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Events and Reports - ProgPower USA V (2004) - Steen´s Festival report Part 1/3 - The pre-parties
Seeing the list of bands playing at this years ProgPower USA festival was enough to get me mooh'ing with delight, so I decided to empty my savings account, buy the plane ticket and head to Atlanta for a few days to check out this one of a kind Metal festival in the USA. It became the weekend of the year and here follows a pretty exact account of my journey with a strong emphasis on the music (and the food of course...)
There and back again... a Metal tale by Steen.
Part 1 - The pre-parties
Wednesday
I awoke very early wednesday after crashing on my hotel bed at the Fairfield Inn the night before. A 14 hour travel, 6 hours time difference and a huge Metal lovers pizza from Pizza hut had me sleeping like a baby. I spent most of wednesday afternoon checking out the surrounding area looking for the Crimson Records store in vain. Back at the hotel after 5 hours of walking around I discovered the store to be one block away from where I had turned back... (Insert weary cow sound here...)
The pre-pre-party for the crew and the early arrivers had been announced for Wednesday evening at 7 at The Vinyl club, so I of course I planned on spending my evening there. Heading down to the lobby of the Fairfield I thought I saw someone I recognised sitting in a chair. Turned out it was Teri from the PM board and owner of the fine Hard n Heavy who greeted me with the same kind of strange recognition, even though I had never seen her before. She headed with me to the party and made me feel right at home from the moment I met her, and being a regular atendee she introduced me to the people already at the Vinyl, who were all very welcoming and friendly.
The crew was already partying there and I was at once told by Wayne the guitar tech to let him know if anything at all bothered me at all. Very nice. Don Capps, Glen Harveston, Kimberley, Bear, Kelly, Nick Van Dyk and everyone else made this a very cool introduction night indeed. It was especially exciting to talk to Nick Van Dyk about the coming Redemption album, which sounded like it would completely blow me away. Still preparing for the Berlin Marathon this was going to be a non alcoholic festival for me, but for the only time during the festival I was tempted to taste the Long Island Ice Tea which came highly recommended and I know that this will be my preferred drink when I get back there next year. I left the bar along with Kimberley when they closed it down around an hour after midnight. I was wondering what had happened to Ben from Metalreviews.com as we had planned to meet at the bar when he flew in. Back at the hotel he was not in the lobby either. Ahh, well, he was probably delayed and he had said that he would run in to the lobby and shout my name when he arrived, so I sat down in the next room with the internet PC and checked some news. Half an hour later I checked the lobby and sure enough, a person who greeted me as Yan from a band called Avian was sitting there chatting with an Asian looking guy. This turned out to be the infamous Ben Buzan from Metalreviews.com, or as I came to silently name him, "motormouth-dude-man"... The self proclaimed "Worlds biggest Edguy fan" was a cool roomate and the human equivalence of an speaking Metal encyclopedia which couldn't be turned off. He just didn't stop talking for the entire weekend. It was great fun and there was always something happening when he was around. We got back to the room and talked all things metal long into the night before falling alseep.
Thursday
For some reason I awoke wide awake after about 4 hours of sleep. Must be the time difference... We went to get the unhealthy breakfast, which consisted of gooey muffins and donuts covered in thick sticky frosting, Yum yum... But after three days this got kinda trivial... I had checked the map and went for my second record store hunt. Ivan, the hurricane was coming and big black storm clouds were hovering on the horizon, so I thought I had better take the Marta (Name of the local train service) and stay out of the heavy rain. Meanwhile Ben went to the Airport to pick up Jonah, keyboard player from Pyramaze and Noah the bass player (not from Pyramaze), who were also staying at the room with us. When I got back from the record store I was soaked due to the heavy rain. Caught a quick shower and went down to the lobby to hang out and see if any bands would arrive. I finally got to me my fellow writer, Hashman who unfortunately stayed at another hotel, but we had a cool talk before we had to get ready for the pre-party. Just wish we had had more time. I had arranged an interview with my hero, Jon Oliva (Lead singer in Savatage) back home and was supposed to call his Manager/Security guy, Dave to set up the details, but apparantly I got the wrong phone number because it didn't work. Dammit!!!
Suddenly it was time to head for the pre-party of the night. It was pouring down heavily outside by now and we got to the pre party a little delayed. I had just ordered a batch of Chicken fingers as the first band of the evening, Halycon Way took the stage and started on their first song. They sounded ok, but not quite enough to take my thoughts away from the food. Magistral were next. This was more up my alley, very interesting power metal, and a singer with great potential, though I thought he sounded too strained and out of tune for the first few songs I heard. After the first two songs I ran into Ben who told me that I had to come upstairs right now, as the first band members had started arriving. I didn't catch the last of Magistral, but I heard that the singer improved greatly. Upstairs was the Earthlink venue where the real festival was set to take place. Two bars and a long hall which was slowly filling with people. The first famous person I said hi to was Timo Kotipelto (former Stratovarius singer), who afterwards was completely booked by people all night. I spent most of the night walking around talking to random people I bumped into and just soaking in the atmosphere. All the way at the back I found the Mountain King himself sitting talking to some people. People were flocking around him, so instead I went up to the big bear-like man who was sitting next to him and asked if he by any chance knew Dave. Turned out that he was actually the Dave I was supposed to call about the interview. He was extremely nice and we set up the interview for noon the next day.
I spent the rest of the evening walking around meeting loads of new people, among others, the Wuthering Heights guys who had just arrived from Denmark and a somewhat pale Claus from Intromental Management. Turned out their plane trip had been less than fun, with 30 minutes of high turbulence before they hit the ground safely. It was also fun meeting John Zahner, the keyboard player from Savatage and two fans who were trying to get him to cough up his Streets bootlegs without any luck.
Downstairs I managed to catch a few Prototype songs. I thought the band sounded really excellent during some parts but then extremely boring in others. They were all over the place and I probably should listen to their albums before I make any conclusion. Enertia unfortunately didn't do much for me, I missed some better melodies in the music which seemed overly groove oriented to my taste.
It had been announced that we would get to hear the new Jon Oliva solo album, and finally back upstairs, a little past midnight it was put on the stereo. Unfortunately way too low to hear it properly. I still sat down in a comfy chair and tried to make out what was going on. So far I can say that is has a fantastic ballad and some really good guitar work. That was all I got. Halfway through the album they closed down the bar and everybody were told to leave. The last thing I remeber was Jon and Dave stumbling down the parking cellar. Should be an interesting interview tomorrow.
Got back to the hotel, only to find Noah passed out on the floor of the lobby. There was a good reason for partying though as he had just been accepted as the new bassist for Avian. At one point he woke up and tried to get back on the couch, but that didn't go too well. Like a mother hen tending her flock Yan half carried Noah back to the room and I sat down and talked to Ben about the events of the day.
Continue to Part 2
| You can click most pictures for a bigger version
The pre party
Could those teeth BE any bigger? | Written by Steen
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 |
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