Alex Band UK

June 13th-I left Florida for Sweden to meet up with the new band on our first European experience together…4 countries, 6 days, no sleep, rock and roll.

June 14th-I arrived in Sweden after a very long flight. I got picked up at the airport by our new European tour bus. The tour buses in Europe are very different than the ones in the States, so it got some getting use to. See, they have to be skinnier in Europe width wise, but they can be much taller…So they’re all two floors. Up the winding stares on the top floor you’ll find another TV room with all the same stuff in the back and then 12 bunks that lead all the way back to the very front of the bus…That way you can sit at the front on the second story and watch the road in front of you through giant glass windows and it feels like you should be driving. Very strange indeed. I found out shortly after getting on the bus from the airport, on the way to the hotel, that Air France had lost Arms’s bag and our guitar tech’s bag again! Poor arms…he will not see his bag for a very long time…

June 15th-This day started with a very, very early morning trip to the NRJ radio station in Sweden. Chops and I met some fans there that had won the chance to meet us. We got some cool presents including a Kokopelli necklace. Chops had his sunglasses on and stank of alcohol…I guess the boys partied hard the night before…I told Chops he smelled like a bum! We moved on after NRJ to go to another radio station that had 2 really crazy women hosts…they reminded me of witches for some reason…they kept cackling in Swedish as they spoke to one another, man were we lost. As we started to play “Our Lives” acoustically on air, the two women got up and were dancing with each other something like a “grab your partner round and round” thing…very strange. Chops and I kept laughing while we were playing, we couldn’t help it. I mean, on top of the singing cackling dancing Swedish witches, the room we were in had a fully decorated Christmas tree on my left and a giant stuffed lion on my right wearing a blue sparkly cowboy hat. After the song was done Chops started playing the theme song to “The Twilight Zone”…”do do do do, do do do do”…I was like, “Shut up dude! I’m scared!” It was fun. After that I went back to the hotel and did a bunch of press interviews. I met this one girl who won a contest to meet and interview me for a magazine. Man, she couldn’t get it together…when she was waiting to come in and see me, she was screaming and crying while convulsing in her father’s arms. She was SO loud that people started coming out of their hotel rooms all shaken up saying, “What’s wrong!? What happened?!” Sacha simply replied, “Oh, just a little meet and greet.” The girl finally got it together and came in the room, I guess she realized I wasn’t an evil monster. After that I met up with the band at sound check for our show that night. None of the band had ever been to Europe before, so they were all suffering from jetlag…Arms kept walking around like a zombie, “What day is it? Where are we?” I decided to introduce them to the fine Swedish delicacy that I like to call “fish paste in a tube”. I made them smell it, that woke them up alright. Sound check went well and the club was really cool, kind of like a big ballroom with huge chandeliers…it was sold out for that night’s show and the band was excited to play our first headlining show together.
No word yet on where Arms’s bag was that the airline lost…they thought it was still in America! By that point he’d been wearing the same thing for two days. Stockholm is a great city… it stayed light out there until like 2AM! It was really confusing. After the gig that night the band got on the tour bus to start there 24 hour drive to Germany. Chops and I went back to the hotel because we were going to fly out the next morning to Germany and do press all day while the rest of the guys drive. Honestly, at that point, my jetlagged brain would have liked sleeping in that little dark coffin bunk on the tour bus for 20+ hours instead of waking up at 5AM and getting on plane flight number 3,478,384…but oh well.

June 16th-Chops, Sacha, and I flew to Frankfurt early in the morning. Once we arrived we drove to Cologne to start our day of TV stuff. First we did Viva TV where Chops and I played acoustically and then we drove to Dussoldorf to do Giga TV as well. In between all that I had to call a few hundred radio stations back in America to tell them how much I appreciate them playing our new song…that’ll be a big phone bill. We drove back to Cologne as the rest of the band just arrived at the hotel…sleep was needed and that we did.

June 17th-I woke up and met our new film crew, who were going to be traveling with us and filming our every move for the rest of the Europe tour…all to make a cool video for the new single to be released in Europe, “Things Will Go My Way.” I did an interview for MTV news at the hotel bar and the constant group of cameras in my face began. The bar was really cool because it was all made out of ice…the top was like a giant flat snow cone to keep your drinks cool…I kept hitting the hard stuff, yah, that’s right, I can finish off like at least 4 bottles of water in one sitting…I know, I should quit, but it’s just so hard. Anyway, after that everyone went to this big radio station to do a full rock show for winners called “Eins Live”. It was all fine until we walked into the room we were suppose to do our full rock show in…uh, yah, it was the smallest room ever with a stage that could fit one of Arms’s, well, …arms…so, needless to say I decided to change it to an all acoustic show…much more intimate, and we don’t get sued for making people’s ears bleed. After sound checking and figuring out that whole mess everyone headed over to Top of The Pops to record a performance of “Things Will Go My Way”. It went well and gave the band their first experience of not really “playing” playing…you know, faking to track, it’s so fun…yah. We saw our hardcore German Street Team fans and they seemed to enjoy themselves that night as well. I always like playing those acoustic shows and man was it easier for me than the one man acoustic shows I did in London a few weeks back. My Mom came with my little German brothers and they were rocking out on the side of the stage during the show. Anyway, after we performed we all got on the tour bus to drive all night to Milan Italy….Oh yah, by the way, still no bag for Arms:( That means by this time he was wearing the same outfit since the day he left New York, 5 days ago. Luckily as we were leaving he finally received his bag and was crying tears of joy to have clean clothes to put on. I said, “man it must be nice to have clean underwear?”, and he said, “I don’t wear underwear”,,,,

June 18th-The next morning we pulled up to the Milan airport in the tour bus super early to jump on a flight to Catania, Sicily. The plane we flew was about 40 years old and stank like smoke and was on some airline that I’ve never heard of in my life…I was too tired to care. When we arrived we went straight to “Festival Bar”, a big outdoor TV show gig with multiple bands playing. We sound checked for “Our Lives” since that was the one song we were going to play later on that night. It was a really beautiful location, right in the middle of the cities’ main square. After that we went to our hotel and were greeted by cockroaches in the lobby, nice. We all walked to some random Italian restaurant to eat lunch. Man, I thought I had seen it all when it comes to weird cultures and their weirder food, but Italians? Pasts, pizza, all that good stuff….but what’s this? Maggot cheese? Plates of oily fat slabs? OK, we’ll start with the maggot cheese, that’s right, it’s pretty much how it sounds, these people in Sicily sit there and thoroughly enjoy this white cheese with live slimy squirming maggots crawling in and out of millions of little holes. AH! NO NO NO! OK, now the fat slabs. We are all familiar with Salami right? The little white dots of fat in the salami? Well imagine salami but the entire thing is just the white dots…that’s right, slabs of fat, and only pure white fat. They get mounds of the fat slabs and put them on bread, Delish! And they aren’t too fattening for those of you on diets;) I’d eat that fat any day before I sucked down stinky maggot cheese…all the sudden stinky fish in a tube paste doesn’t sound so bad. Later on, we headed back over to this outdoor radio show/TV show thing. There were so many people! I had no idea that the entire square was going to be full…like at least 12 to 15 thousand people. The stage was massive and I had fun running around all over the place. The crowd was loving it and so were we.

June 20th-That morning we pulled up once again to the Milan airport after a long drive through the night and got on a plane to London. Well, as we were sitting by the gate getting ready to board the bus, I realized that the few hundred people there were all staring at me….then I realized they were all about 15 years old…then I realized they were an entire school of girls….and then I was mobbed…ATTACK! I tried to sign as much as possible but it was getting a little crazy, so Sacha got me on the bus before everyone and I got to sit up with the driver. As everyone was slowly filling up the bus behind us I noticed Chops and Cory getting out of the bus for a second…Sacha and I were like, “what are they doing?” All the sudden they both light up cigarettes! Sacha was screaming, “What the f*ck are you doing, morons! Put those out!” Sacha wasn’t the only one concerned about this, the guy in the giant gasoline truck next to Chops and Cory filling up a jumbo jet looked pretty angry too;)…you can’t smoke on an airport runway! You can’t smoke next to a 747 while it’s getting thousands of gallons of flammable gasoline pumped into it! Anyway, they learned their lesson and we give them sh*t for it every day since:) So, we got on the plane and headed off to London. When we got off the plane, Sacha started running with me away from the hundreds of school girls that were on our flight ready to ATTACK! Well, we ran alright, but it didn’t matter because we had to go through customs at the end of the terminal and so did the hordes of girls…I was caught. We finally got out of there an hour later and drove way out in the middle of nowhere to do some huge pop radio show for GWR. There was like 30,000 people at that show and they were all happy to see us. The only funny thing about this radio show, was that every act on the bill were playing to track, you know fake play, so we had to as well. I got to tell you, it was really strange to play a four song set at a live radio show to 30,000 people but not really be playing…I mean, I was able to sing, but the band had to pretend. It was still a lot of fun and the band was eating it up…I mean, who doesn’t like 30,000 screaming girls?

June 21st-We took the short one minute drive to the airport very early in the morning and got on our way too long 12 hour flight to LA. Man, those plane rides kill you…why is it that sitting around for 12 hours makes you feel like you’ve just run a marathon? Anyway, we finally arrived at the LA airport, home sweet home….well, not quite yet, after spending 12 hours on the plane and another 2 hours going through customs in LA and claiming our 35 pieces of gear and luggage, we had to race over to Hollywood to film the show Pepsi Smash. God damn this was the longest day ever. We said goodbye to our film crew who were even more destroyed than we were…they had gotten a lot of great footage over the last few days, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that video for “Things Will Go My Way” turns out soon. The band and I were so beyond fried once we got to the studios in Hollywood. The Pepsi Smash show was an all day event, with press and sound check and schmoozing, blah blah blah. I was expecting a typical LA audience, all standing there with their arms crossed thinking, “come on, wow us, we’ve seen everything”….but no, the audience kicked serious ass! We taped our performance of “Our Lives” twice later that night and used up the small amount of energy that was still floating around somewhere in our bodies. That Pepsi Smash show is really cool and all the people that worked there were really nice too. The performance was a lot of fun and I spotted a bunch of fans in the crowd that I haven’t seen since the last record…they were all loving it and so were we. I finally got home really late that night and dropped dead in my own bed….dreaming in red…OK, that’s really stupid:)

June 24th-The two days off were over in a flash and it was back to work. We did the Craig Kilborn show in LA, which was pretty painless. It was an all day event, but fairly easy. We hung around, got some make up, did a sound check, yadayadayda, and then performed. All our friends and family came down that day to watch us, including Aaron who came baring gifts for everyone! I got a Ferrari backpack! Yes! Anything that is Ferrari is good for me;) After the taping was all done that night we went home and slept…I was in major jetlag mode, so I kept waking up every thirty minutes that night thinking, “Where am I? Is it time to go to the airport yet? There’s someone on the roof? I know there is someone on the roof….yah, just go to sleep crazy b*tch…

June 25th-I woke up early, surprise surprise, went to the airport, met the band there and flew to Charlotte, North Carolina to do a radio show. The flight was super bumpy and four hours later as we started our descent into Charlotte, the captain came on and said, “There’s funnel clouds and tornadoes over the airport right now and they’ve evacuated the control tower, so yah, we’re going to go ahead and circle for an hour or so.” I don’t know if any of you have gone in circles over and over right next to tornado brewing weather, but I’ll warn you now, it is not fun, nor is it pleasant, IT’S F*CKING SCARY! To be totally honest though, I was so tired and broken down by that point from the last four months of touring that this new situation of life threatening problems didn’t really effect me, I was like, “yah, tornados, whatever, evacuate the control tower of all the people that make sure the planes in the sky don’t crash into each other, whatever, run out of gas eventually? whatever…” An hour and a half later we landed in stormy rainy Charlotte and I was rushed off immediately to do a radio visit. That night’s radio show was outside in a parking lot and with the way the weather was looking, it wasn’t sounding like there was going to be a radio show that night. We waited at the hotel and I was told by Sacha first that the show was happening, then that is wasn’t, then that it was again, then that it wasn’t…by that time I assumed it wasn’t and got ready for bed, took a shower, got in bed, closed my eyes and then…ring ring ring, “Get downstairs now, Liz Fair and other acts that were supposed to play canceled because the stage had turned into a pool of rain water and all the speakers and equipment burned out, and the stage lighting is fried, and the audience is wet and drunk and angry and leaving…but well, it’s clearing up now and they’re uh, well, “squeegeeing” the stage off as we speak…so you guys are going on”…awesome. Considering the situation, and the lack of certain audio gear and lights, and well, most of an audience, the little gig in the parking lot was actually pretty fun. I got to see some friends and fans I hadn’t seen in ages, so I was happy…and wet.

June 26th-The next morning we all flew to Kansas City to do a big Top 40 radio show with Maroon 5 and Hulk Hogan’s daughter! That’s right, Mr. Hogan himself was going to be there too and I know someone who scored a picture with him;) Anyway, we boarded this really teeny plane that morning. I was thinking to myself as we started to taxi out to the runway, “how the hell is this little plane, totally full of people and all their luggage, and all our luggage and all our 25 pieces of gear?” Well, the answer is, it’s not…but I’ll get to that in a second. First, I’d like to point out another funny moment in aviation history…as we’re getting ready to take off the captain comes on the intercom and says, “Hey folks, well there’s a little bit of bad weather here and there that should cause some turbulence and well, this plane is kind of small and not well equipped to handle such a long flight (two hours), so…uh…well thanks for flying Delta shuttle and yah…” That was great to hear, really makes you feel comfortable. OK, OK, so we get there and low and behold…half of our gear is not on the plane and most of everyone else’s baggage didn’t make it either, due to all of our gear and excess baggage. All the passengers were looking at us like, “thanks mother f*ckers”. Anyway, we had a dilemma, how do we play a big radio show for 15,000 people in a few hours without our guitars or pedals or amps? The answer is… we don’t. Luckily my friend Chris who works at the station we were playing the radio show for is an awesome guy and he switched around our set time so we could go on later that night, which gave the airline time to get the rest of our stuff in on the next flight. The weather yet again was rainy that day and we were suppose to play on some second stage that night that WAS NOT COVERED…I was a little worried. We got to the gig and we were hanging backstage when all of the sudden, Hulk Hogan walks in to meet us! I swear he looked identical to the way he looked in the 80’s when I used to watch him pretend to kill people for fun…those were the days. Anyway, he was really a cool guy and super nice. Shortly after that, we made our way to the stage and luckily it wasn’t raining, but the second we got on stage to start playing our first song…aha…the rain cometh. It would rain a little, then stop, then a little more, then stop…it rained just enough off and on during our set to worry us and to make the stage damn slippery. I had to watch out not to fall on my ass with my bad crazy dancing skills. That show went by surprisingly fast and the audience really made the show great…by this point, the band was really starting to sound good and lock in with each other. All the guys were having the time of their lives and so was I. This is a good life we lead, and we’re lucky to have it.

June 27th-We woke up…yes, you guessed it, very early in the morning and headed to the airport. We had the next 5 days off and I was going to spend it with my girl at our Florida house while the rest of the band was going to fly back to LA and chill there. We all went our separate ways, and after a long journey with too many connections I made it to my little slice of paradise on the beach in Florida. It was time to rest, and I mean really rest since in 5 days, it’s back to Europe for yet another 10-day tour through multiple countries! That’s Europe trip number 6 for me already in the last 5 months. Anyway, keep requesting “Our Lives” at your local radio stations for all you fans in America…that is priority #1! Everyone else, keep doing what you’re doing! All your support around the world helps us so much out there! Until next time, all the love….