Finally! The Mushroom River Band goes on tour. We've always thought that if
Bad News could go on tour (doing one gig is also a tour) then so can we, just
give us a chance.
Nervous feelings? Maybe a little, how will the boys in Hoek and Celestial
Season be? And what will they think of us? We're not the most social kind of
guys but everyone knows that drummers are very social, right? That's right,
we're going to let our skin beater Chris handle all that stuff so the rest of
us can be introvert in peace.. we're really nice guys underneath though so
don't make anything of it. And how will the reactions from the audience be?
Well, there's just one way to find out...
Hop on the train lads!

MAY 2ND-3RD
We left V�rnamo Wednesday evening at 5:58 PM. We met up with Spice in Malm�.
To everybody's surprise he was almost sober. The first major drawback was
the train from Malm� to Berlin. It was an old Russian train from the communist
era. We shared the cabin with a Swedish opera singer. We didn't catch a minute
of sleep since he practised scales all night. We got a few hour's relief on the
ferry Trelleborg-Sassnitz. The first thing we did was to find the bar and
immediately order beers for everybody. Since it was Saso 's birthday the whole
bar sang for him. Since there was still scale practising going on we had to keep
on drinking in the corridor keeping a quiet conversation trying not to disturb the
other passengers. We think we did a fairly good attempt at that. By the way, Chris
fell in love with a beautiful American girl on the train but Anders was the only
one lucky enough to have a deep and meaningful conversation with her. In the
morning Berlin greeted us from its best side, morning sun and a clear blue sky.
After unloading all our gear it crossed Saso's mind that his jacket with passport
and money was still on the train leading him to jump on back again just as the
train started rolling towards Budapest. Luckily he found his jacket quick and
jumped off the rolling train... Since the bus with Celestial Season and Hoek was
delayed we had to spend a couple of hours in the sun outside the station getting
ourselves a tan while still recovering from the sleepless night. When the bus
finally arrived with the members of the other bands we immediately introduced
ourselves and started socialising giving away the presents we brought from Sweden,
elk signs for the Germans, clogs for the Dutch and a life-sized Dala horse for Gary
the bus driver. We became so tired after eating the German sauerkraut, the Dutch
pancakes and the English tea that we just had to go to sleep. Wake up time two
minutes before soundcheck. Gig time: fairly good venue, fairly good crowd, fairly
good band performances. A typical tour premiere. Good night.

MAY 4TH
The Mushroom River Band is suffering from jetlag after two days of sleepless travelling
from Sweden to Berlin to Jena. The opera singer's scale practice is still ringing in our
ears. We went out on a stroll in the city. Calle, our roadie, bought kurtzenhosen and
Anders bought pantoffeln while Chris fell in love with a beautiful German ten point girl
who crossed the street in front of him. Anders immediately started a deep spiritual
conversation with her. After returning from the stroll we went for a game of k�gel.
It turned out that Celestial Season's drummer Rob was a professional k�gel player, he
had in fact won the World Championships in Kuala Lumpur in 1979. Gig time: fairly good
venue, fairly good crowd, fairly good band performances. A typical second night on tour.
Good night.

MAY 5TH
The band woke up very late in Dortmund. Gig time: very good venue, very good crowd,
very good band performances. A typical third night on tour. After the gig it was
the first big night out. The venue held a party and downstairs was a disco where
the members of Hoek, Celestial Season and The Mushroom River Band let loose their
Travolta moves in awe of everyone else attending the dance floor. Who said
hardrockers can't dance disco? Saso fell in love with a beautiful girl named Findus
(or something like that). Chris in his anger for Anders stealing the girls he had
fallen in love with decided to get back by starting a deep spiritual conversation
with Saso's girl. Back on the bus the party continued with lots of Iron Maiden in
the speakers, air guitars, thrashing, moshing and heaping. Anders was the first
runner up for tonight's Grand Prix but Celestial-Rob won the prize after a strong
finish. It later turned out that he had been a professional control loser and won
the World Championship in Acapulco back in 1984. Black out!

MAY 6TH
With the Dortmund party in fresh memory we woke up very early on this day off spent
in Nijmegen so that we could make the most out of it, ready for this day's action.
Before the museums opened at 11 o'clock we managed to attend a very interesting
lecture in quantum physics led by the very famous Dutch professor Jan van Banaan.
After that we went to the museum of modern art where they held an exposition for the
Dutch constructivist artist Piet Mondrian. Since our brains were overheated by all the
new knowledge we became somewhat degenerated and went for some beer drinking and pool
shooting . We ended up staying there until closing time and refused to leave until the
DJ played some Elvis for us. Saso started talking about giving the Nobel prize to the
guy who wrote Suspicious Minds, Spice didn't argue. Good night.

MAY 7TH
Due to riots in Aachen the gig was cancelled letting us stay another day in Nijmegen.
Different lectures and different museums but the same bar as the day before. Same Elvis
conversation again... Spice didn't argue. Good night.

MAY 8TH
We're in Rotterdam. Are we gonna play tonight or not? According to the plan we're
not supposed to play but upon arrival we're told that we're about to play only to
be told an hour later that we can't play after all. Well, that's the way things go
on tour. Considering we will not play we load up with orange juice and crackers to
prepare for the evenings happenings. Loaded with much orange juice and crackers we
enjoy watching Celestial Season play and afterwards there is a party at the venue.
Anders sat down and had an interesting conversation about
the current and historical state in the Middle East with a patron all while the whole
entourage filled the dance floor and showed everybody who was in charge.

MAY 9TH
Bielefeld is a town which no member of The Mushroom River Band had heard of before but
now will remember in the future. Calle-Balle (our roadie) did of course know about
Bielefeld before just like he knows about every other place in Germany. Some of us
went downtown to go shopping for records and to see the local sights. On the way back
we got lost but were rescued by two nice bums who showed us in the right direction,
thanks a lot. Bielefeld gave us a nice day with sunshine and many of us took the
opportunity to get a nice farmer tan (bonnarbr�nna in Swedish) on our arms. Eh...
whatever... Spice has his own way of taking care of pants that has turned into rags.
His were torn apart a few days ago and since he couldn't find needle and thread there
was of course only one thing to do: use tape instead. It actually worked. (Only for
20 minutes but that's beside the point.) Gig time: the audience was tough in the
beginning but turned out to be an excellent crowd as the show went on, see you next
time hopefully. (It was during the gig that Spice's pants once again fell apart.)

MAY 10TH
This is Nijmegen. Seems familiar for some reason, maybe because we were here just a
few days ago. Nice town anyway, it has some fine pool tables and the gas stations
sell all kinds of movies. But one thing they're not good at is baking pizza. Have
you ever heard of a pizzeria that's out of tomato sauce (one of the basic ingredients
in a pizza)? Going to another pizzeria Chris and Saso ordered vegetarian pizzas where
some of the ingredients were fruit cocktail and spinach (is this common in Holland?), a
most unpleasant experience. But hey, this is Nijmegen so they are forgiven. This day was
spent more or less sitting in the bus waiting for showtime. Chris spent a lot of his
time cursing because his cellular phone couldn't keep the connection when he called home
to Sweden. No one else had that problem... Gig time: Another nice show. Spice mistakenly
offended the biggest Mushroom fan in the audience but later apologized and became best
friends with him. The fan wanted us to perform 29' 2 Omega - from the album... but we didn't!
Good night.

MAY 11TH
Woke up in Eindhoven in the afternoon, set up the gear, ate and soundchecked, there
were some quick turns here. Doing soundchecks is boring but this one was pretty fun
since the Effenaar venue had the best sound so far on the tour. We were excited to
deliver this sound to the audience, too bad the audience didn't really show up for
this gig so our egos were seriously damaged. We got over it pretty quick though...
you can't kill rock'n'roll! After the gig we met Walter Hoeijmakers
who has a site on the Internet called Roadburn which is dedicated to
heavy bands playing heavy rock music. We spent some time with him and his friend
sitting in our lounge on the bus discussing stuff like music, the fine town of
Nijmegen and how to pronounce van Gogh correct. After Celestial Season (headlining
in Holland) had delivered their sounds Effenaar turned into a disco palace, great!!
Calle, Chris and Saso put on their finest vintage white suits and red shirts with
matching white shoes before entering the dance floor. Anders decided to outdress
the others by wearing his red suit and pink shirt with matching green sneakers not
to mention his fish tie from 1973, he looked awesome. (Spice went to bed early wearing
nothing but a nightcap by the way.) We danced and danced until the morning line and oh
how much fun we had. Ram (tour manager) impressed everyone by drinking a whole bottle
of Schokomel all by himself in 60 minutes flat. When the disco was over everyone gathered
outside the venue and showed their black hole suns in front of the camera held by Chris,
he got some really nice shots there. The night out ended with Celestial Rob ruining Saso's
suit by throwing an orange on him. It later turned out that Rob had been a professional
orange thrower and had won the district championships in Haag in the early 1990's. He is
actually thinking about making a comeback.
Zzz... zzz... zzz...

MAY 12TH
Patroonat, the venue in Haarlem, will always be remembered for where they put our
dressing room: on the third floor. Those stairs were killing us becuase of our lack
of condition, our soccer playing days in the 1980's are long gone you see. But who's
complaining? The room was filled with Snickers, bananas and Bavaria beer which is a
fine combination so we kept running up and down quite often anyway... We checked out
most of Hoek's gig. Being a band that wasn't even announced to be on this tour as
replacements for Solace they did a really good job and got better and better every
night. The Haarlem audience seemed to appreciate them and so did we, both on and off
stage. Gig time: It went nice... yeah, it did. Good audience, they were with us from
the start. What else? The audience was good. Maybe we said that already, didn't
we... anyway, it went nice. We checked out Celestial Season's entire set from the best
place in the venue which is the royal seats on the second floor and sang along when
they played their big hit Stardust...

MAY 13TH
We woke up and we're in Belgium. Tonight's gig is in a town called Leuven. The sun
is shining from a clear blue sky. The Mushroom River Band sits in the shade drinking
beers afraid of working more on their farmer tan. Celestial and Hoek on the other
hand aren't afraid of anything and hangs out in the sun, some even with their shirts
off. Besides that nothing else happens. Considering today's heat the gig went fairly
well. A typical 8 th gig on tour.

MAY 14TH
Another day off. This time in Hamburg, Germany. After losing contact with the others
(the mushroom boys stopped at a red light...) we were faced with taking care of
ourselves. A somewhat dreadful experience since you get more or less institutionalized
on tour. While discussing how to deal with this new situation that had occurred we
headed for the first sidewalk restaurant and had a beer. We couldn't agree on any
solution so we ended up staying there all night. A pretty good solution without
really being a solution, don't you think? Just before closing time we found ourselves
in the middle of a movie. Two police vans with screaming tyres showed up across the
street where the Casino was situated. Out came a dozen war equipped policemen with
their weapons drawn. They surrounded a BMW 850 and yelled something in German. Out
came a man with his hands over his head and he was thrown into one of the vans. The
police was gone almost before they had arrived. The only thing was that we saw no film
cameras... We ordered the last beer and had a drink to that. Tomorrow is gig time.

MAY 15TH
No travel today since the gig is in Hamburg. A lot of people outside the venue early
in the afternoon. What's this? Have we made such an impact already that people show
up hours before the gig? Now, wait. There's another tour bus and there's another one.
It turned out that Ash played in the same house that night but a different venue.
Oh, well. Chris somewhat fell in love with the female guitarist in Ash, who today
wore an Iron Maiden T-shirt. Does a member of a pop band like Ash has the right to
wear a T-shirt like that? Anyway it's good to be back in Germany. Back to headline.
The gig went really well and it even ended up in some chaos when Spice invited the
fans to join us on stage during the encores. Cool!

MAY 16TH
After a long travel we arrived in Zwickau in the south-eastern part of Germany for
the last gig of the tour. The day was characterized by breaking-up feelings. Photos
were taken, addresses were switched, records were signed, etc. To honor the day
Alessandro (drummer of Hoek) decided that today he was beer roadie to our roadie Calle,
a job that he succeeded in. All the rest of us had to supply ourselves with our own beer.
Trying to keep up with Calle who had help we all ended up pretty pissed. The gig was
good and Calle (after been supplied with many beers from beer roadie Alessandro) showed
us all in the encore who had been in charge all the time. He played the drums, the
guitar, the bass and sang all at the same time, all the while (among other things)
pouring a bucket of liquid over poor Spice who just stood there astonished of what
he saw, finally getting back for all the shit he'd been talking on stage on the whole
tour. All of us slipping and sliding on the now totally soaked stage we all ended up
in a big heap and we decided to call it a day. Good Bye for this time!

EPILOGUE...
Dortmund railway station. Noon. Still fifteen hours to go before we'll be in our own
beds. Hangover. Three switches of trains. 20 pieces of luggage. No money. No food.
Nothing to drink. We don't want to be a part of this anymore...

Thanks to...
Celestial Season
Hoek
Ram (tour manager)
Ken (who helped us with the sound on more than one occasion)
Yvon (who sold the merch)
Gary (the bus driver)
Pre-Ignition (the German booking agency)
All the local promoters
MeteorCity (our record comp), who made it all possible and without
whom it wouldn't have been such a fun and memorable first tour for
The Mushroom River Band.
Most of all a big Hell Yeah! to all the fans who sold their souls
to Rock 'n' Roll together with us.

And last. Don't forget what it's all about.