June 6th 2005 - Gruenspan, Hamburg, Germany
First of all I am from Ecuador.
I flew to London just for the first show.
A friend of mine was studying in LSE and bought a ticket for me just to put pressure on me so I only had to get the visa and the flight.
I remember following Rock am Ring thru a web broadcast during my first evening in London.
On the 9th I went to Shepherds Bush Empire and it was magical.
I realized how easy and cheap it was to get a ticket so I came back the following day.
Unfortunately I had my flight back on the 12th so I couldn't attend the last 2 shows.
When I came back to Ecuador I got a letter of acceptance from a university in Germany.
So I lived there from 2003 to 2006.
During that time period I contacted tapers and traders, so maybe there are a few around there who remember me.
The Dissociatives toured Europe in 2005 and I bought tickets to attend the 4 shows.
I met them after the 4 shows.
The first one was in Berlin. The following day they played in Hamburg.
I arrived at 6 am to the venue because I didn't have any reservation for a hotel room.
The tour bus arrived at 8 am and they recognized me because I had the same clothes.
At noon Dan and Paul wanted to go for a walk downtown but they realized the taxi drivers did not understand English.
They asked me for help and I helped them.
Dan thought they would need my help while interacting with other Germans so he asked me if I could join them.
I accepted and guided them through the city.
It was lunch time and they invited me.
We went for a walk afterwords and it was late so we had to come back to the venue for soundcheck.
Three days later they olayed in Cologne.
By that time the whole band recognized me because I waited for them after each show.
The last show was in Munich and Dan invited me backstage to have a beer.
I think that was it.
In 2007 I came back to Europe with my 2 brothers to watch them in Amsterdam and Paris.
The funny thing is that Dan and Paul shouted my name while waiting in the queue.
We had pictures and everything was surreal.
After the show I met the guys at Burger King near the venue.
Unluckily they got food poisoned and cancelled the show in Paris just while the doors got open.
And that was the end of my journey with the guys.
It's difficult to pick a favourite show..
The first one (09.06.2003) was special because it was the first one.
I was very passionate about Diorama, Dan's health problems, how they had to cancel the tour, I followed BDO and Live at the Wireless thru live streaming from Triple J and downloaded the whole files via dial up internet connection (that was a whole new adventure to me), so I followed every show from the tour day by day and read all the road reports at chairpage.com, I knew exactly all the setlists, I knew what they were going to play, etc.
After All These Years was one of my favourite songs
Just watching the piano, their technical crew setting everything up right before the show, hearing the background music, watching Dan the first few seconds and listening the first chords was enough to feel like you were going to have a heart attack.
Without you was the song I really wanted very badly to watch the band play because at that point in time (information did not flew like today) there was no info about the guitar tuning and the chords, so I wanted to watch Dan playing it.
I remember listening just the day after the Sao Paulo show a clip (mp3) of the song and I fell in love immediately with the way it sounded (distorted and bad quality) and I decided that I wanted to listen to that song live.
The second show (10.06.2003) was the one that I enjoyed the most because it was almost the same setlist, just 2 different songs but I just sit on the balcony and watched everything.
The Paradiso one (20.09.2007) was part of a different tour, I went with my brothers (it was their first and only silverchair experience) and Dan and Paul recognized me, they played different songs, there was no balcony, so it was a whole different experience. I was right in front of Daniel and it was more energetic.
The 4 Dissociatives shows were very similar (same setlist and pretty much same banter).
The first one (05.06.2005) was in Berlin. Very small venue, and you could see the stage very close.
The second one (09.09.2005) was in Hamburg. I already told you my story of having lunch and spending 4-5 hours with Dan and Paul.
The third one (09.06.2005) was in Cologne. I got an audio master recording of that one.
The last one (12.06.2005) was in Munich. I went there with my brother and both met the guys I exchanged email addresses with Paul. We wrote each other a couple of times
It's hard to say which one is my favourite one.
Cheers