Oh. My. God. That had to be the longest trip home ever. I left Umeå late Sunday to head back to Stockholm and then got about an hour sleep before I had to run back to Arlanda to catch my flight to Paris. As luck would have it, the flight to Paris was delayed just enough for me to miss my connection flight to San Francisco, leaving me standed in France for an additional 24hrs. Merde! Thankfully the airport put me up at a local hotel, but let me tell you - it's scary to be a vegetarian at a Parisian buffet when there's so many little googly eyes staring back at you. I didn't realize pork came in so many forms. So anyhow, I survived and finally made it back home yesterday only to discover that my computer was kaput. Awesome. Still, it's so nice to be back in my own house with my wife and dogs and to sleep in my own bed, especially after such a draining journey.
Okay, day three of Umeå Open. My talk went okay even though I imbibed quite a bit the night before and the audience was somewhat unresponsive in typical Norrlandic fashion. That's pretty much what I expected, so I can't really complain. I suspect I could've prepared a little better, but it's far too late for those kinds of thoughts now. The shows that night were fantastic. Cult of Luna kicked things off down in the basement and actually played slower live than on record. Good stuff. I ran out of there at just the right moment to find Isolation Years taking the stage upstairs at the main auditorium. Again, quite nice. Both bands suffered a bit from being the first ones out for the evening, but both the bands and the crowd warmed up nicely by the end of their sets. After that I sat for a bit and relaxed before heading off to see a bit of El Perro Del Mar who was much, much better than I expected. I've thought that her recordings were kind of mediocre, but she really had a great voice live. Then it was back downstairs for Silverbullit who were easily the highlight of the entire festival. Such an awesome band, both live and on record. I took it easy after that until Moneybrother closed the show with a fantastic performance with his full band, including strings. It's interesting to see how much more he talked and related to the audience in Sweden than when I saw him a few weeks ago in LA. Both were good shows, but Anders was obviously much more comfortable in his home country, using his own language.
Huge thanks to everyone who put me up and put up with me. Thanks to everyone at Umeå Open and ExMS for making my trip possible and I'll be trying my best to thank you all personally in the next few days as I catch up on email. I had an awesome time and met so, so many great people. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'll be back in Sweden once again. I just won't go through France next time. Pictures soon! Once my home computer gets fixed. Oh, and if anyone finds my address book, please send it back to me. I'll cover the postage.