Wednesday, October 27
Having just flown my 21st flight this year, I am now back in HK. Thankfully there isn't another tour planned until the end of February next year so I can finally enjoy some relative peace and quiet in Hong Kong, and more importantly, to settle in to some routine as well as my brand new apartment.... it's amazing how long a roll of toilet paper can last when you live on your own. But sorry for trailing off into silence towards the end of the tour. Things got a little busy during the last few days and in retrospect it's all kinda blurred together a little anyway, although it's worth mentioning that Jan-Erik and I ended the final night on a pretty high note - stuffing our faces with a couple McDonald's cheeseburgers each and washing it all down with a bottle of semi-stale Pepsi Lite that we took from a backstage room somewhere along the tour. The rest had their own beds and spouses to return to. Then during my weekend stay of London, I was so busy between battling the post-tour cold and catching up with friends, that I found no time nor reason to get online and update this thing. In fact I was so short for time that I ended up not even managing to do any shopping like I had originally hoped.
Sunday, October 17
With only three shows left to go, we have reached the point where 90% of our wardrobe is starting to smell. And I'm not just talking about the sweat-drenched t-shirts or beer-stained jean, but rather the simple effect of exposing the same set of clothes to the elements - the claustrophobic van, the dusty club floors, the occasional rainfall. We end up like a mild version of the scent one normally associates with second hand clothing stores and crusty squatter punks.
Saturday, October 16
Yeah baby... now THIS is business-core
And here are some pics from our show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam.
The hobbit on stage is me. Holland is really the land of giants. No matter how many times I've been here, there always comes along someone taller than the previous record holder. But it's not like these folks are suffering from some kind of growth disorders, like what we normally see with those featured in the Guiness Book of Records. They are simply very tall people. I think the last time I checked, I came up to just above the elbow of one.
A visit to the restroom is often a good laugh and a bit of a challenge. Had I been born just an inch or so shorter, I'd probably have to tip toe in order to avoid missing the urinal completely.
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At last, our sissy 8 shows in 12 days tour is evolving into something of a 'real' one. By that I mean our sound guy Fabe's van has broken down. Twice. The first was little more than a minor disruption, when the clutch started to not respond properly while we were about 30 minutes away from Leeuwarden. Fortunately a mechanic arrived on the scene within a half hour and sent us on our way after spending some time replacing the broken tube (with a makeshift replacement) that had leaked out all the clutch fluid. The second incident however was a little more ill-timed.
We had played a rather successful show at your run of the mill anarchist vegan punk squat-type youth center (yeah, similar to the ones that you can never get away from on a tour of Germany). Due to the nature of the venue, we were fed earlier on in the evening with little more than tofu and vegetables drenched in satay sauce over rice.
Anxious to put a little meat back into our system before calling it a night, we made a 45 minute dash for the nearest Burger King that was due to shut at one in the morning. We arrived with 10 minutes to spare, our order of 15 or so burgers (and probably as many side items) no doubt annoying the heck out of the staff who probably thought that they were done for the night.
After stuffing our faces in the parking lot with more meat than we should have ordered, we continued on with our journey back to Westbroek and that was when we experienced car failure for the second time in two days.
Shortly after pulling out of the Burger King premises, Fabe noticed a strange noise coming from the bottome of the van. After bringing the van to a temporary pause, he dismissed it as nothing significant and resumed stepping on the gas. But suddenly there came what sounded like a component falling off the bottom and he immediately pulled over to the side. By then we were already on the speed ramp, seconds away from entering the highway.
In my severely limited understnding of car mechanics, I think our hold up had something to do with a malfunctioning fan. But whatever was causing the problem, we knew it was too big a risk to keep on going. And so we did the only thing possible at 2 A.M. Step out into the rain and push the van until we could line it up with the other van, where we then proceeded to tow the thing all the way back to Fabe's house. But of course the rope just had to break 500 metres from the house, and so we treated ourselves to further pushing and bitching in the rain.
Day 7: Arnhem, The Netherlands
It appears that even though cocaine and a whiskey may be the stereotypical norm, my vice - at least on this tour - would have to be that of frequent internet access, in particular my recent addiction to purchasing cameras on ebay. The biggest problem with this of course is that unlike booze or drugs, the time during which I can indulge myself in online bids has to be strictly observed, ie the closing time of auctions, and for some bizarre twist of fate almost all the auctions are set to end right when I'm supposed to be in the van going somewhere or playing a show on stage.
Yet since the start of the tour, I've managed to procure a number of classic cameras that I've been meaning to get my hands on for a while, namely the Ricoh GR1s, Yashica T4, Canon Dail 35 (both the Japanese and US versions), and the original Diana toy camera. In addition I've also managed to successfully bid on another HorizonT panoramic camera, but I'll probably sell it off when I'm back in Hong Kong.
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When you're used to doing long and extensive tours of the US, a 4-6 hour drive between shows goes by like the blink of an eye. But maybe I've been away from doing that in so long that the one and a half hour drive we had from Leeuwarden back to Westbroek after the show last night seemed to drag for all eternity.
Our good friends the Egberts have graciously opened up their home to us to crash at for the entire duration of the Dutch dates. Free cozy accomodation is always a good thing but it also means having to drive back here every night instead of simply being able to spend the night somewhere close to the club we've just played. Thankfully Holland is a relatively small country, so we can't really go more than a couple of hours in any direction from the center, which is where Westbroek is located.
The show itself was a humbling experience especially having just been on top of the world at the Melkweg. With an uninsulated live room, an even colder backstage, a rented PA complete with power-tripping soundguy, as well as an electric circuit that would trip everytime the bass amp was plugged in, we embraced ourselves for the worst.
Well at least the pork schnitzel we were treated to for dinner tasted pretty darn good, and the presence of an internet cafe three doors down from the venue meant that I was able to kill the awkward hours between soundcheck and going on stage in the company of the town's local counter-strike addicts. Ah yes, the familiar sound (and smell) of a gang of unwashed geeks frantically trying to kill off one another. If I closed my eyes I might as well have been back at my regular net bar in Kwun Tong.
The absence of any voices screaming for an encore after our set made it a little hard to determine whether the crowd enjoyed themselves. But then again, a couple hundred crazy fans yelling for one isn't always an accurate measure of a successful performance either. After all, some people will go nuts to just about anything.
Friday, October 15
No tour is complete without a piece or two of fine rock & roll literature. This time around, Jan-Erik has kindly donated to the band library a copy of Motley Crue's 'The Dirt'. With plenty of time on these days off to kill between a dial-up internet connection and MTV's Pimp My Ride, I've already ploughed my way through the first couple of hundred pages. It amazes me that a multi platinum selling band with their own jet, semis and buses can still come home from a year-long tour absolutely broke and starving. I guess despite the immense success, they were on a downward spiral from day one with their heroin, hard liquor and sex addictions. Yet despite the incredibly wild and decadent content, one cannot help but recognize and sympathize with, whilst turning through page after page of painfully honest and sober accounts, the emptiness and hurt that they faced whilst having all the drugs, booze and women that they could wish for.
Wednesday, October 13
One characteristic of the Dutch folks that has left JE and myself completely baffled over is their love for big wide open windows, especially within the bedrooms, thereby allowing an icy cold current to run right through the entire house. This bizarre behaviour occurs even when the outside temperature registers at 6 degrees celsius, which begs the question "why bother living in houses at all?".
Initially we thought that it had something to do with people being too tight with their money to pay for heating, but Erik the band's screamer insists that it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with physical benefits. He and his wife (and probably the rest of Holland too) seem to think that it is a lot healthier and refreshing to sleep in a room that can serve double as a fridge, yet I see little sense or logic in this when everyone is walking around the house with the sniffles.
I'm ready to be back in a warm Asian climate...
Tuesday, October 12
We've now entered the fourth day of tour and it is only now that I've managed to bring myself back into the habit of maintaining a random collection of semi-coherent thoughts on paper.
With little more than 5 hours of practice across two days, as well as the absence of our bassplayer Jan-Erik, we still somehow managed to sound decent at our first couple of shows.
JE flew in from New York via Copenhagen two hours before we were due to go on.
The only things we suffered from on the first night were a poor stage sound and a complete lack of passion towards ours songs, which may very well have been attributed to by a badly assembled set list. I think the general consensus is that we did little more than simply go through the motions... and for the first time in a long while playing music felt like a 'job'.
Thankfully, a superb crew and sound system at the Melkweg in Amsterdam the following night helped us to inject a healthy dose of energy and intensity back into the set, and it felt like we were once again a band that had been touring for a while; well at times anyway.
The hospitality at these clubs have been nothing short of grand. The danger of touring around a lot of the countries in western Europe is that you grow accustomed to this kind of royal treatment, where there's more often than not a choice of delicious hot meals served in the club's own restaurant as well as a backstage room crammed with fresh fruits, warm bread, vegetables, cold cuts, chocolate, and of course the mandatory fridge full of Hoegaarden Witbier and other ice cold beverages. And on top of all this is still the usual offer of a fantastic payment and hotel for the night.
However, this is not quite the reality of touring in many other places, where little or no pay is the norm, and where a band has to resort to fending for their own accomodation or risk spending the night at the soundguy's roach-infested apartment. Getting fed by the venue is rarely an option. So please don't get my lifestyle confused with what's portrayed in movies like ALmost Famous because that is rarely the case.
Luckily for me, the 5 years I spent with Unwed Sailor sleeping on the living room floors of friends/fans and putting my body on a steady diet of Taco Bell & gas stop junk - the whole time making just enough to break even - helped me to develop a relateively down to earth and focused sense of touring. After all, if receiving the so-called rockstar treatment takes precedence over any sense of enjoyment derived through pouring your heart into song on stage and connecting with the people who come out to see you, then one should probably question their motives for touring in the first place.
Sunday, October 10
People keen to get their hands on an LC-A should hold out a little to see whether any truth can be found in these rumours. As for anyone who is thinking about purchasing the new Holga s, I can get them for you for about a quarter of what the Society is charging, so you might want to drop me a line...
Friday, October 8
Wednesday, October 6