An early departure sunday morning to Groningen which is a 2 1/2 hour drive. We are a bit tired after a week of getting up, driving, playing, coming home late. No time for anything else. Lots of stuff has to be taken care of every gig: video recordings, DAT tapes recording the gig, making set lists, not to mention setting up stuff. Arrival at 14.00 at Buckshot with a friendly welcome from Maarten Burger. Got some time to relax before the gig that should start at 16.30.. Jeroen Bos mailed us this alternative schedule yesterday that you can read here. Some people video taped the gig too for their personal bootleg collection; I asked them if they could hand it to us first to view. They were kind enough to do so. We will transfer that stuff to DVD and see if there's any good usable stuff there.

We played two sets to a packed house and closed with Lined Out. Met a lot of old friends I haven't seen in ages, thanks everybody for showing up and supporting us! Got some pizza in Groningen and headed back to Amsterdam at 23.00. We got one more event to go: Lale's clinic coming tuesday in Haarlem. Hope to see you there.

Rich

Lale says: Last night we played in Buckshot Cafe. I've played here several times before and it's always a pleasure. We always get such a warm welcome from Maarten and the rest of the staff. This time the place was filled and it seemed like the audience liked the music. We feel pretty tired now from carrying all the equipment back and forth for five days, and we have a LOT of equipment on this tour. It's been really a lot of fun playing though. Yesterday was also videofilmed with two different cameras, hope that we can use any of it.

By the way, I have a new name now! One of the guys in Nighttown yesterday wrote down my name and asked me if it was right - "Will Arsen"! Rich must have had some food in his mouth or something while introducing me. Anyway a cool name if I ever want to make a career in porn.;-) "Lark Arson" is also a good name. Anyway, after the concert in Buckshot we went to a nice Italian restaurant and had some pizzas. It was nice to see Frans Vollink and his girlfriend again and I also made some new friends. I have a clinic in Tune Up, Haarlem on Tuesday at 21:00. We'll talk about music, different approaches to improvising and I will play some stuff from the TimeLine CD I did with Bas and Gary Willis.We'll have a good time!
I hope to see you there!
/ Lale

PS: I'd also like to thank all the people around the world who has written to us in concern about our bad experience in Leiden.
It's amazing how they can treat musicians like that. We were nice enough to play there for a very small amount of money inbetween the other gigs and after loading all our equipment onto stage we were told that we would get no money at all. These guys are probably used to hobby musicians who would work for a sandwich. It was very unprofessional and the service was very bad. It's just a shame that when you are trying to spread some light with music, people like this just comes around and generate a lot of negative energy. We musicians should stick together and stand up for our work just like any other profession and help to prevent things like this to happen. You guys should be ashamed.

Love/Lale