Day off yesterday. A bunch of us went into town last night to a small bar called The Rambler, it’s a local “rock” bar. There was a band playing. Now normally the thought of seeing live music on a night off is awful, but I was with a bunch of people, so… The band that was playing appeared to be a Molly Hatchet cover band, which was odd but hey it’s Europe, it’s not really supposed to make sense. Then I noticed that they were selling Molly Hatchet t-shirts, well I guess they really went in and wanted to give the crowd a real Molly Hatchet like experience. Then I realized that, holy shit it was Molly Hatchet and they were in the middle of a drum solo. At that point I didn’t really care that I was with people. Humorous or not it was shitty live music on a night off and I just left. This five week tour is about one week too long. “home in four days” is my mantra today. We’re playing Speedfest today with The Sonics, Pentagram, and The Dwarves. Cool bill even it doesn’t make sense. Spent too much money again on records, picked up among other things a few 60′s dutch-beat 45′s. Down in the hotel lobby, making a caffeine pig of myself with way too much free espresso.

A Christmas like image. Bear with me here. Three (wise?) men looking at a broken speaker cabinet like it was a manger with non-working speaker replacing the Christ child, with screwdrivers and drills replacing gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Playing the Kofmehl club here, nice place. It’s one of he most stoned crews I’ve ever worked with, when we came in this morning it was like they were running a smoke machine of weed. The house lighting guy is good but English seems to be his third language, the first is German then a stoned patois of German/English and finally English, although his stoned English is better than my ugly american German. One of the things I try to do when we get in, is get my shit all set up (backdrop, projectors, etc) and get a basic focus before Danny our soundman starts his stuff. Danny’s day always starts with “Spanish Eyes” by Madonna, really loud and often. This is for him to sort out the local PA, he says that “Spanish Eyes” has all the frequencies he needs. Danny is a great soundman and a great guy, he’s one of the things that make life bearable out here but I fuckin hate that goddamn Madonna song so fucking much, aaauughhhh! This is followed by drum check which is another tortuous goddamned experience, but due to local light guy “Stoney Curtis” I didn’t get my shit sorted on time, and had to hear that goddamned Madonna song yet again. Three shows left.

To the tired, slightly hungover, untrained eye it appears that both of these objects are clementines. On further inspection it turns out the object on the left is an orange hard boiled egg. I had a quick WTF moment when I initially picked it up thinking it was a clementine.

Show today at Central Station. The dressing room is four floors above the stage so the fastest way up is the elevator, but it’s slow. I had a handful of kidney bean cans that I had to empty to make primitive washers for the bolts on the base of the new lighting platform, it’s a long yet uninteresting story but the upshot is that it’s impossible to get large washers in most German cities. The big nut and bolt stores are on the outskirts of town, where life is cheap. Sooooo…the elevator arrived and I missed it but the guys inside held it for me, they were a couple of non-English speaking guys. I mimed “elevator going up?” in my overwrought style that I’m sure appeared to look like some insane interpretive dance. We finally established that the elevator was in fact going down. I thanked them for holding the elevator and I stepped back out to wait for it to come back up. The door closed and I counted to five and pressed the elevator button again. It seems that the elevator hadn’t moved yet, the door opened up and the two guys were still standing there, less happy to see me than last time. I mimed an apology and the door shut. This time I counted to ten before I hit the elevator button. Still not long enough, I heard the guys muttering angrily before I saw them and before the door fully opened I hid on the side just out of sight. After the door closed again, I took the stairs.

Danny re-enacting Moses and the Ten Commandments with giant Legos

Darmstadt literally translates to “intestine city”, we were supposed to play Colonburg but it fell through. Day off today, ate dinner at a place called “The Aussie Grill”. I thought it was gonna be a German version of Outback Steakhouse. At Outback, they have typical American food with dopey Aussie names (example):
-”can I have the chicken wings”
they ain’t chicken wings, they koala paws
-”but aren’t they really just chicken wings?”
just play along, asshole
The Aussie Grill had actual australian food; kangaroo, crocodile and springbok were on the menu. I ended up having a ribeye steak with a guilty tasting aboriginal tear reduction sauce.

To save money at the Ibis Hotels, breakfast is just thrown at you, as indicated by this photo

Tiring few days. After the Hamburg show which was good, there was an after show party DJ’d by Bobo our tour manager whose DJ name is “DJ Enemy of Comfort”. Our day off was a 17 hour drive from Hamburg to Vienna. Good show at the Arena there, usually the Arena is one of those places where the saying “if you smell weed, you will not succeed.” is an apt description but this show was great, everyone at the club was really on their game. After the show we had another long drive to the middle of nowhere. Cervia, Italy. Cervia is a summer resort town on the Adriatic sea. Cervia in the winter is kind of like a cross between Seaside Heights and Union Beach (this reference means nothing to anybody not familiar with the New Jersey, sorry. Just think “shitty beach town.”). We played the Rock Planet, it was pretty brutal but the people at the club were nice and the people who showed up dug it. We are now back in Germany which is kind of like home away from home, in some ways it’s better. We usually get well taken care of, the production is solid and the house crews are very good. Seven shows left.

Good German beer

Had a “foodtown” like experience yesterday at an Aldi supermarket in Germany. The bus had pulled over for a break and I went in to buy some food. I got some ham and cheese and bread for the tiny George Forman grill or “grilled cheesery” on the bus, which Jimmy Bags discovered, freeing us from the tyranny of cold bus food. I also picked up some yogurts and clementines and then headed to the counter. It should have been a straight forward deal, the kid rings me up shows me screen with the amount and I give him the money, he gives me the change and voila! The amount was 9.01€ and I gave him a 20€, I went to give him a penny, but he waved it off. The Germans aren’t the type to have a “have a penny, leave a penny” dish. In WWII they tried a “take a country, give a country” thing but they got greedy. Anyhow, I was surprised when I got a 10€ bill and 40 cents, even with euro-math it was 59 cents shy. I know, it’s only 59 cents, asshole. I held out my hand with the incorrect change and made a raised eyebrow, lemon face and shook the change, he looked at it, then me, then the change again. I said “it’s wrong”, and the line behind me grew. I showed him the receipt and said “it should be ninety nine” but it think it came out “nein, nein.”. He glared at me and called over a manager, and the line of grumbling Germans behind me grew some more, now six deep. There was a huge procedure with both manager and clerk studying the receipt. They opened up the cash drawer and gave me another 15 cents. I was gonna say something but thought better of it

Krampus kandy!

I’m a douchebag. When we first started touring (which doesn’t seem so long ago) it was a really big deal to make a collect call home, now I get bent out of shape when the Internet connection is slow at a club. In the dressing room at Grosse Freiheit and Garrett is playing around on his phone, I think he has an app called “sounds to annoy the shit out of Tim”, a collection of honks and beeps an whistles that is not constant, there is just enough time between them to think “maybe that’s the last one……..No, shit!” We play in Germany around the end of the year quite a lot and for years I kept seeing posters for big “Silvester parties”. At first I thought they were big disco parties named (and incorrectly spelled) after gay disco icon Sylvester, (his big song “you make me feel (mighty real)” ). And I was amazed at the bits of American culture that the Germans latched onto, like the almost national obsession with the tv show Married With Children in the nineties. Then I found out that “Silvester parties” we’re just new years eve parties. D’oh.

The lighting desk at Grosse Freiheit.

We are playing The Capitol a nice old theater styled club here. It seems like not much in the way of rock passes through here, on the upcoming shows list the biggest thing I saw was a Rammstein cover band. A couple of years back I wrote about how treacherous the streets of Amsterdam were. Well Antwerp is no slouch in the “I think I’m gonna be hit by a fucking vehicle” sweepstakes. In the photo, the street starts of with a small pedestrian walk, then a bike lane, then a bus/tram lane (and trams are motherfuckers, they make no noise, so you don’t know when they’re about to hit you), then there’s a car lane, a small “safe” zone, another car lane, another bus/tram, bike lane, and finally another pedestrian lane. it’s like a shitty live action Frogger game.

London show was cool, Loko is a great place to do a show, it was sold out and I got to see a bunch of people I haven’t seen in quite a while. Paris show was completely the opposite venue-wise but also great, small punk rock sized room at La Maronquinerie,great house crew and one of the shittiest load outs in memory. Push  all the gear half a block (in traffic) to the bus & trailer that’s double parked and the bus is on a hill so everything has to be held in so it won’t roll out. A guy who we had blocked in took out his displeasure by pissing on the trailer, lotsa larfs. We are in Antwerp today, it’s beautiful where we are. Had an amazing lunch (pictured). Basically a variation on gravy fries. A really nice beef stew(braised beef and onion in a beer based stew) served over fries, it sounds like diner fare but it was better, especially with a beer. It came with a salad that of course was covered in mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is a huge part of Belgian culture and much like the Inuits who have 75 different words for “snow”, the Belgians have over 100 words for mayonnaise.

don't insult it by calling it gravy fries

Playing the Koko here tonight, real good place and i think it’s sold out. Of course it’s an early show because of the dreaded “After Show Disco”, which means crazy packing up and loading out. Lately it seems like I’m just opening my mouth to change feet, A few days ago in Karlsruhe, Phil lost his denim jacket, he was understandably bummed out about. i didn’t realize Phil had 2 to 3 denim jackets with him, so yesterday i saw him with a denim jacket on. “Hey Phil, cool, you found your jacket.”
“No…this is another one….Thanks for reminding me.”
(One of Phil’s superpowers is his ball busting)
“Auughhh!”
So today I saw him with yet another denim jacket. How many goddamned denim jackets can one guy have? This has to be the one he lost.
“So, that’s the jacket you lost? Right?”
“….No…that one’s gone…for good…I’m glad you keep reminding me…dick”
“AAAAAAUUGGGGHHHHHH!”
I’m not saying anything again, ever.

one of the many denim jackets that aren't Phils