HANOI ROCKS: Forging Ahead Into The Unknown

HANOI ROCKS frontman Michael Monroe has posted the following message on the band's official web site:

"Yes, it's me, myself and I, breaking the silence once again… well, as Angie McCoy so kindly informed you — yes, I do have the beastly machine! And I'm not afraid to use it. However, that doesn't mean I'll have my nose glued to the goddamn screen every waking hour from now on.

"Yeah, I know it's about time… but it's about having the time too, and time takes time.

"I hope you've been having a nice time this summer most of the time. Sure, there's been a couple of major screw-ups in our ongoing struggle to get the business side of things organized properly — way too many inept 'cooks in the kitchen' messing things up for all of us — for a change…

"As far as the Dutch Arrow Rock event went, we kept getting dodgy information about it, like how we were not going to play on a proper stage and will have no audience where we play, plus we're not even being advertised as being on the bill, etc. Apparently, our contact person here had the wrong contact person there and that's why our cancellation notice didn't get through in time either. Afterwards we were told that it could've been possible to do it after all and that it had not been cancelled until it was too late. nice one! Certain people involved obviously had no conception of the long-distance travelling, the time and the effort it takes for many of our fans to get to our shows. I dread the thought of someone flying all the way from Japan to Europe for us just to find out there's no gig. Our deepest and sincerest apologies to anyone, who may have suffered as a result. The same goes for the German Wacken festival, which we had to cancel over the ALICE COOPER show opening spot in Finland, since there were no available flights for us to make it back in time for ALICE, whose show we had agreed to open way before Wacken even came up. Once again, we're sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused for anyone involved.

"I really hate having to cancel shows. We've been known to have a reputation for hardly ever doing so, under almost any circumstances…

"Now this pisses me off — having to excuse ourselves 'due to this & because of that'…etc. We're the ones who ultimately suffer as they're likely to be reluctant to book us for a second time after a cancellation.

"The german Bang Your Head festival — surprise guest spot even took us by surprise. The event had been sold out way before they even booked us, so this one can't have hurt anyone too badly…for us it was a bit strange; suddenly playing in front of an unexpecting crowd of some 20,000 'very metal' people who mostly knew nothing of us. I do think we won them over in the end, though. There was a pretty good overall vibe, backstage and stuff… fun too.

"Italy was good, lovely Spain was insane, in Gothenburg it rained… The Finnish festivals were pretty OK too. However, I must tell you that Ruisrock (in my hometown Turku) for me was fucked, because due to a communication screw-up, our intro music came on, even though i was still about 10 crucial minutes away from being ready — and the guys just went on and started playing. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot! So I was angry, to say the least. But hey, whatthefuck — don't mind me, I'm just the singer! Apparently everyone else had fun and some even say it was one of our better gigs…

"Shit happens as life shittens… I mean; what's happening with us now (except for seemingly going nowhere slow) is that we're starting to write some new stuff and about to get some deals in place to finally have 'Another Hostile…' released worldwide. Some of you may remember the simultaneous release plan last spring that went to pot because the label we had the deal with folded. So the album is still not officially released outside Finland and Japan and therefore pretty much new to the rest of the world. (Hey, let's look at the bright side, right?) So, in hopes of better breaks and less bad luck, we'll forge ahead into the unknown, encouraged by your faithful and priceless support, my dear ones…"