Today is New Years Eve and we are playing a show at Camp Buehring, a base about 15 miles from the Iraqi boarder. This base is a base where everyone going into Iraq comes first. Most of the people here have been or will only be here for a few days at the most before they head north into Iraq.
Once we arrived to the base we had another Commander’s Call. Then we got a quick tour of the base before heading to sound check. We played on a huge outdoor stage in the middle of the base. During the afternoon it was beautiful out but at night in the desert it gets cold. We could definitely see our breath on stage but we are not complaining one bit because we know what the weather is like back home.
The show was one of the best of the whole tour. We worked up a cool “punk” version of Auld Lang Syne about 10 minutes before the show… That is one of the coolest things about being in the Blue Island Tribe; we can decide to play a song, spend 10-15 minutes figuring out everyone’s parts, and then play it during a show later that same night. It’s just those little things that make you feel real good and really enjoy doing what we are doing.
We did a countdown during the show and toasted our “near beer” (non-alcoholic beer). Since Kuwait is DRY we were given cases and cases of near beer. It is not good. This is unfortunately our last show of the tour... just when we were getting warmed up the tour ends... anyways all the shows were fun, some were just plain amazing, and we will never forget them.
After the show we took lots of pictures and signed lots of CDs. Each branch of the military has their own “call”, for example the Marines is “hoo-rah”. Blue Island Tribe’s has become “Rip-It”. Rip-it is an energy drink similar to RedBull or Monster but it has been given free to us most of the tour. We have all developed a "healthy" addiction to it and are definitely going to go through withdrawl when we return home.
For every picture we take, we take a nice one, and then a “Rip-It” one… early on in the tour the "Rip-It" photos were pretty tame but by this point in the tour we are full out jumping on and tackling each other...
When we got back to Camp Arifjan (where we stayed the whole time we were in Kuwait) it was about 11pm so our security, Dave and Brad, took us out on the base to celebrate the new year. We went to a "dance" that felt like a Jr. High dance but instead of the girls and guys being on different sides of the room, each girl had about 20 guys surrounding her. This was a very neat experience and we can't thank Brad and Dave enough for showing us a great time, the whole time we were in Kuwait!
1 comment:
John is really getting into it in that one shot of him playing. How adorable is that? This sounds like a fabulous day in the tour. And how about those Blue Island Tribe fatigues!! You should be very proud of the effort they went to and what a wonderful souvenir. And then there's New Year's Eve, nobody rang in 2010 quite like Blue Island Tribe. I can't imagine any of you enjoying a dance where you would have 20 women surrounding each of you. Brandon you have done such an awesome job on this blog, I hope you have a way to make a book out of it and keep all your photos and journaling together. It would be a shame to lose all the thoughts and shots you have put together here.
Post a Comment