Iconic rock band Skunk Anansie have been on tour to celebrate the band’s latest “25LIVE@25” album and mark 25 years in the industry. Written by Ace himself, find out what they have been up to in his third blog instalment…
Since the last time I checked in, we have been on another leg of the European tour. I was taking some days off in Lake Como, Italy to recover from the Italian part of the tour and then took a drive into Holland to play some big festivals. The Bospop Festival was rather damp and a little cold compared to the Italian leg but was around 25,000 people. John Fogerty, the old guy from Creedence Clearwater, was headlining for his 50th anniversary with lots of famous anthems, and we were the band before him. It was an amazing show and went down really incredibly well gaining some really good press afterwards too.
Moving on from there, we went into Belgium where we played Werchter Classic, where we were one of the main acts below Bon Jovi headlining to around 40,000 crazy fans of ours and his. Bon Jovi’s show was quite spectacular in its production (apparently he bought Madonna’s old stage screen set – awesome) and all of us from the band went out into the VIP pit to watch it and sing along to some classic childhood memories.
Next up on our agenda was then to go into France and Germany for that leg of the tour. By the time I had got to this blog, we had probably played to over 200,000 people since we left on June 28th to start the tour. France has always been a great place for us and we started it off with an insane gig in the centre of Paris at a venue called La Cigale. We had played there a few times in the past. A fairly small 1200 capacity theatre, so an intimate gig for us. The crowd went crazy and we all came out afterwards to meet them and sign autographs at the ‘merch’ stand.
Following on from there, we went straight to headline one of the 3 main stages at France’s biggest festival called Les Vieilles Charrues. Niles Rodgers was on the other one just before us closing that stage piggy backing on to us closing our stage. Another great show which then took us into our German tour where I write this blog now. The German tour has got off to a fantastic start as we have always had a really good stronghold here. First of all it was Cologne, yesterday it was Berlin, tomorrow it is Dresden and then it is on to Munich which will then take us up to the Eastern European leg of the tour, which I will report back after we have done it.
The weather has been hot since Holland and there has been a lot of fun with after-show parties and also we have been previewing and playing our new single What You Do For Love which was released round about a week ago. A new video has come out too and Kerrang featured it as an exclusive before it went out on all the other websites. We heard that within the first few days that it had hit five major playlists, which we are very happy about, and also was featured on BBC Radio 2 on Jo Whiley’s show.
Another thing we have been doing on the tour is a charity T-shirt collaboration with our support band ‘Allusinlove’. We have been making t-shirts with stencils of the band names that we sell off for charity to go to Music Support which Mark, our drummer, is an ambassador for. This has gone very well and we have managed to sell them out every night and then sign them at the end for the fans too who are still there. Alongside this, I am now doing phone interviews to Croatia and Eastern Europe in advance of the shows for the local press, websites and magazines to start talking about the band and what to expect when we arrive there.
So, it is all go, all of the time – even a day off isn’t really a day off in this band. I have got to go now and re-order some more merchandise to be sent out from Britain because we have sold-out twice on this tour already! Which actually isn’t a bad problem to have.
I will catch up with you all on the next blog after this next wing of the crazy journey I am about to embark on.
See you later,
Cheers,
Ace
