april 19 – halfway point, 10000+ @ rotterdam’s ahoy & jeff buckley on the jukebox

train into rotterdam from helmond, checked into our hotel by the river, pretty quick turnaround to the venue, rotterdam’s ahoy, which is apparently the standard by which all are measured in the netherlands. alanis sold it out, 10000 plus another 5% or so wedged onto the general admission standing room on the floor. we had her video team do a live production of our show, which we’ve now got on dvd and hope to have on the website in some form or other very soon. makes us look like big rock stars, which is probably a good thing...
the big difference between playing for 2 to 4000 and 10000 is the roar. it seems to come from the depths of the earth and take over the space, whereas with 2/4000 it’s somehow a little more comprehensible. we also took up a little more of the stage so that we could be directly under the lights for the benefit of the taping – that resulted in a mild feeling of isolation for each of us, and we had to adjust our monitor mixes accordingly (e.g., i couldn’t hear adam’s drums too well all the way across the stage, and heard a lot of slapback from the room, so i had to crank the kick and snare in the monitors to stay in time).

alanis opened “you oughta know” with “to all the girls (except she said ‘boys’) i’ve loved before.” julio iglesias came out of the audience wearing no pants to do a duet. just kidding. but she really did open with that song.

went out after the show with some scottish friends of allen’s and linda, a rotterdam local who we had met on the tram earlier in the day and offered to take us out afterward. landed at a remarkably american-seeming bar near the hotel, with a jukebox playing great stuff all night long, including some nice jeff buckley, one of my absolute faves... oh, and at some point carson wound up in a canal brandishing a large fish.