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Pit Stories: Smooth Move In Germany

Band Photo: Astral Doors (?)

We've been talking to bands and fans everywhere to get their favorite mosh pit stories. This week Swedish classic heavy metal band Astral Doors sends in a story about how keyboardist Jocke Roberg got his nickname:

This story takes place about 4 years ago in Southern Germany. We were the support act to the fantasy metal heroes Blind Guardian. I can't remember what town we played in, but that's not really important.

Some headline acts treat their support bands like crap and don't allow the technicians to do a proper job. How many gigs haven't you attended where the sound during the support band's actual show has been terrible? In this case however I must pay my tribute to Blind Guardian and their crew: they gave us everything they had, every night. For two months we were treated like kings and the technicians and the rest of the crew did an amazing job for us; night after night. We filmed all 37 gigs, so it's documented:) Thank you Guardians!

Ok, at the gig this particular night, our keyboard player, Jocke Roberg, had a really bad stomach. He was running in and out of the WC before the gig...doing his thing. The show started and everything went really well the first couple of songs. During song four or five, he felt it was time again. He started to sweat and the panic was close. When it was time for one of our most popular songs, “Evil is Forever”, where we use a recorded organ-hymn-kind-of-intro, which he normally plays along to; he took his chance: he ran behind stage, found a bucket and did the big one. We wondered where the hell he went and we were quite prepared to play the rest of the gig without keyboard. However: just as the recorded intro was finished, Mr. Roberg was back on stage. He completed the gig and everything went great. Ever since that day we call him Jocke Bucket!

Astral Doors' "Best of" collection, "Testament of Rock - The Best of Astral Doors" (reviewed here), will be released in North American on January 25th. You can hear the new single, "Victory," on the band's MySpace player.

Check back every Tuesday for more pit stories.

A self-described "metal geek," Doug Gibson has been listening to heavy metal for more than twenty five years and designed and coded Metal Underground.com from scratch over ten years ago.