Day #3 of Estonian Tour - 2nd Show at Kuressaare Cultural Center
Slept 2 hours last night just can’t seem to kick this jet lag. Villu (my tour guide and legendary Saxophone player Nordicsounds) and I hit the road at around 8:15 AM to the Estonian coast to take a boat across the Baltic to the island of Saaremaa. There we miss the boat and have to wait about an hour for the next departure. Boats here actually transport your car across the water as well.
When we get to the other side it’s about another 45 minutes to the long awaited destination of Kuresaare, Jako’s hometown. I’ve been imagining this city for over 1/2 a year wondering what it would be like… but to much to do… can’t think about that now… I look at the clock and it’s almost 1PM and I still haven’t eaten a crumb all day. I need to refuel, because in about 1 hour I will be on stage expected to entertain a sold out crowd of 300…
Question: Am I nervous?
Answer: Does the Pope wear a funny hat?
Answer for those who have never seen “Raising Arizona” (Darrill): Very nervous considering my “Show” just about 14 hours prior was a complete disaster… what will the precarious cultural and language differences of the Estonian audience hold for me today… will it be a quick and sudden death on the stage?…or a slow and drawn out stage version of the water torture? …or maybe just maybe the Estonian Magic Gods would have mercy on me today and cast a spell of kindness over the audience before I walked out…
5 minutes till curtain time… frantically preparing a few last things in my dressing room… 3 minutes…trying to get mentally prepared…reflecting on my life…2 minutes reflecting on the vastness of the universe, those I love and those I love to hate (just kidding about the hate part)… Suddenly I realize “Marco, you’re not tired anymore.”… am I dead? Did I die? Everything is now black… pitch black… where am I? Am I still in my dressing room? Is this heaven or hell? Then I hear a voice… a calm, nordic voice… It’s Villu… the darkness begins to dissapate… he’s introducing me… the welcoming applause gets brighter… so do the lights… I walk out onto stage and…
… DESTROY (Back of the right hand slapping the palm of the left hand Jabari)!
Unless I’m completely delusional, I think the audience had an really great time. There was laughter, amazement, yelling, screaming… People were standing, jumping, running from their seats (and let me just say this [ without giving too much away] the “Snakes” were really flying in this show!).
When it was time to release the my “Grand Finale” onto the audience (and I mean this in the literal sense), people had rushed to the foot of the stage… it was like a mini mosh pit, some even tried to climb up onto the stage with me…(had I foreseen this in my crystal ball, I would have hired the Hell’s Angels”)… Needless to say it was a complete FREAK-OUT for all those who attended. Click here to watch video clip of the mayhem unfold!
