Rome, Italy

Julie Slick and Adrian Belew doing soundcheck at Laghetto Di Villa Ada, Rome, Italy

Morning (this time from Amsterdam!):

Italy was gorgeous. I'll have more pictures for you later, though I did find some crazy art shots someone took with their cell phone right here.

So guess what. Even though our equipment was mysteriously "found" by Continental Airlines AFTER our show in Germany, when we arrived in Rome Adrian's gear did not show up again. What a bummer.

Also, no bass pedal for my drumkit. I tried to stay calm because hey, this is all part of touring but man it was hard. It was so frustrating! Luckily, it arrived before the show, but not before nearly giving me a heart attack.

So you know you go to Italy to eat but I was so stressed I wasn't really hungry. We had tomato mozzarella sandwiches before the show, and I had my first cup of espresso ever. Understand that I don't even drink regular coffee. I basically had NO SLEEP following our show in Germany and even on the flight to Rome, which, combined with espresso for the first time and worrying about our gear, made for a Very Bad combination. About half-way through the show, during one of our craziest songs, Of Bow and Drum, I had an anxiety/asthma attack on stage. I struggled to keep playing but it was obvious I was having problems and it made the tempos much slower, Yikes. I somehow managed to keep playing but after leaving the stage I totally lost it and for about an hour I had a panic attack and I thought I was going to die. This has happened to me before, usually on plane flights. It was terrifying but obviously brought on by the excitement, no sleep, long hours of travel, and ask me if I'll ever, ever drink an espresso again! I scared Adrian and Julie who told me I looked horrible and just as I was thinking the hospital was my only option a woman came backstage and calmed me down. She hugged me for awhile and told me to take deep breaths. It was frightening. Luckily everything was okay, and I went to hotel and slept like a baby. We stayed at Hotel Villa Del Parco.(pictures of that soon)

I really want to talk more about the music and will do that in a future post because yes! we have good internet here in Amsterdam and after our show tonight we'll be here all day tomorrow, too. But in the meantime, here's a review of our show which appeared in an Italian publication, which, considering the fact that we were still missing equipment and I thought I was dying, is pretty favorable:

"I had already seen Adrian Belew with his trio last April in Rome. Both the line-up (Mike Gallaher on bass and Mike Hodges on drums) and show were awesome.

Yesterday I went to Villa Ada also to see the new guys in the band, Julie Slick (20) and Eric Slick (19). Since the beginning of the concert with "Writings On The Wall" (from "Side One"), Eric showed his tight and powerful drumming skills, a la John Bonham, twisting Belew's music a bit. I couldn't hear Julie's bass very well for the first few songs of the setlist, as the mix wasn't excellent, but later on the show it was clear that she can play. Adrian was in fine form, as usual, and the band streched out the songs a bit to let him play some longer solos, but again, I think there were some technical problems goin' on yesterday (I also heard that his guitar pedals were lost at the airport), and the sound wasn't great - "The Lone Rhinoceros" was played instead of "Matchless Man", maybe because of that.

The best part of the show was probably when some King Crimson's classics were played, like the Beatles-ish "Dinosaur" (what a shame that the bass again was still a bit low on this tune), "Frame By Frame", "Three Of A Perfect Pair" and encores "Elephant Talk" (which Julie managed to play on a 4 strings, despite the original 6 string Stick riff played by Levin) and an exciting "Thela Hun Jingeet", where Adrian was having a lot of fun with feedbacks and sounds from another planet. Regarding the solo stuff of Belew, I enjoyed very much the versions of "Ampersand", "I Walk Alone" from "Inner Revolution" and the instrumental "Beat Box Guitar", while "Big Electric Cat" didn't sound cool enough to me - still a great tune, though.

So, a nice and enjoyable concert, not that long (but I think it is the right choice for this kind of concerts). The young players in the band are good promises for the future, and I'm sure they will just get better and better everyday. I admire Adrian Belew as he let these guys shine on stage, performing along a giant of modern rock music like him."