Jumping back in time a little, our on the ground correspondant Simon Rowley interviews the Mark Saul Band following their near brush with catching a plane in Stansted during the recent tightened security measures. This was during the trip from Edinburgh to Spain, where we were delayed in Edinburgh by 3 1/2 hours, only to miss our flight in Stansted by 3 1/2 minutes.

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The gig in Spain was… interesting. The gig was on a stage which had been set up in a lovely little cove in Tapia, just off the beach. We rocked up there for the soundcheck to be greeted by a spectacle which was almost slapstick, if if weren’t just a little bit scary. The wind off the ocean was blowing a gale, and the poor tech crew was trying to install a couple of rear-projected video screens on either side of the stage. These things are essentially big cloth sails. Not the easiest things to grapple with in the wind. One screen had been mounted already, but the screen on the ocean side looked to be causing problems for the tech crew. Imagine trying to mount a sheet four times larger than a king sized bed, supported by a metal frame, onto a large pole, in almost gale force winds.

I thought to myself, surely they’re not going to do it. Surely they’re going to make the call that it’s not safe, and go with just the one screen. But no. It seems the Spanish are a stubborn lot, cause an hour later they were still grappling with the screen, securing it with electrical ties, obviously hoping that it wouldn’t blow the stage off the (delicately balanced) stilts that it was standing on.

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We´ve arrived safely in Spain, after a gruelling 23 hours of travelling to finally get here – we got up at 3am, didn´t arrive till 2am the next morning). I won´t bore you with the nasty details of our flight, but suffice it to say that the combination of an almost 4 hour delay in leaving Edinburgh (though I saw Sigourney Weaver in the airport lounge, so I feel a little better about the whole thing), luggage handlers who dragged their heels getting our gear up to arrivals, and one nasty beeyatch on the check-in desk in Stansted, we managed to miss the closure of the check-in desk by 3 (that´s THREE) minutes. I don´t think I´ll be able to get the image out of my head of three of us sprinting through Stansted airport, trollies piled high with guitars and gear, and me on the phone to Mark yelling “we´re coming, we´re coming, don´t let them close, we´re 2 minutes away!”

Regardless, the nasty woman at EasyJet (should have got her name, she was TOTALLY unreasonable) refused to delay the flight by even just 3 minutes to get our gear through. And it was EasyJet´s FAULT that our flight was delayed in Edinburgh.

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I called the airline today to find out about baggage restrictions for our flight to Spain tomorrow. Several phone calls later, and they were still adamant that I would NOT be allowed to take my violin on board as hand luggage. I even said to them, if I take it out of the violin case, it just scrapes in under the permitted size officially allowed on flights in and around the UK. But no, “under no circumstances” would they allow me to take my fiddle into the blissful warmth of the cabin.

They don’t seem to understand that my violin in its case, can actually take a fair bit of beating. I get told that I should have arranged a flight case for it, but I just want to wail at them and tell them that the jostling isn’t a problem.

The problem is the cold.

Cold kills a violin, didn’t anyone ever tell you that, you stupid twerp? (I’m talking to the dick at the other end of the phone, not to you, dear reader) Cold, dry air will split a violin’s seams, or crack the wood. Taking an instrument from a summers day in Melbourne, to a winters day in Banff Canada, for example (fellow MYOers will remember it well, I’m sure) can potentially cause damage enough to make your mother weep. So imagine what will happen to it by putting it into a luggage hold which is at 40 degrees below zero…

What got me most incredulously upset was the tone of voice of the lady at the other end of the phone at the airport, “no ma’am, as I said before, you will not be able to take your violin with you on board. You’re not even allowed to bring cosmetics on board” – as if it was the most horrible thing she could think of! She said it like that would convince me that Oooh, things must be serious! No cosmetics, oh woe betide us all! Al-Quaeda has succeeded in it’s plot of terror, for we cannot bring our blush with us!

I wanted to reach down the telephone and bitch-slap her, and yell “who the hell freakin’ cares about stupid cosmetics?! So you go without refreshing your lipstick for a couple of hours! Your lippy will survive just fine in the hold. I have to play a GIG! And my instrument is more than just a tool, it’s my BABY! It’s an extension of ME! And you want to put it in -40 degree weather for how long? Would you make me put a child down there?”

*sigh*

Anyway. We’re off to Spain tomorrow to play what I hope will be a good gig in Asturias. I hope that it’s bloody worth all this f*&king *expletive deleted* debacle.

Just got back from a devine weekend of gigs and relaxing (kind of) in Stornoway. I love that place, I love the harbour, I love the people, I love the new arts centre, I love the fact that they have a wonderful festival (we didn’t play it this year, but we did last year, and what a marvellous event), I even love the name of the place, Stornoway.

The are two ways of getting to Stornoway, on the Island of Lewis, in the Outer Hebridean Islands in Northern Scotland. You can be boring and take the plane, or you can take the more romantic (if slightly more rusty) route, and board the ferry from one of a few places. Our chosen point of departure was Ullapool, yet another sickeningly pretty Scottish harbour town which boast music festivals, fresh fish, and Highlanders who can be as quirky as they are friendly.

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Can I just start by saying, terrorists suck. So they wanted to blow up some planes. Don’t they KNOW how much they can stuff up a music festival when the artists can’t get to their gigs?

We played the Tartan Heart festival at Belladrum this evening, what a fun gig, what a fantastic festival! 

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We’re back here again at the gorgeous chalet in the north of Italy, on our last day here in this magnificent place. I wish you could hear the amazing sound I can hear from where I’m sitting. It’s midday, and there are bells tolling all over the valley, coming from every direction. To my right, I can hear a mellee of four different bells in the one tower. slightly to the left of that, there’s a single bell which has been bonging away to itself, a little lower than the others. Then further off to the far left, there’s another bell, more sonorous and grave. All the bells here in the valley seem to be set to slightly different clocks, and the chiming for midday seems to have lasted a full 5 minutes.

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On the east coast of Italy, bordering on the Adriatic sea, is some of the most gorgeous blue sea you’ll see anywhere. But if you head west up into the hills, you’ll find yourself in a land which is truly the stuff of legend. rolling valleys between gentle hills, creating yet another nauseatingly lovely vista. Why the whole world doesn’t want to live in Italy is quite beyond me.

This morning after our mosh-pit gig at the Montelago Celtic Night, the day dawned bright and warm, and the hotel where we were staying was, as the Scots would say, “heavin’”. It seemed that most of the folk who didn’t camp at the festival last night were staying in the hotel. Didn’t we feel like rock stars when we had folk coming up to us, wanting to buy CDs and get us to sign them, or just wanting to say how much they enjoyed the gig last night. The Italians are such friendly folk, I love em!

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What a day, what a day…

We left Leffe (the town we had stayed in initially when we first arrived) early this morning, in a big blue van driven by a totally down to earth Italian bloke by the name of Gigi, whose colloquial English often had us in stitches of laughter (“farrking drraivrrr, geht aawwf de faarking rrroad!” – but calmly and no road rage involved). I get the impression that Gigi has driven lots of big important bands around Italy, and it was a joy to have his solid presence at the wheel for what was shaping up to be a bit of a farcical day.

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“You see the mountain over there? You are playing on the other side of that mountain!”

 

That was what Gigi our promoter said to us about the first gig of our Summer 2006 tour.

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