Photo credit: Pamela Littky
Alice In Chains tour blogger The Baldy has posted a new blog about the band’s mannequin mascot Larry:
For those of you wondering how Larry! is holding up out here, I have a brief update.
He’s falling apart.
That’s not completely true, but he is suffering his fair share of dings and bruises.
But he’s made it this far, and he had another big day at the Mad Cool Festival in Madrid today.
The festival had a shared dressing room area, which was basically a compound of rooms under a tent.
This is common practice at a festival, and also the perfect place for Larry! to hang out and bewilder various staff, crew, and band members.
But today the tables were turned, because I witnessed some behavior that bewildered me.
It was toward the end of the night, and I left the stage to return to the compound to start packing up a few things.
Larry was one of those things.
I had disassembled his torso from his legs, and I had removed his arms and set him on a road case.
I dipped into the dressing room for a minute, and when I came back out there was a man standing next to Larry!, taking a selfie with him.
No big deal so far, and actually somewhat common.
But the guy’s head was super close to Larry!’s, and then I realized that he was kissing him.
Not just an innocent peck on the cheek, but getting right in there on the lips.
It was mildly creepy, mainly because it went on so damn long.
I mean geez, take care of your business and move along buddy. Does it really take 45 seconds to capture a picture of you kissing a mannequin?
I waited patiently for the amorous kissing bandit to finish making out with our mascot, then I grabbed Larry! and took him outside to pack him up.
I lifted the lid on the hamper where he lives, and two girls came sprinting up.
“We’ll take him!!”, one of them shouted at me.
I explained to them that he was our mascot and we needed him for our next leg in the States, so sorry, I couldn’t give him up.
They had just mistakenly thought that the hamper was a garbage bin and that I was throwing him away.
Sure, he’s a little beat up, and yeah, he’s now probably carrying an STD from some drunken Spanish makeout artist, but we’ll never throw him away.
So that was Larry!’s day in Madrid.
How about the band’s?
Towards the end of the set, our merch guy turned to me and said, “I think this is the best crowd of the tour”.
I think I agree.
I didn’t have the highest of expectations for this festival, because the guys weren’t on the main stage, and they were actually playing at the same time as the evening’s headliner, The Arctic Monkeys.
But when we arrived at our stage and I walked up the ramp, I was pleasantly surprised to see a ton of fans there, and better yet, once the show started they went off.
I haven’t heard louder, more consistent singing along in quite a while, and the fans were totally fired up from start to finish.
It was another awesome time in Madrid, despite the unwanted sexual advances that poor Larry! endured.
