Rockedrømmen Chapter 20
2010: a new album, on top of the world
An English retelling from Kjell Moberg's manuscript.
Our second K-Jell album took us back to China in 2010, but an Icelandic ash cloud nearly stopped the tour before it began. Eight days after a last-minute scramble to get our instruments to Wuhan, we stood on the main stage at MIDI in Beijing.
You Can’t Kill Rock’n’Roll was ready, the tour was booked, and this time our name was on the MIDI festival poster. Then the volcanic ash grounded flights across Europe. At Flesland we waited through cancellations and changing information until it looked as though we would have to give up. Goldenboy went home. K-Jell and Desert Son caught a late flight to Copenhagen and made the connection to Beijing.
We arrived, but our instruments and luggage did not. Wuwei helped track the bags down, and Audun from Desert Son and our guide Alex went to collect them. Two taxis finally pulled up outside VOX in Wuhan at 20.35. We had twenty-five minutes to get ready. The audience saw a band starting its tour; they had no idea what it had taken to get us onto that stage.
On 2 May we played the main stage at MIDI in Beijing. I had waited a whole life in bands for a moment like that. We had forty minutes in the heat, thousands of people in front of us, and boxes of the new album to throw into the crowd. We finished with Struggle And Break Through. For me, this was the peak of everything we had worked towards.
From the archive
