Tuesday, April 29, 2014

4.22.14 - Wiesbaden, GER - Schlachthof

Pull up to huge graffitied warehouse and load in. Story goes - a while back the a slaughterhouse closed down and was squatted. Shows were thrown in two different rooms - one small and one completely massive (you could still see the chains hanging from the ceiling of the killing floor - metal). This large room was soon forced to shut down by the city due to potential roof collapse (glass, steal, and chain falling from ceiling during show? So metal). Instead of shutting the place down and leaving the kids without music, arts, culture, etc - the city put up something like fifteen million euros to build a new venue next door and referbish a nearby old ass beautiful water tower to have shows. If this sounds funny to anyone who has ever participated in DIY shows in the US - it's because it's absolutely fucking insane. Way to go Europe. Hats off and go fuck yourself.
To get more into the details of this impossible teenage punk rock fantasy, the back was the bidding of some sort of preemptive genie. Everything you could desire from being a smelly broke tired band was neatly arranged throughout several rooms. Here is everything you could ever want in no particular order - Hearty rolls with cheese and fake meat, bunks with clean sheets, hot showers with soap and towels, toilets with doors, locks, and toilet seats (if this sounds weird, frequent European dive bars), cooler full of juice, beers, soda, and club mate, fucking laundry!!, coffee machine with coffee already made, curry dinner, working WiFi, a large bottle of vodka, and plenty of comfy places to sit. After a few hours of blissful self indulgence and a running piggy back pavement dive with the hilarious and crude German Melanie we played.
The show was good. But the aftermath was better. Someone said some of my two favorite words "Taylor Swift" and shitty pop sing alongs radiated from my phone. Someone found the eighth inch jack and the awful pop snowballed into Kanye, Beyonce, and Jay-z orchestrating our best white kid dance steps. The doors were locked and we were left with the bands, bartenders, and friends as the pop turned to hip-hop and the arm roof raising turned into attempted break dancing. Apparently a few of us knew some half assed moves and we turned the show into one of those sick 90's movies where the break dance team starts from the bottom training at some run down graffitied warehouse with sparatic trash fires and barbed wire. Minus the fires and wire.
Fast forward. I wake up bruised and unable to walk. Apparently one of my seemingly brilliant dance moves left with with a busted ankle. I limp back to find our once imaculate room to be covered in empty bottles, spilt booze, hearty bread rolls, and broken glass. We spend a few minutes piecing the night together, pack up, load, give our apologies, and get out.

4.20.14-4.21.14 - Happy Easter!

Part I - Brunch Ruiner

Wake up with my face adhered by drool to leather couch arm at venue. Outside an arrogant sun reveals country side and a few small rural houses. I find the face value accepting Christian girl who convinced me to stay and who 6am out drank me to reluctantly drive me to the hostel where everyone else is staying. Rolling yellow canola countryside in middle of nowhere. Pull up to picturesk cottage hostel. Outside everyone stands smoking, haggard, and dressed in black. We take a waxy bag of apples and feed them to pigs and miniature horses. Head to brunch downtown. Get pulled over. Cops try to intimidate us and get us to say we have drugs but they don't speak English well so it's just sort of funny. "Brunch Ruiner" is a good band name and stems from when you're hung over with your friends on some Sunday after church (in this case - Easter Sunday) and your loud crude offensive dialogue ruins all of the families brunch around you. We get word that The Scandles, of who we played with the night before, are having an Easter egg eating competition and we are invited.

Part II - An Easter Celebration

We pull up to a darling house with a well manacured backyard that's home to a 130 year old turtle. A picnic table is lined with several cases of dyed eggs and Becks beer. We unshell the eggs, place them in a bowl, and set the table for each contestant to have ten hardboiled eggs and two large beers. The basics of the rules are that whoever the first person is to consume their respective meal is the winner, but if you vomit before completion you are disqualified (for the complete contract written the night before including rules and objectives see the photo bellow.) The games are initiated with a stood reading of the rules by our most English of friends, James, to make it as legally binding as possible. The games begin, and in a half hour end with a small mountain of egg puke and one victor who managed to slam his last beer before he puked not 20 seconds after. We applaud the sportsmanship and carry on to Nuremberg.

Part III - Nuremburg, GER - Art's Bar

We have no show this night, but we do have a friend who works at a bar. He invites us to stay at his apartment and come out for drinks. The bar is about 70% of the room, with the other 30% being a narrow three foot wide horseshoe shaped isle. We take a handful of shots before getting completely claustrophobic and half of us take a beer-in-hand walk through town. Massive cathedrals with steeples peeking over painted brick and diagonal wood braced building assembling a sort of architecture that I can only describe as sooo German. We eventually get to a hole in the wall bar that has foozeball and plays your entire Napster collection including Evanessance and Papa Roach. We have a drink while Kerry and I devise a plan to steal a bottle from behind the bar. It was simple - i would head to the otherside of the room and ask the bartender for distracting english complicated tourist directions while Kerry pursed the bottle. However, upon finding that the bar owner was walking in and out and was a 300 pound skinhead we decided we needed something a bit more drastic. Unfortunatly, I couldn't smash the empty bottle I found because a new group of people entered the bar and sat infront of the target bottle. Fortunatly however, at this very moment we saw they had an official game of Stump in the bar! Never ever had i heard of this game anywhere else but in the States, never mind had I ever seen an official stump stump on a stand, never had I ever played it inside at a public establishment where it could surely debilitate somebody. Here's how it works -  you have a stump, nails, and a hammer. Each player stands their nail up in front of them with a gentle tap. The rest of the game entails other players trying to hit your nail into the stump on one swing, but not before they have to throw the hammer in a complete drunken flip in the air. Genious. 

Arriving back at the bar to spread the stump gospel, we had come to find everyone else had already done about a dozen shots each. I played catch up with Mexicanas (a delicious concentrate Bloody Marry shot with more alcohol and more hot sauce) followed by Slushy shots (like childhood but more compact and more sinful). I walked outside to see some German rapping and being an asshole. One of us pulled his hat off his head and dropkicked because "it was the only thing I could do to not punch him in the face." At this cue I met some Nicaraguan street stranger and went across the street to a tiny club with 6 people. She bought me 20 euros of drinks and was one of the most magicless and uninteresting people I have ever met. I then met a group of people who invited me back to their house 10km away for a 5am BBQ. Fully aware that this was a terrible idea I grabbed my belongings and stumbled into their taxi.

The apartment was large, clean, and garnished with glass cases full of expensive worldly artifacts. I sat on couch that resembled a leather spaceship and watched an already playing DVD of a huge rave on a massive TV. The BBQ had exactly the 4 people that came with me in the taxi and no one else but did have a small grill and a lot of nice gin. I sat and drank heavy gin and tonics while talking about something. I got the impression I was trying to be hooked up with one of the girls who was Polish and spoke little English, but was feeding me salad. Still put off but not opposed to the weirdness of the situation I take a piss to to come back to everyone putting on their bags saying "We must go. We have to go now." I say "uhhh?.." and we are out the door on a bus on a train with them explaining I only need to go a few more stops before my stop. Completely wasted at 8am now alone looking beside me at all the people dressed up and going to do Easter things distracted me enough to miss my stop. I get off at the next, stand on the plaform for a moment trying to piece together the night, wander across the street, and pass out in a park. 

Monday, April 21, 2014

4.17.14 - Amsterdam, NE. The Winchester.

Genieten is a Dutch word for a subtle and pleasurable feeling. I was told there is no word like it in English so I can only do my best to understand it. Its a gently rattling bike chain on cobble stone streets. Its the sparkling reflection of choppy water meeting docks and canal walls and wooden house boats. Its a breeze passing through doll house scaled streets garnished with black iron balconies, planters, and hundreds of slightly rusted bicycles. Its sun kissed skin over coffee on a quiet morning balcony. This is the best I can understand this word. A word described to me during a nasty hang over. A hang over that is the sum of a bottle of vodka drank before sound check. That is six or seven beer tokens ending at a techno dance party. That is some tasted alley substance that was mostly (but not all) talcum powder. That is a two euro for two minute peep show. This, to the best of my understanding of the word, is not Genieten.

4.16.14 - Trier, GER. ExHaus.

The key to skipping a good rock is to get down real low with the surface of the water before releasing. You can wind up and throw with a fast even spin as hard as you want, but if the rock hits the water at too sharp or wide of an angle, you're only going to get one huge bounce before you're dead in the water. A bit of a running start, a smooth soaring release, and the most horizontal tragectory is going to give you the best results. Picture yourself as one of those olympic curlers with the cool underhand knee sliding and put your other hand up for style. Yeah, that's how you skip a rock.

4.15.14 - Achen, GER. AZ.

trying to find venue. Can't find venue. Why can't we find the venue? It turns out the venue is underground. We back the van down a 45 degree angle of a drive way that ends at a gate underneath a busy downtown block. We unload into the first room - a thick graffitied entirely concrete cube spotted with a smorgus board of pipes, folded chairs,  whatever. We pass into the next room through a hatched steel vault door. The door frame is a meter thick of concrete. As we continue the air becomes palpable - a heavy stillness smelling of old beer, sweat, and cigarrettes. We pass through another similar larger room with a huge stage (well, for an undergeound bunker it's huge) and enter into our final room of a small messy stage and quaint hand built bar. The place was made during the cold war in case of nukes and now serves as a space for punk bands. Go figure.

4.14.14 - Bielefeld, GER. AJZ.

Squatted anarchist community center. "Old industrial something." Show space, movie theater, wood/metal workshop, bike shop, gym, restaurant, bar, cute courtyard strung with vines and tied together shoes. Every available surface pasted, painted, strewn, and stickered. Five star vegan dinner. Beers. Show. Candle light climbing stairs into dark theater. Dirtied red velvet fold down seating. Intimate candle/lamp lit acoustic show. Lumberjack looking German played a bow. Joe. Tim. Comfy five comforter bunk. Sleep.

4.13.14 - Münster, GER. Baracke

Download the seven minute workout app on your phone. Get all of your unhealthy friends together on a lawn. Go for it. Its hilarious.

4.12.14 - Copenhagen, DEN. Underwerket.

Long drive. Ferry. More driving. Coffee. Beers. Walk around. Talk to locals. They tell of Christiania. An old military base squatted in the 60s that has been anarchist since. Sounds awesome. But they tell me its mostly a good place to get weed. We all agreed to go after the show. We play the show. Everyone but me gets really stoned. We don't go. Ugh.

4.11.14 - Berlin, GER. Cassiopeia.

Afternoon practice with James. Pay by the hour place. Neck starts hurting. Cafe. Neck freezes. Wander to van outside venue. Physically can't move neck. No idea what's wrong. Searing pain. No way to play. Figuring out way to hospital. I just lay in the backseat instead. Figure out I can walk around if I continue to lift the weight of my head perfectly still. Can't sound check. Throwing around ideas. Try to duct tape a piece of cardboard around neck. Eventually I can hold it still enough to use both hand to play drums. Eventually gets good enough to move. Real weird. Show. Joe McMahon of Smoke or Fire vibes sweet acoustic ear candy. Elway ruins it. Solo slam dancing and beer slinging by our love Yvy. 80's dance party. Girl from plane shows up. Dance. Get loaded. Go for piss. Some German dude corners me in the bathroom stall while talking to me in German. Closes door. I laugh at the ridiculous of the situation and say "...huh?" He says in English "do you want drugs?" Still laughing I slip in "yes, thank you." He responds in typical German fashion "why are you thanking me? I haven't given you the drugs yet. You Americans are too nice. We Germans are honest." Clearly this not being his first bathroom visit of the night, he vaguely rambles about American politics, culture, and might have hinted at being a Nazi. I thank him and quickly escape. We continue to a Karaoke bar. I sort of ditch the plane girl. Feeling far more charming I some how convince the bartender to give me discount beers. Wasted no ticket train ride. Bed.

4.10.14 - Chicago, Istanbul, Berlin

Flight #1. Prepared for 24 hours of bullshit. Sit next to girl. Funny, cute, quirky. Explains she is an actress. Making music video. Premise - Walking down streets of Chicago. Confused. Full of wonder. Slight existential crisis. Walk into lake. People gather. Reaches into sky. Praises lord. Falls into water. End premise. Fucking loves Jesus. Tells me about it. A totally good normal person with good normal interests who if you replaced "God" with "Tom Hanks" or "Magic Toaster" she wouldn't have sounded any less insane. Flight #2. Sit next to girl. Funny, cute, quirky. Explains she delivers packages around the world in person. Talk about whatever. Invite to show. Exit plane. Band reunited for the first time in a while. Get drunk in typical fashion. Pass out.