We got out of Leon at the check out time, which was pretty good considering. I think our parking permit ending at 11:53am influenced that. We decided we would smash it out straight to Pamplona, get to the hotel and relax and maybe even take in the town. I checked the running sheet as we got in the car to chuck the applicable addresses into the sat nav and then realised, it said “accom to be shown to by promoter after sound check”. So there goes the “get there and chill idea”.

The drive to Pamplona began to get nicer, greener, more mountainous and rugged as we reentered the Basque Country. The address we had for the venue was wrong, which was nice because we got a scenic drive through the old town at 10km p/h. Zia, our huge van barely scraping through the tiny alleys they call streets. I could see long scratch marks about 1/1.5 m high on a lot of the walls, I imagined that they were bull horn marks from the annual July festival in which they run the bulls through these very streets. Pretty rad, The old town is beautiful, I’d love to come back and see it, from a distance!

We arrive at the venue and it looked like a café in the middle of a botanical type park with people eating tapas and drinking cocktails, hardly the rock haunts we’re accustomed to. Sure enough this was the place we were playing. The guys had a practice PA, for the vocals and said we were supposed to play outside. Ha! With a vocal PA. because it would be forecast for 16 degrees (freezing for the Pamploniens) so they moved the gig inside the café where there were large 4m high columns everywhere. Not the best visual space for a show. We thought we’d get into it and make the most out of it, so I thought it would be funny at such an un serious gig to bring out our festival size banner (4mx 4m) and put that up as the backdrop. We did it was hilarious, playing in a small café with a practice fucking PA with this gigantic backdrop of our logo.

People came, about 40+ and were very enthusiastic. We were told this is a great turn out for this “venue” because it is in the middle of the park not near the main night life hub in the city.

We thought we played well and we both had fun and more importantly, so did the small passionate army of punters. We played early and did a slightly shorter set (1 hr) and finished up with a great dinner after the show. We did one encore and that was that. We were in good spirits and the local lads that helped tech the show were keen to take us out on the town. I decided against that after receiving an email that I had a dentist appointment booked for me in Madrid at 12pm! It’s a 4.5 hr drive from Pamplona! Yes I’m going to the fucking dentist. I’ll explain later. So I decided to call it a night and get ready for the early morning haul to the chair! More on that later.

Cheers for a good night Pamplona, I hope to be in you for more than 14 hrs next time. J

-Higgsy