Next stop: one day in Geneva. I headed to Geneva because I wanted to see my friends Laura and Alfred's band, The Long Lost, perform. The band was performing internationally for the first time (although Laura and Alfred have performed all over previously), with shows at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona, Madrid, Dundingen, Geneva (maybe others). It's not everyday you get to jet to another city to see friends perform, not to mention actually hang out with people I know.
After waking up at 5:15 am, repacking my bag, getting to the airport, and flying to Geneva, all by 10 am, I was pretty spent. Also, my head and now chest cold won't clear up; getting terrible sleep at the Brussels hostel did not help. And it was incredibly, unusually hot in Geneva. Therefore, I just stayed at the hostel and watched TV, napped, read, went online, and generally hung around the "relaxing area" in the cool basement of the hostel.
I met up with the musicians around 7: Laura, Alfred, Amir and Jonathan. All four contributed to The Long Lost (the opening band), Amir and Jonathan made up Fixed Action Pattern (formerly Jogger), and Alfred performed as Daedelus. I join them for the pre-show bands-and-crew dinner of salad, pasta, seasoned zucchini, peppered fake chicken or real steak, and mini lemon curd tarts, prepared by someone at the club. Pretty gourmet and I learned that getting dinner before the show is unique to clubs in Europe.
After dinner, there was about 2 hours to before the show. We sat around, chatted, etc. (You know, drugs and hookers.) Shortly before the show was to start, it was time to change into "concert dress" and Alfred discovered he's forgetten to bring his performance pants. There was some debate of the options since the hotel was not particularly nearby and it was decided Alfred and Amir would switch pants. This is the stuff you don't see on Behind the Music.
The audiences were great: quiet during mellow The Long Lost set, peppier during Fixed Action Pattern, and dancing during Daedelus. The audience's reaction to The Long Lost's set was especially beautiful because I was told that this club generally hosts rowdy bands with a much heavier music types, i.e. death metal. The audience even requested a TLL encore, which was a first for them.
During Daedelus' set I sat upstairs in the balcony and got enjoy the his set and watch the designer create the graphics-video that were shown on a screen at the back of the stage.
The show ended at about 1 am and after packing away equipment, we all walked back to the hotel, and then Laura and Alfred walked me to my hostel, which was a good idea considering the hour and neighborhood. I got in bed at 2:30 am and felt like a wannabe rock star.
