What’s worth mentioning is that I did manage to write to 2 people very closely related to Richie business wise, and they both answered me. The first person said that is not allowed to pass any messages to Richie or Jon. And I have to say I thought it was very classy from that person because: 1) that person replied to me at all, 2) told the truth and didn’t try to tell me what I wanted to hear. I always prefer the hardest truth from the sweetest lie. That person gained a lot in my eyes.
And the second person was quite opposite. I managed to get contact in early March on FB actually (through my wife’s account) and that person even told me that read the review and that liked it very much, and most importantly that will pass it along to Richie for sure. For a moment I felt I finally did it. But even though I was writing to that person several times more, and surprisingly getting replies too, every time I heard “Haven’t passed it yet, I am busy now, but I will do that soon”. And that soon never happened. For me the thing was very easy – copy & paste the link, simple as that. 5 seconds of that persons precious time. But that never happened unfortunately. And it’s not even that I am mad at that person. I am not, really. I understand that someone can be very busy at work, hell I am very busy at work too, but I would never give anyone hope, when I know deep inside of me that I don’t have intention to help at all or simply can’t do it for some other reason. Cold truth, but the truth. It always works better than a lie. That person promised me to pass it along to him and never did that. And that did more damage than good. But, enough about it. The fact is, that again, for another couple of months I tried to go to Richie through different door, but again this path and those people on the way did not led me to the goal. So, again I lost the battle and dropped Twitter and social media for the summer.

And in the meantime, the tour was announced and I got the tickets for the show in Berlin. I was happy as a little kid. I dreamed about it all my life, but after Dublin shows more than ever. And what was even better, the band has never come this close to me. Finally , for the first time it was only a few hours’ drive. It is about 500km (one way) from my hometown to Berlin, but still far closer than 1400km to Paris or even more by plane to Bristol, London or Dublin. Finally no plane was needed and as I personally hate flying that was comforting too.

As you know the way of announcing Richie’s shows was rather mad. They showed up out of nowhere and the sales started the next day. So quick decisions needed to me made. And I was at work when I read over here about the show in Munich. Quick search on the net by myself and I found the info about Berlin show too. That was the best news of the year for me. I had no doubts I will go there, and I had already discussed it with my wife that she is going with me too. As I have written in my review of the album recently, at that point as I was buying the tix, I hadn’t heard a single song off the new album, except “Every Road”, but my wife did. And she has fallen in love with “Get So High” right away and just wanted to hear this one live really bad. So I was happy that I will go with her, just as for all other 6 BJ shows we’ve been together. But this time, as the tickets for Richie were a bit cheaper than for the band, and since it was so close to us, I decided to give it a try and take some of my friends with us too. And I thought only about 2 of them, right away. Those were my band members, that I used to play with a couple of years ago. They both love rock music but I kind of invited them to BJ world years ago. We used to jam a lot in the past, mostly on acoustic guitars, playing BJ songs together (and many others too). If there were any people in the world I would love to take to the show with me – that would be those 2 guys. And minutes after I found out about the Berlin show, I called both to ask whether they want to join us, telling them I need a quick decision. Both of them said “Yes”, but could not confirm it 100% as they would have to check either with their boss or wife whether they can go or not. Thankfully, in the morning both of them received green light. All we needed was some luck during the sale. And when the moment came, I was lucky enough to get us the tickets on eventim.de and from that moment I just knew this trip will be special.

So, we got the tickets and were just impatiently waiting for the day of the show. In the meantime I had a monster month at work and of course the album was released in the meantime too, and finally I could listen to it and have fallen in it right away, but you can read more about it in my album review, so I will not get back to this now (here it is: http://drycounty.com/jovitalk/showthread.php?t=54388). I just would have to underline, that Richie’s show was the greatest thing that kept me going through all the storms in that time. That was my light on the horizon and no matter what was happening on the way I just knew that my reward is waiting for me on the 13th Oct. in Berlin. But never in my wildest dreams I had foreseen the things that were destined for us over there. If you thought that my Dublin story was unreal, you better stop reading now, because the things that will happen later will beat Dublin to pieces.

I couldn’t wait to hear Richie live, with his solo stuff. My fav song has always been “Ballad of Youth” and I was kind of hoping I might get it with a bit of luck, but also after the release “Seven Years Gone” has joined BOY on the podium, and was hoping to get that the most too. But apart from song choices and set lists I thought that my presence at the show might be my final and maybe best shot to pass my Dublin review to Richie somehow. I didn’t know how I should do it yet, but it was worth a try. I’ve done that spontaneously already at the O2, by meeting Obie, so maybe in Berlin I will meet someone else or maybe even Richie himself. You never know. So I was going to prepare a special printed version of my Dublin review, that would also include my photos from the shows and I also decided to add my album review to it too, as both of them seemed like Part 1 & 2 of the big picture.

And suddenly only a week before the show, last Saturday, a new factor showed up in this whole scenery. A new person actually. After trying to send messages to all the people working with Richie in any way, I thought I basically knew everyone and sent a message to every important person. But I guess I was wrong. On that day, Matt, Jon’s brother, that I followed on Twitter too, introduced one person to the world. Mr Nick Light – the tour manager of Richie’s solo tour. Who is that, you might ask? I had absolutely no idea. I have never heard of him before. Maybe some of you did, but I haven’t. And surprisingly he seems to be related with the band since early 90’! Anyway, I started to follow Nick right away, and in one of his first tweets he said the band is flying tomorrow to Europe for the shows. And here’s what I thought: “Ok, a trip from LA to Amsterdam will take a lot of time, so usually people might be bored on the plane, so maybe that would be the perfect time to read my review, huh? And maybe give it to Richie either on the plane right away or later?” A bold thought, but again, for the first time in a long time, I decided to give my luck one last try on Twitter. I decided to send a tweet to Nick early in the morning LA time, so in the afternoon in Poland (9h difference), before anyone else will tweet him, so he wouldn’t miss it. And so I did….and believe or not but Nick replied. After almost a year of trials on Twitter someone finally saw my tweet! And as usual I just asked him to read my reviews and pass them to Richie later, and that it’s really important for me. I also wrote that I can’t wait till the show. I did everything the same way I did in those few hundred of messages to dozens of other people. And here’s what he replied:
https://twitter.com/NickRLight/statu...50364573466624
https://twitter.com/NickRLight/statu...50529531273217

“I promise to read it on the plane” !!! I couldn’t believe he replied to me and moreover that he is going to read my reviews. I felt I am getting closer and closer to my goal that Richie reads them too and that it might happen even that day. So I was waiting for any other news from him and whether he read it eventually, but…again, like with all other people it seemed it was only a one time shot and again no more news from Nick. They landed safe in Europe and the shows started to roll, but I still didn’t know if Richie got this or not. But after reading more about Nick and reading his tweets I realized we both have very similar jobs. We both take part in or organize events and take care of all the logistics that goes with it. I saw him tweeting in the middle of the night, still working. 24/7 kind of job, exactly like mine. So I could understand he was very busy and that he might not have enough time or strength to read it on the plane, so I just thought I will try to find Nick before the show and give him the reviews personally. I had no guarantee I will meet him, but it only cost me some ink in the printer so worth a try for sure. During the week I was working at nights after work on those reviews, making a nice looking layout to it, arranging my photos, front pages to the reviews etc. I wanted this to look very personal and unique. I wanted to put my all heart in it and make it more pleasant for the eye. I made a small book, with 25 pages in total, all done in MS Word. I would never say that this basic software might help me make something like that, and I work with Word every day at work. Like I said I spent few nights, working on it until 2am or longer but I think that hard work has paid off and I knew that I can proudly give the final version to Nick.