Select a band member at right to read their reports from the road!
THE MOST RECENT RAGE...
Via De La Plata – Merida Spain (by FREDDIE VIDALES)
We took a flight on the afternoon before the gig from Berlin to Seville, Spain. From there we headed not far away to a hotel in the middle of town. We had a little bit of time for sightseeing before getting some rest to catch a shuttle in the morning for the town of Merida. We got to the venue early in the afternoon and went straight to the dressing room. It was a hot day, but at least we were in the shade. The crowd was mostly huddled together under large tents spread around the venue with only a small percentage being right up at the front of the stage. There was a water truck on the grounds spraying water onto a small section of the crowd. Since there was only dirt on the ground to begin with, that meant there was plenty of mud on the right side of the crowd area, if looking out from the stage. They looked like they were having a good time though, so getting muddy didn’t really matter too much to them.
The headliner of this festival was Iron Maiden, so we saw most of them walking in to the backstage area. Brent got his picture taken with Steve Harris (lucky). After a while it was show time for us. Even though it was a hot day, the wind was blowing hard enough to keep us cooled down. We played for about an hour. Slayer was on after us so I rushed back to the stage to watch. One of our crew guys is a friend of some of Maiden’s crew, so I asked him for a special favor. I asked for two passes to go on stage with Maiden to sing the middle section of “Heaven Can Wait.” After some checking around – we got them! So there Jon and I were, standing behind Steve Harris with a few other folks on stage singing “whoah oh oh, whoah oh oh oh ooohhhh oh oh.” We felt like we were teenagers again. It was a truly great experience that I’ll never forget. We went back around to the side of the venue and watched the rest of the show, got back on the bus and drove to the next show, also with Maiden in Zaragosa, Spain. Well, not really….
We woke up once arriving at the next venue only to find that the entire show had been cancelled. It seems there was some really bad weather the night before, and it destroyed much of the equipment and staging. At least one person was injured. We got out of the bus to find people putting gear back into trucks instead of taking the gear out. Our original plan for after the show was to leave immediately after our set for the airport. There was some sort of world’s fair going on in Zaragosa, so there were absolutely no hotel rooms available, hence the quick dash for the airport. Instead, we ate lunch at the venue and took a train into Barcelona, Spain so we could catch a flight back to Berlin. Adios amigos!
