My first jump! 12,000 feet up with over a mile of free fall. Absolutely incredible! And coincidentally on the day after the 10-year anniversary of my fall from a tree and subsequent broken back and cracked skull. Wooo!
and that's it. we made it to the plane in st. petersburg all fat and sassy, and flew nonstop to london, where 6 of us stayed at a pricey hotel near heathrow, wanting to go crazy but ultimately out of gas. we ate better than average indian take-out in the hotel bar, despite a nasty woman from the hotel telling us we weren't allowed to eat non-hotel food there. robbie and juliet swooped in like shining rock-star santas, bringing us the luggage and gear we had to part with in zurich, and shared a few pints before returning to real-life in london.
out of the 20 or so countries we traveled through, customs was by far the worst coming back into the u.s. i'd like to think my own country, my homeland, would welcome me back and pat me on the butt, open its arms and give me a big smiling american hug. but no. instead, the questioning was borderline harassment, the glowers held mean and low, and the remaining two of us endured an hours-long ordeal of baggage searching and rummaging. to turn my frown upside-down after this painful episode, i rode home in a limo, blasting russian techno given to me by pasha and drinking warm beer i pilfered from the airplane.
i made it through the entire tour without getting sick (granted i threw up once, but that's different), without getting food poisoning (that i know of), and without getting athlete's foot (though this awful jock itch is a different story). sitting here in fremont now i'm coughing up lung butter and snorting back gobs of mucus, so it looks like my luck finally ran out. at least i stayed relatively healthy throughout my travels, and held this beast off until now.
about an hour ago i parted with my mohawk, waved goodbye in the mirror at rudy's, and prepared for a lavendar-shirt-with-french-cuffs winter. i can only hope that our teary goodbyes at heathrow won't be the last we see of each other, though somehow i suspect there is much more in store for the KMFDM dampfwalze…
the last show in st. petersburg, we're almost home
Current mood: drunk
Category: Travel and Places
it's unbelievable that this journey is almost over. i've gazed across the snowy swiss alps and seen moscow's red square. i saw how Guinness was made and where hitler stood for some of his most infamous speeches. i've been through the coliseum and across the Baltic sea (a few times), seen prague and budapest and zurich and paris and vienna.....
today i plugged into my mp3 player and drifted across russia, en route to st. petersburg, still enamoured of my darling buka who was so good and such fun in moscow. it's amazing to see this gigantic country from above, to see sights that have been bombed and maimed and destroyed, only to be rebuilt again. and while enjoying a quater pounder with cheese and sipping red bull! globalization is here and kicking, no matter what. beyond any other franchise or chain mcdonalds has been more present and more accessible, and frankly more welcome. for a while i thought i would despise seeing those golden arches (and i certainly have a few times, especially coming through the alps), but for the most part they've been an instant reminder of cheap and simple food (an absolute necessity on tour). greasy and fad-laden, for sure, but nonetheless exactly the same no matter where you go. very good and very bad all at once...
we just did the last show of the entire tour tonight, in st. petersburg, though moscow (last night) was perhaps the most insane show yet. the city is awe-inspiring and very vibrant, and I've never seen such and up-for-it crowd. working on only about an hours sleep (no complaints, was well worth it!) i manned my station above sascha, lucia, steve, and jules, and scowled near andy on a huge drum riser. the night went well, no ruckus or fights, but the crowd was absolutely mental. a few guys held a sign up during the show proclaiming "KMFDM will NEVER stop!" and when the band left after the last encore, i decided it would be a good night for running down the stage with the camera and encouraging everybody to whoop and holler. i ended up almost getting pulled by the feet into the crowd! they were pure energy, ready to grab anything and everything that promised more music and more fun. both before and after i posed for tons of group photos with the fans, and signed about 30 autographs (this was after i made it very clear i'm not in the band, just a roadie!). an unbelievable experience, to be sure.
currently i'm standing in stocking feet at an internet terminal (thank god it's windows xp, because i had to dick around with the settings a WHOLE bunch to change it from Cyrillic to english) at my hotel in st. petersburg, at the end of one of the weirdest experiences of my life...although i can't go into detail, suffice it to say that three in the bed is too much for the head, and instead of that i'd rather be dead! hahahaha.....
our last show with the bus was zurich, which was also our last show with the wonderful troupe panic dhh. i very much miss those guys (and gal!) now, and hope antti wound up back in england with a big bottle of gherkins. because of a scheduling snafu we had to cancel the show in cork, and (ah damn....) have a day off in dublin. and what a day! though it was mostly comprised of sleep; rusty, lucia, and i managed to take in the dublin castle and christ church, then rusty and i did the Guinness plant tour. the tour ends at an amazing viewpoint at the top of the brewery where you are served a free (after the 14 euro admission) pint of Guinness and allowed to sit (or stand) and gape at ireland proper. rusty and i took great advantage of this, and i wound up with one and a half pints of Guinness instead of the measly one. woo hoo! later he and i and our dublin merch girl gemma hit the town, finding plenty of late-night haunts to peruse. we went from rock dance club to piano bar to all-night kebab shop, and the fun didn't stop until about 7am. the next night i wound up going out with john, who was the promoter for the dublin show, and again staying up til all hours drinking guiness and talking shit. i regretted this session the next day, as we had not one but TWO flights, first to london and then to moscow. on the second flight i actually managed to get sick, and luckily duncan and anticipated my up-chuck and brought a spare sick-bag from the first flight. one small hurl did me good, and i managed to sleep for the rest of the flight (much to the relief of my fellow passengers, no doubt!)
so.....i think that's it for now, i'm sure there are more tawdry tales that escape me now, but i assure you when they surface so shall i with their memoirs. see you all in a couple days!!
after show riots and tear gas
Current mood: accomplished
the show is over. we are getting ready to take down the stage when the main promoter guy, sandro, tells us he has to make an announcement on the microphone. he makes the announcement, in german or dutch or something, so its pretty much meaningless to me. however, shortly afterwards, i learn that his announcement was a warning, telling all the patrons not to go outside because there is a riot. a riot! this we have to see, of course.
peering out the 2nd story dressing room window we can definitely see a huge plume of smoke coming from somewhere close, and maybe the flicker of flames. no worries, doesn't look close enough for harm...until a few more minutes elapse and angry shapes begin wafting through the fog, throwing bottles and tipping over anything in site. because our driver, tomas, is sleeping in his bunk in the bus, rusty and i rush out to wake him up and secure the bus, and figure out if we can get the bus out of the riot zone.
in the midst of our bus-securing, the power is yanked and we cannot start the engine. our mid-bus door is wide open, no power, and now rioters on both sides of the bus closing in. the fire trucks are roaring slowly towards the blaze, but kids are throwing bottles at their windows and tossing debris beneath their tires. soon we hear a few ominous thuds, and realize the tear gas just came. so 30 or 40 meters to the front and to the rear of the bus grey clouds of tear gas well up and drift our way. on the other two sides of the bus are the venue and a big cement wall. angry swiss kids, now with black face masks and bottles held, are closing in on the bus, which is now sitting exactly in the middle of the melee.
rusty and tomas rush to restore power to the bus so we can close the door and secure it while i ran a few crucial items from the bus to the venue. at the far end of the street it looks like the flames are subsiding, though the ominous silhouettes of riot police (in full mask/truncheon/shield regalia) are unmistakable. staff from the venue and other people opposed to the violence have begun dragging the makeshift roadblocks back to the sidewalk and confronting the mob. finally the bus engine roars to life and we hop on, shut the door, and evaluate possible escape routes. no exit path seems viable, so we stay near the bus and keep watch.
we have very little contact with anybody in the crowd, from either side, though at one point a guy asked me to stop filming, as he thought it would only encourage the mob. fair enough, so inside the bus i went, and popped out the top hatch to what became a great vantage point of both sides, and slightly detached from the frenetic mood on the street. the situation held fast for a while, the police seemed to dissipate at both ends, and i think people were getting tired of being pissed off and rioting. only a few people on the ground seemed terribly agitated any longer. cars started to drive down the street and pile up, unable to move past the boards and bottles and debris. eventually the fire died totally and the tear gas floated away while responsible passersby and venue staff cleared the road enough for cars to pass. the destructive thugs slinked away and the remaining happy drunk people re-emerged to wish the night well.
after just under an hour everything seemed good again, so we returned to the venue and completed our pack and load out. an interesting end to a good show.
p.s. duncan got hit by a car that night too....as he was exiting the bus, which was parked directly on a busy street, a car sped by and clipped him. we reckon that thats his third and final strike of bad luck, as bad luck seems to come in threes. of course, he is totally fine and ready to rock, as always.
we played in martigny yesterday, a small town nestled in a mountain valley, full of beautiful swiss women and good food. from the minute i peered out my bunk window onto the sweeping mountain vista i was in love. we arrived early enough for a small group of us to take a sight-seeing trip up the mountain, and make a stop at a french-looking mexican restaurant (im not kidding...i never would have imagined finding a mexican restaurant on the side of a swiss mountain near france, but there it was...) to sample the local white wine. the vineyards in martigny cover much of the landscape, and make for gorgeous aerial views.
it turned out the local promoter, who took us on the drive, is also involved in the goa and trance communities, and we've both done work with infected mushroom! sounds like there is a pretty cool scene in switzerland which i intend on exploring at some point. the venue, Les Caves du Manoir, was a tiny concert hall in the basement of a several hundred year old building formerly occupied by romans. we guessed that legal capacity would be under 100, but Balthazar assured us we could fit nearly 200 bodies inside....as we soon found out, there was no hesitation in squeezing a lot of bodies into a little space, and after only a few notes of the first KMFDM song our dressing room was totally inaccessible, and with it the many bottles of vodka and mixers i had procured a few hours earlier. the staff was completely understanding, however, and was happy to give up another load of booze and energy drinks for my impromptu backstage bar.
since there was so little room anywhere near the stage for crossed-arm scowling, i hung out with duncan in guitar world and we took turns scowling (id hop in to scowl when he tuned guitars, and then discreetly cover his back and legs with gaff tape when it was his turn to scowl). after the show a huge squad of police turned up, and we assumed their mission was to bust everybody for drugs or noise or something. not so. these guys made a beeline for the kitchen, busted out the clipboards, and started chalking up cleanliness offenses! but these guys were carrying guns and heavily armed! so apparently the swiss take sanitation very seriously. the cops eventually left and we all hung around and partied, since we woulnt end up leaving until 9am for bern.
so here we are, in bern, 6pm, in some kind of anti-police autonomous zone where the club sits. there are posters (in english and either dutch or german) plastered all over declaring the drug dealers and their supporters to be bastards, and that if they dont stop abusing this cultural-political free zone there will be hell to pay. and to top it all off there is a kids fun forest about 100 meters from the venue, full of circus rides and games, small children in bright coats fluttering around eating cotton candy. its an area where a terrifying cracktown sits adjacent to a beautiful botanical garden. weird. i will do my best to get a picture of the mohawk online soon!
accomplished
nostalgic
thankful
bouncy
giddy
sick
drunk