flying home.
in many ways this is the end of the tour for ’18’.
it started in january of 2002, and now it’s august of 2003 and it’s ending. we still have one show in september, i think…
but apart from that, the tour is done.
and what were the chances that the tour for ’18’ would end up being 18 months long?
18 months of touring.
a long time.
i don’t mean to be obsessed with long tours, but the ‘play’ and ’18’ tours have been long (4 1/2 years, all totalled). and as i said previously, i’m ready to not be on tour.
touring is great. i know i’m being redundant…. playing music live in front of thousands of people (the combined live audiences for the ‘play’ and ’18’ tour is around 4 or 5 million people…and that’s the ‘live’ audience. the television audience was around 3 billion people. a lot of people…) is great.
but now it’s time for a break.
i want to thank people, but honestly there are too many people to thank. we’ve had 30 bus drivers and tons of crew and catering and promoters etc. but there are some people who have been on tour with me (some on and off…) since before we started the ‘play’ tour in april of 1999, and i would like to thank them.
scott frassetto, dan hardiman, pablo cook, ian huffam, marcia vlassic, ali mcmordie, steve walsh, daniel miller, john pennington, barry taylor, gregg demammos, paula quijano, eric harle, and kevin weyremechek (whose name i still can’t spell and who we all miss terribly…). and then lots of others who’ve helped me more than i could ever have hoped for, and forgive me if i accidentally forget to include a few names here…dick meredith, dianne charlemagne, spinbad, greta the bass goddess, craig underwood, marci weber, snakey, luton, rj, svetlana, the chi 2 strings, pauline, ray, george, drew, dave ordas, randy brown, jem, phil charters, lucy, nicola, helen, ryan, duard, and many, many others. thank you.
it’s worth remembering that when the tour for ‘play’ started we were playing small venues that were 1/2 filled. i remember an early show in pennsylvania where we played to around 125 people and we had to put the monitors on cocktail tables. or the very first american show of the ‘play’ tour, performing in the basement of the virgin megastore in union square for 100 people. our first show in new york was for 100 people, and our last show in new york was on a pier in the hudson river for 20,000 people. our first show in london was at the scala for 400 people and one of our last shows in the uk was headlining glastonbury for 125,000 people.
we started the tour in 1999 with one beaten up tour bus, with lighting equipment and guitars and keyboards in the sleeping bunks and a u-haul that we all (at times) helped to load. we ended the tour with 4 tour buses and 3 trucks, and no one had to remove guitars and lights from their bunk to go to sleep.
in these last 4 1/2 years we’ve played over 500 shows. we’ve been around the world (literally) more times than i can count.
it’s been a pretty remarkable 4 1/2 years, and i can only give my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make these 4 1/2 years so amazing.
cos at the end of the day my job in touring is the easiest one of all. i go on stage and play some songs and jump around like a spastic monkey. everyone else works 100 times harder than me, and for that i’ll be eternally grateful. i’ve been fortunate to work with the smartest and funniest and best people in the music business, and i thank all of you very, very much.
thank you,
moby