The long trip to and from Mexico was totally worth it. The crowd was really awesome. Thanks to everyone who came out to support us at the show — I’m glad we did manage to fit in a “meet-n-greet” of sorts and were able to meet at least some of you! I got to meet Phillip from Horus, who had the coolest pinkie respect shirt for me. That was soooo thoughtful of you, thanks so much, Phillip!

Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me so I’ll be dependent on other people’s photos. But here are some of the first things that come to mind on my first morning home after the trip.

Time to come clean: I had doubts about doing a performance without any rehearsals. I mean SERIOUS, crippled-with-worry, oh-my-God-this-is-freaking-MADNESS doubts. Not doubts about the other Soppies, of course, but about myself.

For you guitarists who only play at home and don’t ever play live, trust me: playing live is completely different to playing in the comfort of home. For one thing, having to solo while standing up SUCKS; I play 100 times better when I can sit down. In fact, there’s some solo sections I physically can’t play unless I’m sitting down, so I have to change them for playing live. But even then, no matter how much I practice, the guitar pretty much feels like a strange piece of wood in my hands during solos when I am standing. It’s a bio-mechanics thing.

For another thing, playing at concert volume through a real cabinet and power amp feels completely different to playing at TV volume with headphones at home (like I normally practice). Even worse, when you play live you have to deal with any number of unforeseen distractions: things happening in the crowd, things happening on stage, dancing bananas , problems with your monitors or your gear — the list is endless. But the most debilitating thing (for me) is all the memories of every mistake I’ve ever made coming back to haunt me and making me lose what little confidence I have. It’s really strange how much your performance depends on your mental state; once the negative thoughts set in, they are really hard to shake and can totally put you off your game, making you totally screw up stuff you’ve played perfectly a million times. It’s terrifying, because you never know when it will happen. But if you can just relax and have fun, everything is so much easier.

Despite all my worries, I’m happy to say that from my perspective on stage the Mexican show rocked. And I’m so glad it did because it showed me that I actually can manage despite a long break, no rehearsals with the band, and not having much time to practice (I’d been working very long hours in the weeks before the show). This was a MASSIVE relief, because with our members spread out all over the globe we won’t always have the luxury of rehearsals before shows. But if we do play more shows in the future, my stress level should be much lower than it was this time thanks to this successful experience. (Good for everyone — a stressed-out, sleep-deprived Lorinator is not a lot of fun to be around.)

Because there are other guitarists among the readers here, I’ll give ya the lowdown on the amps ‘n’ valves: I have to say that the Rectifier/Pod combination was freaking MANLY (at least from where I was standing!). It would be interesting to compare (in a back-to-back blind test) with the Marshall I’ve used before, but my spontaneous (and totally subjective) impression was that the rectifier kicked the Marshall’s metal butt. And another gearhead thing I noticed: the combination of my favorite strings and Big Bend’s Nut Sauce (I’m not making this up) really does seem to work well. My guitar was easy to tune up after changing strings, and I don’t remember having to tune at all during the show.

Another good experience from this show was “pulling through with great aplomb” despite myriad problems and setbacks. Sound check was, errr, somewhat of a mess. For whatever reason, things that seemed very simple to set up (like power for our equipment) took a looooong time. And everything was late, late, late: our own sound check was massively delayed (for reasons unclear to me), and in turn we ended up keeping Xandria waiting a long time for their sound check. To their credit, the Xandria band members were very gracious and understanding about it. (I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have managed so well had I been in their shoes.) I also heard that because everything was so late, that the doors didn’t open in time and people ended up having to stand waiting in the rain. For a long time. So sorry about that!

Anyway, everything was running late, and when we finally got started with sound check we had the joy of equipment getting broken. I didn’t see it happen, but Alejandro’s keyboard stand was not up to the task; it somehow got tipped over, sending the keyboards crashing to the floor and breaking two keys on the (borrowed) electric piano, rendering it unusable. No piano, no SoP. Luckily, a phone call or two to the right people and they had a new piano on the way for us. There was much rejoicing when it finally arrived!

But the problems didn’t end with broken keyboards. After sound check when Arjen was changing strings, the locking nut on his guitar broke. We didn’t have a spare guitar for either of us, so there would be no way for him to play unless we could somehow fix it or find a guitar for him to borrow. The one time we had no spares, and a guitar breaks! That Murphy guy will get you every time, I tell ya. Luckily, Pieter, our sound engineer, managed to somehow MacGuyver it back together using his ingenuity and the meagre collection of tools we had on hand (including a fake Leatherman), and it held up for the show! Kudos to Pieter for not giving up!

We also had problems with Johan’s wireless — the first one didn’t work, and neither did the second one they brought in. In the end, like 5 minutes before we were supposed to play, I let him take the one they’d arranged for me, because Johan runs around a lot more than I do and I’m pretty much tied to my pedal board anyway. I’m embarrassed to say that even though I had suggested it earlier on, I wasn’t very gracious about it when it came down to it that late in the day, mainly because I was worried that my sound would get messed up when they were hurriedly re-wiring my gear and that I’d have a horrible surprise during “Spellbound,” effectively killing my mojo for the beginning of the show. Luckily my sound was OK, probably one of the better on-stage sounds I’ve had, actually. And we got our jumping Johan

The coolest thing was that the Soppies all kept their cool and stayed positive and optimistic through all the setbacks. The lovely people are definitely one of the best things about SoP

That’s all I have time for today, but I’ll try to get some more posted tomorrow.

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