diary of a rockstar #5

I am writing this to you at the end of the most insane week of my life. It was also the most fun week I’ve ever had, and the week where I suppose I was having fun but the alcohol drilled so many holes in my memory that I’ve lost whole hours. In the past week I’ve done the following things:

- played a mindmelting show at the Popmundo Festival Grounds
- cried happy tears over that
- also got happily drunk over it to celebrate
- ended 16th in the Festival final because of that show (how awesome is that?) – watched GOD SMACKING, earth shaking, mindmelting, revolutionary and perfect shows take place
- got bruised in many mosh pits
- sang my throat raw at many many many concerts
- danced with pretty much everyone I could find at aforementioned concerts – congratulated many talented artists with the amazing shows they’ve played
- wiped a silent tear at the trip down memory lane during the Sex Pixels concert
- got drunk on antique whiskey
- drank champagne and tequila with friends and lovers
- failed to reconstruct holes in my memory after aforementioned tequila
- made a lot of new friends
- chilled and relaxed with my hookah
- stomped in the mud at the Festival terrain (it used to be so lush and grassy, what happened?)
- had mudfights with my friends (which were hilarious by the way)
- snuggled and danced with lots of gorgeous and talented people
- reignited my sex addiction and my smoking addiction (but I am pleased to report that my compulsive urge to go on shopping sprees has dwindled)
- canceled my wedding since my ex-fiance/boyfriend and I thought we’d be much better off not married anyway
- partied with my ex-fiance about canceling the wedding, and got promptly knocked up by him (oops condoms…)
- decided that having a love baby conceived at the festival is MUCH cooler than a stupid wedding – had a few epic hangovers
- had more than a few epic snuggles
- had a GSG week that was the culmination of months and months of hard work.

Shining eyes and no regrets, people. Thanks for all the support we’ve received in the past few weeks, it’s been truly heartwarming and I couldn’t have done any of it without you. Much love, people. Next Festival, I’ll be there again even if it kills me.

So… my band is going on an extended break right now, and the thought of it is frightening. Anyone got any ideas on what to do with that hole in my life?

diary of a rockstar #4

I’m writing this in the VIP plane that is currently high in the air above Europe. It is taking me and my band mates to Stockholm. And, barring the thought of sudden plane crashes or heart attacks or other disasters, we are going to stand on that stage in Stockholm tomorrow, amidst the crème de la crème of the music industry. It all culminates on this Thursday at 2 in the afternoon for me. The past two years of frantic working towards this moment. All of the exhaustion, all of the hard work. The studies, the blisters on my fingers, the recording sessions, the time spent on the road, the opportunities missed to be with my children. It was all for this moment.

And oddly enough, unlike with the show in Montréal, I’m not nervous this time. I’m excited, mostly. I know for a fact that my band is better than ever. We’re better equipped than ever to give our fans a good time. Our songs are well known, our single is topping the Modern Rock charts, our shows are being reviewed as revolutionary by the critics, our musical skills and stage skills are as honed as we can have them… what else is there left to do than to throw a party on that stage? Because I know my spirits are boosted beyond anything I’ve ever felt before.

All I fear is that the true brilliance of it will go unnoticed by the critics. Sadly, the critics are not Rebel Justice fan boys and fan girls, so they miss out on the connection and the electricity that we have going during our best moments. They were rather unimpressed in Montréal. We’ve gotten better, but is it enough to melt some critic’s minds? Time will tell.
I just know that we’re going to give it our all. This is all I ever wanted, all I ever wished for.

This will be the best show in Rebel Justice history, and the last one before we go on a long and well-deserved break, so it’d better melt your bloody mind.
I know I’ll walk off that stage with my brains in a jar where they’ve leaked from my ears. All I can do is hope it will be the same for you.
Shining eyes and no regrets, right?

And… Isa…? Good luck, love. You’ll be glorious, too.

diary of a rockstar #3

We made it. We made it. We REALLY made it. Damn. It’s only now starting to sink in and it’s been a week already.
Preparations for the show in Stockholm are already underway, but when I lay myself down to sleep at night I still see us standing backstage. Torrie and I were standing together behind the curtain, staring at that humongous crowd with hearts beating in our throats. They were waiting anxiously, some people were already singing. Over eighteen thousand people, I’d never seen such a crowd before. My kids were in that crowd, my friend Walter was watching us, among all those people. So many fans, it was such a sight to behold. It also terrified the hell out of me.

My knees felt like water and my heartbeat was erratic, so I did the only thing that I could think of that would could calm my nerves: I grabbed a bottle of ridiculously expensive champagne and drank it in one go. It didn’t help much, but there was no more time to think anyway. We all hugged and kissed one another, and then my feet touched the stage, and Montréal exploded in sounds and sights. I will never, never forget the sound of the cheering of the crowd. It set me on fire on the inside, and my bandmates were just as alight. We had a vibe going beyond anything I ever felt before. The encore lasted forever, the crowd just kept screaming, kept singing, kept responding to us. If I were to die today and we would have to look back and name my finest moment… then that show in Montréal would be it.

I’ve had moments of happiness before, I’ve had moments where I’ve felt so alive, so intensely right. I remember the surge of love I felt when I held my eldest daughter for the first time – it was so intense and unexpected that it took my breath away. Or the phonecall of my Personal Assistant Joan, telling me that the 10dB’s had reached the #1 position in the Modern Rock charts. I remember the elation when I greeted the crowd in Amsterdam on my first show with Rebel Justice. I’d been so afraid the fans wouldn’t accept me, but they embraced me, and that felt so beautiful. Or that night Stephen and I walked through Amsterdam on a New Years Eve so many years ago. So lucky to be alive, so happy just to be. To have each other, walking through cobblestone streets wet with rain, his arm around my shoulders. Or that day I spent lying in the grass at Solidarity Live Aid, together with Isa and the kids. Those few precious moments in life that stand out in a life that is filled with dreams and awesomeness already. I mean, I live a life that many people dream of. But seriously… my finest moment? That was in Montréal.
The press was pretty brutal. They called it a revolutionary show, amongst other bands that had melted the critics’ minds. So it was supposed to be less, or something? I don’t know.
We just felt it was our finest moment, and I felt the love so strong, so pure… how can anything top this?

For me, that show was GOD SMACKINGLY GLORIOUS. I won’t ever let anyone else tell me different. It was that good, it was that brilliant. Anyone who was there will agree to it.
And you know what? We’re planning to be glorious once again in Stockholm. We will melt some minds. It’s going to be fantastic. Shining eyes and no regrets, that’s what we’ll be. Because then you’re a true winner.
It will be our finest moment.
And you’re all invited.

diary of a rockstar #2

I’ve been hell to live with this week. Hereby I would like to apologise to my poor suffering bandmates, because I know I haven’t done much supporting for them in the past week. Especially the beginning of the preliminaries was pure murder on my nerves. The very first band to enter the stage in Montréal completely set the stage and raised the bar to a level I thought we’d barely be able to reach. A revolutionary show, right at the start. It was a blow to my morale, to be sure, especially since they weren’t even considered a favourite. They came out of nowhere. Of course it’s a great feat for them and I applaud them and wish them the very best, but I have to admit that at that very moment, I felt like bawling my eyes out.

Especially when soon afterwards bands like Latino Caderes and Poisonous Fantasy played shows beyond that. Mind-melting shows were played. Earth Shaking shows were played. How were we able to compete with that, I wondered in despair. Rebel Justice is a solid band, around forever, a great name to be sure. Where it comes to the quality of our album releases we are unrivaled. We’re a studio band, for as long as I’ve been with them we’ve had the most fun in the studio… and that’s while I live for the stage. It just goes to figure that the time we spend in the studio’s is even better than the extreme thrill of being on stage in front of ten thousand people.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t be perfect on stage. At some point during a tour it just all seems to fall together, and we can be brilliant. We’re always incredibly good on stage, don’t get me wrong, but those moments of pure perfection are a bit rarer. They’ve become something I count on, though. During a tour, we’ll have these moments. There’s this equilibrium where everybody sings our songs along, we’re not exhausted yet, everything is going well and the stars align… and that sets the place alight. With the tours we do, the shows we play… that’s what always happens.

Yet now we’ve done a completely different tour. The biorhythm of our tour is new, unsettling. An unproven theory that seems to be working… so I start worrying. Is it working? Will it be enough? Haven’t we planned things wrong? Why is the competition doing better? Shouldn’t we… aren’t we…

I pretty much lost it past Saturday. I sat down with Stephen and I was near to tears with desperation. He let me rage, gave me a kiss in my hair and then said quietly: “You should have a little more faith. Our tour planning is sound, we’re doing all we can. And that’s all there is. I don’t want to look back on this with regret.”

That’s something I always tell other people. Have a little faith. Believe in it. Feel the love.

And that somehow changed everything. It was as if a veil lifted from my eyes; suddenly I realized that yes; we’re doing all we can. And yes, I’m still in the best damn band in the world. I have the best bandmates, we have the most gorgeous music. We’re better than we’ve ever have been. That should be enough for us, winning or not.

Especially after what happened to the lovely ladies of Crazy Fucking Bitch – giving the show of their lives, mindmelting review… and still not qualifying – it just brings back home the message that you can’t control things, that’s just life. Anything could happen. All we have to do is to enjoy the crap out of ourselves because if we’re not enjoying ourselves, we can never be winners. The true winners are the ones who come out of this competition with shining eyes and no regrets.
So when we have a great time on stage with the people of Montréal… how can there be any regrets? It would be so very sad if the journey to Stockholm would end here, but we’re still going to stand on a stage with nearly twenty thousand people.

We’re going to throw the biggest party in Rebel Justice’s history. So… we’re going to be glorious anyway.
And if that’s enough to continue the journey to Stockholm, so be it. But the party comes first.

diary of a rockstar

Has it only been a week? I feel like a year has passed since we embarked on the road to Stockholm.
Life has turned into this bleary blur of travel and sleep deprivation, with its only bright moments the moments that we enter the stage and the waiting crowd screams their welcome at us. The reception when I shout “Helloooo Ankara” is something I dreamed of when I entered the music business.
Once upon a time I was nineteen years old and I plucked my strings, wishing that one day I would enter the stage ready to rock, and thousands of people would be glad to see me.
At the moment I experience that euphoria twice a day and while it still gives me goose bumps, it’s become something you expect. Of course they’re screaming the moment Stephen installs himself behind his drum kit, and Torrie and I bounce onto the stage, Jean hot on our heels.
The only times it stays quiet when I get onto that stage is in my nightmares. Because I’ve been having them, in the past few days.

I am on that stage in Montréal, and nobody will be there. Or I’ve forgotten to bring my bass guitar with me. I’ve forgotten every single song we’ve ever played in the past. Montréal starts booing us, because I mess up. It all happens in my nightmares, and I wake up in cold sweat. In the dead of night, or draped over my seat in the VIP plane between airports , I shiver and wish there would be someone to tell me that it’ll be alright. Or at least that I would believe them when they tell me so. Because in my heart of hearts, apart from all my bluster and my cheerful shit-talking and my bluffs, I’m still that frightened little girl that wonders every time whether this is the day the world finally realizes that she’s a talent less hack, a fuckup…. and what the hell is she doing in such a great band anyway?

But then I get on stage and the gig review in Ankara says we were incredible and that I’m a five star performer and I live the dream again.

I’m tossed around between emotions. I am exhausted, I party too much, I sleep too little, and I can’t get the lyrics to ‘Dance this night’ out of my head anymore these days. I’m humming melodies of our songs while I’m sitting in the bathtub of some hotel in some Turkish city, I start playing the wrong intro to the song we’re supposed to record in the record studio, I snap at my personal assistant Esthelle when she drags me to the airport. I miss my friends and I forget to call them to ask what’s up. I miss my kids. I keep misplacing my stuff and I keep rubbing my poor battered fingertips with aloe. I have no idea what’s happening in the world anymore. I used to be involved in the world, but I’m losing touch. I edit articles for It’s Pop and I forget I’ve ever done it when I log into my terminal the last day… I asked Isa if she’d done it, and she assured me it was my work. I can’t remember, it’s all part of the blur.

But Ankara loved us. Istanbul adored us. Izmir partied with us. Johannesburg tore the place down during our encore.
And that what keeps me going. Bleary-eyed and stressed as I might be, this is the life I dreamed of. And it’s as crazy and as intense and beautiful as I ever hoped it would be.

keep the faith

So during one of my panicked rants about the Festival prelims (I have a lot of these lately… I’m such a ball of nerves it’s not funny anymore) I was suddenly jerked to the most sudden standstill today. It was Steph of course, who managed to clear the mist over my eyes.

He let me rage and then afterwards he just quietly said: “You know, I’d really like it if you had some faith in our tactics. I worked really hard on this, and I could use your support. We’ll make it, you know. We’ll get there. And if we don’t, we’ll have given it our all. But have a little faith, please.”

And he’s right. Kobe on a bus, he’s right.
I’m the one who’s always telling people to have a little faith. I’ve always had faith in him, so I should definitely have it now. His tactics are sound, and he’s worked so hard on them, and I couldn’t do it better. He’s a freaking genius, and he’s my sweetie. Of COURSE I should have a little faith.

So I will.
And suddenly it all becomes a lot easier.

become the catalyst

And now it swells in me
Smash all my defenses down
I’ll take this,
I’ll let this fire consume me

I will not, I will not!
I will not fall, I will not fail
I pound the walls,
I shake the cage
I will not fall, I will not fail

Let this fire consume me

This burning passion, it fills me with desire
And drives me and it drives my cause
I’m filled with reasons
my reasons drive me further
Disdain for disbelief will stay the course

Oh, let the fire consume me
Let the fire burn
Let the courage flow through me

Let the fire burn

One more week. Seven more days, and then we will show the world what we’re made of.
I don’t know what I’ll do if it turns out not to be enough. Bawl like a baby, probably.

The fire burns so bright inside of me.

One more week, and then nearly nineteen thousand people will be at our feet, singing along with Rebel Justice.
It damn well better be glorious.

and then…. hell froze over

Be mine
2009-07-20 18:00
With shaking knees and sweaty palms, I proposed to Lianne Brantley …

Lianne, I know I hurt you. I hurt you too much. But I feel the time is right. I discovered we truly belong to each other. It felt wrong to be separated from you, and now is the time to, for once and for all, say we should be together, till the end of times.

Lianne, we shared some great moments, and we shared tears, there’s only one thing really missing in our fairy tale story. We never really shared our lives.

Lianne, will you be mine, forever?

And then Stephen dropped on one knee, and gave me an engagement ring – in the middle of the lobby of Hotel Mandalor in Moscow.

I burst out laughing, asked him what the hell – but he was serious. And then I laughed more, but there were tears running over my cheeks as well (hush you , I was drunk as all hell!), and I told him sure, why not, let’s do this thing.

I love him more than anything, and if he wants me, he can have me. He’s had me from the moment he smiled at me and gave me that t-shirt. Or perhaps after that phonecall of six hours on the road between Melbourne and Buenos Aires. I still remember that throaty laugh of his, and the way my heart was pounding.
I could say so many things about him and me. Deserted restaurants in the dead of night, us being the only two patrons. His arm around my shoulders and the sound of firecrackers in the air. That time when I dragged him off stage after the first encore and into a broom closet, frisky as hell after he did his striptease. The look in his eyes when he held June in his arms for the first time. Or the look in his eyes when he told me he’d just resigned as mayor of Amsterdam.
The way we get when we’re discussing our new album or our new tour. Shared looks during shows, when the crowd responds well.His focused intensity in the studio.
…but also the hurled insults, the morning grumpiness, bitch sessions (shared ones, and when either of us is the subject), him being so headstrong I want to kick him in the shins. Exasparation when he’s in one of his moods. His self-destructive tendencies at times.

But that’s all part of it. And the whole package, all of it… it’s wonderful and I wouldn’t have it any different. (Besides, it’s not like I’m the easiest person in the world to live with) Because we share our dreams, and we share our lives. We’re rebels together and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m always with you.
I promise.
(whether you give me a ring or not. the promise is always there…)

a moment of humility

The only thing that really sucks about reaching the top is the moment that you look around you, at all these incredibly talented musicians, and then suddenly reaching the crippling realization: what the hell am i doing here, at the top? I’m a fucking hack.

That’s what’s happening to me on a pretty much daily basis. I talk to talented musicians – legends, even – like Darrell Gill or Tonya Cullen or Stephan Adamson…. or I listen to Steph’s fills during his drumming… and I realize that I’m just… mediocre.

I’m not a talented musician. I’ve never been. Everything I’m doing is by the skin of my teeth, practicing until my fingers bleed or blister (or both), sing until I can’t speak for days because my voice gives out. I study Modern Rock until I can’t listen to it anymore… and still, still it feels like it’s not enough.
I wasn’t born with loads of talent. I’ve always had to work hard for it. It doesn’t come naturally to me… nothing of it does.

Well, there’s one thing that comes naturally- that’s the brilliant smile on my face the moment the spotlight touches me. Yeah, I’m an attention whore. I’m a performer, an entertainer. But I’m not a musician. And those eight stars in singing and string instruments… it’s just not enough. It feels like it’s never something I earned. Not compared to all those brilliant people I surround myself with.

I wonder when it’s going to feel like it’s enough, like I’ve done my best and I’m worth something. Because of course I enjoy the success, I love applause, and I get a real kick out of record sales. But it never feels like my accomplishment, you know? In the 10 dB’s it was a team effort – and we were never that good anyway, we were just a lot of fun and we never took ourselves that seriously. But now I’m in a band with such brilliant, brilliant musicians… it never feels like my accomplishment. I feel as if I’m lifting along on their success.

Perhaps it’s irrational. Twenty five years of Rebel Justice, is seven years of Rebel Justice with Lianne. Rebel Justice welcomed me with open arms, the return of the bass guitar. And I am as good as Darlene ever was (I think) – the fans never seemed to mind me. Fan response when I joined up with Rebel Justice was good. Maybe they just wanted the bass back, maybe they thought Steph and I made a cute couple. I don’t know.

I’m just back in the University again, furiously studying bass guitar lessons.

At some point I should feel like I’m worth something, right?

too much is not enough

Top Star Quality
1 Lianne Brantley 92%
2 Sara Hansen 89%
3 Emre Gercek 88%

I love you guys too.

No seriously, I’m on top of the world. We rocked Helsinki Live Aid, without our stage equipment… without pretty lights, without smoke machines – nothing. Just us, acoustic. And the crowd went wild. People fainting, singalongs still ringing in my ears. All those people shouting for more, KNOWING that we’d play ‘Trioxine Antidote’, shouting for the song, shouting they loved us. Despite the sound quality always sucking in open spaces – the voices ran as loud as they did in any venue. I was still half drunk, and my fingers needed to be iced because damn, my calluses were cracking and I’m killing off my fingers by playing and recording and jamming so much… but it is all so worth it.
It’s been a few hours and I’m still all high on adrenaline. *dances around*

Adrenaline
keeps me in the game
Adrenaline
you don’t even feel the pain
Wilder than your wildest dreams
When you’re going to extremes
It takes adrenaline