Meeting your favourite musician... By @musicandreview

- Billy Sheehan, a super bass player who became known with the band Mr. Big and now coincidentally is part of a band called The Winery Dogs along with Mike Portnoy and Richie Kotzen, great coincidence.

We agree that seeing your favorite artist live is not the same as meeting him.

I can't say this is my situation, my favorite artists are from another country.

Well, as I mentioned before, I have not personally met my favorite artist, but I did attend his concert; however, I can tell you about some situations in which I was able to meet artists whom I admire a lot, again I go with two points:

- The first one was in 2009, I attended a concert of the German Symphonic Metal band Xandria, it was in a very intimate place, I even remember that there were very few people who attended, maybe it was because they were not so well known, but I did have them on my radar. At the end of the concert, I went to the bar to buy a beer and my surprise was that next to me was the bass player Nils Middelhauve also asking for one, I wanted to be discreet and not approach him with a lot of energy and what occurred to me was to make a positive comment about the vocalist (in perfect English I think, the important thing is that he understood me), to which he replied "yes, she's great", then I took the opportunity to take a picture with him, then I could also take a picture with the guitarist Marco Heubaum.

Sorry for the quality of the pictures, back then phones weren't that good with the camera and the low light didn't help either; and well, I was younger, thinner and with hair.

- The next anecdote was this same year, after almost 5 years without attending a concert I had the opportunity to see the Italian Power Metal band Rhapsody (Turilli / Lione), I already did a post about that experience, but it is worth to take a couple of things for this initiative; the first thing is that minutes before the concert started I went to the bathroom so I didn't have to do it during the concert and to my surprise I found the famous vocalist Fabio Lione, what was he doing in the bathroom of the mortals? Well, it doesn't matter, I obviously recognized him instantly and asked him for a picture, he was totally receptive and nice; surely we agree that a bathroom is not the right place for this kind of encounters.

Minutes before, while I was walking towards the concert venue, the bass player Patrice Guers and Dominique Leurquin, one of the guitarists, were walking in the opposite direction, it seemed very strange to me that nobody recognized them but I did and of course I also asked them for a picture, one of them said "quickly" and so I did.

From these situations what I could feel was that they were people just as we are, this is perhaps because they were very kind and receptive, it is true that they do not have the levels of fame that mainstream artists have but at least they retain a certain humility, it was nice to approach them.

I was able to see my favorite band in my country twice so for them I wouldn't necessarily travel to the other side of the world, however, there are some that I still have to see and for which it would certainly be worth a trip of such magnitude, among them are Nightwish, Hammerfall, Therion, Stratovarius and Symphony X, I would love to see them together in one of the biggest Rock and Metal festivals in the world as it is the Wacken Open Air, this festival is held every year in a small town in Germany.

I imagine myself planning a whole weekend of good food, good drinks and of course with the excitement of finally seeing these bands, of course, before that I would have to take a long flight from the city of Lima, and of course with Dina by my side at all times to take care of me.

In the following video you will see images of the greatness of this festival.

As I mentioned before, Mike Portnoy and Billy Sheehan are my favorite artists, I think that spending a day with them the first thing I would do would be to buy them a beer and something to eat to get into confidence, I would ask them how it feels to travel and tour so often to so many places in the world, is it as good as it sounds?, or are there a lot of complications behind it?; for sure their answers would be very interesting. I would also ask Billy for a lot of tips to improve my bass playing, as I have said in previous posts, it is the first instrument I learned to play. And well, playing some songs with them would be amazing, for me it would be something from another planet.

I thank @fernanblog for inviting me to this initiative, it was a lot of fun for me to write this.

All photos are my property. Sorry if the translator failed me, as you know my native language is Spanish.

Hugs to all of you!