Tagged: westfalenhallen

MY YEAR IN ROCK – retrospect 2012 (part 3)

(continued from http://lita77777.posterous.com/my-year-in-rock-retrospect-2012-part-2 )

OZZY & FRIENDS IN DORTMUND, GERMANY

The Ozzy & friends gig in Dormund was a memorable experience for good reasons and bad. I got to know a new friend, Suuded, and we had a great time. Remember a fantastic dinner in a restaurant right behind the Westfalenhalle, but I also remember the sky just opening and it was pissing down all day! We were forced to stand out in the rain by a sadistic power-hungry security person who made sure nobody was under the long roof in front of the entrance (there would have been PLENTY of room there for a lot of people). Anyway, we got in the front row eventually. Both Steel Panther and Ozzy were well worth the wait and the rain!

The story can be found here: http://lita77777.posterous.com/ozzy-sweden-rock-festival-part-1

Photos from that are on my Facebook-page: www.facebook.com/intherearviewmirror

SWEDEN ROCK FESTIVAL….

Only two days later, it was time for the next annual event: Sweden Rock Festival.
This time I was joined by Vera, my Russian colleague that I got to know after bumping into her several times at press conferences at Sweden Rock. She was going to camp with her friends though (wild horses couldn’t get ME to do that camping-thing).

The first festival-evening was one of those slow ones, where you just “get in the zone”, pick up your passes and all that stuff. I only checked out H.E.A.T and Dynazty before drivng home that evening. It was freezing, I remember that much… But Satchel (Steel Panther) was going to turn up the heat the next day!

The full story: http://lita77777.posterous.com/sweden-rock-festival-2012-part-2

The next day I ran like crazy to make it to the first signing-session of the day, which was Satchel from Steel Panther. I had found this great tent where musicians hung out and various guitarists were doing signing sessions. But it didn’t seem like it had been widely announced anywhere, so thank god there weren’t those insanely long lines as to the “regular” signings.

When I walked in, it was still Andreas Kisser from Sepultura who was signing. I was first in line for Satchel, and I got my hoodie signed, and some pics. The message he left was of course very “Satchel-style”…! ;)

Vera and I also met a nice dude from Adrenaline Mob’s crew, who invited us to be his guests, so we spent the day hanging backstage and on various stages. That was perfect, if for no other reason than because it was raining all day, and we didn’t have to be out there getting soaked. Watched Ugly Kid Joe, Motorhead and Twisted Sister up on the stage for instance.

Press conferences I didn’t want to miss included Steel Panther and Sebastian Bach – but then I happened to walk in on a few more by coincidence. There is activity 24-7 at Sweden Rock, it’s nearly impossible to try to sum it all up. But check out the pics on the Facebook-page (URL mentioned somewhere above), that will give you a quick tour of what was going on on stage and back-stage at Sweden Rock Festival 2012!

Way too much to mention, I think I kept updating in real-time on Facebook because I wouldn’t have time to write an actual blog. Busy summer! :)

Next up was my other favorite festival: Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium!

[to be continued….]

Ozzy & Friends ticket hell

Yesterday really put my patience to the test (not that I have a lot of that to begin with…). 
 

Ozzy & Friends in Dortmund, Germany. Steel Panther opening. Perfect gig. 
Except for having to stay awake through an entire Black Label Society dead boring gig, but that’s the deal, what can you do……

I hadn’t decided whether or not I was gonna go, until an online friend asked me about my plans. She wanted to go and figured we could share room and go to the gig if I decided on Dortmund. Sounded cool to have company for a change and meet a new fellow music fan, so it didn’t take a lot of persuading to get me to decide. I was going!

So, after working out our plans on the phone, I went straight to Westfalenhallen’s own website, as they were the only ones selling tickets at face value.

I spent TWO (yes 2, two, zwei, två, deux, dos, due) freaking hours, trying to buy an Ozzy ticket!

The Van Halen ticket-hell that I went through a few months ago was a walk in the park compared to this. 

So, this is what you’ll have to deal with, if you ever feel like ordering tickets from Westfalenhallen’s website:

The website is not available in any other language than German. Great.

There is a link that says Tickets. When you click on that, you get three other links that sound similar, and if you don’t speak German very well, it’s pretty hard to understand the difference between the link “Tickets“, “Ticket-Store” and “Ticketing Westfalenhallen“…….. So, I clicked on the first one. Took me to some sort of search-page. Typed “Ozzy“. Got one result – just some sort of info-page about the artist in German.

The page didn’t include a link to any tickets. It just said that you could purchase tickets by clicking the link/button “Ticketinfos“. Just my luck that neither the link or the button was on the page yesterday. :-( (they had fixed that the next day, no wonder I was going nuts for not finding it!

I was searching everywhere on the page and it took me an HOUR only to find some kind of ticket-store on that page!

I FINALLY tried clicking on any other artist on the page and it opened some outdated, old Java-applet that looked like it was left from 1987 or something…. After clicking my way through THAT I finally got to the last stage where I could buy the tickets (HALLELUJAH!!). Right.

First I had to REGISTER as a new customer. Fair enough. Then it wouldn’t accept the password – so I kept requesting new ones. I ended up with a mailbox that had no less than SEVEN new passwords! 

NONE of them worked! (black smoke coming out of my ears at this point…)

I started over, registered again, used another mail address, realized that you couldn’t print the ticket and it cost 15 euros to get them to send the tix outside of Germany, so… *sigh*  I had to go back and change my customer info and use Nadine’s address instead.

And after TWOOOOOOOOOOOO HOURS I had the effing ticket!! I was ready to throw the PC out the window, one of the most frustrating online ticket-purchaces I’ve ever experienced!

But now it’s finally done. Trip booked, hotel booked, concert ticket taken care of, so the show better not suck. :-) Not after the ordeal I had to go through to GET the ticket!

Somebody asked me why I didn’t just request a press ticket. Because – as good as it is with freebies, they never send you those tix in advance. And the list gets there in the last minute, usually. So, you are always risking ending up way in the back because you have to WAIT for it.
I don’t have the patience for that. I want my ticket at hand when I get in line.

I’m still into the music and the gigs – I’m not and I never will be, the bored journalist who’s standing way in the back with a glass of wine talking to colleagues or just checking out the show from the soundboard looking slightly blasé.

I want the experience, the sweat and being part of a jumping, wild crowd – the actualADRENALINE. That’s what I live for. So, no freebies for me if it’s a band I really like (unless of course, it’s a laminate that will grant me access to anything or I’ve seen the band lots of times already and need to just write a review). :-)

A month from now. June will be a kickass-month! So looking forward to it.

[From one of last year’s OZZY-shows. This one is from Ergo Arena in Poland. I was sick as a dog, 39 degrees C fever, had spent all day in bed at the hotel trying to recover. Yet I forgot all about it at the show – it kicked ass!]