JEBO
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9/22/2007 9:42:32 AM
---- Updated 9/22/2007 9:55:54 AM
JEBO Tour Blog Day 4
Day 4 – Wednesday July 18th – Tom's on the Rocks, Ratingen
JEBO Daily Blog for Kevin @ Bristol Rock www.bristolrock.co.uk
by Charlie Presburg (www.pollstar.com)
We wake at the Furtherhof in Neuss to a very hearty breakfast and the smiling face of our German attache Peter. Spider and Lawrie settle into some more games on the pool table, Nick finds the biggest cake the bakery across the street can produce whilst the rest of us relax before we drive over to Ratingen, a small rural suburb of Dusseldorf. We follow Peter in his Jag with Rob in the passenger seat. It's about a half hour's drive before we hit Tom's on the Rocks (and at one point almost plough into the back of Peter's vintage Jag, well, he did brake suddenly!). The venue's situated next to a country highway and is surrounded by forests and glades, very nice. Tom tells me that he was a car mechanic for over 20 years before he decided to give it all up for music and start this purpose built venue, good boy, we instantly take to him. We unload, set up and run through the sound check which goes well, they've a great PA here and the staff are both attentive and very helpful. There's also another band here doing a photo shoot, friends of Tom we think. One of them is dressed in a red and white mask reminiscent of the wrestler Kendo Nagasaki (for those that remember him). Another member of the trio looks ever so slightly like the great Jimi Hendrix and appears from nowhere dressed in a purple crushed velvet suit and matching wide brimmed hat, nice.
Tom and his wife begin slaving in the kitchen over our dinner of, yes, you guessed it, Schnitzel and chips, the band's German meal of choice and staple diet of the tour, it's delicious and we sit in the sun and gorge our faces. Rob announces that we don't have the set lists printed off so Tom and myself cross to street to ask the owner of Cedric's Restaurant (whose name's Peter, not Cedric, don't ask me why) whether we can have the use of his printer, they ask us to come back later as they're kind of busy, this we try three or four times over the next half an hour or so only to get the same response. Time is getting on and we need to find our hotel. We were originally booked in to the hotel across the street from the venue next to Cedric's but Tom tells me that it was recently flooded so he desperately begins finding us alternative accommodation, he succeeds, hurrah! It's time to hit the road again to find this hotel, turns out that Tom's not sure exactly where it is, as I'm in the car with him with the boys following, I offer my mobile as he's not brought his with him, he phones his wife to get directions and about a half an hour later, we come across a blue and white building that can only be described as a huge piece of Lego, I kid you not, behold, the Etap in Ratingen. I'll spare you the details but our rooms are odd, very odd, there's a double bed in each and a single bunk above the double, how peculiar, it looks more like a student room in a hall of residence than a hotel but it's a place to sleep. We dump our luggage and head back to the venue where there's a full car park. Finally, we manage to get our set list printed off across at Cedric's, all thanks to the proprieter Peter, you star!
The boys take the stage around 9.45 and play a stonking hour and a half set to a good sized crowd. It's loud, as ever, how we like it and Tom looks a little nervous due to the volume level, there's people stuck to the back wall with the G-Force. I'm then told that Wednesday is usually open mike night and that they weren't used to this level of volume, not tonight baby! We were particularly amused by the fact that the place was full of men in Motorhead T-Shirts, one even read 'Everything Louder than Everything Else', very funny.
Following the gig, CD's were sold and autographs were taken, the boys were happy, we liked this place a lot and we were invited back in October when we're due to tour here again. We gave Tom a T-Sh
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