Pre-tour checklist:
- Get all vehicles serviced/repaired and ready to go. This way, no matter what the circumstances are, there will definitely be one of them to take Jesus and a bunch of gear on tour. We select the appropriate vehicle for each tour depending on what the tour requirements are. In true DIY spirit, Jesus maintains and modifies all the vehicles himself. They are all customized for long-haul drives with modifications to reduce fuel consumption and engine wear, with additional monitoring systems for the various engine and drivetrain systems, so any mechanical failures can be spotted and rectified before any serious damage occurs. This reduces downtime and enables Jesus to make it to gigs all over the world without wasting time with breakdowns.. Since most of the vehicles are really old and spares are no longer available, or when they are, they are overpriced, Jesus also manufactures parts from scratch, or modifies scrapyard parts from other vehicles to fit. Of course, to make it possible to repair things that break on the road, Jesus always carries essential spare parts and fluids with him on tour.
- Get all instruments and music gear serviced/repaired and ready to go. Touring is really harsh on music gear, so it needs regular attention to remain reliable and offer a great sound to audiences worldwide. Most of the gear Jesus uses is either really old, really modified, or completely hand-made prototypes. Again, in true DIY fashion, Jesus personally tests, repairs, modifies and builds his equipment in his secret lab to his standards of orgasmic sound quality. The electronic components used in most of the equipment used on Jesus is Angry tours are either hard to find, impossible to find, or plain ridiculously expensive. To keep his vintage sound generators going, Jesus painstalkingly rescues old electronic devices from the garbage all around the world, brings them back to his lab, and if they can be made to work again they are, or if they cannot, all their usable components are harvested and filed in suitable tins and jars, and stored in the Full Wave Rectifier Laboratories Vintage Electronic Components Warehouse. From there, Jesus can almost always find the right part for any repair or building project he might be working on. Once all the gear is ready and has moved from the lab back to the studio, suitable tour-cases are found for all items, and everything is properly and safely packed for transportation to the gigs. Once again, since commercial flight cases tend to be unreasonably expensive, Jesus makes his own from old suitcases and whatever can be harvested from the garbage.
- Get that pile of fucking tree-wasting, mind-numbingly stupid, bureaucratic bullshit, such as travel documents, vehicle registration documents, mandatory insurance documents, technical inspection documents, customs clearance documents, even official weighbridge certificates, sorted out and make sure every bit of useless paper is there to satisfy horribly depraved border guards and shamelessly corrupt customs officials. Without that, you can't get very far these days. Unless you like going down the road of bribing your way across Europe, which is definitely doable, even in rich countries like Austria (from where Jesus has been deported for refusing to bribe a corrupt border guard), but we dislike this practice. Even if we didn't dislike it, we couldn't possibly afford it anyway.
- Confirm all the gigs shortly before leaving, and get all contact details, addresses, directions, and other useful details, and write it all down. On paper. At least two copies, kept separately. Computers fail when they are most needed. Papers can be misplaced or damaged. But Jesus is on a mission from god, and he will get to the gig even if the world is fucking ending while he's at it.
- Rehearse the set and setup. Take everything out of the van, set it up just like it was a gig, go through the set, make sure everything works as expected, pack it all up, put it back in the van. This way we know exactly where everything goes and how everything is set up, and we can do it faster and easier, with less mistakes, at the actual gigs.
- Stock up and arrange the Full Wave Rectifier Laboratories Mobile Record Store and Distro. Make sure all the new releases are in, throw in some used vehicle parts to show what we've been through, throw in anything new that has arrived at our distro, pack some lights to illuminate the merch stand in dark venues, and put the box in the van.
- Go through the Full Wave Rectifier Laboratories Library and look for any maps that could be useful. Paper maps, that is. They work better than sat-nav GPS systems. Throw them in the van.
- Make sandwiches, pack water, toilet paper, dry food for emergencies, some fruit and veggies from the garden, say goodbye to the cats and the neighbors, ask the neighbors to water the garden, check there's a couple of spare pairs of underwear and a clean towel in the van, and hit the road jack, and never come back no more no more no more no more................
