But I was pleasantly surprised by a phone call at eleven am. It was my mom. She is so cool. She woke up at two am in San Diego to wish me a happy birthday when I woke in Sweden. Anyhow, as most days, we pile into the van and drive four plus hours. We stopped off at this rest stop that I seem to end up at on every tour, the castle rest stop as we call it. Breakfast was served, just as it was on the way to Oslo. We eventually arrived in Malmo. We are scheduled to play this free festival and apparently the whole city is in on it. There are areas in different parts of town that have stages and bands playing. But the portion of the festivities that we are playing are all sort of, uh, metal, or some shit loosely based on that stuff. I was pretty excited to see Mayhem I must say but the rest seemed like dog shit, and well, it turned out that way. We checked in to get our passes and load our gear. A bouquet of flowers from Rocky surprised me. She somehow managed to have flowers sent there for me. That was sweet of her and really cute. I was just bummed that they were not going to be enjoyed as I basically live in a van. We wonder the grounds a little and grab some catering. Not a lot of time to venture off to see the town, we are kind of stuck in the area. So we all end up people watching at the fest. I have to say, that shit was so amusing. I thought that Swedes for the most part had it going on. But as it seemed, the fest was a collection of the opposite. You had some of the most busted up people, looking amazingly absurd. There you had spandex pants, ripped Viking looking metal dudes, sluts, narks, pock marked pre teens, Goth midgets, weekend warriors, new metal myspacers, drunks, moms, and a grip of other random people. Testament took the stage. It was pretty rough. Their banner looked airbrushed. They took the stage, singer with his patented half mic stand that he holds onto and plays air guitar with as the band is doing their thing. Bobby was stoked on part of his childhood that he cut his teeth on, so at least someone cared besides the sea of chumps that were watching them. To me, Testament sucked when I say them sixteen years ago when they opened for Slayer and they still sucked now. But the amusement factor quickly wore off and we made our way back to the backstage to start setting up. Just before the line check we made our way to the stage that Mayhem was playing, and I have to say I was impressed. They were so evil. The sound was great and the singer was in a cloak, gargling some sort of language between songs. That was a band that we would love to tour with. Oh well. We suited up and went to check out a little more of Mayhem’s set. It was interesting to have some jagoff laugh at me in my uniform when he had a patent leather trench coat, buckle boots, and a chomp. I mean he was like that every day of his life, for real. But whatever, I have embraced the ironic factor of my career. Just as we were about to go on things went to hell. We walked on the stage, the crowd was fired up, I passed by Bobby’s cabinet, and the cord to his head was stretched between our cabinets. I ran into it and the cord pushed my bass off the guitar stand. It hit the ground in front of my pedal board and the g-string tuning peg broke off and the g-string popped off. I grabbed the bass, unplugged it and made my way off stage. The rest of the guys followed. I looked at the headstock. There was no way to get the g-string to stay on, or a way to tune it. I had no idea what to do, as there were only 2 songs in the set that I could play without a g-string. Here is the ridiculous part; there was no other bands or basses at that point. We were headlining our stage, so all of the previous bands gear was packed up. The stagehand brings me a bass to use, so I scramble to get back on stage, but there was no strap. Mine was screwed onto my bass and would not fit on the pegs of the other bass. Then I was instructed that the bass didn’t even work. I was sitting there feeling defeated, not knowing why someone would bring me a bass that didn’t even work. Anyhow, we are told about a tech that does work on gear for the fest. We ran over to where he was and pleaded for him to fix it, somehow. He tried a few things that all ended in failure. He was under pressure, the pa was blasting a sample from our sampler, we were running out of time, and the audience was ready for us to hit the stage. The tech said to get out of the room, so we stood outside. I peered thought the window and quickly came up with an idea to stick the string in the hole that was left from where the pegs broke off then to put a small screw into the hole, cramming the string in and making the tuning mechanism grab the end of the string so I could tune it. But it would still take a lot of time, so as I wait patiently for him to get the idea into gear, the backup bass that I was given was handed back to me, and I was told that it works now. Not sure why or how, but realized that it was still strapless. The crew decides to make a strap out of duct tape. There I was holding the bass where I would have it on me, and they quickly created a strap. I ran to the stage wishing myself a happy birthday and we went on. The crowd responded to the delay and there was tension built which actually worked in our favor. There was a great impact when we started playing. As we got three or four songs into the set I realized that the bass that I was using has less frets than my bass, so I could not play a few of the songs in the set. We skip a few tracks and move on. Eventually the bass is delivered to the stage and I switch the basses, and I’m back in business. It was amazing to get my bass back and we blazed through the rest of the set eventually going back to most of the skipped songs. The set ends and we exit the stage, relieved. We all played pretty good from what we were given to deal with. Granted, the sound was so odd on stage, but it was doable for me, and the audience seemed to dig the set. As we changed out of our uniforms we are amazed at the ridiculous shit that happened, glad to have that mess over with, Gabe suggested that I write about how we scrambled to borrow a bass and got a loaner from Mayhem. Then added that on the backside of the bass was a Red Hot Chili Peppers sticker on it. I wanted to do that so bad, but I figured I should go the truthful route. But it would have been amusing if I had written that. We eventually packed up the gear and headed over to the Hotel. I was ready to relax in the room but was hassled by my Swedish friends that “it was my birthday and that I needed to go out.”
Ironically put, but I decided to go even though I ended up hanging out with Otto at a bar and none of the Swedish. As the bar was closing everyone decided to be pizza bro’s so I grabbed a cab back to the hotel and called it a night.