Tao » tour

4th July – Basel – the last concert.

jalal — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:18:53 +0000

Basel stage

The last concert of the tour is in Basel, Switzerland. And, as usual with the Swiss concerts, is organized by [name removed], a wild crazy organizer who seems to be on the edge of having it all spiral out of control but somehow keeps it together. He’s setup a beautiful stage design for the event.

Good lighting, eh?

The concert is in the Basel Messe, the large exhibition center in the city. It’s a nice place. We find out when we’ve set everything up and need some adjustments to the lights that the light technician quits work at 5pm and has gone home. So I’m left with the job of climbing around on the light gantries getting the lights to point in the right direction and then running the light console during the concert. Which means not so many pictures this time round.

Adi and Raj

Last night madness strikes.

Some of the local wild women.

Lunar eclipse?

26th – 28th June – Warsaw

jalal — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:03:15 +0000

Warsaw stage

I like Poland and was looking forward to the concert in Warsaw, which I’ve not visited before. So was a bit disconcerted to find that it had been voted the ugliest city in Europe by TripAdviser. It is indeed a rather unlovely city but after a short readup on the history of the place one can understand why. Completely razed to the ground in 1944 by order of Hitler and then finished off by the Russians. Who then helped to rebuild some of it under the communist regime using the best of Soviet architecture. Remarkably, the old town center, which was completely ignored by the Soviet era reconstruction, was rebuilt to the original photographs and drawings by private donations and nowadays looks like “the real thing”.

Getting to Warsaw had been a long day as we’d stayed longer than intended in Berlin in order to enjoy a good lunch at Buddha Home, an excellent Nepalese restaraunt in Berlin. Add to that some atrocious weather and Polish roads and we were lucky to haul in to Warsaw just before midnight. Much of the roads weren’t so bad, but the autobahn simply ends about 100 km before Warsaw and suddenly becomes a two lane road through the countryside along with all the traffic from the autobahn. I guess they ran out of money.

Soviet tower (Palace of Culture)

Polish Pope

The Warsaw concert is in the Palladium Club, which is kind of an old variety club that has seen better days. It has a good feel to it though and the staff are friendly (like most everyone in Poland). The stage is a little small but the equipment is good and we have a good sound and light show and the concert goes real well. Big thanks to the organizer, Gosia, for getting it together so beautifully.

Old town square.

Mermaid, an icon of Warsaw.

Stage shot

Shadows on the wall.

Manose on percussion

Mantra time

Beautiful Pratibha helped everywhere, with such joy!

We all made some beautiful friends in Warsaw.

23rd – 25th June – Berlin

jalal — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:53:53 +0000

Berlin stage

Tonights concert is in the prestigious Berlin Philarmonie, in the Kammermusiksaal, which is normally used for chamber orchestras and is in the round, meaning the audience is sitting all around. It’s not particularly designed for a stage performance, more for an ensemble to be listened to and as such the acoustics of the hall are excellent, which, paradoxically, poses a problem. Deva and Miten require a neutral acoustic in a hall, so that they can create their sound without the hall effecting it, but in this case the very layout has an effect. We haul up their own Syrincs PA that we use for the voice workshops, but that just makes things worse. It creates a rather tense sound check and, as oftens happens, an inspired concert!

The Berlin Philarmonie is a “union house” and behind these two words lie a whole world of problems. For instance, there is no parking available, so after unloading I have to trundle off to find a parking place. But, to get out of the Philarmonie parking area I need to get a ticket to raise the barrier, which means going to a different office, staffed by four guys in uniform. After much discussion amongst themselves they decide to issue me with a ticket to get out (have they ever done this before?). To load the equipment on to the stage, we come in a back door to the elevator and up to the second floor. When we arrive at the second floor I drop the elevator key which skedaddles over to the edge of the elevator and drops down the shaft. I go down to the porters desk to explain my predicament and find out that that is the only key and they’ll have to call in the engineers, four of whom duly arrive and peer down the shaft for a while and decide that they can’t find the key. So now I have to fill out forms so that they can put in a claim for a new key, to be paid for by my insurance. I ponder offering the engineers €50 to “find” the key but don’t really have time (it’s getting pretty late by now). Although I don’t believe in things just disappearing….

Illegal photo of the foyer

I also find out that I need a permit to take photographs in the concert building, presumably applied for in advance. And that noone can enter the concert hall after the concert has started. This is kind of standard with a chamber music orchestra, but is not really necessary with our kind of concert. Still, rules is rules and it would be more than my job’s worth to let you in sir.

Ceiling art.

There is a bit of chaos around the organisers of the concert (like who is organising it?) as we have two points of contact, Sybilla and Brian, and sometimes get two different answers. Such as which seats are being used in the hall. The concert is not using the whole hall, there will be a couple of hundred seats that won’t be used and we would prefer that those seats were all in the area behind the stage, and apparently some of the doors have been closed. But once in the hall, people can walk around and sit where they like, so we end up with an audience all over the place.

Stagae shot

And then there is the 30 piece under-10′s orchestra, who wander into our back stage area and setup for practise while we are doing a sound check. Thirty under-10′s can make a fair bit of noise when provided with flutes and violins… such are the joys of the Berlin Philarmonie!

Music in the round

So, a world of problems and what else can go wrong? Well, in the end, nothing and after all the grief and stress of the sound check, it turned out being a beautiful concert. Miten wasn’t too confident with the light techs so I spent much of the time up in the gods with them (in the end a competent pair of guys). Moving from there into the concert hall itself was problematic as each door had a young lady whose purpose in life that evening was to make sure that noone entered during the concert.

It all comes up roses and song

It was a good concert and that meant that it went on later than usual and the Philarmonie, being a union shop, has strict rules about closing times, so there is a bit of a panic while we get everything off the stage, into the elevator and into the van. And yes, we did need to visit the gentlemen in the other office to get a pass to leave the car park!

and love and hugs

Returning to the hotel, we went around the side of the hotel for the entrance to the car park and were met with the sight of dozens of young ladies in very short skirts and bikini tops… the ladies of the night.

19th – 22nd June – Hamburg

jalal — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:37:11 +0000

Hamburg stage

Always a shock driving back into Germany. Suddenly the autobahn becomes a scene from James Bond, with Porsches or BMWs sniffing up my exhaust pipe and flashing lights at me to overtake. It’s strange, take a mild mannered German deputy bank manager, nice wife, a loving father to two kids and put him behind the wheel of a car on the autobahn and he turns into a speed freak, every car in front an enemy to do battle with. And drivers from Hamburg seem to be amongst the worst.

Anyway, onto Hamburg and yet another cute hotel, the Hotel Mittelweg (http://www.hotel-mittelweg.de/), which could be incredibly kitsch, done up as it is with antiques and period pieces, but it’s so well done it’s comfortable and cute. The sort of place where I could just hang out in the room and do nothing. Which I did… It’s a bit of a walk from here to anywhere else really, but not too bad and I take a stroll out that evening into the Grindelhof area of pubs and restaraunts.

All stars need their own personal tailor for those last minute fixups.

The concert is in the Hamburg Congress Center, a massive conference and hotel complex center near Dammtor and i cruise up there next day looking for an entrance into the hall. After a bit of searching around I find the porter who gives me map so that I can drive around the back to the stage door. The concert is organised by Wrage Seminar Service and they duly show up to help with unloading and getting the gear up on the stage. The main man in Wrage is Jurgen, and sweet guy though he is, can be a little frustrating to work with. I keep getting the feeling that he has another job somewhere and he’s just taking some time off to do this in his tea break. So we’ve asked for some tea-making equipment and get a kettle, tea bags and sugar, but no cups to make it in and no tea spoons to put the sugar in. Just as an example… I could go on but I don’t have time to complain, got a concert to put together.

and Rajen

Film director Kali

Despite being a Congress Center, the venue has quite a nice atmosphere, and although not sold out, was a really good audience. We’ve also got a film crew here. They drove up from Cologne and have been stuck in traffic for the last 3-4 hours, so they finally arrive a little late and a little stressed but ready to film.

Stage

16th – 19th June – Amsterdam

jalal — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:11:17 +0000

Amsterdam Stage

In which we stay in a nice, but funky hotel near the center and play a concert waay out in the suburbs and wander around the city of many delights.

Past experience has taught me that Amsterdam hotel rooms are tiny, if you have a large suitcase you can’t move. So it’s a great surprise to find our hotel (Hotel Plantage, www.hotelplantage.nl) has decent sized rooms and is located a short walk from the center of the city. It’s also pleasantly run-down and funky and run by a guy who used to run a hotel in the red-light district. Downstairs is a nice pub and cafe and around the corner is the university area. Van parking is a kilometer away, but it’s a nice stroll.

The mix desk...

where it all comes together.

The concert is next day and is out in Almere, kind of a satellite town of Amsterdam. We start driving out early, which is fortunate, because the new Amsterdam metro line project means lots of streets are being dug up and our satnav is trying to take us down them. Quite why the Dutch think it’s a good idea to dig an underground transit system through a city that is in large part water, in a country that is partly below sea level, is beyond me. Must be something they’re smoking. The project is way over budget and time and no-one I met had a good thing to say about the idea. Meanwhile, we do arrive at Almere eventually and it’s all brand spanking new with lots of parking and nice new buildings and fantastic concert hall, the Schouwburg Almere.

Smita, Ravi and Miten

Ravi

The hall was built only two years ago and they installed state of the art equipment for the stage so setting up goes very smoothly, sound is good, as are the lights. Strangely for such a spaciously laid out town and a new concert hall, the seating is all a bit cramped, going right up to the stage, with four or five narrow balconies around the hall. This means that Miten can’t invite the audience up on stage at the end of the concert.

Praful, sax maestro

and Ravi

Whenever we play Amsterdam there is always a few other musicians who drop by and sometimes get invited to play. Today there is Ravi, a multi-instrumentalist from the UK who has played many times with Miten over the years. Tonight he’s just going to sing and do some overtone singing. And we have a local resident, Praful, playing sax. Also a multi-instrumentalist, Praful has been responsible for some of the musical arrangements on Deva’s CDs. They both play for a few songs in the second half of the gig.

Higher

and higher

The next day is the luxury of a day off and have a lot of fun wandering around Amsterdam. Next day we head off to Hamburg.

Stage

in many

colours

11th June – Cologne

jalal — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:19:18 +0000

Stage

Travel to the sound of Pink Floyd, “Echoes: The Best of”, and I marvel at the fact that this music was made before the advent of computer synths and recording systems. And such a distinctive sound, one that no-one has really recreated since then. The journey is short (couple of hours) but with torrential rain showers and overcast skies. Somehow, this is the right weather for Cologne. Whoever put the city together had grey overcast skies in mind and the place ‘looks right’ today.
I’m staying at UTA near Friesenplatz and it’s always great to arrive here. I’m sure of meeting a bunch of people I haven’t seen for a while and I’m not disappointed this time, meeting up with Satyarthi, who I haven’t seen for a decade or two! Plus there is Osho’s Place, one of the best vegetarian restaurants in the world. I find when I arrive that my room has been swapped with Manose, who ‘requires’ full time internet connection. So, I get a better room but without internet access.

Three geezers at large...

Deutsche Telekom has persuaded the German government that allowing open wifi access points will encourage terrorists and child pornographers to flood the networks with smut and terrorist manuals and that the world would be a far safer place if all access points were locked down and everyone had to pay for access. To Deutsche Telekom naturally. So the government has made it illegal to have open wifi access points. Which is why it is almost impossible to get access to the net without going paying €15/hour to T-Mobile. I say almost, because there is a brave cafe nearby that lets me log on for free and check my emails. It seems to me, that with a little imagination, we could start a movement to have all access points use their SSID as the password, thereby fulfilling the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

Morning satsang

Thursday is a religious (Catholic) holiday so the event is all-day, starting with a Satsang at 12:00, but it means we are starting off at 08:00 with the stage setup. It’s the same stage setup as we’ll use for the evening concert but it’ll have to be moved back for an intervening event in the afternoon. We set the stage colour to predominately white and open the halls window shades to give some approximation of daylight, although given the grey skies outside and incoming storm, it doesn’t make a lot of difference.

More satsang

Having them on the stage for satsang and nudging folks to sing along means that there is little difference between a satsang and a concert, which is a bit of a disappointment.

The empty chair...

We’ve played many times in the Tanzbrunnen on the Messeplatz, in fact it’s Deva and Miten’s seventh gig here, and the third that I’ve been here for. The technical guys at the hall are speedy and very professional and the gear is of high quality, so setup is smooth and the sound and lights are good. Plus, catering comes out of Osho’s Place, so we get some great food and drink for the whole day and there is continuous flow of old friends coming through the dressing room.

Lots of friends dropping by

The stage

The evening concert is, as usual in Cologne, full and juicy. Most people know the songs and sing along with them, the concert hall looks great as does the stage. Miten invites everybody up on the stage for the last couple of songs (is this going to become a regular part of the show?) and the Tanzbrunnen becomes an intimate venue for the final song.

All are welcome here

Just a group of friends.

A Mantra for Interesting Times.

Our Nepalese banners

6th – 9th June – Frankfurt

jalal — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:39:57 +0000

More stage

The Frankfurt conert is not really in Frankfurt, but in Neu-Isenberg, a satelite town about 10km outside. We’ve played in the Hugenottenhalle last year and it’s a good hall. The voice workshop on Sunday is across the other side of Frankfurt, but we’re going to stay in Neu-Isenburg for the duration. It’s a nice hotel with free internet, friendly staff and a quiet area. Well, it would be quiet if they weren’t digging up the road outside my room and Monday morning I’m woken at 7am to the sound of pneumatic drills and diggers. Closing the windows doesn’t help very much so it’s an early start on Monday.

Hugenottenhalle

Frankfurter Ring organize a lot of events and are a great team of people to work with. They’re available for us from the moment we arrive until we leave and that makes our work a lot easier. The voice workshop on Sunday is in the Bockenheim area of Frankfurt, in the Titania Event Theater, a nice little place in the back streets. The workshop is sold out and goes well, I take the time to do some work in a local cafe. In packing up we seem to gain some cables which we discover later and will have to find a way to return to the theater.

Introducing Manose

Deva, Miten and York

The concert itself is back in the Hugenottenhalle in Neu-Isenberg, which we have played in previous years. Last year at the Colors of Ostrava festival, Deva and Miten had met up with Jan Garbarek’s band and connected with York Wegener, Jan Garbarek’s lighting designer. They’ve asked him to come along and do a set design for tonights concert and when we show up he’s already hard at work erecting frames and light stands. It’s an interesting concept that he has and is different than anything that we’ve had before. Normally Deva and Miten appear in a pool of light on a darkened stage, sort of floating there but in this design York has created a frame that they ‘sit in’, sort of like a picture frame but with lights. It works quite well on the Hugenottenhalle stage, which is not so big and the frame fits very nicely, but I can’t see it working on some of the large stages that we play. Unfortunately York has some problems with one bank of lights and that distracts him a bit at the start. I think he solves the problems though and by the second half of the show things are looking pretty good. Unless you are sitting in the front row, in which case you would have been a bit dazzled by the back lights shining down at you.

More stage

Colors always changing

Boogying on...

and higher....

into silence.

Again Miten invites people up on stage for the last two songs (those who were in the voice workshop), always provides a bit of an energy rush, particularly as it’s the Sufi song “Il Allah” which usually picks up a good head of steam before dropping off into the beautiful “Ommm…. “.

Sakha, sound engineer par excellence.

Ganesh, remover of obstacles.

29th May – 1st June – Rainbow Spirit Festival, Baden-Baden

jalal — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:53:33 +0000

Baden Baden stage set.

I’ve been sick for a few days after the first leg, sore throat degenerating into a dry cough and it lingers on for a couple of weeks. Most unlike me, I figure it must be some sort of East European bug that I’m not used to. I find out later that Deva and Sakha both had the same sort of thing. Regardless, the show must go on and the next gig is the Rainbow Spirit festival in Baden Baden, a gloriously esoteric extravaganza in a city better known for it’s casinos and extreme affluence.

Satsang

Rainbow Spirit is a festival that has been taking place regularly for a number of years and is a mixture of all kinds of new age shops and shows. The Kongress Center is the main venue for the event and is three floors of halls, seminar rooms and space for exhibitors booths. There is an all day schedule of talks, workshops and events in the halls and the exhibition space is full with every crystal, therapy and shaman of Europe (and beyond).

Satsang on the Saturday, it’s very full. Satsang is an Indian word used for a gathering where people sit together (normally in silence and meditation) and literally means ‘sitting with truth’. In the case of Osho’s people, it has evolved to be an hour and a half sitting with music interspersed with silence and quotes from Osho. There is a stage setup for the weekends events, but Deva and Miten sit on the floor in the middle, with everyone else around them. There is a beautiful 90 minutes of music and silence

Sumano, Tour Manageress

In the evening there are concerts from Milarepa and his One Sky band, followed by Prem Joshua and his band, almost all old friends of mine. Milerapa’s band, as usual, is a spontaneous collection of musicians from the region and Mila leads them on a high energy romp through old and new standards. Rather than travel with a band he uses his vast network of musicians to invite whoever is available to play and in this case he’s got an 8 piece ensemble. Most people seem to know the songs (including the musicians!) and are dancing and singing along.

In the changing room

Prem Joshua and band take over after a short break and move us on into their mix of east and west fusion. I’d met them in the morning, they were setting up at the same time as we were (first time I’ve seen a group of musicians sound checking at 07:30). They played a good high energy set with some new stuff as well. They’re heading off to Italy later to start work on a new album, which I look forward to. Getting in and out of the concerts is a real PITA though, as the wrist bands we are all wearing should allow us entry to any event but some of the door folks don’t seem to realise this and I end up spending a chunk of the concerts outside. In the end I give up and head off to join Milarepa and crew for a pizza and beer.

Here's to rock and roll!

The DP&M concert on the Sunday is too large to happen in the Kongress Halle and takes place in the Casino building, where there is seating for 1250 people. They’ve played this hall many times and it’s a well equipped place to play in. This time we’ve asked for the stage to be a bit deeper than normal (at an additional cost of €600) but after we’ve setup we find that the fire curtain runs straight through the setup and we either have to move forward or backward, so we move forward and end up at the same place as previous years but with a bit more space behind. It’s the kind of fire curtain which means that not even a wire can cross ‘the line’… totally dumb situation.

Baden Baden stage set.

Cornelia Flatischler

Peter Makena

In the second half, Miten invites up Cornelia and Sabina to play percussion. Cornelia is one half of the TaKeTiNa Institute and played with them last year in Chemnitz. She sings good too, talented gal. Late he invites up Veetkam, a percussionist from the Singing Buddhas, in Switzerland and finally Peter Makena, composer of the “So Much Magnificence” song (which is played) and of many other sannyas songs. With the addition of each musician the energy levels rises and we end with everyone blissed out and breathless. The Great Orgasm as Miten later put it.

Veetkam from the Singing Buddhas

Monday is the Voice Workshop, very well attended. It’s a beautiful room for a Workshop, lots of light and space. And Miten has invited Rishi, Dwani, Cornelia, Sabina and Veetkam to join in to make music, so it’s a full on mix. Deva is a little sick, grumpy and feeling frail and last thing she wants is a bunch of extra musicians in the middle… but after a few tears and a few hugs the workshop starts up and things move to a ‘higher plain’.

Voice Workshop

Afterwards there is a bit of an altercation between Sakha and Mariam, the concert organizer. One thing we’ve learnt on tour is to never, ever get between Sakha and his food. It’s like getting between a bear and her cub, or a wolf and his kill: consider yourself lucky to come away with a full set of digits. Mariam didn’t like him eating the food set out for the artists and told him so. He survived though without too much damage. Later, after a flurry of emails on the situation, I understand that they’ve ‘hugged and made up’ in the virtual sense of the word.

Beautiful Ajara

Maestro Manose

Paul and Kerry, US organizers

TaKeTiNa concert

Satsang

21/22 May, return to Freiburg

jalal — Sat, 23 May 2009 21:11:41 +0000

Sarve takes one van to Freiburg, me the other. The musicians fly off to London for the UK leg of the tour. Bloody hot journey… stop in Regensburg, Neurnberg and on home.
Today the temperature is up in the high 20s at least and out on the autobahn its in the 30s. And I’m driving west to Freiburg and the sun is shining in the drivers window all the way and this van doesn’t have any conditioning beyond rolling the windows down, which on the autobahn is going to dehydrate me to raisin like proportions as well as being uncomfortable but the alternative, having the windows up, brings the temperature in the cab up into the mid-forties within a short time so I alternate between cooking and being blasted by the wind and fortunately I’m travelling on my own so no-one hears me cursing and I arrive in Regensburg with sweat sores around my waist and a great and immediate thirst. Fortunately, this is Germany and they understand great and immediate thirsts, for which they invented beer. But I couldn’t be bothered to take pictures, so it’s a text only post…

19th/20th May, on to Budapest

jalal — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Full view

In which we continue on through Maribo, stop at a Croation border post, later at Ballaton. Concert in Millenaris hall/park in Budapest. No air-conditioning, arrival of Sarvogeet. Miten singing soft, second set louder, it’s effect on Deva, then everyone on stage for the Israeli song.

Pratap, Ljubljana organizer

We leave Ljubljana with a certain sadness, but I’m sure we’ll be back soon. Pratap, the organizer, has managed to put the concert on successfully for a couple of years, despite giving the impression of being rather spaced out, he gets it together, a great combination!

We’re travelling in two vans and decide to stop at the Ballaton lake for lunch, although it’s about four hours out of Ljubljana. After about two hours though, Miten calls up and says he’s hungry, pull over at the next likely looking place and we’ll have a picnic. I spot something that looks like a truck stop over on the right and head off the autobahn to see if we can park there. It’s the Croation border post and we don’t want to go through, so we stop in the car park where there is also a little coffee bar. Not quite the romantic lake side picnic, but still quiet and we’ve brought along some of the food from last nights concert (Indian, hmmm!) and we can order a coffee afterwards. A nice little picnic and some music for dessert.

Picnic in, er, Hungary?

On continuing, Manose (who is travelling with me) decides he wants to see the lake anyway, so we head off towards the lake and pull up at the water front. In some places it’s like a little Germany, with menus and business names in German and the whole water front a little family paradise of small bungalows, snack bars and swimming places. Manose desires a fish, so we find a snack bar that will grill a fish for him. And then on to Budapest.

Oh yeah, tuck in boys!

I like Budapest. Despite being a big city with a lot of grand buildings, it’s also got a sort of rundown decadence to it and every corner turned can bring a surprise piece of architecture. There’s lots of expats from various countries doing whatever and as no-one speaks Hungarian, English is the second language (although many speak German as well). We decide to walk down to the river in the evening, on the map it looked about 30 minutes but after an hour I had to admit to being totally lost. We were on a hill by a castle but there are two or three castle sort of places in Budapest. We asked a passerby which way to the river, she thought long and hard and said it’s best you go that way and get a tram and a taxi driver suggested we go down the hill and turn right, which we did, and after another hour were by the river. By then it was nearly midnight and on the Buda side of the river there are few places to get a beer so we took a taxi back to the hotel. So much for the night life in Budapest…

Millenaris Park

The concert is in the Millenaris Hall, which is part of the Millenaria Park, a nice green block with an exhibition space, a theatre and two concert hall. David Byrne’s playing next month, but tonight it is Deva Premal and Miten, with Manose and the concert has been sold out for a couple of weeks. There are a surprising number of people who are determined to get in without a ticket and the entrance is very busy. This concert is organized by Vitold (as it was last year). At first he was worried that he had booked too large a hall, now he was worried it wasn’t big enough. Some of the venues on this tour have been a little short in the lighting department, the Millenaria makes up for this by having enough lighting for a small city (which wasn’t all used fortunately). Again, great equipment and a great crew to run it.

Enough lighting for a few concerts.

Miten is singing and playing a little soft on the first half of the set and Sakha mentioned this to him in the break, the second half he is a lot stronger, which also prompts Deva to sing a bit stronger. This fills her voice out well. I realize that as we are playing bigger halls with bigger sound systems, sometimes it is too easy for the singer to hold back and sing softly, which changes the tone of the voice. The second set has a full-on energy and culminates with a rocking version of ‘Illah-ha hoo’ and lots of people on stage, before falling into a silent space with a mantra.

Up on stage

Sarve has shown up from Freiburg to drive their van back there while the artists fly to the UK for a couple of concerts and I go to Nuernberg in my van to pick up some more CDs before going to Freiburg, then Sarve will take their van to Frankfurt for the artists on their return and I drive to Baden Baden for the Rainbow Spirit festival. That’s the simplified version of events, there is also sorting out which equipment needs to go to UK, what stays in the van (and which van), such are the joys of tour logistics.

Sarvogit, helping with logistics

Sarve and Sakha

Millenaris stage set.

Full view

Manose in sound check