When we left Brisbane is was the hottest day they’d had in ten years. Literally. When we landed in Melbourne it was raining. I’d to like request that we find a happy medium as far as the weather goes.

Melbourne is a great city, however it reminded me a lot of San Francisco, so instead of feeling like I was on vacation, I almost felt like I was just staying in a hotel at home. An odd feeling, but a lovely city nonetheless.

The shows in Melbourne went well. After Landslide someone yelled “It’s better than the Dixie Chicks!” which threw Lindsey off a little, he just laughed and thanked them. It gave all of us a good laugh as well.

Stevie’s been bringing out a lot of new wardrobe pieces, she’s not only been wearing the new Gypsy top and boots, but for the second show in Melbourne she wore a new top for Goodbye Baby. It’s a gorgeous pink, sparkly corset style top that she wore under her usual pink Goodbye Baby cape. It looked really pretty, especially under all the lights. I realize that Stevie’s outfit choices might not be a topic worthy of the evening news, but I, along with the few other gals on tour, I love when she wears something new, so I somehow feel the need to share it with you. Stevie’s assistant Karen, who knows how excited I get over these new clothing items, says we’re in for a real surprise in Sydney. So we have that to look forward to…I’ll keep you updated.

During World Turning a girl managed to climb over the speakers and made it on to the stage, right in front of Stevie. I’ve never understood the need as a fan to get on to the stage. As much dedication as that may display, it’s still kind of weird, if you ask me. One of our security guards stands right behind me during the show, and when I turned around to point the woman out to him, he was already gone. I looked back to the show to see the stage climber being kindly assisted off stage. Our security boys are quick, that’s for sure, the woman was on stage for a total of 2.3 seconds…hardly worth the work in my opinion, but now she has a great story to tell, I suppose.

Lindsey knocked over Stevie’s mic stand during I’m So Afraid….both nights. The first night he actually swung his guitar into it, the guitar got all caught in up the beads and ribbons and he kind of dragged it around. Now, me being the one who has to “care” for her mic stand, I never like to see this, as I’m the one who ended up coming in early the next day to repair the damage. So when he knocked the newly repaired stand over again the second night I was about ready to go on stage and kick some Lindsey butt. However, Stevie has my back…when she came back on stage for Landslide, one of the sound guys was picking her stand up. She just leaned in to the microphone and said “he’s so grounded.” My sentiments exactly.

As the band was all heading back to the dressing rooms after the last show, Stevie was singing ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’. Which isn’t weird in itself, she often bursts in to song for seemingly no reason. But it was cute, mid-verse she couldn’t remember the words, so Lindsey filled them in for her. She proceeded to stroll along singing while Lindsey hummed in the background.

We’re off to Perth, where it will be unbearably hot. And we’re playing an outdoor gig. Time to get the sunblock out…

Until next time…

CB

If you can remember what the last day of school before summer vacation feels like…that’s what the last day of tour feels like. It’s a good feeling. Especially when you know you don’t have to say goodbye to everyone forever since we’ll be back on the road in 6 weeks time.

I’m sure you’ve all heard rumors of Christine coming to the last show, and you might be surprised to know that even we didn’t know if she was coming. Late in the day we found out she would be attending the show, but not performing. She came early and hung out, watched the show and stayed for a while after the show as well. She and Stevie were like schoolgirls, giggling and chatting. She looks fantastic, might I add.

My personal victory of the day was at soundcheck. One of my favorite songs is Trouble, one of Lindsey’s solo songs. I beg and plead about once a month for him to play it at soundcheck, to no avail. But in London, I used the “as a going away present to the crew” excuse, and he finally agreed. So after the rest of the band left the stage, he stayed, along with the back-up band and I finally got my Trouble. It was so good. In September, Lindsey recorded a show in Chicago for PBS called Soundstage, and about 12 of our crew stayed in Chicago to help out. I was lucky enough to be one of them, because there was very little work required and we basically got to sit around and watch Lindsey and the back-up band rehearse and screw around. Stevie came for a few songs too. He performed Trouble, and a handful of other great songs. I highly suggest you check it out when it airs, if it turned out half as good as it was live, it’ll be worth your time. And that wasn’t a shameless plug, I swear, when he did Trouble at soundcheck it reminded me of the Soundstage show, and how good it was.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. The show went well, the band gave thanks to Christine during the introductions, before we knew it Mick was on stage screaming “The Mac is Back” and our last European show was over. The band stayed late, being that Christine was there and that it was our last show for a while, but eventually everyone filed out, a few hours later load out was over and we also left. We headed back to the hotel where the hotel bar was packed with our crew. We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning having our own little going away party, and for those of us with early flights (myself included) I think the decision was made at about 4:00AM to forgo sleep and just head straight from the bar to the airport.

Turned out to be a good decision, I slept for nearly 7 hours of an 11 hour flight. I had a 3 hour layover in LA, and at 7:00 yesterday evening, I touched down in lovely San Francisco, and was delighted to get home, get in my own bed and sleep for 24 hours. As I write this I am cuddled up in bed with my cats and a cup of tea. It’s good to be home.

I hope I’ve done my job of at least providing a little entertainment and giving you a window into our world. I can only hope that I’ve conveyed how much fun it is out here, and how thankful I am to have been a part of it. Until next time…

We had a day and a half off in Glasgow after the drive from Manchester. I slept the first day and spent the second walking around, followed by a very late night at the hotel bar. A group of people took the train to a castle in Edinburgh on one of the days off, but I have to admit I didn’t see much of Scotland. And talk about accents, I didn’t understand a word anyone said, they might as well have been speaking Swahili. I hadn’t an idea what they were saying, but it was cute anyhow.

The best part about the arena in Glasgow was that the Stage was about a 5 minute walk from the production offices and the dressing rooms, and you know what that means….golf carts!! For about three hours during the day I ran a taxi service to and from the stage. Back and forth, bacjk and forth. And no one even bothered to tip me! Cheapskates. The show was good, went off without a hitch, which is both good and bad, good because nothing went wrong, but also bad because it means I have no funny stories to tell you.

There were a few penguins thrown on to the stage in Glasgow. John saves every penguin anyone has ever given him or the band. And when I say every penguin, I mean every penguin. After taking the penguins in to John so they could introduce themselves, I went to put two penguins in his road case after the show…and there’s no room. There’s not even room for clothes anymore. It’s all penguins, shoved in to every drawer, in to every spare bit of space. It’s a good thing this leg of the tour is almost over, because we might have had to start sacrificing penguins.

We left right after load out to drive to Belfast. We have sleeper buses with us again, so I thought the drive would be ok because you could just crawl in bed and sleep the whole way there. Silly me. We had to take a ferry to Belfast (obviously, since Ireland is an island). I’ve never been on a ferry, well at least the kind that you drive your car onto. It’s very weird, the bottom level of the ship is basically just a big parking lot, and the upper part is restaurants and bars and lounges. So at 5:00AM, after 2 hours of sleep, everyone on my bus woke up to get off the bus and go upstairs to the main part of the ship. I asked why we couldn’t just stay on the bus and sleep, and was bombarded with replies about how I wouldn’t want to be down here on the bus if the ferry happens to sink. Everyone on my bus was going upstairs and I really didn’t feel like being alone on the bus in the dark on the bottom level of a ship, dreaming about the ship sinking, so I got up too.

Walked around delirious in my pj’s for 2 hours and nearly cried for joy when they announced we could go back downstairs.The funniest thing about it is that no one from any other bus woke up and came upstairs, they all slept through the ferry ride except for our bus. I guess they put all the paranoid people on my bus. Fell back asleep the second my head hit the pillow only to wake up an hour later for load-in in Belfast. Grrrrr.

I saw nothing in Belfast other than the arena, which is too bad, I would have liked to see the city a little bit. The funniest thing that happened in Belfast? Well, funny to me anyway. During the show, about four songs into the set, a very bad smell started making it’s way over to the stage area. We all noticed it immediately, you could see everyone looking at each other as if to confirm that they smelled it too. Come to find out there was a sewage leak in the main dressing room hallway during the show and the building maintenance people were not best prepared to handle such a situation. Apparantly the best way to fix it was to just throw a large section of carpet over it. Then, they used a wet-vac to try and clean up the water, which only worsened the smell immensely. (I have to tell you that I have a really sick sense of humor, and bathroom jokes make me laugh so hard I could cry, so needless to say, as much as grossed everyone out, I found the whole situation downright hysterical and could hardly form a sentence for about an hour after the show. Even as type this I’m laughing so hard I’m crying.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again….it’s a glamorous life we lead out here!

We had yet another ferry to catch that night, but it didn’t leave until 8AM, so we stayed at the gig, on the buses until 4:00AM. A lot of people sat in catering drinking Guinness until the building finally kicked us out. I woke up to go upstairs on the ferry ride again, this time it wasn’t as bad since I’d had 4 hours of sleep, and we had a 12 hour drive ahead of us so I knew I had plenty of time to sleep later. The drive was long and boring, we watched a few movies and slept on and off until we arrived in London at about 7:00PM this evening. Tomorrow is our last show before we pack it up and head home for 6 weeks. I hate goodbyes, so I’m not looking forward to it.

Our four day stay in Manchester was full of happenings. We had two days off after we arrived from Manchester, the first day off was really only a half day since we arrived in the early evening. There wasn’t much to do near the hotel, there were a few restaurants and an outlet mall that I was smart enough not to visit, knowing I would spend far too much money if I did. But the hotel was right on the water, so I was perfectly happy just being outside and going for walks. We went to an enormous mall that was a ten minute cab ride away, it was so big that by the time we had covered the whole mall, I was exhausted. Shopping is tiring. The hotel bar was also perfectly suitable, so it was constantly occupied by at least a few of our hooligans.

But on with the show…Behind the stage there is this lift, in addition to 4 sets of stairs to access the stage, the lift is a quick way to get Stevie on stage. It’s a pretty simple concept, it’s just a platform that is operated by a single button…up or down. Stevie comes off stage a few times during the show, takes the lift down, goes to her tent behind the stage until she needs to come back on, then she takes it back up. Simple. Only it’s not so simple if the lift decides to stop working when she’s standing on it and is already late to be back on stage.

Our stage manager took note that the lift was not going to work, and somewhere between Stevie, our stage manager and one of our security guys, the decision was made that there wasn’t enough time to go all the way around the stage and take the stairs, so they decided to pick her up and lift her on to the stage. Halfway there, Stevie started laughing uncontrollably, causing our stage manager to start laughing, and getting her on stage turned into one big laughing party. She made it up there, but I think it took her the whole song to stop smiling and giggling. We’ve now purchased a small ladder in case this kind of thing ever happens again. We laughed about that all night and into the next day.

Then on the second night, near the end of the show, during the intro of Tusk, Lindsey started yelling. At first I thought he was just having a crazy night and really getting in to it, but he was pointing in the audience yelling “stop that!”. Mick knew there was something wrong and stopped playing, the arena was totally silent. I guess Lindsey had spotted a fight out in the crowd, someone who had obviously come to the show for the wrong reasons, and Lindsey wasn’t having it. It was great, he told them to get out, and they did, security escorted them out immediately. But not before Stevie put her 2 cents in as well, “how dare you! Get out of our concert!!” Such a cute, fiesty little thing she is. Come on people, this isn’t a Guns N’ Roses concert, this is Fleetwood Mac, we’re all about the love. No fighting allowed. If there’s one thing this band won’t have it’s fighting in the crowd. They’ll stop a show over it. Tonight was proof of that. After the troublemakers were escorted out (embarrased as all get out, I’m sure) they started Tusk again and finished the show with flying colors.

All in all a great 4 days. Goodnight Manchester… Scotland, here we come.

Upon arriving in London I was most pleased to see that there are actually bright red phone booths everywhere, and policemen actually do wear tall, funny hats. I did a lot of shopping, a lot of eating, and then some more shopping and more eating. I didn’t do any sightseeing, I didn’t feel the need to see Big Ben or Buckingham Palace or anything like that. I was more interested in just checking the city out. My most impressive acheivements for the four days in London? Taking the subway multiple times and not getting lost, but even more impressive…I did not get hit by a car, I came really close a few times, since my brain was not capable of grasping the concept of looking right THEN left when crossing the street. I’ve been honked at a lot the last 4 days. I’ve gotten used to it.

The gig here was a little hard to manage. The stage is on the ground floor, but the production offices, dressing rooms and catering were all up 4 flights of stairs, or you could wait 5 minutes and take a huge freight elevator. Neither option is all that appealing. I opted for stairs, and it was a painful reminder of how out of shape I am. The upside to this problem was that we had golf carts to drive the band around.

I love golf carts.

I would drive one all the time if they were street legal. After hours of begging, our stage manager finally let me drive one. And when I say he let me, I mean that he didn’t come chasing after me or start cursing me over the radio when I got in and drove away with out anyone’s permission. Mission accomplished. But then I ended up having to drive Stevie up to the dressing room when she arrived and then back down for soundcheck. Driving with one of the band members is kind of nerve racking, I felt like I was taking my drivers license exam. If my golf cart had turn signals, I would have used them….in addition to using hand signals. All I could think was “don’t crash, don’t crash, don’t crash”. I didn’t crash. Yay for me.

The dressing rooms at this venue are all trailers, which I like, because they are all arranged in a little corral. So it leaves this open space in the middle where we set up couches and some mood lighting. It gives everyone a place to hang out together & mingle, it’s nice. We call it Camp Fleetwood Mac, now all I need is a firepit and some marshmallows.

The shows were good, there was a strict 10:45 curfew, which basically means if the band is still playing at 10:46, there’s a big, huge, fat fine to pay. So we were planning on going on at 8:00, that didn’t happen, I think we went on at 8:15, and we ended up having to cut the last song. But the second night, our lesson was learned and the band was saying good night at 10:40 after a full set.

The band stayed really late after both shows, London was full of friends, family and guests. We had to have two huge tents in addition to our normal hospitality area just to accomodate everyone.

We’re off to Manchester in the morning. Only 5 more shows to go and then The Mac is going on vacation! As much as I’m loving Europe, I’ll be ready to go home when it comes time….I’m tired and I miss my own bed.

If I have to blow my nose one more time, I’m going to jump off a bridge. I hate to be melodramatic, but I’m deathly ill, and it’s only getting worse. The only time I complain about being out on the road is when I’m sick, because all I want to do is call in sick to work, crawl in to my bed at home and cuddle with my cats while I feel sorry for myself. That is not an option. I can’t call in sick, I’m thousands of miles from home and from my bed, and my cats don’t even remember me at this point. I know, it’s just a cold, but I’m a big baby about being sick.

Tour is like day care, if one kid shows up with a cold, it’s only a matter of days before everyone has it.

So unfortunately, I can’t tell you that much about Birmingham, since I spent one and half out of two days sleeping and coughing and watching television. We arrived mid-day on the 23rd after a 3 or so hour drive from Newcastle. I fell asleep as soon as got to the room and saw a fluffy white down comforter with 4 huge pillows. If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s staying in bed for downright unhealthy amounts of time. The bed doesn’t even need to be comfy, but I’ll take all the help I can get.

The first night we were there a bus was scheduled to pick us all up and take us to a pub that was about 45 minutes away. Our production manager lives near Birmingham and his friend who owns this pub was nice enough to open up just for us and have us all for dinner and drinks. I over slept and nearly missed the bus. Big surprise. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I have a little reputation for missing the bus. It doesn’t happen often anymore, but there were a few weeks where I missed nearly every other one. Oops.

Dinner was great; the pub was adorable, very cozy and cute. I was still pretty out of it from being ill and sleeping so long, but everyone ate and drank too much and had a good time.

The next day was the day I spent in bed. We’ll skip that day.

Which brings us to the shows. I’m sure most of you know about the meaning behind the penguin, it was sort of a mascot for Fleetwood Mac way back when. We don’t see many penguins at the shows in the states, but here in the UK, penguins are taking over. At the first show in Birmingham, someone put this dancing penguin on top of Stevie’s monitor. It had a sensor on it so it never fell off, it just stayed, going from side to side, dancing and spinning. Stevie was having the hardest time keeping a straight face. The first time she came off the stage that night she proclaimed that she loved the dancing penguin and wanted it. I don’t think she realized that she’s at a Fleetwood Mac show, and that the people with the penguin would probably be more then happy to give it to her. At the end of the show, they offered the penguin up, and Mick took it…Stevie ran over and grabbed it out of Mick’s hands. Backstage later that night I had to help her figure out how to turn the dancing penguin off, because after 20 minutes…you just want the penguin to stop dancing.

Continuing the penguin theme, the second show in Birmingham was John’s birthday. After World Turning, Mick introduces everyone on stage, and when he introduced John and announced that it was his birthday, it was like a penguin downpour. There must have been 30 stuffed penguins thrown on stage. It was hysterical. We bagged them up after the show and we are now traveling with a penguin arsenal. You need a penguin? We’ve got a penguin for every occasion! Penguins dressed like Santa, penguins with scarves, penguins dressed as reindeer, penguins with little Fleetwood Mac shirts on, dancing penguins, singing penguins, penguins with sunglasses on….you name it, we have it.

I also have to mention that a fan, or a group of fans, made Stevie a cake. They managed to give it to the right people and it actually made it back to Stevie’s dressing room. It was incredible. Stevie made sure we took plenty of pictures of it. It had little mini album covers on it, painted perfectly. It must have taken them forever to make, so incase any of the bakers of that cake are reading, we were all very impressed, Stevie included.

We drive 2 hours to London tonight, where we have two days off and then two shows. Hopefully the cold that is kicking my butt right now will be better soon, I don’t want to miss any of London.

On a completely unrelated note…if you’ve never been to the UK, you should come for the candy alone. There’s this candy bar called a Crunchie. I’m considering leaving the United States simply because candy like this doesn’t exist there. I would happily live in an igloo in the Antarctic as long as I had Crunchies. There must be some conspiracy as to why we these aren’t sold in the US. My new mission in life is to find out why. I’ll let you know what I find out. Until next time…

Newcastle was okay. I’ve been tired lately and it’s cold here so I pretty much stuck to the hotel the whole time, with the exception of a few meals out. We flew in from Dublin yesterday morning and arrived at the hotel mid-day. The hotel was nice, it was right on the water and there were plenty of restaurants and bars nearby.

Any who…I stayed up too late in the hotel bar, and the lighting guys made me drink a shot of Sumbuca, which is basically liquid licorice hell. Went to bed with a headache, woke up with a headache, and it took a good part of the day for me to feel good again. Like I said, liquid licorice hell. But enough about me…on with the show.

I will admit, the Newcastle show has left a bad taste in my mouth. Not because of the show or the audience in particular, that was all fine and good. But because of what happened after the show…

At the end of every show, when Mick is saying goodnight, I wait up front with the crowd until the house lights come on, indicating to the audience that the show is over. Then I make my way to the front of the stage, squeezing myself between crazy front row fans, to start taking down equipment. Well, last night while I was on my way to the front of the stage, there was a lot more action up front than usual, when I got there I saw that a handful of fans had somehow grabbed Stevie’s microphone stand, which is covered in carefully placed ribbons and beads and rosaries. They had her stand on the floor and they were tearing it to shreds. Real nice, huh? They were like rabid animals. I grabbed the stand and was playing tug-o-war for it with two
guys. One of which pushed me, and it would be unladylike for me to repeat what I said to him, but it involved a lot of words that my grandmother would smack me for saying. I jumped up on the stage to find one of the sound guys helping me pull the stand back up and away from the ribbon-hungry fans. What monsters! Who pushes a girl? There was, however, a very sweet lady picking up sad little scraps of
ribbon/bead shrapnel off the floor for me. When all was said and done, the ribbons and beads were not doing well. They are back in a wardrobe case recovering now, and have been stabilized but remain in critical condition. I just hate that a handful of people can ruin a whole night. Oh well, roll with the punches, tomorrow’s a new day.

After the show I went up to Stevie‚s room to tell everyone about the mic stand brawl, she was not happy about it. But it makes for a good story, doesn’t it?

We went back to the hotel after load out and had a drink before retiring. Tomorrow morning we take a bus to Birmingham for 2 days off and then 2 shows. This leg of the
tour is flying by; it feels like I‚ve been out for a couple days, and we’re already halfway done. For some people who are anxious to get back to their families and such, that would be a good thing, but for me, I’m a youngin, with very little to call my own, so I’m not ready to go home yet…I’m just getting started with Europe.

Today’s Theme: Scary Alien-Like Fish

I am in love with Kiel Germany. Kiel is in the Northern most part of Germany, and it’s right on the water. Needless to say, it’s bone chilling cold here and the wind is not helpful either. But I love this city. It’s beautiful. We were lucky enough to have two days off here. I spent the first day off walking around in what could best be described as the Times Square of Kiel. It’s obviously not as massive as Times Square, but it has the same busy feel and lots of shopping. The streets are cobblestone and mostly closed to cars, it’s just charming. We went to a German restaurant for dinner, I’m pretty much a vegetarian, but when they brought the guys, food to the table, I have never seen so much carnage in my life. It was just a huge tray of meat, sausages and sauerkraut that they all crowded around like cavemen while I ate my dainty cheese plate. We also had a keg at our table. Is that really necessary? We eventually migrated to an Irish Pub where a lot of the crew had set up camp. I planned on getting to bed at a decent hour, but three hours later I was
taking shots called Brain Tumors. I have no idea what was in them, but I’ll just tell you that it tasted twice as gross as it looks.

After sleeping until noon I was prepared for another day of exploring Kiel. We walked a few miles down by the water and came across a small aquarium. It ended up just being a huge room with different kinds of fish in tanks, but it was fun. We took pictures of all the really creepy alien-like fish that don’t exist in America. After the aquarium it started raining so the night’s activities were limited to getting a bite to eat close by, and getting to bed early.

The next morning was show day, we were up and out of the hotel early, but to make a long story short we were arrived an hour early for load in. So there was a lot of sitting and waiting. I personally took it upon myself to find a comfy couch and take a little morning cat nap.

The show itself was good, as usual. It was our last show in Germany, we drive an hour to Hamburg tonight, check in to a hotel for a good 3 hours of sleep and then we fly to Dublin tomorrow morning to play two shows there. I must say, I loved Germany, but we’ve been here 10 days, and I’m ready to roll. We’ve chartered a 737 to take the crew from Germany to Ireland. What a treat, a private plane. Now this is getting good. I’m indescribably excited to see Ireland. Of all our destinations on this tour, I’m most excited for Ireland. I can’t really say why, maybe I’m just a sucker for a good accent. I’m also waiting to see how many pints of Guinness the boys can get down in 2 days. I should keep a running count. We’ll be taking a tour of the Guinness factory on our second day off in Dublin. This has the potential to get real ugly folks, I’ll keep you updated.

Today’s Theme: Disgusting drinks and dirty words

The two days off in Dusseldorf were great. It’s a cute town, with an good public transit system, so exploring the city was easy. A few of us went to Krefeld to race go-karts, which is about a 30 minute train ride away. It was so fun, I think 6 of us went, and I was only the girl racing? I got my butt kicked. The race supervisor looked and sounded like the guy from Saturday Night Live who says? Do you want to touch the monkey?? You know, the Sprockets guy? Anyway, he waves a blue flag at you whenever someone’s trying to pass you. I got blue flagged nearly every single lap. It was hysterical. By the time we were done I think I was 8 laps behind. I am also apparently such a bad driver that I caused Tim, one of the lighting guys, to crash in to a wall. (Don’t worry, he’s fine.) Needless to say, I did not receive a trophy. I placed last. But I’m no sore loser, it was a good time had by all. Even the train ride was fun, the train station itself was this beautiful old building with a clock tower, and the train went all through the countryside. I was ecstatic over seeing ducks and horses while on a train, what can I say, I’m from San Francisco, little things like this please me. I’m pretty sure all the locals on the train thought I was nuts when I started screaming “Look, Ducks!!! Ducks!!” And it’s amazing what You’re willing to eat and drink while in foreign countries, on the way back to the hotel we got these dreadful, foul smelling drinks that consisted of hot mulled wine mixed with all kinds of spices and hot rum. Talk about an acquired taste, yet I drank the whole thing. Why, you ask? Because I’m in Germany, and I’m determined to try new things, no matter how vile they may be.

The gig tonight was in Oberhausen, which is about a 45 minute drive from Dusseldorf. This morning was actually our first morning of how tour usually is. We’ve had rehearsals and back to back shows since we arrived, so this morning finally felt like we were on tour again. Getting up early, loading all your luggage up and piling on to the bus to go to the gig. Today is also the first day I feel I’ve completely recovered from jetlag. It took a week. How’s that for adjustment?

The day went by fast, we had to make sure we were on time today, if not early. There’s a midnight flight curfew in Oberhausen, which means if the bands plane was not on the runway and in the process of taking off at the stroke of midnight, they were stuck in Oberhausen till morning. So we had soundcheck at 5:00PM sharp and the show was to start at 8:00PM on the dot. (Which is when the show is actually supposed to start). Fleetwood Mac is usually a tad bit late to take the stage (not late late, just fashionably late, still, 8:00 was kind of a push.) They ended up starting the show about ten minutes after 8:00. Not bad. And can I just say that the crowd in Oberhausen is seriously one of the best I can remember. They were insane. There as a girl in the front row that kept getting up on her boyfriends shoulders to take pictures of Stevie, no matter how many times our security went to tell her to get down, she was right back up there ten minutes later. The whole crowd clapped and screamed from the first minute to the last. It made the show so much fun. I think the standout song tonight was “Never Going Back”, I’ve heard that song live too any times to count, and it’s always a beautiful song, but for whatever reason, tonight it was heart wrenching. Let’s just say I may have even gotten a little teary. Just maybe.

There was also a lot of commotion today due to the fact that we were recording Peacekeeper for a television show (Editor’s note: it was for the AMA awards). I’m not even sure what show it was for, I just know that there was a television camera crew there, and that I heard the word Peacekeeper 4 million times today. It was the talk of the town.

Okay, my final tidbit tonight is actually a polite request to all you showgoers out there. Please, please leave your tambourines at home when you come to a Fleetwood Mac show. There was a girl behind me tonight that played her tambourine the WHOLE SHOW. And if that wasn’t bad enough, she had NO RHYTHM. It drove me up a wall, so much that our security nearly had to hold me back from jumping in to the audience and hunting her down. So please, leave the tambourine playing to Miss Stevie, the world will be a better place for it. Oh yeah, and those little laser pointer things, leave those at home too, nobody likes those, they’re annoying and you know it. I think it’s my bedtime, I’d say goodnight in German, but so far all I’ve learned to say are dirty words. Figures.