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Tag: Concert

Heavy Devy: Redux

Last time I went to see Devin Townsend live was back in 2019, and it didn’t exactly go as planned, as I detailed in my blog post back then. Little did I know what absolute fuckery was about to come out of a wetmarket in Wuhan, China before long.

“Say hello to my little friend.”

A couple years have passed, where mother earth was playing a very exciting game of Pandemic with real people. We’re not out of the woods yet, but things are returning to normal, and the disease is no longer considered quite as big a deal as it once was.

Devy’s back, let’s go!

When I saw Devin Townsend was returning to Oslo for his Lightwork tour, of course I just had to have tickets, and so I bought them.

Yay, Lightwork!

Turns out Devy was releasing a new album called Lightwork, and was promoting it on an album tour, including Europe. Sweet!

New album by Devin Townsend! Yay

But the album release was pushed back, and Ticketmaster decided not to let me know that until quite a lot of time had passed. However, Mr. Townsend still went on tour – playing various older songs, and he’s got an amazing discography, so that shouldn’t be a problem. I was able to refund the original tickets, and buy new ones for the other tour, which it turns out he was doing along with Dream Theater.

Being someone who listened a lot to Dream Theater in the mid 2000s, I thought that sounds good to me, and I ordered tickets for me and my girlfriend, and planned a stay with some relatives living a quick train ride away from Oslo. That way I can see relatives, cut costs, and drive my own car most of the way, without having to deal with Oslo traffic and parking and all that jazz. Sounds like a win to me!

Cool & good! They even have a cute kitten.

The logistics went perfectly this time around. No hiccups at all.

If anything went a bit wrong this time around, it might be that Devin Townsend was a warmup act for Dream Theater. His set wasn’t very long, and the audience was mostly there to see Dream Theater, which means they weren’t mostly there to see him, and I think they made that very clear unfortunately.

Devy must have picked up on it, because although he delivered a good show, he seemed almost depressed. Lacking some of the joy and spark I’ve come to appreciate about him. The technical aspect of the performance was great, and he played a very good setlist, so I’m pleased to have seen his show in it’s entirety – including finally hearing Deadhead live without having to leave the venue as it starts, as happened last time. But yes, something was amiss.

Poozer

The evening devolved into Devy making constant fart jokes, and telling the audience he doesn’t care that they’re not excited, he gets paid either way.

We enjoyed the show regardless, but I hope to see a whole show of him at his best. Then again, he’s weary of touring now from what he’s said. Still, he’s supposed to be back in February 2023, and I might catch his show then.

James LaBrie of Dream Theater

In my teens I used to listen to Dream Theater daily, but that night they were not my cup of tea, to put it mildly. Being a prog band, it’s to be expected that some of the music gets too esoteric and technical to be enjoyable to most people, and while I like a lot of their discography, I simply didn’t enjoy them that night. It didn’t help that James LaBrie seemed to have gotten hold of some bad amphetamine, with his uncoordinated whirling and jogging around the stage. We left pretty quickly.

After ditching Dream Theater, we headed to a bar called Brewgata instead. Although a bit hipstery, I found it enjoyable regardless. We enjoyed some drinks and a little people-watching before we headed to the train and went home, feeling like the night was a good experience all-round, even though I was a little bit disappointed the crowd bummed out Devvy, which in turn made his performance a little bit less exciting for those few of us who were there for him.

Better than last time, but let’s hope next time is even better!

Why, oh Vy?

A tale of disappointment, frustration and lessons learned the hard way.

GET HYPE!

Devin Townsend is touring in Europe, and he’ll be playing Oslo!

– NaĆ­ve Ranyhyn, 2019

I immediately purchased a couple of tickets for Devins ‘Empath’ tour, with all the tail-wagging excitement of a labrador thinking he’s headed for walkies in the park.

Prepping

The concert was to be held on the 24th of November, a Sunday night, in Oslo. So to ensure I had enough time to get to the venue and enjoy my gig. How best to do that, one wonders?

Where I work, I’m lucky enough to enjoy a flexible schedule, which means in cases like this, I can usually arrange to have a day off, and work the hours back some other way. As long as I give sufficient notice, it’s hardly ever a problem, which I’m thankful for. So I gave ample notice to my boss that I would like to take Monday 25th of November off work, and that was OKed without any fuss. Excellent! Now for transport.

Rental?

I have this old diesel car, a 2001 VW Passat, that has seen a fair amount of mileage. For the past year I’ve noticed some issues with acceleration and have been unable to pinpoint and fix it completely. We found a hole in an EGR valve, which was replaced by a mechanic friend of mine, and we flushed the engine and turbo system as well, but still it struggles to even reach the speed limit in some cases. So I decided I didn’t want to take my car to Oslo, where diesel cars are banned at least some of the time.

Instead of using my car, My roommate and I decided to rent one. We found a rental agency, and found a suitable car. We decided the cost was acceptable, even factoring in the higher level insurance we wanted to get to cover any and all possible damages that might occur, just to be safe.

Shortly before the concert was set to happen, my roommates cousin offers to lend us his car. Being at least somewhat frugal and seeing no sense in giving good money to a rental agency when we can get it for next to nothing, we agree, and decide not to book the car instead. We thought we were clever. Alas, the innocence of youth..

Murphy’s Law

The evening before the concert, the guy whose kind offer of borrowing his car suddenly remembered that he’d forgotten to put the centric rings on when he changed to winter tires.

So. Not that car, then. It was too late to get a hold of a rental too. What do we do? Let’s check buses then!

No buses going quite so late. Maybe a train would work? Let’s look up train schedules.

Oh god, vy?

With the concert starting at 19:00 we saw an opportunity to arrive in Oslo at 18:30, and leave again with the last train out. That gave us several hours for the concert, which should be done by then. Gigs usually last around two hours so we thought we were good. Even including the sound check and encores.

To avoid having to wait for 4 hours and 45 minutes at Nelaug train station – conveniently located in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere – before getting on the connecting train home, we decided to arrange transport to and from Nelaug by car.

Being a seasoned concert-goer you noticed our mistake right away. We didn’t account for the warm-up act.

Being a seasoned train commuter however, you noticed yet another mistake we made: Thinking that 30 minutes extra would provide sufficient temporal slack for us. But no, Vy had other plans.

Delays

While waiting for the train at Nelaug station, we were informed that the train would be running about 20 minutes late, because they’d decided to pick up more cargo than they had originally planned. This took extra time in and of itself, but there’s an additional delay from the added weight not accounted for. This caused us to arrive in Oslo an hour after schedule.

Vy arrives on time – an event which grabs national headlines:
Official spokesperson assures public it’ll never happen again.”

Haken

We may have arrived an hour late, but it turns out this was just in time for the warm-up act. The one we hadn’t factored into the concert duration when we booked our return tickets. Yeah.. We got an hour of whatever the fuck this is first.

To be fair, it’s our own damn fault. I know there’s always a warm-up act, and the Empath tour poster on the Devin Townsend website even mentions Haken being part of the tour.

So, with the warmup act and the main act sound check concluded, it was time for some of what we came for.

Ain’t never gonna win.

We had to leave after the track ‘Never Gonna Win’ in order to have enough time for the train ride home.

My favorite tracks of this tour being Deadhead, Why?, Kingdom and Spirits will Collide – I was pretty disappointed I didn’t get to hear any of them. But that was nothing compared to the disappointment of hearing the intro to Deadhead just as I was heading out.

Every fiber of my being told me to dig my nails into the wall, refusing to leave until the song was over. Sadly, my voice of reason won out, and I begrudgingly left the concert hall, heading for the train home. God damn, those were some of the hardest steps I ever took..

My face when I’d found my seat on the train home.

Lessons learned

Next time, I’ll book a hotel for the night, and I’ll be taking an early bus.