Fri 15th May Rostock Germany Stadthalle

Campino the Toten front man introduces the band and the crowd get straight into it!


2 minutes into this clip the band play ode to joy and the camera pans the audience giving a feel for just how large this venue is, huge applause as the band leave the stage, it was deafening!


Go Genie Go. Brilliant!


Tango

Thur 14th May Prague Futurum

Support bands were Texas Terri Bomb and Tight Finks

Wed 13th May Passau Germany Breillanderhalle

The new back drop

Tue 12 May Bamberg, Germany

Two of the culprits caught on camera!


setting up the stage, this is incredible!


Mick, why haven't we got this much gear!


WOW!



OK so it's a long post, not much else to do on the bus so I started typing and couldn't stop!
7 hour drive from Vienna, through Hungary and onto Bamberg, Germany.
Mutti woke me up early and got me to watch the tour bus outside while he went to hire another vehicle to help with our overload problem. He came back with a car, it’s all he could get, oh well, better than nothing. Luckily the Vienna hire company had a German car so it was no problem for us to drop it off in Germany.
Everyone else surfaced and after some rearrangement of luggage (we were still concerned with the weight of the van) we set off on our 7 hour drive to Bamberg, Germany, I was driving the bus and had Dan, Scruff and Monk on board, Mutti was driving the car with the others in it. We followed them for a good 4 hours, we had one quick stop for soup and then carried on,
Later a green and white van appeared along side us with Zoll written on it, it then pulled in front of us, I then tried to overtake it and it pulled in front of us again. Then a red sign lit up in the back and after lots of German words we didn’t understand it switched to English and said FOLLOW ME!
We followed the van off the autobahn and along small roads for about 10 mins, it then pulled up at a building and told us to drive in which I did, once we were in the doors were shut and we were told to stay in the Bus. It was weird one minute driving happily up the road, the next minute in an industrial unit surrounded by pistol carrying customs officers.
The chief took our passports and disappeared, we were a little concerned; the van was still very heavily loaded. After a few minutes he reappeared and asked questions where have we been/going all the usual stuff, got any drugs, booze or cigarettes on board?
We hadn’t got a thing, not even a bottle of beer, they looked disappointed, I joked that we were a good band we didn’t smoke, drink or do drugs!
Another officer said nicely oh what do you do then do you like girls? Yeh, I said we all do except him (pointing at Dan), he likes boys, they all cracked up laughing! Sorry Danny boy!
Then they drug tested each of us and as each of us passed they would hand back the passport for that person.
We set off glad to be out of that place, we were now half an hour behind the others and had no one to follow, we switched on the sat nav but it spoke German, help!
Dan was a great help, he taught the sat nav to speak English by pressing loads of buttons on it, then he read the map and we got sorted, Phew!
We arrived at the venue, it was a bloody great 8000 capacity stadium, wow!
Tonight is a first for me with the Adicts, they are not headlining but supporting a huge German band called Die Toten Hosen, one of the biggest band in Germany, apparently the singer is Germanys equivalent of Bono, oh no!
We only have to do a short set tonight so should be quite easy for me which is good as I have driven the bus for 7 hours and am tired, I didn’t help unload, went for a walk and had a drink. They had a huge crew at the venue that soon got all the gear in. We set up and sound checked.
I had to adjust my thinking, when you are supporting there are advantages and disadvantages ref. Setting up the stage, either way there is a critical time period which is the 20mins between bands, If your supporting you have to get all your guitars, drums and amps etc. off the stage as fast as is humanly possible, when your headlining you wait for the support band to get off and then have to get your guitars etc. setup, It is a manic time that requires forward planning and organisation, the Die Toten Hosen crew are highly pro and have been friendly and really helpful, we are working well together. The guys in the band are nice and friendly too, the drummer Vom is English and is also the drummer of the English band ‘The Boys’ and TV Smith. I had a long chat with him but didn’t mention the fact that Suspect Device have recently been covering their song Brickfield nights.
The gig was sold out, so many people, I walked out on the stage for a final check before the band went on, so many people in the audience it was an amazing sight!
The band played well and I like the shortened set, the audience really enjoyed it but it was different to a normal Adicts audience, naturally most were here to see Die Toten Hosen, and I guess a lot were not familiar with the Adicts music.
Inspite of this the band went down well.
At the back of the venue where we load in was a German man with a key of beer and some plastic glasses, he was drinking a beer from a glass, the colour of the beer got my attention, it was not lager! I went and chatted to him but he didn’t speak English but his friend walked up and translated for me, “that beer looks nice, can I have a glass please”
The interpreter explained that this guy brewed the beer himself and was very proud of it, he had brought a keg to share with his friends, they gave me a little to taste, it was fantastic! He poured me a full pint and I thanked him and went inside to watch Die Toten Hosen, soon the beer was empty but he kindly gave me another one, lovely man! We watched most of Die Toten Hosen set and they are really good, more rock than punk rock I would say. After the show we went back to the hotel which was incredibly posh and beautiful. I had a shower and then the phone went, Monk, Pete, Kid and Hoggy were off to the bar, I was too tired and decided to call it a night.
Went for breakfast in the morning and one of the Die Toten Hosen guitarists said to me “is it true the Adicts were in the bar last night wearing nothing except the white dressing gowns from the rooms”
I laughed, that sounds about right, that’ll be them!

Hoggy bastard Roadie at the age of 20 Months

He is without doubt to blame for the current outbreak of swine fever.

Mon 11th May Vienna gig

A hot Scruff, there were no stage fans!





Would you buy a T'shirt from this man?


Monkeys stuff arrives so he sorts it into piles for each gig





Woke with a slight Hangover
We all had a lay in and went to the venue at 13:00 nothing was ready, they had changed to a larger venue at the last minute as advance sales were too much for the original venue.
The new backdrop arrived and it looks brilliant, Pete told me the last time the band toured with a backdrop was 1994, I think they should always have one, looks really good!
Sound check was excellent and long as the band pissed around for a while.
Full house for the gig, was a good show. Some guys kept getting on the stage so Hoggy and I were busy till in the end they got security. There was a lot of stage diving, The band say they don’t like all this diving as it reminds them of Chelsea’s Didier Drogba, cheating bastard!
When we went to leave we hit a major problem, our gear wouldn’t fit in the tour bus, In Serbia the back line had been locally supplied whereas the rest of the tour we are using our own hired in back line, this had been delivered to the venue along with loads of stuff for Monk.
Now we realise it won’t all fit in the bus. We are bloody good we are.
We did get everything in the end but it would be impossible to travel any distance, also the van was seriously overweight.
We managed to get to the hotel and everyone went straight to bed, we were all wiped out.

Sun 10 May, travel from serbia to Vienna

Yep, that's are picture of me smoking, I don't smoke for a year then have 10 in a night. This seemed to amuse the tour party, the non smoker finally smokes!


Ghost vindaloo went down well!


At the border Pete and i are still trying to get a straight red by kicking the hell out of each other!


Adicts Norwegian fan club
Igor was the promoter for the show and did a great job. After breakfast we sat on the patio balcony of the hotel sipping beers waiting for hoggies bag to be delivered by the airline, Hoggy was minging by now after 3 days with the same clothes, no one wanted to sit near him on the bus.
All of a sudden a group of elderly Norwegian ladies appeared and recognised us from last nights show. We were virtually mobbed by them, they were like teenage groupies. They had photo’s taken with us. They were disappointed that we had to leave as the bag arrived, we think they wanted to give Hoggy a good thrashing.
At the Serbian border we queued for an hour, the guards looked stern and had a good look round the bus, we went straight from there into a queue for the Hungarian border where we queued for another hour. Ironically we were all starving Hungry, When we finally got to the Hungarian border we were question by a nice Hungarian lady who looked like she could take any of us out with a single punch. She looked very stern so we decided to see if we could make her smile, we all sat with silly expressions on our faces. When she clocked us she pissed herself laughing. She asked Pete what he was doing here and he replied “I have no idea” oddly she seemed satisfied by that answer and let us through, no problem.
Incidently we have a playastation and fifa 08 on the bus, I hadn’t played before and was crap. Pete was also nearly as crap as me so we decided to brighten it up a bit.
New rules Fifa 08 Copyright The bastard road crew,
1) Each goal scored = minus 1 point, (we couldn’t score anyway)
2) Yellow card = 1 point
3) Second yellow 2 points
4) Straight red 3 points (hero worship was given to persons achieving this)
I am not prepared to say who won, all I will say is Mr Peter Dee is one of the dirtiest bastards I have ever come across. Kid and Dan could really play the game and took it seriously, we ridiculed them and then baffled them with our dirty tackles, they thought they had won till we explained we were scoring cards not goals.

We stopped in Hungary for fuel and kid discovered some strange alcohol drinks for sale in the garage one of which was called unicum and several others I can’t remember, the bottles weren’t huge but the percentage proof was. Kid got stuck into them and really enjoyed the rest of the journey.
At the hotel we were settled into our rooms and kid wandered into my room, he could hardly talk and kept staggering into the wall, Words can’t describe how smashed he was. He asked me to show him too his room as he had lost it somewhere. I took him to his room and within 5 minutes he was unconscious on his bed.
Everyone else got directions to an Indian restaurant and we set off on foot toward it. We were given a map by the hotel but it was so small only Scruff could read it and he’s dyslexic. Dan nearly got hit by a tram, Pete grabbed him and just about pulled him clear. Dan was so grateful but Pete was mortified, he said he couldn’t understand why he had done it, “I think I thought it was some one else”. He would much rather have seen Dan get squished. Pete seems to be very fragile and hurt his ribs in the process of grabbing Dan.
Miraculously we found the restaurant and all ordered some dishes loadsa vindaloos. The lamb wasn’t good but I enjoyed my chicken one. We ordered papadums which when they came were spicy ones, I asked for some plain which they gave me, strangley they were indistinguishable from the spicy ones.
The beer was great and I was thirsty, I hadn’t been boozing on the bus so was really thirsty; I demolished six pints during the meal, far more than anyone else! This was my first good drink of the tour. We all went back to the hotel but I was still thirsty as were Scruff and Monk. The guy on reception told us about a bar nearby which sold local beer and would not rip us off, another tiny map was produced and we headed off onto the streets of Vienna.
Unbelievably yet again we found the place that was called the Asylum!
This place was in like a huge undergroud cellar all dank, dark. The music being played was indescibable, the atmosphere I would call creepy, the whole thing reminded me of the film hostel!
Not many people in, barman was really freindly and we drank more beers and he kept giving us free shots! Soon we had got control of the PC playing the music and we wouldn't let him near it, scruff became DJ and all of a sudden the atmoshere changed completley, the other customers seemed a lot happier to and they all joined us at our table, Scruff is a brilliant DJ, occassionally the barman would try to put a track on but we wouldn't let him! No idea what time we left that bar but were all staggering!
Back at the hotel scruff went straight to bed but unbelievably Monk and I went in the bar for a night cap.