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| Hey, I'm touring in North Germany and my parents are far way ;) Kiel 2008 |
Following up on the last little post about Terraplane's live history, here's a map of shows that I played with Samsara Blues Experiment on European ground from 2008 - 2019. I will follow up to post the concerts on other continents later. Actually I could really write a book about all the memories I have. And maybe I should, before I forget it all ;)
It was kinda funny to reminisce the progress from the first self-organized shows, mostly through contacts that I had from working as a poster artist or old Generated X (my stoner webzine) - buddies, later though connecting with bands from other countries like Pater Nembrot or The Machine and a few also with the help from other band members. I don't want to play things small, everyone had his part in the band, and only towards the later years things drifted in a bit a strange direction for me. Maybe it's also a natural progress that people want to have their say on everything, even things that never bothered for a discussion before. Let's just say that in the early days we'd all been on the same page which made things easy even while working through a 40hr day job besides the band, and not even earning a lot of money in all the early years.
I still vividly remember a lot of the excitement from just finally playing cities like Dresden or Hamburg which, believe or not had been hard to enter before the times of social media. A few of the musicians who had actively played in that time may remember when we had to send out demo CD-R or even cassettes. But anyways, later on an old contact to Matte Vandeven (Sound Of Liberation) became one of the most important anchors to the career of SBE. I met Matte first in 2004 after a self-organized show in our hometown Wernigerode for his band The Great Escape, who were touring with House Of Aquarius (awesome band from Sweden - you should know that already). I don't even remember talking more than two or three words with him back then, but somehow a connection had been made.
One thing tho that always had made SBE special would be that from early on we have started to play shows in other countries. After only six concerts in Germany we already flew out to a show in Rome which in hindsight seems more a kind of nuts if you'd ask me. At that time we could hardly play through a tight 40-minute set. It was all kind of funny, and shortly after that we headed off to the US Westcoast which of course added a lot to the "mystique" of that band. Which other band could you name that just with their first two track demo already toured on other continents LOL. But most of these shows were more improvised than professional, but then maybe that is not what matters so much at all anyway.
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| Sometimes in the early days we even brought out that old Sitar, Berlin 2008 |
