The volcano tour

The 2010 China tour opens at the big club Vox in Wuhan on Saturday 24 April. We are bringing the Bergen bands Goldenboy and Desert Son as support, and our guitarist Steinar Hjelmbrekke gets his own solo spot before K-Jell goes on. A whole rock package from Bergen to the Chinese. One week before departure, the volcano on Iceland erupts and the entire European fleet is nailed to the ground. A very dark, very heavy ash cloud could tip the whole tour over and strand us in Norway, the one place we do not want to be. Some interesting days ahead, then, before departure from Bergen on 22 April.

Wednesday 21 April, the day before departure, and everything looks brilliant. Air traffic across Europe is expected to run as normal from Thursday. Talk about drawing the winning ticket this week. We are going to China, the forecasts are entirely on our side, everything is packed. Thursday morning, 07:00, we are woken by the news that Flesland is closed. Full crisis, we are travelling to China today. A new ash cloud has "suddenly" hit Norway during the night. How does something like that happen suddenly? Someone must have known. I seem to recall there are quite a few weather satellites up there. Were all of them out of order on Wednesday?

The morning brings contradictory news and forecasts from every direction, and we are confused and fed up. Then signals that Ålesund airport will open. Then TV2 says Flesland opens at 14:00 and the danger is considered over. Our flight is not until 17:55. Is it possible to have this kind of luck? We meet at Flesland 15:30, check everything in, and open with a couple of tour beers in the bar. Everyone is glad, nobody quite exhales: nothing is 100 percent until we are in the air.

Thirty-five minutes to departure, SAS announces it is cancelling all flights until 20:00 because of new ash. New information at 20:00, that is all we get. This happens while KLM and Norwegian fly as normal. How strange is it to watch every other airline take off and land while the company you are booked on does not have a single plane moving?

We wait for the 20:00 update. The hours pass, the clock reaches 20:00, nothing. Norwegian, meanwhile, announces regularly over the speakers that all their flights run as normal. From SAS we passengers get zero information, which we find rather worthy of criticism, and we are close to giving up. Goldenboy throw in the towel, get their tickets refunded and go home to Bergen. Nobody can blame them. Hope is realistically gone for anyone flying SAS tonight. So near and yet so far. We decide to drink up the last beer and follow their example, since even airborne now we would never make the Beijing connection.

On the way down to cancel our trip, a message crackles over the Flesland tannoy: the flight to Copenhagen is cleared for departure, now. We spend about two seconds deciding to take the chance and sort the rest out from Denmark. Thanks to SAS and their total lack of information to their own passengers this Thursday, the tour is one very good band short.

On the plane we are told the Beijing flight is also delayed out of Copenhagen and that we will make it. We do not believe it. We do not believe anything SAS says anymore, but we hope for all we are worth. We land in Copenhagen and are told to run through the entire airport, the Beijing plane is standing there waiting for us. That sprint will be talked about at Kastrup for years. We tumble into our seats and give SAS one crystal-clear instruction: our luggage MUST come with us, we are playing concerts in China. SAS says it will make the flight. In the course of one Thursday we have gone heaven, hell, heaven, hell, and nobody can say where on that scale we are now. We are too tired to care. A couple of beers, and we fall asleep at midnight, on our way to China. Finally.

Er det slik at SAS har dårligere fly enn de andre siden de ikke kan fly, når resten kan fly?

A fair question from the departure hall: does SAS simply own worse planes, since theirs are the only ones that cannot fly?

Reisebrev, China tour 2010

We land in Beijing on Friday 23 April a good two hours late, but still in time for the domestic flight to Wuhan. We think. An empty luggage belt meets us. Not one of our twelve pieces has come along from Copenhagen, even though SAS said it was all on board.

Has anyone tried lost and found at Beijing international airport? Thought not. Let me keep it short: this is nothing like a fifteen-minute errand. A great many people are at work, and very few of them are doing anything at all. The ones who actually do something, well, they have plenty of time. Three hours it takes to get our missing bags registered, and that is only the opening bars of this waltz. Our flight to Wuhan takes off somewhere in the middle of it.

We phone SAS. First the press-this, press-that menu, then twenty minutes on hold. Twenty minutes on a mobile from China to Norway, there is money in Telenor’s till tonight, and this is only the first of many calls. SAS promises to get the luggage to us in time, stamps URGENT on the case, and promises to keep us informed. It is not all that easy to play rock concerts without guitars, drum pedals and drumsticks. We rebook onto a new Wuhan flight with all the extra fees and fuss that brings. And yes, you guessed it: SAS never makes a sound again.

So we make our own moves. Our Chinese friends in Beijing are put on the case to push from that end, and we keep leaning on the SAS call centre, twenty minutes of hold music per round. It turns out SAS does not actually know where the luggage is, but assumes it is on its way to us. Brilliant. It really cannot get any better than this.

In Wuhan we are picked up by our friend Wuwei, who has stood waiting at the airport for over three hours because of all the nonsense, on top of the long taxi ride out and back. Wuhan is an enormous Chinese city with traffic to match. He checks us into the hotel, and in the total absence of clean clothes and toiletries, a shower is at least something. Then we sit down with Wuwei and other good rock’n’roll friends at the bar Wuhan Prison, right by the hotel, as is Vox, and take a few beers to wind down. Nothing more can be done before the next flight from Denmark, now in the air, lands in Beijing, hopefully with our lives in its belly.

Saturday 24 April, concert day. Wuwei from the band SMZB manages what SAS cannot: he traces the luggage and pushes through that it will be at Wuhan airport by 18:50. But we have to collect it ourselves, delivering it to us is apparently not possible. Kicked a little while we are already down, is how that feels. The problem is that the drive from Vox to the airport takes an hour and a half, and with rush traffic quickly two hours, one way. With showtime at 21:00, this is starting to smell scorched. It is a rock race against the clock.

Audun from Desert Son and our guide Alex take responsibility and jump in a taxi to the airport. The rest of us cross our fingers. Minutes and hours go, and at 20:35 two taxis swing in front of Vox with our luggage. Twenty-five minutes until we are due on stage in front of a packed house. Not exactly the warm-up you would draw up in advance, but you take what you get. Since Bergen we have owned nothing but the clothes we stood in, and untangling the mess has cost us time, energy, resources and not least money. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to work out where SAS now sits on our customer satisfaction scale, and I doubt they will ever climb back up.

Then everything turns. Full house in Wuhan and a storm of cheering. The concert goes far beyond every expectation, the crowd is in ecstasy, K-Jell CDs pour out of the merch box, and sorely needed yuan pour into the tour purse. The night ends so well that Wuhan alone covers most of the travel and lodging costs for the rest of the tour inside China. For the bookkeepers: one Norwegian krone was about 0.85 yuan.

Afterwards it is back to Wuhan Prison. Wuwei and BT buy food from the endless street grill carts in the Wuhan streets, dinner for ten at around 30 yuan a head, and the bar sells beer at about 5 yuan a bottle. Fans keep dropping in wanting their CDs signed and their photos taken with us, which is only fun. We sit there and enjoy the rock’n’roll life, and Wuhan owes us nothing.

Departure from the hotel at 08:50, which is early for a gang of rock musicians who spent the night being social in Wuhan. It takes five ordinary taxis at about 30 yuan apiece to move people and luggage to the station. On the platform, a worry: the train tickets are alarmingly cheap, even by Chinese standards. After the crazy trains of earlier tours we always buy the best seats there are. These tickets were arranged by the new boss at Vox, who has clearly not received that memo and has "saved" us roughly 2.50 kroner and a gumball. The bad feeling proves correct. We are booked into exactly the carriages we have sworn never to enter again, the ones with seats for 150 people and 300 or more inside.

We send our guide Alex to check the dining car. He reports there is room, but he thinks it is a bit expensive: about 30 yuan extra per man. Expensive? Show me the person who would not pay 30 yuan to escape what we are looking at for the next four hours. A full dinner is included, for the record. From the dining car we discover proper beds can be had for another 30 or 40 yuan, and three of us buy that comfort. The carriage itself is decades old, thoroughly smoke-cured and honestly quite grim, but the seats are good.

Smoking is allowed everywhere on the old trains in China. It reminds me of the Easter trains to Geilo in the late seventies, when everyone smoked in the carriage and you smelled it on people afterwards. That is a precise description of a Chinese train ride of the old school. We go into rest mode, iPods on. Steinar has an exam the day after we land back home, so he sits there studying while the rest of us are limp and perfectly at peace with it.

In Changsha we remember the tiny taxis that fit almost no luggage, and make an executive decision. The club is only three kilometres from the station, a 10 yuan ride, so we drop the hotel the club has reserved and book into Motel 168, 250 metres from the station. Cheap and good, a combination we appreciate, and it solves the getting-back-to-the-station problem from last time. Then a taxi to 4698 Live House for soundcheck, no luggage trouble now, only guitars. Dinner at the same restaurant as in 2009, right by the club. Last time the young girl working there nearly fainted when we walked in. Just as funny every time, just as unreal, and about as far from anything that happens to us at home as you can get.

Tonight has a shadow over it. In the night before Saturday, one of the regulars at 4698 Live House was stabbed to death in another part of town. Sundays are thin concert nights at the best of times, and with that on top we brace for an empty room. At nine o’clock it does not look good. Then, just past 21:00, the place fills up properly. The crowd, it turns out, wants rock’n’roll in buckets, in spite of everything.

A small stray current between guitar amp and microphone keeps yours truly actively awake all night, little electric jolts every time man, mic and guitar meet. Plug in and fire away. It becomes a very good Sunday concert, band and audience both well satisfied, followed by the usual full round of autographs and photos, performed to Olympic gold standard. Supper is eaten at 01:00 near the hotel.

Tomorrow, Shanghai, and we do not need to be up before 12:00, which feels fantastic. We will "fly" there by high-speed train. Norwegian authorities should come and have a look at this. A stretch that used to take 22 or 23 hours now takes seven or eight, in enormous comfort. Imagine a Bergen line like that: a good two hours and hello Oslo. Today you get seven or eight hours on the old bumpety-bump stock NSB has at its disposal.

We stretch checkout at Motel 168 to the last minute, eat a good breakfast-lunch, and walk the 250 metres to the station. A travel tip for anyone planning trains in China: do not bring the biggest suitcase you can find. A big case is pure unnecessary stress on trains. We have gone sharply down in suitcase size since the last tour, and it has paid off at every stage, boarding, stowing and getting off.

Eight hours on the fast train and we are in Shanghai. China is and remains the land of contrasts. Shanghai presents itself as a western megacity with everything you find at home and plenty more, while Wuhan and Changsha are vast Chinese giants of a completely different character. Monday is a free night, we play Tuesday at Yu Yin Tang. The club has a deal with Elan Hotels, newly renovated top to bottom, 160 yuan a night for super rooms, and central if you put your tourist shoes on. Moving between districts in Shanghai can take hours, not minutes, but from here The Bund is 15 or 20 minutes by taxi. We head out for food and a look around, and call it a night at 02:00 with a tourist plan for the morning.

We wake to sun and real warmth, summer at last. Breakfast, taxi, The Bund, the bay with the TV tower where all the famous Shanghai pictures are taken. Plenty of people, as expected, and among them fans who want photos and autographs, plus a number of Norwegians in town for Expo, the world fair. We do our tourist duty properly, walk the famous shopping streets, take the pictures, enjoy life. At 16:00 we have to turn back. Soundcheck at Yu Yin Tang, concert tonight.

Shanghai is New York and London, for better and worse. A city where pulling a crowd is genuinely hard, simply because so much happens all the time. And it is Tuesday, and weekdays in China are like weekdays at home: getting people off the sofa and out to a concert when they work early next morning takes some doing. Yu Yin Tang itself is a beautiful club with everything a world-class rock room should have. We are tense about the outcome, but K-Jell has done well in Shanghai before, so we allow ourselves a little faith.

As in Changsha, the room is deserted until the clock strikes 21:00, and then it fills fast. It becomes clear from the first chord that this is the best concert K-Jell has played in Shanghai, period. The crowd is wound up, the band is wound up, and then it simply detonates. A well-filled room and a band strutting with rock’n’roll energy: that is the whole formula for a rock’n’roll party in Shanghai.

The night has two curiosities in the audience. First, SAS flight attendants turn up. The whole plane over had heard about the Norwegian rock bands and the luggage circus, and some of the crew wanted to see these bands with their own eyes. Special, and funny. Second, the Norwegian Consulate in Shanghai sends representatives to the concert. What we are doing in China is clearly being noticed in circles well outside the rock scene now. Then photos, autographs, gear back to the hotel, night food from a local street kitchen, and straight to bed.

Early up. We leave with a margin, because if you hit the Shanghai rush the train to Nanjing leaves without you. In the fog of language barrier and cultural difference, the taxi driver delivers us to Shanghai South station instead of Shanghai Central. That may not sound dramatic, but this is not Nesttun to the centre of Bergen. This is a city that would swallow all of Bergen, the whole region around it, and then a bit more. A mistake like that can be fatal for a train departure.

New taxis are conjured up and the clock works against us. "Luckily" the taxi drivers of Shanghai have both trained for and driven Formula 1, more than once, so this should go "fine". At 130 kilometres an hour we slalom between cars on the motorway through the city, like a badly acted action film. Add that there is not a single seatbelt in a Chinese taxi and that the gap to the car in front is roughly 2.5 centimetres before overtaking, and you understand this is a notch above the excitement level we like or need. A bad reality-flash of a racing game where one crash means final game over for all participants, machine included. But our three drivers have decided we will make that train, and so it will be.

We finally step out, whole, at the correct station. Then a last hustle to the right platform, where we abandon every piece of learned queue culture and politeness we left Norway with, and reach the gates exactly as they open. The margins land on our side once again. Nanjing, here we come, by fast train. More excitement than this we have absolutely no need of today, and on that the whole travelling party is agreed.

In Nanjing, one more taxi queue to reach Guabo Bar, which by the signage may actually be called Castle Bar, the jury is out. Taxis in China are their own theatre. The drivers argue constantly about who gets to drive whom, and it is just as comical every time. At the Nanjing station we get an extra dose when two drivers fly at each other out of nothing. These men must have built up impressive blood pressure in their line of work, but then, who would not, driving in this traffic.

The plan is to go straight from the stage onto the night train to Beijing, which is on the hectic side, but it will work somehow. A couple of the travelling party do not fancy that squeeze and buy plane tickets and a Nanjing hotel night instead. The rest of us take the night train as planned. It is cheaper, the comfort is fine, and this time the train actually reaches Beijing before the plane does.

Last time, Nanjing was packed and completely fantastic, so we arrive with expectations. Tonight turns out quieter: 40 or 50 paying. But whether the room is thin or full, you deliver 100 percent to the people who came, that is the whole trade. We push on with everything we have, on the theory that everyone who stayed home tonight will hear about it and come next time. The ones who did come get their photos and autographs. Then the clock says go, taxis to the station, straight into the bunks at midnight. When we wake up, we are in Beijing Rock City.

Early morning, the train rolls into Beijing, sun and glorious weather, with serious heat in the forecast. Summer. Today we were supposed to play Mao Live House, the club counted as the most important junction in the whole Chinese rock scene. The Beijing police closed it just days before we left Norway. Along the way we have learned that heavy forces and a united Chinese music scene are at work, and that Mao will most likely reopen during the summer. Not in time for our concert, unfortunately.

If there is a positive in it, it is this: rock in China now stands strong enough that the police cannot simply switch it off and expect it to disappear. There is politics and money in Chinese rock these days, and when that happens, the pipe suddenly plays a different tune further up the system.

We make our way to the Aloft hotel, right by the Midi Music Festival grounds, a lovely tower with everything you need spread over umpteen floors. There is a meeting with the festival’s booking chief, Mr. Chang Liu, where we go through everything about Sunday’s concert on Midi. With Mao gone from the schedule, the day is repurposed: first the necessary shopping, then Beijing enjoyed at full width. The evening brings Kang Mao and the October Party Records crew in Beijing, and a proper dinner with that gang. So the day fills itself nicely, concert or no concert.

The two who chose the plane out of Nanjing finally reach the hotel at 18:00, flight delays, and so they lose the Beijing day. That is the night train’s final word in that argument. For scale: crossing Beijing from one district to another can take as long as driving from Bergen to Stavanger. That says something about the dimensions and the traffic in this city. We turn in at a "normal" hour. Tomorrow is Tianjin, and a good long drive each way.

A good night’s sleep in a very good hotel is no stupid formula on tour. Today, Tianjin, a city not too far from Beijing. We have hired a Toyota Hiace with driver for the occasion, 800 yuan for the whole package, so we can drive back to Beijing straight after the concert. A longish evening, but we all want the whole of 1 May free in Beijing, because that is the day the Midi Music Festival opens in Haidian park.

How long does the drive take? We have chosen to just float on that one. An hour in Chinese time can mean anything from 15 minutes to three hours, and we have long since stopped fighting it. There is, for the record, a bullet train that does Beijing to Tianjin in 45 minutes, but from our hotel, getting to and from the stations would eat the whole gain. So: the asphalt prairie. We are collected at 13:00, on time, and off we go into the Chinese asphalt jungle, where there are exactly two speeds, off and full throttle, and where right of way belongs to whoever whistles loudest. That is our reading of the local rules, anyway.

After riding the prairie in our old rented Hiace, which now smells of scorched rubber and produces a range of strange rhythmic rattles, we are in Tianjin. Tianjin is an old Italian colony, and naturally we are playing in "little Italy" in the middle of it. They have built a whole quarter here copying European architecture and culture, and the quarter is betrayed only by its neon signs, whose English would not pass any English teacher anywhere in the west. Beyond that it is genuinely lovely: clean and neat, lots of good food and drink at small prices, and friendly people everywhere.

The venue is 13 Club, up on the third floor, and it turns out to be a tremendous place, everything in order and a fantastic terrace on top of proper concert rooms. Soundcheck is done quickly and painlessly, so there is time for an inspection round at street level. Tonight, we agree, is an Italian food and drink night. We find a fine restaurant and are received by the boss himself, who lays on most of the menu and looks after us royally. He sees the chance of earning a little extra on us, we see the chance of extra service and a great night for a few miserable yuan more. Win-win for both parties.

Concert time approaches, and Steinar opens with his solo songs before K-Jell. To our collective childish delight, the stage is equipped with a smoke machine and a soap bubble machine. It rains soap bubbles over Steinar while he plays, and we stand there laughing like kids. I have never played anywhere with a soap bubble machine on stage. Norwegian clubs, take note.

At 21:00 the room at 13 Club is close to full, and a hungry rock audience wants K-Jell and gets K-Jell, in buckets. A good hour of rock’n’roll for an over-revved crowd, people singing along and loving everything they are capable of loving. You can search a long time for more fun than this. Afterwards a stack of felt pens is worn down on autographs and even more photos are taken. Then it is late, and the old Hiace stands ready with a Chinese Formula 1 chauffeur behind the wheel. We fly back through the dark with every strap and rein the old van has, and we arrive at the hotel in Beijing whole, which is worth noting. Tired, bed, and tomorrow is a day off.

SÅPEBOBLEMASKIN, det er bare helt fantastisk, det regner såpebobler over Steinar når han spiller og vi må bare le godt av dette.

A SOAP BUBBLE MACHINE. It rains soap bubbles over Steinar while he plays, and there is nothing to do but laugh. You have to experience it once.

Reisebrev, China tour 2010

We wake on 1 May to sun and 30 degrees. The sightseers in the party have already left for the city. The rest of us are going to the Midi festival, except our free tickets have not turned up. We send booking chief Chang Liu a message that we are done waiting, we are coming out, tell the gate. Seven and a half minutes by taxi and we are there. People everywhere, and an instant, glorious Roskilde feeling. We drift around until we find someone to talk to, who fetches one of the security chiefs. She is ruthlessly efficient, sorts out tickets on the spot, and we are inside.

What a place. Everything a festival must have is here, and by everything I mean everything. Two huge stages and three small ones, masses of people, masses of good bands, cheap food and even cheaper beer. It is sun, it is summer, it is festival, and life is extremely worth living right now. One detail gets me. After the police closed Mao Live House, Midi has raised a tent called Mao Live House, with the club’s own stage and PA inside, and invited the bands who have played Mao since the start. A finer way of saying you can’t kill rock’n’roll, in China of all places, is hard to imagine.

We stop by the myspace.cn stand. When they realise who we are, we are asked in for a short meeting, and in comes the boss himself with all his lieutenants. Myspace.cn wants a close cooperation with K-Jell in China and asks about using the band in their promotion. Hey, who says no to that, he he he. Later that evening one of the bands on the bill is Sham 69, legends, one of the biggest punk bands of all time next to the Sex Pistols. Seeing them live for the first time on the opposite side of the globe is its own kind of strange and wonderful.

We round off the night with Sham 69 and head back to the hotel, where the day has one more gift. In the bar sits Ray from No Name, an old punk friend of K-Jell and a big name in Chinese and Asian punk. He wants to use his partners to help K-Jell onwards to Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and more. That bodes very well for the future. And tomorrow it is serious: K-Jell on the main stage of the Midi Music Festival at 13:00. We go up to sharpen our sabres, which is to say, sleep.

Sunday 2 May, the day itself. K-Jell on the main stage of China’s biggest rock festival. It does not come bigger for us. The car collects us at 11:30, straight to soundcheck on the main stage, and what a sound it is. Completely sick, it kicks so hard it hurts. Then the five-minute call. We are ready, and we can hear that the crowd is ready. We walk on to a roar from thousands, BT counts off, and the field in front of us boils.

We deliver our 40 minutes on Midi. Forty minutes in 30 degrees, dead still air, full sun. We close with Struggle And Break Through and get a huge send-off as we finish our show at Midi Music Festival 2010. In our honour the entire Midi leadership has stood watching the concert, something they normally never have time for in the middle of festival days. Off stage, a bottle of water in one hand and a beer in the other, and no peace to be had: hundreds of fans stand waiting at the backstage entrance. So we go out and meet them, all of them. We sign CDs, t-shirts, tickets, festival programmes and a good deal else.

After a short pause it is off to a TV interview and a round of meeting more important people on the Chinese music scene. Fans find us everywhere we walk, every single one wanting pictures and autographs, and every single one gets them. Then, finally, we get to enjoy the rest of the festival together with the other bands and the whole festival crowd. Career-wise, for K-Jell in China, this is the view from the top.

Monday 3 May, homeward. The bus collects us together with a band from the Netherlands for the run to the airport, over what we hope is now an ash-free Europe. Before we leave, four friendly Swedish girls come over for a chat, their first time in China. These girls are not just anyone: they are Sahara Hotnights. They get K-Jell CDs, are duly impressed by what K-Jell has managed in China, and contacts are exchanged with a promise to talk more once everyone is home. The bus ride itself is long and remarkably quiet. It appears everyone gave the night before their full attention.

At the SAS check-in at Beijing International Airport, the fun starts again. The staff here are working from an SAS manual printed somewhere around 1980, we have to assume. Congratulations SAS, you did it again. They now want 160 euro for our guitars, even though it stands in black and white on SAS’s own website that instruments under 15 kilos fly free alongside your luggage. This is the sort of thing that causes noise, when people were fed up with their airline long before the trip home.

SAS spent their entire blunder quota with us long ago, so this tips the bucket for all of us. Enough is enough, and it is time the cupboard got placed where it belongs and the keys handed to the right people. But this time we are prepared for everything. We have the documentation with us, printed, and we put the whole SAS crew in Beijing out of play with it. Papers are handed to everyone who contradicts us, and we stand hard on our right. Bosses come and bosses go, and in the end they fold and admit they have not read their own company’s updated pages. Excellent, we think. What will be next? Everything is checked in exactly as it should be, a little tax-free, onto the plane, and we are bound for Denmark and Norway.

That was the 2010 tour. Fantastic, and rich in experiences and incidents, the way China always is. K-Jell’s position in China is thoroughly strengthened, a stack of new contacts made, and every arrow for the future points up toward the stars. That is where we are heading, and we ride our rock’n’roll horses on toward the top in China and Asia. We could surely have told you much more, but some things we keep for ourselves, for our own reminiscing nights through the summer and autumn. Then we point our noses toward China again in 2011, for a new tour and new big festivals on the far side of the globe.

Alle piler for fremtiden i Kina og Asia peiker oppover mot stjernehimmelen.

Every arrow pointed up toward the stars that spring. What the autumn of 2010 would do to all of it, we could not know. That is another letter.

Reisebrev, China tour 2010