Danish

We’re stood pondering as you do in the name of travel and light entertainment on the concourse at Manchester airport, our flight for Copenhagen is half an hour late which is good because we are too. I abandoned the spare guitar last minute so we’re bound to bak strings as I make a mental note to find someone kind enough to offer to change them in such an event. Craig never seems to break strings, probably because he plays with such finesse…on the other hand I tend to rag the life out of the telecaster and am more prone to breakages. Tonight’s Danish gig will be a first for Markus who, possessed by the spirit of the CHAV is currently playing darts and supping Guinness in the lounge bar. In WH Smith I buy the obligatory pulp fiction, pain killers and fisherman’s friends. We say a few prayers for the instruments survival and we’re off. 1 hour and 40 minutes later we are met by our amicable hosts Asbjorn and Christina and wizzed off to the hotel, then out to lunch on what turns out to be a gloriously sunny day via a main street that boasts such primal attractions as a mambo penetrator. Mike reminds us that Copenhagen is home to the Donkey Mag which is probably more information than you need to know. The lunch is strikingly huge and satisfying [which pretty much sums up the capabilities of the aforesaid device but I’ll stop there less you think I’m turning into some kind of fetish deviant]. It is all pretty fascinating none the less. I get the goats cheese deluxe and we sample the local bitter. The hospitality factor is A star plus and we end up rambling on about the corporate nonsense that is the music industry, a subject that brings out the soap box in all of us. We return to the hotel before getting a taxi to the gig. We’re in good time. All the hire gear is present and correct as I go into tour manager mode ticking off the specifications and double checking the rider which is ample and colourful and not without cheese. So much cheese. The sound check turns a little fraught as the engineer is a bit of a policeman, he is convinced we have effects problems when we know for sure the hire amp is buggered. We sort it out just seconds before Craig has a nervous breakdown and leave to eat in a Swedish –Indian restaurant where all the curries come topped off with grated cheese, the food is good but it’s not quite right, not with all that cheese, still we're not complaining, not in the least. Asbjorn and Michael our hosts are DJing at the venue after we play tonight, Michael tells of his love of The Editors who are from Brum apparently, as am I [sort of]. Their English is superb; as ever I feel shamed by my linguistic failings. We return to the gig and are onstage at 11.15 for an hour and fifteen minutes. It’s possibly the hottest gig I’ve ever known, I get drenched in sweat like Bruce Springsteen [not him again] and we’re made up with the reaction. Someone tries to rob my hat but I rob it back later. It’s been sometime since we did an upbeat enjoyable show, the last couple have been marred with technical hitches so we’re buzzing and carousing and cascading as we do a post gig interview with a music magazine whose name escapes me. Then we loiter intently selling cds and eating luxury chocolate in a dressing room that smells like a perfume factory before retiring to a corner of the club where you can hear yourself and the music and have a beer. Marcus takes the cheese, huge slabs of it unopened from the rider. At 4am we call it a day; it’s been a long one at that but a good one. Tomorrow we’re over the border in Malmo. VPx