(Original on www.kaizers.no, Text backup here)
It's the middle of the festival season, and the Kaizers machinery is devastating all of Europe.When you have the ambition to spread ompa-rock amongst the whole population of Europe, you need to travel a bit. This weekend, Kaizers played in Switzerland, at Stavern Festival and at the Swedish Arvika festival.
- Such Switzerland-directly jobs are pretty heavy, Terje Killmaster Kaizer tells us. We went to Gardermoen at four o'clock in the night, flew to Amsterdam, then on to Zürich, before we took the bus for the last part of the way til Bern. There we played at five in the afternoon, about eleven hours of traveling later. And if additionally, you need to get up at five thirty the next morning to get back to Norway, you get pretty jetlagged actually.
- Do those circumstances influence the playing and the fun?
- Not necessarily, no. The concert in Switzerland was special because it was a little of a "four seasons in one gig" concert. As we started, the sky was blue and sunny, then suddenly the sky opened up and everybody was soaked wet in five seconds. The rain was incredibly intense, and some rusehd for cover but most just got an extra kick and were having even more fun. To show his solidarity, Janove went out into the audience of course and sang Kontroll på kontinentet out there in the pouring rain.
- Nice of him. Something funny to tell from the tour?
- It was a funny weekend, we actually saw pretty much, but especially a scene from backstage in Arvika. It was after we had played. Franz Ferdinand with band and crew had come backstage to sit and relax there. Then a representative from the festival came over til Rune Mink and asked him to go somewhere else to eat the peanuts he was chewing, because there were some in Franz Ferdinand who were allergic.
- Allergic against seeing someone eating peanuts?
- Weird, isn't it? I've heard about nut allergy, and that's no fun, but there must be a limit for sensitivity. So instead of just obeying such a weird message I went over to the singer who was sitting there reading a book, and I asked whether it really was so bad that they were allergic against nuts so that even other people could not eat them.
- So, what did he say about that?
- He just started to laugh and wanted to know "who said that?" and then explained that it was in their raider that THEY didn't want to have peanuts because he and another one were allergic, but that others could eat as much as they wanted, for his matter.
- Hehe.
- It was pretty funny. They were extremely nice and down-to-earth people without any up-high view of themselves, those guys. But true, it's those things that cause that people are being stamped "arrogant" and star-ish, without any reason.
There will be new adventures Wednesday already, when Kaizers play at the trash dump in Arendal. This will be another special Kaizer evening!