gave the best we had. Just hope for the best and prepare for the worst and then let it burn. The gig went pretty well considering the circumstances. I just couldn’t help laughing as Vanhala was nailing down the songs. That is professional.

After the show we hanged at the backstage and “enjoyed” the absence of showers. We did one interview with a Spanish magazine and the watched the rest of StS’s show. People started to enter the club in halfway of their set, but unfortunately they were not after the band. When the show ended the place turned into a gothic disco. The catch was that we had to load out immediately, and that had to happen through the audience. It was a load-out from hell. Strobo-lights, insanely loud disco music and swarming masses of dancing people didn’t make the long way of carrying the equipment any shorter. It was total chaos all the way. Everybody was pissed off. Some of us lifted their mood by entering the disco afterwards and some of us just sat in the bus with grumpy faces consuming all the booze we had left. I belonged to that grumpy unit, the Finnish way. We cursed our rotten luck and this evening to hell. I stayed awake till the buss call (4:30am) and then crawled to my bunk. Long drive ahead once again. So long Rome, we’ll be back. In some other life.

Ville Vänni/INSOMNIUM