ONE SEGMENTED BLOG
8.28.2009
12:00am
This one's sort of long, so I divided it into segments so you don't have to read it all at once. :0)
Well, what a year of travels this has been...
I've gone from never having stepped foot in Europe before this year, to spending a good 3 months there, traveling by bus, tram, metro, tube, foot, and many many airplanes. One might even say, too many airplanes.
On my last European tour, it felt like we only traveled by airplane. Seriously.....Need to go to the hotel? Take a plane...... Go to the loo? Take a plane! In 33 days, we were on 30 aircrafts. Lots of little flights. Lugging baggage and gear around at an airport first thing in the morning, at say around.....7am, everyday, turned out to be a great workout--and a true test disproving my theory that I need 10 hours of sleep to be fully functional. But I hit my wall at the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. We were about almost 4 weeks into our journey, when sitting in another gross airport terminal that didn't even have bathrooms (you had to exit the gate to pee and then stand in line and go through security again) and a flight status that no one heard any word from 3 hours after we should have departed--pushed me over the cliff. I was so tired....I was so sick of airports, I was so sick of waiting, I was so sick of only getting 5 hours of sleep. I cried. But this story ends well!
When we finally found our plane and were on our way, I listened to a De La Soul mix which made me happy, and I felt like I could finally breathe again. When we arrived at our destination, Pori, Finland, a small town holding a huge Jazz Festival, I discovered that De La Soul was playing the same night I was, a couple hours later, meaning I could see them play!!!!! I walked into their show when the sun was finally setting around 1am, and left their show feeling rejuvenated and glowing as the sun was rising, around 2:30am.
But gosh, I know that I never would have seen half these places, were it not for music. Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland...to name a few. I had to keep pinching myself to believe that I was really in all these beautiful places. In the end, it was an incredible whirlwind experience of a tour, with great friends by my side.
A pain in the neck...
The U.S. tour was a lot of fun. It started off with a really fun show at the Troubadour in L.A. and a few days later, laryngitis. No talking, and steroids got me through it in the end, and I was back to normal a week and a half later. Although, I found I kept getting these killer headaches! I wondered if maybe I was grinding my teeth (I have to wear a nightgaurd at night)? When I would laugh, which is something I really like to do, I'd have sharp, shooting pains in my head. Luckily, my tour manager Katie, is an amazing massage therapist. She did a lot of relaxation work on me. Turns out, I was holding tons of stress and tension in my neck and shoulders. I'd never done that before. It was a new thing for me to become aware of. I realized that on most of my other tours, I was opening for somebody else. I'd play 30 minute sets, and afterwards, chill out for the rest of the night. It was a breeze! And now, here I am headlining a tour, or on tour, just for me atleast. There's a sense of increased responsibility for sure, and I guess it was really stressing me out without even knowing it. It can be a nerve-wracking thing. To wonder if people are gonna show up to a concert, or if the tour will be a success. I had to consciously remind myself to relax my mind and my muscles and take deep breaths. Soon after, my headaches went away and I was finally feeling like my old self again.
Ice, ice, baby...
That is until my dry ice incident in Montreal. It was my last "day off" and I was to fly to Montreal to shoot a music video for the song I wrote for Tiesto. This is something he will play behind him while he's DJ-ing at his shows. For half the day, they had me lying in a pool of dry ice. I didn't really mind it, until it started to become difficult for me to breathe. When I got back to my hotel that night, my chest hurt a lot, and something definitely didn't feel right. If I'm correct, I think I had the thought, "I wonder if I'll wake up in the morning?" It still hurt the next day as I flew to New York. I had a show that night, and thought it best to just get checked out by a Doctor. Turns out, my lungs had collapsed! Yes, in order to protect themselves from freezing from inhaling the freezing cold vapors coming off the ice, they collapsed themselves, making it difficult and painful for me to breathe. I picked up an inhaler, and took the F train down to the Bowery, and made it just in time for soundcheck. My chest and voice were back to normal by the next day luckily....but it had been an interesting couple of days there. And for anyone who thinks dry ice is safe to breathe in.....it's not. Don't do it, unless you're into asphyxiation, and even if you are into that....why risk something going wrong and you being discovered like that without even getting to defend yourself and say, "It's not what it looks like!" ? But back to the video....despite my physical sacrifice on set, it's gonna look great! hehe....I can't wait to see it when he goes on tour this Fall.
What next?
And now I'm back home. What's next? I'm supposed to start recording the NEW record sometime at the end of the year. So, for now....I'm going to stay at home as much as I can, and get creative again. I'm going to demo all the new songs I have on Garageband to prepare for the studio and to get new ideas.
And as far as keeping in touch while I'm locked away at home, I'm gonna try to devote more time to all the social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, my website, and now even YouTube. I'm starting to put together some video blogs (oh my gosh!!!!). I'll let you know when the first one is posted. :)
Stay cool,
p. ahn
Well, what a year of travels this has been...
I've gone from never having stepped foot in Europe before this year, to spending a good 3 months there, traveling by bus, tram, metro, tube, foot, and many many airplanes. One might even say, too many airplanes.
On my last European tour, it felt like we only traveled by airplane. Seriously.....Need to go to the hotel? Take a plane...... Go to the loo? Take a plane! In 33 days, we were on 30 aircrafts. Lots of little flights. Lugging baggage and gear around at an airport first thing in the morning, at say around.....7am, everyday, turned out to be a great workout--and a true test disproving my theory that I need 10 hours of sleep to be fully functional. But I hit my wall at the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. We were about almost 4 weeks into our journey, when sitting in another gross airport terminal that didn't even have bathrooms (you had to exit the gate to pee and then stand in line and go through security again) and a flight status that no one heard any word from 3 hours after we should have departed--pushed me over the cliff. I was so tired....I was so sick of airports, I was so sick of waiting, I was so sick of only getting 5 hours of sleep. I cried. But this story ends well!
When we finally found our plane and were on our way, I listened to a De La Soul mix which made me happy, and I felt like I could finally breathe again. When we arrived at our destination, Pori, Finland, a small town holding a huge Jazz Festival, I discovered that De La Soul was playing the same night I was, a couple hours later, meaning I could see them play!!!!! I walked into their show when the sun was finally setting around 1am, and left their show feeling rejuvenated and glowing as the sun was rising, around 2:30am.
But gosh, I know that I never would have seen half these places, were it not for music. Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland...to name a few. I had to keep pinching myself to believe that I was really in all these beautiful places. In the end, it was an incredible whirlwind experience of a tour, with great friends by my side.
A pain in the neck...
The U.S. tour was a lot of fun. It started off with a really fun show at the Troubadour in L.A. and a few days later, laryngitis. No talking, and steroids got me through it in the end, and I was back to normal a week and a half later. Although, I found I kept getting these killer headaches! I wondered if maybe I was grinding my teeth (I have to wear a nightgaurd at night)? When I would laugh, which is something I really like to do, I'd have sharp, shooting pains in my head. Luckily, my tour manager Katie, is an amazing massage therapist. She did a lot of relaxation work on me. Turns out, I was holding tons of stress and tension in my neck and shoulders. I'd never done that before. It was a new thing for me to become aware of. I realized that on most of my other tours, I was opening for somebody else. I'd play 30 minute sets, and afterwards, chill out for the rest of the night. It was a breeze! And now, here I am headlining a tour, or on tour, just for me atleast. There's a sense of increased responsibility for sure, and I guess it was really stressing me out without even knowing it. It can be a nerve-wracking thing. To wonder if people are gonna show up to a concert, or if the tour will be a success. I had to consciously remind myself to relax my mind and my muscles and take deep breaths. Soon after, my headaches went away and I was finally feeling like my old self again.
Ice, ice, baby...
That is until my dry ice incident in Montreal. It was my last "day off" and I was to fly to Montreal to shoot a music video for the song I wrote for Tiesto. This is something he will play behind him while he's DJ-ing at his shows. For half the day, they had me lying in a pool of dry ice. I didn't really mind it, until it started to become difficult for me to breathe. When I got back to my hotel that night, my chest hurt a lot, and something definitely didn't feel right. If I'm correct, I think I had the thought, "I wonder if I'll wake up in the morning?" It still hurt the next day as I flew to New York. I had a show that night, and thought it best to just get checked out by a Doctor. Turns out, my lungs had collapsed! Yes, in order to protect themselves from freezing from inhaling the freezing cold vapors coming off the ice, they collapsed themselves, making it difficult and painful for me to breathe. I picked up an inhaler, and took the F train down to the Bowery, and made it just in time for soundcheck. My chest and voice were back to normal by the next day luckily....but it had been an interesting couple of days there. And for anyone who thinks dry ice is safe to breathe in.....it's not. Don't do it, unless you're into asphyxiation, and even if you are into that....why risk something going wrong and you being discovered like that without even getting to defend yourself and say, "It's not what it looks like!" ? But back to the video....despite my physical sacrifice on set, it's gonna look great! hehe....I can't wait to see it when he goes on tour this Fall.
What next?
And now I'm back home. What's next? I'm supposed to start recording the NEW record sometime at the end of the year. So, for now....I'm going to stay at home as much as I can, and get creative again. I'm going to demo all the new songs I have on Garageband to prepare for the studio and to get new ideas.
And as far as keeping in touch while I'm locked away at home, I'm gonna try to devote more time to all the social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, my website, and now even YouTube. I'm starting to put together some video blogs (oh my gosh!!!!). I'll let you know when the first one is posted. :)
Stay cool,
p. ahn
