Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this blog at least half as much as I enjoy writing.
As I told in the previous post, I worked on the metal band's concerts and projects, and went on another big tour with the rockstar. Between those two, Jenny gave birth to her child but didn't work actively in the first few months of the baby. She was half-back, with a severe baby blues and aggression at the same time. And that's when the problems started.
In late 2007, the metal band kept playing one-offs. We also went to play at a heavy metal festival in eastern Europe as a small entourage: 5 band members, me, the roadie and the fotographer. I think this is the ideal definition of a very small crew. Things didn't go very well technically, but at least we have cool photos of that tour :)
The festival was a disaster, there were around 3.000 people against an expectation of 15.000, the "promoter" was a 25 year old kid, who had just bankrupt, exhausted mentally and physically, but still trying to make the festival happen, convince bands to play, as a metal lover. I tried my best to at least refund the expenses, but it was clearly impossible. I explained the situation to the band who were enjoying a great hotel in a beautiful city -all the promoter could cover were all our hotel extras. All of it. Got it? :)-, excited to play to a foreign crowd in a couple of hours. They said fuck it, let's play, and they did. The sound, the crowd, the concert in general was terrible, but somehow we managed to have a good time.
A few months later, when we had all forgot about it, I received a cheque from the promoter covering all the expenses.
Then the DVD madness began. Although I had done a lot, taking so much responsibility in a few months, I was still a beginner. I had absolutely no idea what releasing a dvd was all about, or what I had to do as the artist party representative.
Jenny spent the last month of her pregnancy at the hospital, in bed; she had hypertension and preeclampsia, she strictly had to avoid excessive motion and stress, or she could lose the baby.
So I had to work as the general coordinator of the dvd process, with the local division of an international major record label. I went to PR meetings, gathered all the info about interview and media coverage offers, label meetings about timetable, audio and visual material, contracts, payments, royalties, etc.
Every two or three days, I went to see Jenny in the hospital. After long conversations about local music industry, life, pregnancy, future projects, I'd share all the info I'd gathered, and she would make comments and suggestions. Then I talked to the band, dealt with all studio time - the band was rehearsing for gala concert of dvd- and arranged tv, radio and press interviews and went with them to every one of them. I arranged the photo shoot, had consent letters signed, etc. It required hard work to arrange everything to go smoothly, and although the paperwork went ok, the artistic aspect of the project was much different. The lead gutiarist of the band was also the director of the dvd, and he wanted everything to be perfect so bad, that we had to postpone release date a couple of times.
And after all that, I had learnt what releasing a dvd was all about. It was so much like giving birth in several ways. We had labor pain until we saw the dvd on the shelves.
Around exactly the same time, while the band was interviewing for their cover story on Rolling Stone, Jenny gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby boy.
