(Original on kaizers.no, Text backup here)
It was a weekend packed with events for Kaizers Orchestra, and it resulted in three six-star ratings for the groundbreaking band!(Photo: Geir Zahl. Kaizers had a private plane and champagne between the gigs this weekend)
- Getting "the number of the beast" as rating suits us pretty well. We truly feel like a monster in top form at the moment, Janove Kaizer states, who has a day off between gigs today.
- This was a rather intense weekend for you?
- Yes, it was definitely an intense weekend for us! First we played at Hove festival on Friday as the first Norwegian headliner ever there, so clearly there is some pressure in having this responsibility. But it went well (read the review here), and we must point out that the audience at Hove was sensationally enthusiastic. We've rarely seen such an atmosphere! Great fun.
- And after that you got on your private jet right away, just like the Stones?
- Yes, we had already booked a gig at Biri Travbane for Saturday, so when Roskilde called a couple of weeks ago and wanted to book us for the Orange Stage at four o'clock, we really had to work out a way to do this, logistically. We didn't want to say no to Roskilde, of course, but at the same time it was unacceptable to drop the Biri concert, and so we had to figure it out logistically. Fortunately, we have two sets of backline, so we don't need to move all the equipment back and forth, and when we came up with the idea of a private jet, we figured out that it was actually feasible time-wise, with the least possible margin though, but feasible after all. So we went for it, and thought that it will surely work out.
- Congratulations to a six-star rating for this one as well! (Read VG's review here!)
- Thanks! It was a lot of fun at Roskilde this year. Actually, we felt that we had pretty good control over the vast plain, and this time we had no crises on stage either, like in 2006, when the bass string broke. The most dramatic part this time was the thunder storm that rolled over the area right after the gig. The highway around Roskilde was closed due to flood one hour after we left the stage, so we really had to hurry to get on the plane before all hell broke loose.
- And straight to Biri.
- Sure. It was amazingly sunny and hot during the 90 minutes that we played on the Orange Stage, especially right in the front of the stage where I was, so I was completely exhausted after the gig. Fortunately, I'm in pretty good shape at the moment, and luckily we had champagne on the plane to get back our strength, so therefore I managed to recover very fast! And Biri was awesome as well (read the review here!) A little contrast to go from 45000 people to 2000, but both is big fun, and since we returned right from the away win at Roskilde we only needed to sail on on the excitement and postpone fatigue a little instead.
- You are in the middle of the festival season, what's ahead now?
- We'll have a few days in Stavanger this week and practice the Volume 2 songs that we'll play at Øya festival. Then we'll go to Vikedal and play there on Friday, before we do our only festival appearance in Sweden this year, at Putte i parken festival on Saturday. This will be fun. We're really getting going now!