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----------------------- 03.20.03 – 03.26.03 This is the tour Diary of Vadim, Yarah Bravo, First Rate & Gez. Location: USA and Canada now! Welcome to the 6th installment of our weekly diary during our North American tour. This week we get stuck in a blizzard, equipment brakes and eat amazing Cajun food! Thursday, March, 20th - Whistler (British Columbia) Dear Diary, After the great show last night in Victoria we awoke ready for our new adventure into the “great outdoors”. We have never done a show in a ski resort or ever been to Whistler so on both counts this was going to be new. The town was located in a spectacular valley with some breathtaking views. Pretty small but the majority of people were young and up for partying. We had a great apartment on 2 levels with a sauna and Jacuzzi, kitchen, and a great balcony but like always we rarely have time to appreciate fully these splendid amenities. We had some take away sushi and then headed for the club which was kind of in the same building. The show went ok but the sound was really crap. Perhaps the worst on the tour so far. It took the sound engineer 2 hours to find an electricity plug!!!! The crowd was very international with people from basically everywhere. Snowboarding tourists. Firstrate played his part at uniting the world with Love by making a lot of “peace” with a Norwegian lady in the car-park. Though she seemed to be more interested in Yarah. Friday, March, 21st – Vancouver I have played here quite a few times and in fact always had a great response so I was looking forward to this show. I think Vancouver is a great looking and sounding city - funky, modern, innovative, musical.... so we had all the factors covered except the weather - loads of hard rain. Yarah and I after soundcheck snuck off for some tasty Spanish tapas (our favorite) but unfortunately Yarah was very sick later (not meaning hip hop sick - yo she”s a sick mc but meaning not very well and needing to sleep and recover and use the toilet kinda sick!!!) So we had to do the show without Yarah that night but it didn't in fact matter that much because surprisingly the sound was really really terrible. Without doubt the worst sound on this tour so far and probably impossible for us to do a “live thing” at all. So me and First Rate rocked the decks back to back for like 3 hours and that went pretty well. We had an open mic session with some nice mc”s (and some bad mic feedback) but after the show we did feel a little bit “periphery” and like “spare dicks”(not wanted!). I think basically this was a regular club night where people come anyway and it was more about flossing and looking cool, picking up chicks etc than the actual music so a little disappointing. Good turnout though with over 600 people! We even had people that came all the way from Victoria to see the show again, and they were all very disappointed that Yarah was not there. they said they came to see her and not me, what am I , a spare dick?? hehe... Saturday, March 22nd - Nelson (British Columbia) We had to drive 8 hours eastwards to get to this place. I had never heard of it before but we were told it was supposed to be a hippie town near the mountains where things really go off! They weren't wrong. It was a really great show minus a wack soundsystem. That's 3 days in a row now! At the club there was an older man who was selling spicy African sauces. After the show we always have the munchies so we went to check his sauces out. He said the red one was “mild” and the green one was “firey”. So we thought we would be safer with the red one. And took a big chunk with tortilla chips. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah it was deadly!!! We were in pain and could barely talk the rest of the evening. First rate AKA Girthy, made some vocal harmonix with a local female beatboxer. we didn't catch her but she was supposedly dope (check out kela if u ain't peeped him?) Sunday, March, 23rd - Golden/Travel day (British Columbia) Nelson is a tiny little town in the mountains so this morning when we went to hunt some food down we met quite a few people from the show on the previous night. People were very friendly and welcoming and we met a few more hippies! Around mid afternoon we set of Edmonton but the journey wasn't that easy. We continually drove into the mountains and then had to cross a lake via the local ferry .Unfortunately we arrived just 3 minutes too late so we had to wait another hour for the following ferry. Whilst we waited it got later, colder and the weather was gradually teaming up against us. We finally crossed the lake and ventured into the rockies where the weather got really terrible. A huge snow blizzard, a lot of lorries forced off the road and visibility down to a few yards. It was a little scary cause it was getting quite late and we really were at one point up a mountain by ourselves and couldn't see a thing or a way out driving at 5km an hour. We couldn”t go on in this weather so we checked into a hotel and collapsed. Monday, March 24th – Edmonton A nice brisk 7 hour drive through the Canadian rockies via Calgary till we arrived here. A welcoming -10c to get us in the mood and a pretty huge venue which i think would of been impossible to fill unless your Avril Lavine on a Monday! Next door to the club there was a really nice Cajun spot, we had some Gumbo and some Jambalaya, yummy!! Calgary is the most northerly Canadian city we are told but we were hoping for a royal welcome and the show did go pretty well. Some crazy fans in the front row, made it all worth while. Unfortunately in the middle of the show my drum machine worryingly played up so we couldn't do a couple of tracks which we use that specifically for, I think it is just a scsi lead problem and not the MPC - well I hope so otherwise i wont be able to fix it till we get back to London. Tuesday, March, 25th – Calgary Much Music (Canadian Music channel) is the shiznitz yoooo! Its so much better than MTV, better programming, more innovative, challenging and so much less corporate and free minded. I love the way they challenge viewers and give people a chance to air there views regardless of opinion. About the only entertainment on TV right now... Back at the club we had a few stage problems. We had the decks balanced on a plank of wood on top of a fridge where we kept the booze - pretty convenient right! (they didn”t have any conventional tables!) My drum machine broke down for the 2nd day in a row. Damn- i think it might be finished. I bought it back in 94 so its had 9 good faithful years but i can”t get the same sound with new equipment . The show was cool though, a lot of people - like 250 people on a Tuesday which is very cool for us in North America. Nice vibes too and the warm up DJ's - small town DJ's were super cool. they run a local record shop called Giant 45 and they hooked us up with t-shirts, caps and loads of stickers. They played a very good funk set as well. After the show we had a boogie. Wednesday, March, 26th – Saskatoon The war started 5 pm Pacific time one week ago. There is so much coverage on tv/radio both here and in USA that to be honest we are starting to get very sick of it. It feels like we are watching a video game or playstation something... its like so surreal with coverage from this tank and from this frontline etc... But this is very real war where unfortunately people will die and not just Iraqi”s (cause already we killed over 1.5 million Iraqi's with sanctions and continuos bombing for 12 years) but coalition soldiers and perhaps when the caskets return people may think a little different about how “just” and “moral” this illegal war is. This is really making us all pretty depressed and what's worse is the lie”s on TV and in the papers, the squabbling between pro and anti war just splitting all of us. What we need right now is more unity. Well the show in Saskatoon, made up for the 10 hours it took for us to get there. Great little venue, and people who were really up for having a party. There were some nuttas at the front of the stage that were loving it so much they knocked down the monitors while jumping up and down. It was a great night.... Spread the peace — Vadim & and the team... "How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy" — Nietzsche
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