Oh... if that's the way he was.... yep absolutely thanks to Frank!!!!!!

And of course I reminded Marcel of the correct spelling of your name and surname! I'm wondering if he has learnt it!


Stefy

Tour Diary - From 2nd to 4th June

So my friends,

we risked our lives a few more times in Bilbao...our "driver/soundguy" came to take us back to the gig, again taking Beevis with him...imagine a guy with halfclosed eyes, talking with no stop between words sounding a bit like a didgeridoo, and a general demeanour like he belonged in Jackass...driving fast with one knee on the wheel and at the same time fiddling with the stereo, chatting with his buddy, talking to us, looking at chicks, talking on the phone...after the show he came backstage, dead drunk, I just said to him "you're not driving anymore" and he promptly handed me the keys to the van :-)...of course Frank TM wouldn't allow me to drive, so I got in next to him in the front seat, only to discover that Butthead wanted to come along...all the way back to the hotel he was emitting grunts and groans, unhappy with our route, trying to grab the wheel from across me, and I had to wrestle with him...
But I jump ahead, again. Well, we got back to the venue where we proceeded to do our usual warmup routine - voices warmed by various singing of songs and scales, Jack'n'Coke for me, Caipiroskas for Jeff, diverse drinks for the other two. Intro gets started, onstage we go...and confusion ensued! I forgot to put in my earplugs, my mike was set to the height of Dio, and the monitors were all fucked, I had no drums in mine anymore. So I had to tell the band to take a break between the first two songs so I could fix at least the first two problems. Ok, we moved on...then Jeff decides to fuck with the setlist, I had no idea what or how we wanted to do it, all I knew was I have to detune between the first and second medley of the show if we're doing DOAPS, but somehow we ended up doing Just Between Us instead, with me still being detuned and having to think about that the whole song :-)...ok, we get to my solo spot, and the monitor engineer thinks he's doing me a favor by turning up the sound in my monitors and the sidefill where I stand not knowing it makes it harder to play - and then he forgets to bring it back down when the guys come back on making it even harder to hear the drums :-))! By this time I had lost what little sense of seriousness I may have before a show starts, and I guess it was projected on the others, because when we got to Jeff's pianobar thing...Jamie and Brian started posing next to Jeff taking pictures of each other, we went out on stage miming crying during "Sorry" :-)...we got Jeff cracking up to the point he had to stop playing...I just love doing shows with these guys.

So our promotor was a nice guy, but there were some oversights on his end...the "driver/soundguy" being the best/worst depending how you see it...but we made it, and it's a good learning experience. Of course there was an early flight, leaving the hotel at 6 in the morning...only 3 hours of sleep again!

Landed safely here on Gran Canarias. I was looking forward to the beach, but it's been overcast and very windy, so no luck with that...must be the wrong season or something ? Last night we went to a Brazilian restaurant, very nice, but it was so good I ate myself silly, and went to bed at 22 waking up this morning at ten....yey, around the clock. It's a little weird, either no sleep or way too much...
I have no idea what to look forward to when it comes to the show, I've never heard anything about anybody doing gigs here. I will report on that in my next installment, but I have no way of knowing when to write, I just learned we're leaving our hotel tomorrow at 5!!!! in the morning, stopping in Madrid on our way to Holland for Wednesdays show. We'll see...goddamn do I miss my One and Only :-) !

Oh by the way, I've been corrected, it's Thierry Voyen and nothing else, my hearing ain't what it was :-)!
Later,

MJ

Correct Marcel! The Spanish guy!

Poor Marcel near Butthead!!! This guy was absolutely completely drunk

I can imagine the terror on his face!
Stefy

I love reading the tour diary... it makes you realize the life of a "rock star" isn't all it's cracked up to be!


Giosi

Tour Diary - From 5th to 9th June - Thanks everyone!


My dear friends,

at the time of writing, the tour is over. I want to thank my friends Jeff, Jamie, and Brian for a great time. See you on the way to South America! Thank you Frank, you rock ! And thanks to everybody who's made this a great experience, Peter deWint, Alex and Evey, Stefy, Erik&Arjo and the guys in Dust. Promotors everywhere, and everyone who came to see us, thanks, and hope we're welcome back if the occasion ever arises !

But what happened the last couple of days ? We flew in to Holland (again), and drove over to Zoetermeer. We checked in at a hotel, it was nice...cool bathrooms, wish I had one of those, large, jacuzzi bath tub, and a nice big shower stall...the day passed without much in the way of adventure, I stayed in to have a nice quiet evening, go to bed early, the others went to Amsterdam to party...what happened was I was still awake when they got back, in the same position they left me, in front of the pc, trying to convince my 1&only to come visit me in Stockholm...it looks like it's going to happen unless she changes her mind, but I was twisted in knots there for a while :-). Oh, earlier in the bar having a few beers, there was a wacky american woman we were talking to, she was a bit dizzy, but it took her about 5 minutes to turn to me and say (about Brian): " He likes to talk, doesn't he ?" :-) !!!

Next day was a long slow wait to go the gig, the Boerderij. A nice venue, a little hot...a very nice reception from the people there. We had a nice time hanging out with our friends, Alex and Evey (congratulations!) brought chocolate...they told us they'd wanted to buy some erotic chocolate for Jeff, specifically a chocolate twat, but according to Alex it "just didn't look right" :-)!!!
Again we had Dust as opening act. The gig was fine, it wasn't packed, and it was of course a week night, so the response was ok under the circumstances.

Again a late night, and early flight to Copenhagen :-)...the scourge of this tour...I'm surprised I haven't gotten ill. Add to that the stress of having to get the passport thing under control...but amazingly enough, when we got in to Malmö, the passport was ready to go, and we found the courier quite easily...later I learned that the Japanese embassy had accepted the new passport despite it had a different number than the old one which was listed on the certificate of eligibility one needs to get a visa. Phew!

Ok, we get to Ronneby Brunn, the hotel the Sweden Rock Festival uses. We have lunch, and I discover Vinnie Appice in the lobby, knowing he's a friend of Brian's I called Brian over, and Vinnie wanted to eat too, so we had company...later in the evening I took the shuttle over to the festival, a 50 minute ride, only because I wanted to see Heaven & Hell soooo bad...and all I could watch was 4 songs, because I had to catch the midnight shuttle back. Bummer, because they were good.

It's nice to be at this hotel, you meet a lot of friends, Igor and Francesco from UDO, Mark Nowak (German promotor), Ian and John Leven from Europe, and the guy who got me started as a musician, Andreas Matz, just to name a few...add to that that I had a stroke of genius, I came up with my new favourite drink : Absolut Ruby Red with tonic and slice of lime!

Friday, the last show on this tour. Before the show we signed some autographs, there were more people there than expected, we barely finished before our time was up...the funniest thing, at one point there was two girls before me, and one of them was just shaking and not looking so well. Naturally I asked her if she was ok, to which here friend replied "yeah, she's just nervous". That got me curious, so I said " oh, are you getting married or something?" To which miss Nervous promptly replied: " you can get married anytime, but Talisman you only meet once!"
We got set up, it was all good, the gear (thanks EBS!), the sound on stage and everything. I was expecting a good crowd, and I was not disappointed. The area in front of our stage was packed, and we did a nice show, with an amazing response...I was having a hard time not to cry afterwards, I just love doing this, and it's just sucking elefant ***** to not do this more...
the night was spent watching Aerosmith (didn't like them, only when they did "Sweet child" they had a groove), getting back to the hotel, having a few drinks, saying goodbye to Jeff and Brian who had to leave for the CPH airport at 3 in the morning!!!

So...it is done...now me and Jamie are in GBG, well on our way to Japan for the LAD promotion trip - "Melodic rock night vol. 9" - here we go :-) !!!

See you!

Big Love,

MJ


--------------
Thanks Marcel for keeping us updated! It was great seeing TALISMAN live again! So thanks everyone who made it possible!

I had a great time!!!!

Love,
Stefy

I have enjoyed reading these blogs so much! Thanks for sharing these with everyone and safe travels to Japan with Jamie!

Heather

Waiting for the Brazilian part!

Ok
This is an intermediate diary entry, between the European dates and going to Brazil in a few weeks time. It was prompted by events that occurred while I was on tour with another band I (and Jamie) am involved with – Last Autumns Dream. This entry is therefore divided in 2 parts, namely the trip to Japan, and the WTF!

WTF! A week ago I received the e-mail from Jeff with the message of his termination. It wasn't a total surprise, as I will explain. But it was still a massive WTF! moment.

Ok, I am back home, body and mind starting to synchronize yet again. I just can't hold back anymore…I know that Jeff has signed a confidentiality agreement - I totally expect him to sugarcoat everything he says to any media – but I have not. And everyone who knows me expects me to say it how it is, so get ready.

Jeff had told us early on in the tour, like the first day really, about how he was concerned about what was going on with Journey, that there was some unspecified dissatisfaction with him coming mainly from Neal Schon, and that he couldn't get an answer from anybody in the band or from management what it was about. We all told him not to worry, it was a weekend, they would tell him something soon. After the weekend there was a rumour on the internet about Jeff getting fired. Management responded to inquiries from Jeff about that, telling Jeff to cool it and don't do anything,

it was just Neal being Neal and that it would blow over. But I could see the agony was still there, the band themselves were still not returning any calls. The thing was, Jeff was doing this farewell tour with Talisman so he could lay this part of his past to rest, before moving on to further commit to his new job with Journey. This mean't being away in Europe, feeling isolated from what was going on back home, that alone should have prompted reasoning adults to respond to messages or questions … WTF! Great reward for Jeff's loyalty and commitment…

Well, I know Jeff expected to come home to have a sitdown with Neal and management to discuss and sort out whatever issues or misconceptions. Instead this happened: we'd done a highly emotional show at Sweden Rock, we were all feeling good about the reception…and backstage at the Aerosmith show Jeff meets the singer for another band that have the same management as Journey. This guy steps up and says to the effect "Hi Jeff, so sorry to hear the news about your departure from Journey"! Talk about a letdown!

Ok. Let me stop here in my narrative and tell you what I think of Azoff and friends, the so called Journey management. They tell other artists on their roster before they tell Jeff about the termination – confidentiality breach anyone ? Keeping band business under wraps ? When the rumours started they told Jeff it would blow over if he would cool it and not be so active on the internet etc. which in retrospect is of course lies and very manipulative. They allow their clients Schon & Cain (aka Frick&Frack, love the ridicule they get on for example melodicrock.com) to send out press statements that are just plain dumb. Noone with management is watching out for the trademark "Journey" it seems.

How is it that they accept their clients idea of choosing a cover band singer ( haven't heard the guy, he may be the shit for all I care) when they had Jeff come in and breathe new life into a band that was floundering ? And WTF, they terminate Jeff, send out a moronic press statement, delete Jeff's image from the website and his participation from the bio…and immediately put on top of their news section a 3 times as long as the termination press statement a NEW press statement where they brag about how they got a song on the Sopranos! They usually update the news on the website what, once a month or less ?

Everything Azoff & friends have done in this situation reeks…makes me wonder what the scene with the other Azoff artist was all about, they wanted him to be the axeman, or lay some foundation so Jeff wouldn't cause some sort of embarrassing scene when they had to place the call ? What makes me even more nauseous however are the malicious rumours that I've seen.

I wonder who is behind those, the common creeps out there, or somebody more "connnected"? I swear, Jeff hasn't said or done a single thing that doesn't rhyme with his intentions of loyalty and commitment to working with Neal, Jonathan, Dean, and Ross. He's the kind of guy that would have stepped down, worked it out so everybody came out smelling of roses – but he simply hasn't been given the chance. WTF! When Jeff told me about the situation I thought "very immature people" but I never expected F&F to really go through with it. WTF!

Jeff's been my brother for a long time. I hurt almost as bad as he does. I feel very strongly that he's been used and wrongfully dismissed, no warning, no second chance, for no proper reason given other than that Journey now wants to use a cover band singer. How sad, screwing Jeff for that…

Take care,
MJ

It's all the fault of the midget so!

What a hypocrite! He was the one who brought Jeff into the band and then turns around and backstabs him! Can you say l-o-y-a-l-t-y , Neal?
I think he is jealous of Jeff's success and ability to be liked among people. Hey Jon and Neal, how about smiling and saying hello to people when they meet you instead of looking comatose ?? Maybe you need some lessons from Jeff on how to be human.

Giosi