april 10b/11 – grandiosa, the king of norway, oslo show

dag-are and anja (friends al met for 2 days in morrocco at some point) found us at the oslo central train station, picked up some frozen pizza (according to them, frozen pizza, specifically “grandiosa” brand, is the national food of norway) and headed to anja’s place. they prepared a trio of grandiosas, we all toasted “skål” (prounced skoal) with some wine from alanis’ catering, discussed the intricacies of norwegian cuisine, and passed out for the night watching tiger woods win the masters.
finally got a good night’s sleep, showered, brought stuff to the venue (the oslo spektrum, kinda like a basketball arena), then off in search of repair for adam’s incapacitated video camera. no luck there, unfortunately. we’d been videoing the first day or two, drained a battery, plugged back in and no juice. tried everything, and the repair guys (in some random office on the 7th floor of a random building in oslo). we’re workin’ on getting another camera going, as we have dreams of a “hard day’s night” style movie documenting the tour...
then off to the king’s castle, down karl johanns gate for our first actual sightseeing. the castle is guarded by a few norwegian soldiers, kinda like the ones guarding buckingham palace in england, but with no fence around the castle. we walked right up and it seemed as though you could just go in, nobody was stopping us... ‘til at the last second one of them started turning red and mentioned that we weren’t supposed to go in there. little stroll around the grounds, then back to the venue.

watched another alanis soundcheck, they worked on a different set than the one in denmark & i got some keyboard pedal recommendations (stuff to make your wurly go nuts) from zach, alanis’ insane keyboard guy. hooked into the venue’s wireless internet to upload blogs/pics while alanis played in the background... they finished & we soundchecked with “change,” replacing “when we are one” ‘cause we wanted to rock a little harder, and i added a distortion pedal to my scenario (carson’s been using one to great effect, beefing up our choruses with some dirt).
downstairs to catering for a quick dinner, then back up for our set @ 730p. another great one, tons of girls leaning over the security barriers... met lots of nice norwegians during the break, signed more stuff, and spent the alanis show stage left by the monitor engineers where we got a good view of the whole stage.
alanis did a nice long encore during which we headed to the merch tables to sign cds at the end of the show, always a nice way to finish. then down to the dressing rooms in the depths of the spektrum to hang with alanis’ band for a bit, then up again with all our stuff to “champs,” a bar attached to the arena. hung out a couple hours (the bar put the new cd on their stereo which was a nice touch i thought) with some people from the venue, as well as our hosts and some of their friends who came to the show.
then back home to anja and dag’s to crash for a few hours...