Sean Lennon Day 18, Going home...

There is nothing worse than going to a small airport with lots of gear, and when the girl at the counter looked like she was going to cry, we knew we were in for a long one... She didn't know what to do with everything, the supervisor was little help, and it took over 2 hours to check us in for our flights. With everything tagged, we went to bring the gear to the oversize baggage bay, and there was no one there. 10 minutes before the flight. Finally someone showed up and we had to help carry all the gear to the plane. Then, at the last possible second, some moron in the security department decided they had to open and inspect all our cases. Somehow the plane left on time, but I can't figure out how... It was a brutal way to start the day. Don't worry, it gets better.

So we get to Paris' De Gaulle airport, we have 45 minutes to make our various connections, so we start running through terminals to get to our gates, etc... In Europe, there's some Passport Control gates before security, which isn't a big deal, you just show your passport and go, but when there's about 600 people in line and you have 20 minutes left til your flight, you have problems. But alas, they were just beginning.

We're pretty sure none of us are making our flights, Sean got on the phone with his travel agent to start re-booking some later ones, then it happens. Whistles start blowing, cops come running out from all corners, security guards start freaking out. There's an unattended package at the security gates and they think it's a bomb. Amazing. So they try and herd everyone out of the terminal, but humans being fundamentally stupid, most people just stay! Unreal. If it were actually a bomb, none of us would've had a chance. After a few minutes (!) people start scattering a little bit and we're put in another part of the terminal to wait it out. That airport better hope they never have a real problem because their evacuation plan blows. Anyways, after about 1 hour, they clear everything up, reopen the gates, we go through Passport Control, clear security and race to the planes. In a way, the whole thing was a blessing in disguise because they had to ground all the planes while they sorted things out. This way the planes had to wait for all the passengers before taking off, so we all made it, but the flights left about an hour and a half late.

Somehow, despite all that, I still get to Montreal with enough time to make my connection, except it takes forever for my bags to show up (you have to claim and recheck them when crossing borders). So I'm waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting some more, and with less than 10 minutes to go, the bags finally come through, I grab them and run to the next gate to recheck and go to the plane. But it's too late, they say I'll never make it and they'll try and rebook me on the midnight flight, which is 5 hours away! I've already been flying for about 12 hours today so I'm really not into that idea, but what can you do? I had given up all hope when all of a sudden a message pops on to the computer screen: my flight has been delayed! I can make it! So I drop my bags at the counter and head to the gate, plane takes off and lands and all is good.

Except my bags don't show up. Because I had checked in so late for the flight, my bags never made it to the plane. Fantastic. So I go to the baggage guy, fill out a form and they say if my bags show up they'll deliver them to me. But then it turns out there's another flight from Montreal coming in and sometimes they put late bags on the next flight, so I stick around for a little while and sure enough they come down the belt. I grab my bags and finally head home after 14 hours of travel.

I've been back about 36 hours now, readjusted to the time zone and I'm ready to go. Looks like I'm home for about 10 days, but I'm trying to find something sooner. I'll let you know, stay tuned...

Sean Lennon Day 17, Carhaix, FR

4:30am comes really fast when you finish work around 2am. We dragged ourselves out of bed, sleepless, and started the day with a drive to the airport. Thankfully, as far as airport check-ins go for a band, this was pretty painless. We got on the plane and made the first flight to Paris, then ran across the airport to make our second flight to Brest.

For some reason people don't understand when you say you need an empty cargo van for 30 pieces of band gear in road cases. It doesn't fit in sedans, and no one seems to get it. This is why we were pretty frustrated to see 4 compact taxis waiting for us at the airport. Why is it so hard? After messing around with the pack for about an hour, we finally spotted a slightly bigger taxi to commandeer and we were able to go to the hotel for 30 minutes before making the 1 hour drive to the Festival des Vielles Charrues, the biggest festival in France.

So, we stop at the hotel, get into the cars to leave for the festival and 1 hour later we pull up, as scheduled. We took a quick look to make sure the gear made it, went for a quick lunch, and before we knew it, it was showtime. There were a couple glitches, like amps that died, etc... but the show ended up going really well, and the 30,000+ people in attendance loved it. And that was it, the last show of the tour. We hung around for a little while, checked out a couple other bands, had dinner, played ping pong, etc... and around 11pm we went back to the hotel. Once there, we took over the bar for our farewell drinks and crashed so we could get up early for 3 more flights in the morning...

Sean Lennon Day 16, Patrimonio (Corsica), FR

We actually had a show today. What a concept. It was a good one though. After breakfast at the hotel, we made the 30 minute drive to the open air theatre in Patrimonio, set in the mountains by an old church. It was pretty amazing.

Aside from going into town for dinner, we spent pretty much the whole day in the mountains. It was a pretty relaxing way to spend a work day...

Won't last long though. At 4:30am we have to get in vans to head to the airport... Tomorrow's gonna be a long one...

Sean Lennon Day 15, Bastia (Corsica), FR.

I decided today that I'm tired of running around trying to see as much as I possibly can. It wears you down after a while, and this is the vacation leg of the tour and I sure as hell don't fell like I'm on vacation. So, to solve this problem, I stayed at the hotel all day. They got the internet to work, which is gold, then I just visited one balcony after another, spent some time by the pool, walked to a cafe up the hill for dinner and went "home" and crashed. It was actually relaxing. And tomorrow it's back to work...

Sean Lennon Day 14, Bastia (Corsica), FR

Today we headed out with slightly diminished enthusiasm given our experiences yesterday. We found a place in the main square for breakfast that overcooked our food, but at least that's better than undercooked I suppose... We then started wandering a bit more hoping to discover for ourselves what others wouldn't tell us. And we found stuff. We started aimlessly wandering through nameless streets, up hills, through alleys and we found loads of restaurants, cafes, shops, name it. All in the residential areas I'm sure they don't want us to know about. We found some pretty stunning architecture, most things built in the mid 1800s, and some great views overlooking the city.

We eventually made our way back for our mid-evening beach time and tried to put together a plan for dinner. After checking out a few spots, we settled for a restaurant inside the old Citadelle which was light years better than last nights meal, but the first night was still the best... After eating, we tried to find a place to hang out, but the nightlife left something to be desired. Most thing shut down fairly early here, like by 11pm, which is usually when we just get started. So, feeling a little better about our lot in life after some better experiences today, we headed back to enjoy our balconies before trying to get some sleep.

Sean Lennon Day 13, Bastia (Corsica), FR

Seeing as we're on vacation for most of the week, we slept in. Late. I got up at 2:30pm. We didn't really know where to go for food yet, so we went down to the hotel restaurant where we paid about 4 times what the food was worth, it was good though, just not much in the quantity department. After that, we attempted to rent scooters to run around the island, but we were shot down due to our lack of scooter experience. Sigh. So, slightly disappointed, we walked around the downtown area for a little while, and I use the term "downtown" loosely, found a grocery store so we could stock up for the week, and then proceeded to ask some locals where the "hot spots" were in terms of nightlife. That didn't go so well. I asked for at least a name of a bar so I could look it up myself, and was told I should just check with the tourist office, no one would help me.

And so we headed back to the hotel to hang out on the terrace overlooking the Mediterranean and we made some plans for dinner. We worked it out so we could get some taxis to go out to The Pirate Restaurant, which came highly recommended. Turns out the pirates were the cabbies. After arguing for a long time when we got dropped off, they finally explained that different times of day have different rates, and not only do they charge to drive you somewhere, they charge from the moment they leave the station tile the moment they get back! So, what would be a $7 cab ride in NYC ends up costing 30 Euros each way! Insane! We decided right then we were only going to places in walking distance for the rest of the week.

Anyways, the dinner was a little mediocre given the amount of money we paid, it wasn't terrible, but not great by any means. Unfortunately we had to call cabs to go back to the hotel, and with the luck we have, the same cabbies came to pick us up. Not only did they come to get us, but they stood at the end of our table til we were ready to go. Unreal.

So we get back to the hotel, go down to the pool and enjoy the water til we all run out of energy and decide to crash.

Sean Lennon Day 12, Travel to Corsica...

We got up early and hopped on the bus. And drove, and drove, and drove... stopped for some really bad rest stop food (I threw out the sandwich after 2 bites) and drove, and drove, and drove... And we got to Orly airport just outside Paris. Then we waited. And waited and waited to check in. Then we got on the plane and let a total cowboy fly us to Corsica.

Once landed, we were told it was impossible to find food, it was 11pm and we were starving from the travel all day. But, somehow, a little golden nugget found its way into our lives. One of the guys that picked us up had a friend that owned a restaurant in town (we're in Bastia) and he made arrangements for them to stay open for us. And it was amazing, a great meal, really nice people, a really good time overall. We returned to the hotel, quite late at this point, and finally crashed. And so begins our week on the island.

Sean Lennon Day 11, Aix-les-bains, FRA

We got into town right on time for our load in after a long 12 hour + drive. We had an early slot today, which is always nice because we pretty much have the night off after that. It helps that this festival, Musilac, is really cool. Huge stages, other big names to check out, like Keane and Arctic Monkeys, good food, and, the best part, right on a beautiful lake in the mountains. Amazing. It's always nice to see palm trees too. Hopefully this is a taste of things to come over the next four days, which we have off in Corsica. I know, life sucks sometimes...

Sean Lennon Day 10, Brussels, Gent, BEL

We had some time before leaving town this morning, so the first order of business was getting a Belgian waffle and some coffee, both items achieved successfully. We then got on the bus for the short ride to Gent.

The thing about having a tour bus in Europe is that a lot of the older cities, like Gent, have really small streets that can be hard to navigate. We got stuck, had to unhitch the trailer and push it through the streets, move road signs, push cars, etc... It took us almost as long to get through the city as it took us to get there from Brussels. It was pretty special.

Once parked, we had a chance to walk around and check stuff out as we got there around 3pm and we only had to set up at 9pm. It was great because the entire city was one massive festival. Roads were closed, there were stages everywhere, beer tents everywhere, it was amazing. Literally the entire city was shut down so they could party. Unbelievable. You'd never see that in North America. They even built stages over water, like a bridge, so bands could play for passing boats.

Eventually it was time to work, and it was good tonight. It was another outdoor festival and the town square we were in was packed, and we had the headline spot, so all in all it was pretty cool. Unfortunately we couldn't stay after the show tonight because we had a 12 hour overnight drive to the south of France. It was too bad, we were told by the time we were done, the city was off the hook. Guess we'll just have to come back next year...

Sean Lennon Day 9, Dour, Brussels, BEL

We woke up in Amsterdam this morning and reluctantly got on the bus to head to Dour for the "reknowned" Dour Music Festival. What they don't tell you is that it's known for mud. We didn't lose anything, but I did see one poor guy lose both his shoes in a muddy swamp-like pool of something. They were instantly considered casualties of the festival.

Today was a little bit relaxing because we had a really early show, done by 4pm, and right after we headed down the road to Brussels, a great city that I like a lot. We had an amazing hotel right off the town square, one of the top 5 I've ever stayed in. After checking in, we headed out for food, which is not hard to find in that part of town, and afterwards we found a cool patio where we spent the rest of the night hanging out with some locals. For the first time, it didn't rain during our time off, so overall it made for a great night off.

Sean Lennon Day 8, Amsterdam, NL

I like Amsterdam. What a great place to spend a day off. We pretty much just hopped around patios all day and it was awesome. These people have it all figured out.

Sean Lennon Day 7, Den Haag (The Hague), NL

We got up early today to move into the new bus and head out of Paris. It's a decent bus, good size bunks, really stable drive, so I slept all the way to Den Haag. It was great. Once we got there, we loaded in and set up pretty fast, soundchecked, etc... just another normal show day. It was an outdoor thing, which was interesting. It was like a small open-air amphitheatre in a park, actually a really nice setting. Only thing that made it weird was that the sun doesn't go down that early in this part of the world. Even the last few days in Paris, the sun was up well past 10pm. So, it was almost like playing an afternoon show.

Afterwards, we made the 1 hour drive to Amsterdam so we can spend our day off there tomorrow. Once in town, we headed out looking for a place to hang out, but most places are done by 10pm during the week, so after looking for 2 hours, we gave up and headed to the hotel. See what happens tomorrow...

Sean Lennon Day 6, Paris anyone?

6 days in Paris is hard to beat. It ended up going by pretty fast too. Today we headed off to the Père-Lachaise cemetery, which is absolutely massive, and saw graves belonging to folks such as Jim Morrison, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf and a tonne of war memorials. After a couple hours of that, we had lunch around the corner, then we made our way to Tourist Mistake #2 (#1 was the Louvre), the Champs Elysees. It was nice, a great walk, but again, so many tourists, so many bad stores. We made it down to the Arc de Triomphe, so it was cool to see that, but it had started raining so we bailed in to the metro station and made our way back.

We rested at the hotel for a bit, then decided to head back up the hill in Montmartre to find another good place to eat. That wasn't very hard... Afterwards, we stopped by one of the cafes that we turned in to our local hangout, had a farewell beverage, and headed home. We actually have to work tomorrow...

Sean Lennon Day 5, uh... let's see... oh right. Paris.

We thought today would be a great day to check out the Louvre. Had a quick bite beside the hotel, hopped on the train and off we went.

From our experience, I don't think it's possible for there to be a great day to check out the Louvre. Monday morning and it was slammed. Nothing but annoying tourists. Couldn't walk anywhere, couldn't get close to anything. I saw the main stuff, like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, etc... and a massive amount of artifacts from ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt, but it really wasn't that enjoyable an experience.

We then headed to the Notre Dame basilica, then up the hill to the Sacré-Coeur church, walked around Montmartre for a bit and back to the hotel. Had a couple hours to rest and then went back up the hill for dinner. We found a great place that was remarkably cheap. It was a little ironic because Montmartre is such a major tourist area, our hotel is right in the middle, so we figured we should head outside the area for food when we could, but the cheapest and best stuff was right in our backyard the whole time... And so we ate, enjoyed and headed home for the night.

Sean Lennon Day 4, Paris, FRA

Today is our 2nd of 4 days off in Paris. Harsh, I know. First thing we did was find a café for breakfast, but unfortunately had brutal coffee, so we stopped for another one. It was bad too. We gave up, went to get a metro pass and we headed off to the catacombs of Paris.

That was pretty crazy. The amount of bones, organized in endless stacks was unbelievable. They even used the skulls to make designs within the stacks. I've never seen anything like it. I have lots of pictures... After that, we checked out a cemetery where we saw the graves of people such as Samuel Beckett and Sartre, stopped for lunch and headed back to the hotel for a bit.

We headed out again for dinner a little later on to a great restaurant across town where fellow diners included one Owen Wilson. We were tempted to stay out a little later, but the metro stops running fairly early (1am), so we just headed home for the night.

Sean Lennon Day 4, Paris, FRA

Today is our 2nd of 4 days off in Paris. Harsh, I know. First thing we did was find a café for breakfast, but unfortunately had brutal coffee, so we stopped for another one. It was bad too. We gave up, went to get a metro pass and we headed off to the catacombs of Paris.

That was pretty crazy. The amount of bones, organized in endless stacks was unbelievable. They even used the skulls to make designs within the stacks. I've never seen anything like it. I have lots of pictures... After that, we checked out a cemetery where we saw the graves of people such as Samuel Beckett and Sartre, stopped for lunch and headed back to the hotel for a bit.

We headed out again for dinner a little later on to a great restaurant across town where fellow diners included one Owen Wilson. We were tempted to stay out a little later, but the metro stops running fairly early (1am), so we just headed home for the night.

Sean Lennon Day 3, Paris, FRA

Today we had a show in Paris, at the Solidays festival. It's easily the biggest festival I've ever been to. There were 5 stages, 4 of which are bigger than any stage I've ever worked on. It's insane.

The down side to today is that I managed to lose my phone. I don't lose things. This is really freaking me out. I can get a new one set up and shipped over with the special Euro deals I have, but it'll end up being a $200 mistake. Not cool. I also managed to lose one of the memory cards for my camera. Just not my day. Dave, our guitar tech, had a harder one. One of the stagehands plugged all the guitar player's pedals into Euro power sockets without converting the voltage. I've never seen so much smoke come out of a pedal board. It was spectacular, but basically all the gear was fried. If it was any other band, I probably would've laughed like crazy. This was not funny right before a show. Somehow it got worked out though and the show went on relatively unharmed.

Anyways. It was only a 20 min drive from our hotel, so we took our time this morning. When we got there, it was pretty much time for us to do our thing, so we got right into it. The stage we played had about 12000 people at 6pm. Wild.There were close to 40000 people on site. The other bands playing around the same time as Sean were Sum 41 and Lily Allen. Sum 41 had a massive crowd. I had no idea there were so big in France. At least 25000. Crazy. We saw the last bit of their set after ours was done, had some dinner and headed back. We went to - get this - a café for a couple drinks and food and decided to call it an early night. By tomorrow all jet lag will be gone and we'll be adjusted. It's a day off too, so we have all the time we need.

Sean Lennon Day 2, Paris, FRA

I tried to beat the jet lag today. I forced myself to get up early and pumped myself full of espresso to try and force through the day. It seemed to work for a while...

We had a show in Evreux today, at a festival called Le rock dans tous ses états. It was about an hour or so outside Paris, but we left a little early to make sure we got there on time. Good thing we did. Our driver didn't have a clue. We made it to the town, but once there, he was stopping and asking people on the street where to go. So much for being pro...

We made it there a little early anyways, set stuff up and waited for the show. It was cool, maybe 5000 or so there when Sean was on. Afterwards, we didn't hang around too long. We packed fast and jumped back in our cars and headed back to Paris where we all went out for food. We found a nice café that stayed open late enough with decent food and a stuck up waiter. Good times. Thankfully outside the tourist areas people are generally pretty nice. I guess that's the downside to our temporary neighbourhood. I'll learn to deal with it for 6 days....

Sean Lennon Day 1, YOW-CDG

I had to get up early today to finish all the little things - currency, supplies, packing, etc... That took a good chunk of the day and I headed to the airport for 6pm to fly to Montreal, then on to Paris. While sitting at the airport in OTtawa for what seemed like the millionth time this year, I decided to go to the bar, something I hadn't done there before. Funny thing is I ran in to two people I hadn't seen in months. Funny how that works out...

Anyways, the flight to Monty was painless, I waited a bit for the flight to Paris, everything was fine, no glitches. I even managed to get a little bit of sleep on the plane. Once I landed, I headed over to another terminal to meet everyone, and after all the flights got in, we headed to the hotel.

It was a hotel we've stayed in before, during our last trip here, and we were pretty excited about it. It was amazing last time and we're in Paris for the first 6 days, so things were looking good. But the hotel is being renovated. Not good anymore. Our rooms are but a fraction of the size they used to be, and somewhat uncomfortable. The internet isn't even working during the renovations either, so we're pooched. Oh well, at least we're in an amazing part of town, so we're only in the room to sleep anyways...

So after dropping everything off, we head out to look for food, something that's incredibly easy yet near impossible to find here. There's so many places, literally every 2 doors is a café. How do you choose? We eventually settled for one that provided a mediocre meal, but given our hunger it ended up being ok. After that, we headed back to the hotel for a bit, and later on the evening we went to another café for dinner and took a quick metro ride into the heart of the city to burn whatever energy we had left. By the time we got back, I figure we were probably awake for some 30+ hours. Amazing.

Sean Lennon, Toronto, ON

Mornings are rough. Getting to bed around 4am when you have to get up a 6:30 is a nightmare. And that was how my day started. I got up somehow and got to LaGuardia fairly painlessly, and remarkably quickly. It's a good thing I got there fast because that airport is a disaster. Thankfully I had an electronic ticket, so there was no waiting in the unbelievable lineup to check in. I just had to survive the free for all train wreck to get my baggage tags. In a normal airport, after you check in, you go to the counter, they print off your tags and you're set. Not here. No sir. They let hundred of people crash the counter while the machine spits out tags and they randomly call out names that no one can hear because everyone is too busy yelling at them because the system blows and half the people there will miss their flights. And then, while they're handing out some tags, a lot of other tags just end up on the ground and trampled, and who knows what happens to the people waiting for those. It's insane. After an hour and a half, I finally convinced a girl behind the counter to help me out, which was no easy task as they basically ignored everyone. At one point there was actually no one there because they all just too a handful of tags and walked into the crowd looking for people. It was brutal. And then, after you make it to the front and get your tags, you have to push your way back out through everyone to drop off your bags at the x-ray machine, and I'm not talking 20 people, I'm talking about 250. They don't even take your bags behind the counter! Anyways. I finally got my tags about 20 minutes before my flight, rushed to security (thankfully there was a tiny lineup) and made it on to my plane with seconds to spare. It was the first time I felt some serious stress at an airport; I really couldn't miss this flight. First day back with Sean, didn't want to start on the wrong foot... I now completely understand why most people hate to travel. If that happened to me every time I had to fly, I'd quit. I didn't think it was possible to hate an airport more than I hate Pearson, but I was sooo wrong. Pearson is a delight compared to what I went through this morning.

And then I got to Toronto. That was a walk in the park by comparison. All I had to do was meet everyone in a different terminal, then we all hopped in to vans and headed to the hotel. I somehow managed to get an hour or so of sleep, and then it was time to load in at The Phoenix.

I'm always happy to go there. I know everyone, I know the gear will work and it's actually a good place to play when the room is full. We had a good soundcheck and I felt like I never left, just right back in the saddle again. After a quick dinner break, we came back for the show, which was a bit bizarre. The main problem was that it was a club show on Canada Day. No one books a club show on Canada Day. You play outdoor festivals where people can party and see the fireworks. There was a small crowd, but they were good, solid fans and the show went really well.

After the show we dealt with gear issues for the flights the next day, had a quick beer, made a trip around the corner to The Big Slice on my way to the hotel and then actually made it to bed at a realistic hour, which was very necessary after my recent lack of sleep. Tomorrow, I fly home for about 48 hours, then it's off to Europe for the rest of the month...

The Stills, Brooklyn, NY

Today was Canada Day for us, a day early is close enough... The show at the Prospect Park band shell is basically a Canada Day party put on by the Canadian consulate in New York. Our good friends the Sam Roberts Band were also on the bill, actually as the opening act. We thought that was a little funny given his rock-god status in Canada...

We had an early load in and soundcheck that felt a little rough given the time we got back last night, but the bonus was that it was out of the way early and we had a chance to head back to the hotel to rest for a bit before the show. We went back for dinner, watched Sam play (it was the first time I actually saw them from the front of a stage, weird...), and then we put on the rock show for some 4500 people. It was great. Perfect weather for an outdoor show, the guys played well, looked good, sounded good... Overall it was a winner.

After the set, we all headed over to a place called Union Hall with the Sam guys, which is the only pub I've ever been to with not one, but two(!) bocci ball set ups. I don't know if it's called a field or a court or what, but it was interesting. I was hoping to get out early because I had an early flight coming up, and swore that I'd be out by 1:30am. Funny how that turns into 4am really fast. Funny how much it sucks to get up at 6:30 to go to an airport...