In Milan for the third show of the tour, and the first ‘back to back’ one with no free day in between. This is a big issue for the crew, who were at Verona packing up until very late in the night, then went with the trucks to Milan and almost immediately started loading into the venue here.
Quite a bit of time backstage - we’ll be lucky to have a soundcheck at all
But it turned out they set things up and we squeezed in some time, as people were coming in and finding their seats, to run a few songs
If I start to think I understand many of the elements of the show, there’s this to baffle me
Story of the day:
Staying at a pretty posh hotel in Milan, we come down to the lobby to leave for soundcheck at the venue. Dave, our tour mgr, is there, busy on his cellphone, and a nice bloke approaches me, tells me our vans are here, but at the sidewalk outside the crescent drive to the hotel, and that he’s ready to get the vans as soon as we’re all down. When all the band have arrived, he goes out and gets the 3 vans to park right in front, then as I’m about to get in, he asks for a photo with me. As I’m smiling into his cellphone it occurs to me that maybe he’s not with the hotel, or the vans, or the promoters, just a guy with the attitude of the people who help us get around. And he knows that, like sheep, a band on the road will just go where they’re told, sometimes murmurring ‘baaah’. He gets photos of himself with each of us, and then we get into the vans and leave.
Later I asked Dave, and indeed he had no idea who the bloke was - he’d also been fooled into thinking it was someone sent to help us get to the venue. No harm done, I’d have posed for the selfie anyway… but I think we’ll now be a little more particular about who we follow - we’ll remember the bloke.
An interesting development; there is an AI setup that translates into the local language everything that Peter says, and shows it on the large screens. But today… he’s speaking Italian, and it’s translating into Italian. Hope it’s getting the words right.
Tomorrow we’ll fly to Paris, where our next show will be.
More soon.