TALISMAN TOUR DIARY BY MARCEL JACOB

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!

Nath wrote:

I've seen this garden midget before!!!!

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

Journey and their sorry excuse for a management company don't know a damn thing about ethical business practices. I'm curious as to what kind of 'confidentiality agreement' Jeff had to sign in the first place. I'm so glad Marcel spoke up! At least we know why Jeff hasn't been able to come forward with his side of things yet. I at least hope he is lurking around the boards (especially the MR boards...the Journey fans are REALLY upset over this) so he knows how much he is loved and appreciated by old and new fans alike. If you are, Jeff, you have a great friend in your corner who's willing to say what you can't right now. Nice to see egos don't run rampant in the Talisman camp. Marcel, you rock!!

why change? It is easy to be an asshole.. You can't get hurt. It is when you are a nice person, like Jeff, you get hurt.

nikkib703 wrote:

Journey and their sorry excuse for a management company don't know a damn thing about ethical business practices. I'm curious as to what kind of 'confidentiality agreement' Jeff had to sign in the first place. I'm so glad Marcel spoke up! At least we know why Jeff hasn't been able to come forward with his side of things yet. I at least hope he is lurking around the boards (especially the MR boards...the Journey fans are REALLY upset over this) so he knows how much he is loved and appreciated by old and new fans alike. If you are, Jeff, you have a great friend in your corner who's willing to say what you can't right now. Nice to see egos don't run rampant in the Talisman camp. Marcel, you rock!!

Agreed...

Nath wrote:

Me and Marcel have enjoyed this pic soooooooooooooooooooo much!!!!

Thank you!!!!
Stefy

Nath - you're a NUT!!! But at least you're a LOVELY NUT!!!

xo Heather

If you asked to Marcel about his latest brazilian experience, he will answer something like: "the caipiroscas were damn good :-)."

If you want to know more details about this caipiroscas trip on Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, please read this new diary entry.

For some time we have been in touch with a Brazilian by the name of Carlos, he runs a store by the name of Animal Records in Sao Paulo, and he’s a huge fan of melodic rock. He’s done a few shows with Jeff before, either with Jeff’s solo thing or a type of show he calls “Hard’n Heavy” where he brings in a band he labels “hard” and one he labels “heavy” and in between a wet bikini contest ! This time no semi or totally nude chicks though, I’m sad to say, even though I tried hard to get our Caipiroscas served by a topless waitress, it was just a regular concert and not the party thing…So, given the premise of Jeff going to do Journey in the future Carlos made the decision to bring us for the “last” show, only to add yet one more in Rio ...

By the way, we infrequently do a time diversion game called “Reach for the stars”, Carlos I tagged as Vincent D’Onofrio!

It was with very mixed feelings I went to Arlanda July 4th. It was the second time going all the way out there that day, the first in the morning saying goodbye to Miss Solstråle (not the last!) and I was looking forward to a terribly long journey, just when I’ve recovered from the awful trip to Japan. 12 hours on a plane is murder for the spirit! Going there was stressful because our flight to Zurich was delayed and we had a very short connection time before, so we were running hard to make it. Of course on the way back it was the opposite, Jamie and I had to leave early from Rio to go to SP to wait 6 hours for the flight to Zurich, arriving Zurich after 12 hours we had to wait there 8 ½ hours for our flight to Stockholm…door to door 34 hours.

Ok, Jamie and I arrive in SP early thursday morning. It’s pitch black outside, whereas I’m used to it being bright and sunny already. It’s winter of course, but I thought it was going to be warm anyway…silly me, it was quite crisp. We beat most of the early morning traffic being so early, but we were a little gleeful hearing that Jeff’s and Brian’s flight were delayed and hearing that they would definitely hit traffic at it’s fullest…nothing but the best for Jeff, huh?

We got to the hotel, had ok breakfast, a little rest. Everybody met in the lobby for lunch, going to a more than a decent sushi place, drinking the first caipiroscas of the day, sakeroscas I believe, with kiwi and strawberries, damn tasty. I was a bit concerned about lunch, because the breakfast was steady enough not to warrant a lunch on my behalf, especially knowing there was a churrascaria waiting in the evening! But what the hell, diet is just DIE with a T as Garfield is known to say.

After that we went back to the hotel to regroup and do a pressconference. It was fun as always, we love doing these things, playing off of the people and ourselves. More caipiroscas, except I was very confused by my first one, it was terrible – but after a while I learned it was because the bartender made it with cachaza (or similar spelling), local booze, disgusting! Of course I drank most of it anyway .

Then we left to do an instore at Animal records. It was great fun, I don’t know how many people were there, a couple of hundred? Everybody was in a good mood, despite the tight circumstances with space and the time before the galleria closed. Some of the people spoke good enough English to hang out and chat a while, pretty cool. Funniest moment - one kid about 20 asked if he could kiss my bald head, I said sure, he did, somebody asked how that felt, my response was immediate: “kind of wet, a lot of tongue in that one!” The only complaint I have is that there were no caipiroscas served during the signing.

Then we went to the churrascaria. This is a brazilian steakhouse. You normally go to a buffet to get sallad/veggies/pasta etc, and they serve you grilled meat at the table until you move the sign on the table from “serve” to “DONE!”. It’s good, but very much…one needs to be starving to really enjoy it. The particular place we went to was a little weird, full light, no real ambiance, seemed a little like a russian place…of course, after the caipiroscas and food there was noone interested in seeing SP nightlife, although I do regret not having the energy to do it, since we didn’t get the chance the night after. The reason for that was simple, we were forced to consider the possibility of having to get up early the morning of going to Rio because of a possible strike at the domestic airport.

So, Friday I wake up, have breakfast (a chapter in itself, what with the weird styles of bread and cookies etc), take a long walk. If you haven’t been to Sao Paulo, here’s my impressions: traffic, high buildings, traffic; no upkeep on pavement, buildings or anything, and hence new buildings are next to old ready-to-tear-down ones with no seeming plan; traffic, with very bad air, flying out of SP going to Rio I was disgusted to see the fat smoglayer over the city; they drive with very little if any regard for what I’ve learned are good rules in traffic, yet there are few cars with dents in them, but apparently at least one biker (many of them though!) an hour gets killed. In short – very messy. And high buildings everywhere, it’s like Manhattan times a 1000. Graffiti, weird scribble graffiti, in very weird places, on top of buildings and other places not very easy to access.

We go do soundcheck, and of course it was not the promised 15 minutes to the venue from the hotel, more like 45. But, we were assured it would be, which is why we had to go another 45 minutes back to the hotel to get stage clothes, ear plugs etc.


Jamie, Brian and I went to have dinner at a small bar next to the hotel; it was cool, simple food and caipiroscas. Jeff stayed behind to rehearse a song with the opening act Tempestt, one he did a duet with their singer on their recent album, they did that at the gig later. Tempestt was a cool gang, the singer BJ we’d met at SRF, and now the rest. They rocked. The cover they did of Europe’s “Rock the night” was hilarious to me, because it was so perfectly sounding like Europe back then and very much better than what the original sounds like now (don’t kill me Ms Solstråle ).

We did the show with a minimum of mishaps considering the circumstances; the crowd seemed to enjoy it. We had a private bartender mixing caipiroscas, but the topless waitress was nowhere to be seen (reportedly we had a miss Poison serving drinks at one time during the evening, albeit not without top, but I missed that). Apparently we downed 5 bottles of vodka during the night, I should be dead I suppose (again), sugar and vodka, hello, but I felt fine the next morning and so did everybody else.

After the gig it was an impromptu party, free for whoemever wanted to join in. One guy asked me what “Colour my XTC” was about, for lack of knowledge I replied something like “when you have great sex you see colours” to which he said “hmmm, with my girlfriend I only see in black and white”, to which I (spontaneously and with no malice ) replied “well, perhaps she is not right for you”. He seemed to consider this, and then just turned around and left. “Oh no, did I offend him?” I asked the other people taking part in the conversation. “No, he’s probably looking for a new girlfriend” was the reply!

Saturday morning I woke up early. Feeling fine! Well, that was about to change a little. I’m usually not very fearful of flying, but the ride from the domestic airport in SP to Rio was scary. The pilots took of kind of sharply, and then they had to turn around to the right direction towards Rio kind of immediately before we’d reached some altitude, hanging over the city of SP with all the high buildings. Disconcerting to say the least.

But that was nothing compared to the sights going into Rio from the airport. I guess it was similar in SP, but it was so dark when we got in there…I’m talking about the favela of course. It’s terrible to see that kind of poverty so close to the rich people. Cardboard houses, some of them with the luxury of corrugated tin roofs…and so on top of each other…it makes me sick.

It is to be expected that there will be difficulties.You know, it’s not easy to do what we do. The travel is but one thing. When we arrive there is language barriers making things like a sound check kind of difficult, equipment problems, weird food, time schedules from day to day…performing is a cinch when you’re in your normal habitat, but this way it’s quite a feat!

In Rio we experienced everything to the max. The food was weird; the churrascaria they took us to for lunch was not as good as the one in SP. Next morning I would learn at breakfast that it was weird there too – scrambled eggs fried with too much butter that was sour to boot, stale bread, tasteless pastries. I wonder if it was just bad luck or if it’s a sign of real differences between SP and Rio.

The drumkit they brought for Jamie had the original heads from when the owner bought the kit in 1975, and it was cobbled together with screws and barbed wire where the original pieces were missing. After the opening act was done we discovered they had torn down Jamie’s kit from soundcheck and put up their own, which they ungenerously removed after their show (it was better). So Jamie had to rebuild the kit again before we were on, making our start delayed. After 3 songs, and we do five in a sort of medley, I saw him (sort of, it was very dark where Jamie was sitting and I barely saw him up there) throw something large very aggressively into the drum podium and I thought “oh no, the show is already over”. Later I learned it was the drum chair, which had almost collapsed under him as he was playing, that he tried to kill. The cymbalstands were falling off the podium, at one point he had 2 guys holding cymbals for him on broken stands! Everything sounded differently from soundcheck…oh well.

Before we did the show we did an instore…when we got there the galleria was closed, we had to walk around the block and enter through a small fence…there were about 100 people there that had been locked in. Well, we sat down at some juryrigged tables with a large tourposter behind us and got to work. After we were done with signing and picture taking, Jeff and I did a brief TV-interview…after which we did station ID’s, rather impromptu, especially Jeff’s went rather well …he said something to the effect of “ I am JSS from Talisman and you’re having a good company with “Rockin Company” (the station) and as he said the last word he managed to make a gesture that almost overturned the table, for sure it’s contents! Youtube any one?

The audience response was great, as good as in SP. And since we were very inspired from delving into that cantine thing with vodka, ice, sugar, and lime (aka caipirosca) that was located stage left, things happened: “Oh Caipirosca”, which is otherwise known as “Just between us”; Jeff told us to be quiet and started looking for singers during the singalong to “I'll B Waiting”, the first one was a girl that sang with a nasal and quivering voice to which Jeff said “oh no, we don’t need Nelly Furtado”!
The next victim was a guy who sang very dramatically to which Jeff said “ Yeew, we definitely don’t want Meat Loaf”, imitating the guy but overstating it (of course).

Then some guy jumped up on stage and wanted the mike, Jeff gave it to him, and the guy started doing Jeff’s routine from the DVD…and he was actually not a bad singer …at first Jeff didn’t know what to do and let the guy do it a bit, then he just took the mike back and said “Ok we have a winner, but WTF, you’re a professional singer aren’t you, get off the stage!!!”. Und so weiter...

After the show we got back to the hotel, once again with the threat of a possible airport strike hanging over our heads. Jamie and I had to get up early anyway, our flight was earlier than the Americans (so they hit back, swine Americans), so we got to bed. The wonderful breakfast I mentioned earlier, then we left for the airport. Seeing the favelas again in the morning…oh well. The flight to Rio was a little easier to take, this time they were coming in from the right direction to land. But it was terrible to enter into that smog. Carlos picked us up, took us to a lunch at a very good italian restaurant with his lovely family, then drove us to SP international for the flight home. The lines at the airport to get into security…Jamie who’s been to Russia said this was worse …inside we went to our gates, while waiting we suddenly were called by Brian and Jeff who just arrrived from Rio, passing by our gate from the inside. That was the first I saw of them that day, they looked worse than Jamie and me and they had had more sleep . Supposedly. I wonder if it was the last…

Ok. Obviously Jamie and I made it back home safely. None the wiser of course , except maybe the insights: that caipirosca is a wonderful thing, brazilians seems to be very cheerful and hospitable especially if you are a Swede with a band, churrascaria tastes better than your stomach approves it, smog is a factor, and many brazilians are poor to a sickening degree.

Now what ?

And now???

MORE SHOWS PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!

So happy to read about the amazing response the band had in Brazil!!!! Good job Brazilian fans... thanks a lot!

Love,
Stefy

Stefania wrote:

And now???

MORE SHOWS PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!!

So happy to read about the amazing response the band had in Brazil!!!! Good job Brazilian fans... thanks a lot!

Love,
Stefy

Nice read, thanks again Marcel!!

Yes Stefy!!! Back to work now, we want a new Talisman asap!