Day 17 - La Riviera, Madrid, Spain - 13.11.2010

I haven’t been able to wash any laundry since Lille, and now I’m really starting to run out of clothes. Ten concerts without access to a washing machine has also taken its toll on my stage outfit, so today I was determined to find a Laundromat or Lavateria or whatever its called here in Spain. I gathered my Posse (Einar/Tobias), and off we went on our quest. Our first stop was at Lori’s, to borrow some laundry detergent. She supplied us with what we needed, asked around in Spanish to find out where we could go, jogged over herself to check if it was open, returned and told us it was closed, and then added that their (Therion’s) sound check were moved earlier so we wouldn’t have time to wash anything anyway. Cool... Guess the quest will have to be postponed.



The upside of not being able to do my laundry was that I now had time to take a stroll downtown in Madrid. On our way we were lucky enough to be heading in the opposite direction of a demonstration, featuring both Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh. We also met this guy, who makes a living smiling for money.



To my surprise they don’t seem to sell clothes in downtown Madrid, so my quest for clean clothes continues. On our way back to the venue, the demonstration had decided to turn around, so once again we had to walk through it in the opposite direction.



Time for soundcheck. Has anybody seen Halvor? He’s always on time for sound checks, and always tells somebody where he’s going. He’s not in our dressing room, nor at any other dressing room. Nowhere back stage. Not in the bus. Nowhere in the venue. He’s not in the close perimeters of the venue. I try to call him, the phone rings, a couple of times, and then I get a “no answer signal”. Time goes by.

Lori: Here’s a guy sleeping that kind of looks like Halvor!
She shakes the sleeping fellow, who turns around with an astonished look on his face.
Lori: Not him!

More time goes by, everybody’s looking, but no Halvor. We’re all starting to get worried about whatever has happened to our dear bass player. Is he lying somewhere in his own pile of blood? Almost an hour after our sound check started Halvor comes jogging up on stage with his green foosball t-shirt. He’s been lost in Madrid for over a couple of hours, with nobody understanding English. He’s never been so desperate in his life. On the bright side, we’ve never had a slower group of local venue riggers, and since they were running approximately 90 minutes late, the sound check went smooth as always.

Being the blog-guy for today, I’m in charge of setting up the camera. It’s actually harder than it seems though. Specially when the venue is a maze, I’m focused on filming where I’m going, and in addition I have all these amazing pictures running through my head from the backstages we share with Loch Vostok. I made this short film to illustrate the life of “the camera dude”.



The concert went well today, and we once again edited our set list by replacing one of our new songs “Cryptogenic Desires”, with another new song “Restless”. I guess we’re not that patient when it comes to playing the same set night after night. We also encountered the same odd looking crew we met earlier in Paris, who said they really enjoyed this alternative set list. They would also like, once again, to send their greetings back home.



I think that’s all the super interesting information I have for you guys following our blog. Oh well, of course I could also tell you all who has hooked up during the last 24h, but I guess I’ll rather use this as a cliff hanger, so I know you’ll be continuing checking out our super duper fantastic blog.

Until next time!
TorO