Day 19 - Madrid Monitorama 2011

Yo! Woke up in madrid today. It was one of those days when the bus can't park at the venue, that usually means a pretty stressful morning. Especially for me, nice I always wait as long as possible before I get up. So I get up, grab my stage clothes and whatever I'll be needing during the day, and rush on out.
I'ts always nice when the venue is located in the middle of the cities we visit. This is the case today. Nice!
After getting our stuff into the venue we met up with a graphic designer and friend, Ritxi (who did the booklet for Bilateral and the cover and booklet of Tall Poppy Syndrome). He was nice enough to show us around/hang out with us in Madrid. We went for a walk, following Ritxi's lead. First stop: The Temple of Debod. An Egyptian temple in Spain…makes sense…? Anyway, it's located in a nice park, and the weather wasn't too bad. Nice way to start the day, in my opinion.
We had breakfast/lunch at a cafe nearby, and went for a walk in the center of Madrid. Surprisingly, we met some familiar faces…

After hanging out for a while, we were joined by Ritxi's girlfriend, Alba. We walked around some more, had some tapas, and headed back to the venue for soundcheck. Great day so far..

Soundcheck complete communication breakdown? incompetent in-house crew? I don't know exactly what happened, but after waiting for a really long time, we basically ended up without any monitoring at all. Playing without hearing what we're doing is a pretty hopeless scenario, to say the least! Pretty strange considering that the rest of the venue was great, and is frequently in use. We finished the horrible soundcheck feeling frustrated, shocked, and at the same laughing about the ridiculous situation. We were also hellbent on delivering a good show, despite the "difficult" surroundings. Who's to say Leprous isn't up for a challenge!

So, it was time for the first Leprous show without monitoring, ever. Not the kind of premiere worth looking forward to, but not much we could do about it. Come what may, and all that…
Luckily, parts of the PA system was located behind the edge of the stage, so we could actually hear a little bit of what we sounded like. The local crew had also fixed the problem with the monitors during our show, so we actually had somewhat random monitoring during most parts of the show. For some of us it saved the concert, while some of us would have been better off without random things appearing (and disappearing) in the mix. On top of these factors, we are well into the tour at this point, and without sounding too "cocky" I think we would be able to pull of a decent show under worse conditions than today. Catastrophe avoided, in other words.
Our opinions on the gig may vary, but considering the circumstances we all agree that we did a good job. The crowd was great too! It felt really good to get a lot of positive feedback, after all the energy wasted being frustrated earlier. You guys saved our day!

-Rein