One of my artists always said, better to do something then do nothing at all. And he also said, see the possibilities instead of the obstacles.

Right now I really like this advice. Just gave artists an opportunity to almost go to the other side of the world to play on a really cool thing. You think they would be happy? No, the response is, how can I get time off from work. I mean this is not until April next year, so you roughly have 6 months to ask your boss for the time off. Tell your partner that you going away for a two month on an adventure.

But these reactions become more and more common. It seems like people don’t have the confidence anymore to achieve things? The only see the negative things and the fear of a failure. I don’t saw my generation like that? We just took the risk and if it crashed we mainly laugh about it. Like the story, I will tell on the person down here. Yes, I think people are too afraid nowadays even though it’s safer than ever. Start seeing the positive in everything, my artist was damn right on that one.

PERSONAL:

My mom worked on the railroad when I was young. With that came a free pass to trains in all Europe for all members of our family. My best friends dad also worked on the railroad so he had a free card too. Our thing was to catch trains and just go where ever we were landing. Of course, telling our parents that we slept over at each others place. Instead, we took the train all over Europe and ended up in a lot of places. And we were young and really wanted to discover things.

One trip we did was to London. My friend really wanted to stand in the cheering crowd of Millwall and be on the football riots. I really wanted to check out the London discos. Especially one called Equinox that had full lasers. So we went over a long weekend.

In London, we meet a crazy Australian guy that claimed that he had all the right connections to get into clubs. We tagged along and we went to a place called Stringfellows. The people who know what it is understood that this is not a place where you come in with a t-shirt and blue jeans. But we were traveling light and that was the only thing we had. The Australian guy somehow got us in even though the place was really crowded and we didn’t fit the dress code. Inside the Australian warned us that the prices were very high in the bar. So we mainly just stood there in the crowd looking like two aliens.
I decided to go to the bathroom. I went in and after doing my thing came out and washed my hands. I couldn’t find a paper but there was a big black box in velvet on the wall. I thought it might be a hand dryer so I checked it out. There was a big golden button in one of the corners, but not much more, I pressed the button but nothing really happened.

Then some really strange dude came out from one of the stalls. Coming up to me looking as confused as me. We struck a conversation trying to figure this machine out. In the end, we found a small opening for coins on the side. I was of course always broke but my new friend had a lot of pound coins so we shoveled in at least five of them then pressed the button.

The machine went on and just poured out condoms in golden packaging. We were laughing like hell. Kind as he was he gave me half of all the condoms that the machine got out. We got up to tell the funny story to my friend. When we got up we meet the duds friend a small guy that was really strange. He was trying to order a drink but couldn’t get any service. Well, he looked like an alien like us so no wonder. My friend warned him about the high prices. He just looked at us and said: I can get you any drinks you want we just got paid. We didn’t understand but the little guy just got in drinks after drinks to us. We partied really much for an hour with our new friends. Then we had to get to Equinox. They wanted to go but had to stay for some reasons.

So went to Equinox and was amazed by the lasers. The next day we went into a real football riot among Millwall fans, we almost got tattooed with the Millwall logo, we got out of that and hit the illegal clubs in the Docklands in London.

A year later I was watching MTV and suddenly a new group came along. And there was my buddy from the toilet at Stringfellows. he was playing the guitar like a god.  Here is the video. and three minutes in the video he shows up, my condom buying friend Saul. On Saturday he plays in Sweden again. Sadly we only took pictures of the lasers, not our new friends.

Yes, back there were no obstacles. We just did it and saw where the road took us. I feel that has changed with the new soicla media. Today I have great stories. Sure failure to not change phone numbers with Slash, or even take a picture but hey.