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Paul with Brain-Hat approaches gig-fuel with customary caution.
[w/ The Walls]
And it’s unceremoniously we’re dumped. You can’t even begin to fathom the depth of our hangovers. It’s half seven in the morning and we’re being left in a square, a few hundred yards from the venue, because the bus can’t fit any futher along the tiny tributary of cobbled Prague thoroughfare. There’s a fine, wettening drizzle, and the drivers are ever efficient, perhaps even more so, with helping us unload. They say good bye with all the zeal of men who know that they will get some sleep now. We’re completely the opposite. Donal knows where to go tho, and we’re carting our gear up a hill around a corner, down a little lane to our venue. It would be perfect for a the over sixties bingo society or a school talent night. We dump the gear and head to the hotel. We’re pure alcoholic rage at this stage, rage and hate, and there’s too many of us for the hotel, so we sleep where we fall, 4 to a bed, on the floor, scrunched into the couch.
When it all gets sorted we find out where we’re sleeping and that’s just what we do. Sleep, snore, awake, eventually, shower. Shave. We avoid eye contact.
After some food and a beer, we begin to feel human, and head to the venue to start setting up for the last gig. Jurgen regales us with accordion renditions of famous tv theme tunes. Raus have come from Valmez but decide not to play because we’ve fucked up all their equipment or something. We too tired to know what’s going on.
We play, there’s not many people there, but it’s fine. We’re too fucked to do a full set, it’s hilarious. Vinnie can’t start ‘This used to be the future’ cos he’s shaking too much. We put all that’s left of our enervated, effete bodies into the last stomping rings of ‘Opposite of Addiction’ Crash. Last note. Last beat. Last thump of the tour.
We scarfe booze and watch the Walls. Jurgen dances like Tron. Where does he get the energy? We’re able to communicate again, mumbling apologies for the apocalyptic state of ourselves earlier that morning.
After we group hug, take photographs, marvel at the wantonness of it all. We park our gear and head to the pub, have a few more quiet drinks and fall back to the hotel, where we lie like death under the shadow of the castle. Nobody dreams tonight.
Vinnie and Paul in rapt concentration. Iva sings. A train the distance brigs us our booze.
“only 73% of the notes were necessary, with an 8% margin for error ”
A pleasant drive, as pleasant as it can get on the alcoholic submarine. Donal Dineen has turned up and there’s about 40 people on the bus at this stage, I’ve kind of lost track. Though, no smuggled women, I notice. Or do I? Well, not really. I don’t care.
A pleasant morning spent Breakfasting with Jurgen, and somehow reading the Irish Times, followed by the load out, followed by picking everyone up for the journey and every one is washed and looking vaguely human. Followed by driving down the motorways, with the horizon flat and the day dull, the atmosphere on the bus the kind of dry calm you may find on death row when the inmates have ceased to care.
The venue, like last night, is subterranean. A smallish room, like the Underground or something. A real venue like venue. I say, this is it. This gig will surely rock.
Today, Jens, also traveling with us, and Dee, still at home, have arranged for local Gypsy-music diva Iva Bittova to come and sing with us on a track or two. We had been trying to learn one of her songs previous to this, but failed miserably. Maybe it was it’s twists and turns, maybe it’s because we’re all fucking idiots. When she turns up for soundcheck, we’re effusive with apologies and thanks, and she’s ok with it all, and in the meantime, we’ve decided that the song we’re going to do is My Brass Buttons (real funny story behind name) and she takes the mic and by jesus. We’re all grinning and trying not to laugh at the utter serendipitous rage of it all. It’s still about the music I say to Vin who’s grinning like a maniac and I’m bumming a smoke off him. For a while I thought it wasn’t about the music any more… duh? I know, I know he says.
We go for a walk into town, but the famously beautiful Brno of legend seems to be quite a ways away. Still we find the outskirts of the town, a nice little shopping district that looks a bit like Grafton street in the street lamps and darkness and we have a few coffees in a pretty trendy looking place and Simon and Me and John D wonder about if any of this is real and how utterly unreal it is to be living in a bus and seeing another city every day and not even knowing what day it is and how is it possible to drink that much and yet, ultimately how utterly banal the whole thing. It is about the music. It is about being important, at least to yourself, for an hour every night. This is a kind of cabin fever setting in, the need to rationalise away the past week of being drunk.
We’re suitably philosophical back at the venue. We have a eye-opener, dance to the walls, and then do our gig. It’s on the tiny stage so I’m stuck between drum kit and piano, and it’s like the days of yore. We play away. The crowd like it, I think, till we do My Brass Buttons and up steps Eva, and it’s mental. Ballistic. Then she sings over Ignite the doom carriage and we’re leading the applause and she’s translating our thanks for her to the audience and then we do John the Revelator, and then we could just be playing Dire Straits covers and I don’t know if it could get any better. Best crowd, gig, buzz.
After we sell or give away what’s left of our merchandise. Susan Scanners looks after the money, so she can mete it out to us over the course of the evening and we don’t blow it all on the first round. John B insists that we order shots of… uh… something, just to see the train. The train being this toy train that arrives from the bar, via a hole in the wall, and stops just above our heads. 6 shots a journey. How many journeys? We’re fans of the Orgazmus, queuing up to ask the beautiful bargirls over and over for just another orgasm. I talk football with a local American ex pat. We know our Czech football. Or we’re too drunk to care. In the backstage, cubby hole area, some locals sit down and we amuse them with our singing, our awful renditions, drunken thumbed and slurring, and it’s the best crack ever.
John B leads us back to the Bus, but gets us lost, and kicks me when I sit on the ground in protest. I reserve the right to have my one night of insanity.
In the salubrious surroundings of the backstage, I go through my pre gig ritual of collapsing unconscious on the bar. A banjo is nearby.
The drive is short, and we have hotel rooms in the Hotel Apollo, which, not unlike it’s counterpart in Bratislava, the leviathan Hotel Kiev, was built to mirror the future, in all it’s glorious communist splendour. You’d wonder why these places have these huge hotel, hundreds of rooms for a town of a few thousand. Apollo is lovely, though secretly dilapidated, never has more than about 10 guest till the irish arrive. Myself and John D stayed there with Donal the year before on our junket to Valmez with the Tycho Brahe. The town is lovely, provincial, and given that all our other venues have been in the Capital or second cities, this is probably the best gig so far. The venue, The M Klub, is situated in the cellars of the castle (castles are a prerequisite for towns around here, like churches to our hamlets back home.) and it’s lovely. The sound men are, ahem, sound, the sound is perfect, the venue is a perfect size and even holds the sound pretty well considering it’s shape. Our first song, as has been for the whole tour, is Hugs For Buddy, and we go out on the stage and we start to play and by the end we’re all turning our heads to one another and going, jesus, that was perfect. That’s the effect of five consecutive gigs. Tightens the thumps. Funny, cos just prior to going on, I was asleep on the bar, and Lisa was talking to shadows, delerious, goggle eyed. The rest of them were sitting around, quiet, smelling faintly. But the gig, it flicked the switch. We throw our selves around and had a great time, and the crowd seemed to dig. So after, on a minor high that belies the utter shatteredness of my body, we have a few brews and a chat and watch the walls, who get the whole stinking room up dancing and singing, and yes even us, till after, it’s like, that’s it. No more. I have to go to the hotel. And I’m in my bed before 12 (after reading some more of Motley Crue’s The Dirt, which puts it all into perspective for me) and asleep soon after and then John and Vinny crawl in as the sun comes up and am I remotely jealous, ohgodno.
“whoever touched that stripper is costing me 30 euro”
The first person to wish me a happy Paddy’s day, was the guy on the street who “exchanged” mine and Lisa’s Hungarian Groat for us so we could buy, at the very least, a bottle of water. We knew he ripped us off, because if we’d waited more than a milisecond before agreeing to his rates, we’d have noticed that where we were parked next to the Hotel, there was at least three other Exchanges, that didn’t appear to be ruffians pretending to Cambios. Still, it’s all kinda, you know, local. Or something.
The baying mob want their money back. But it was free, we counter. Well fucking pay us to watch you then, they crow. Seems fair.
The hotel, which was to be our day room, was odd in the extreme. Built to look like the Not Too Distant Future some time in the nineteen fifties, it was all beauty board panelling, and globular lights, all eerie deserted corridors and nothing seemed to work. It’s like somewhere Stanley Kubrik would have taken the cast form The Prisoner.
Luckily for us the venue is walking distance, well, as long as you know where to walk. I get there eventually. They’ve invited us around for lunch, so I turn up, having a goo at the place. Some had been there already, indeed, some had gone straight there when the bus rolled into town at about 7. Anyway, it’s cool, but it seems kinda like an Irish bar in Dublin. The Slovak pub, all done up to look like an ale hall from the days of Beowulf and the like, murals on the wall with the Slovak cross and the long room, like a banqueting hall, at which we’ll be playing, tucked away at one end. We do lunch, it’s all heavy and salty, perfect for a day of, say, ummm, booze.
We do the sights, John B and Paul and Joe wall. The city is odd, the old town was half demolished to build a motorway, that bit of it that wasn’t demolished in the war, and all the buildings outside of the old bit are grey and faceless. Imagine what Dublin will look like in about 20 years… Plus, my favourite bit, there is no such thing as a payphone. Seriously. We soundcheck then do some more exploring later, down the cobbled streets eating icecream as the sun sets and it feels like a holiday, briefly. Danielle from Hot Press turned up last night, so conducts some interviews with us today, to kind of replace the ones she did last bight when were too drunk to spell our own names, and John D was asleep on the floor of the aisle on the bus. We find somewhere local to get dinner, some interesting backroad bistro called Pizza Hut. They do fine cocktails, the orgazmus. Vodka, Baileys, Kaluha and Triple Sec. Might as well just have one and forget about it. Your night is over. Death hangs around your shoulders like a pall. Your balls will be tasting breeze before this night is out. Again.
The gig is great, in a way. The room is thin and the sound is crazy. The bass amp breaks. The walls play well, get some energy going and steam the room up pretty fucking good. By the end of our set, we’re heaving, sweating, needing boozing lot. But, because it’s Paddy’s day (no leprechucans), and the Irish Ambassador has even turned up to see us (our second political visitor after Ivor Calley the night before, enjoying a similar junket to us) we launch into our not-remotely-rehearsed joint set type dealy. The Walls join us, and we play the Weight by the band, oh, oh so badly, but sure it doesn’t matter. Then we do No Diggidy by Blackstreet and before you know the venue is now heaving itself . People jumping, dancing going bonkers in front of us, the floor is pounding and shaking and you’d have a not unreasonable fear for your life.
Scanners finally gets a round in. Later the strippers would fleece him. What was he expecting?
The people running the show seemed pretty pleased by all this. I guess they’re easily amused. So, in thanks as we’re sitting there in a little adjacent bar, they bring us tray after tray of booze, (and there’s like a million of us) and these two good looking ( a banality over there) bar girls get down and sing us Slovakian folk numbers. We reciprocate with nothing, Except John singing It’s all Good by Dempsey and the rest of us mangling about two verses of Fairytale in New York, and that, in view of all the camera and microphones that Donal and Mike had brought, constituted our cultural exchange. Our excuse is we’ve been part of the EU 30 years now, so our culture has basically been subsumed in to a nice little homogenous half-American sludge. We’ll give you culture, we say, and hit a bender of biblical proportions that would have made any of you bastards at home proud of us. From the raucous singing, like myself and Simons Impassioned version of Darling Nikki, to Steve Walls pretty impassioned version of Viva Las Vegas that included dancing on a table on kicking the entire contents of said table, glasses and ashtrays and what not into the people watching. From late bars to strip clubs to night clubs to getting man handled by bouncers who were clearly once Stasi or something and stealing absinthe from bars to getting back to the bus so late that Hans the driver, newly awoken, comes up and thanks us, without a smidge of sarcasm (he’s German… duh), for keeping the noise levels down all night and allowing him his sleep. No probs, buddy we say. You’d do the same for us. We prepare to leave for Valmez, and the promise of our first proper bed in a week.
The venue is a boat, and why not.
“I like New York in June…. How about you?”
If I could take that image from my head forever, I have to erase the day. The image of Simon and John D, standing on the gang walk of the ship, as we unloaded the gear in to the bus, the nice calm Danube night about us, their pants around their ankles, their heads on each others shoulders, perhaps a testicle dangling in the wind, those dulcet tones. I like New York in June…. How about you? I’d have to erase the day. I’d have to erase the previous few hours, were we were in the venue, watching the drinking, and meeting with the Irish contingent of Budapest, where we were falling around the dance floor to the equal amusement and horror of those around us, after we watched the Walls set, and having being so painfully aware of the scarcity of crowd and their, um, distance from the stage we pushed our tables up to the front of the stage and drank and sang along and danced like fucking idiots. I’d have to erase even that. Though I could go in reverse and ignore our show, see us on stage squeezing the notes back into their instruments and sucking into a vacuum the sound of music in that big empty hall, picture the whole show diminishing back into the moment we walked on the stage, the eraser heads of memory clicking into place. But then, it wasn’t too bad, because we’d been so thrilled by the venue in the first place. I’d use the erase heads to take the support band and revert them to impressionable teenagers again, then lend them some decent music so that they’d depart into another genre and not do to us what they did. But then that wasn’t to bad, cos while they played we stood on the deck and watched night take the Danube, colour it black and fleck it with lights. We wouldn’t have had those little secret conversations we had, wouldn’t have confirmed those little things we thought we knew, that if the eraser heads of memory could suddenly click onto and save us…..
We wouldn’t have had the dubious fun of struggling with the city, immediately over awed by it’s span, it size, awed into submission by the struggle to find a Turkish bath that did no more than fulfil it’s obligations by being more of a bath, less of study in bureaucracy, cowed by the restaurant and it’s indecipherable menu and the fact that everything, even the fish chowder, came with beef, apparently, and leaving certain vegetarians, ahem – me, going, I can’t eat this and the fat little waiter looking at me, un-understandingly going, “but… it’s beef”. I’d erase that bit.
I’d have to go over the hilarity of watching Hans the driver losing the rag with some guy parked in our spot down by the boat when arrived, with traffic piling honkingly behind our ample purple behind, and kicking his car cos he wouldn’t move (or he wouldn’t move cos Hans kicked his car), and we cherish that, like when we finally came to the venue and thought to ourselves, cool, an actual fucking boat, which on the inside is big, village big, spacious, nice, friendly, with nice staff, like the guy who took time out to help me use the phone card (which didn’t fucking work), and the people who fed us (no beef) in the upstairs restaurant, the view the Imperial buildings that line the banks and the girl with the chest surgery over by the window. And we’d have to get rid of it all, the fourteen hours driving in, the interminable waits at the Slovakian borders (the only people left who stamp a passport), the tiny Slovak towns we travelled through as misty dawn gave way and we thought about all that had gone up to this point and wondered, will this ever seem remotely real. We’ll keep all that, though, we will, Cos mostly we’ll just be remembering Simon and John D, standing on the gang walk of the ship, as we unloaded the gear in to the bus, the nice calm Danube night about us, their pants around their ankles, their heads on each others shoulders, perhaps a testicle dangling in the wind, those dulcet tones. I like New York in June…. How about you?
Mission for mutha-fucking love. Paul models the "polish condom" look. Score will he? Read more...
“Mission…. For Love”
Up early, some of us sit in the lounge of the bus watching as Warsaw becomes small hamlets, then industrial centres, then suburbs, then row upon row upon row of identical looking, yellowish apartment blocks, then businesses and pizza hut and then the massive building that Donal points out as the venue. Holy Jeepers. The Palace of Culture and Science, as it’s modestly referred, is Stalinist in the extreme. It’s his overbearing present to Warsaw after it was levelled by the Nazis. It’s huge in scale, and not just cos it’s a big building, but the doors and windows are huge, the statues, twenty feet tall, of Russian workers with Asiatic features busy working, thinking, scything, being generally industrious. Surrounded by bunker – like shopping centres that seem to sell nothing but mobile phone covers, and ugly buildings that look like canary wharf, we’re kinda under whelmed and hungover. A cursory walk over there reveals nothing but a couple of churches with statues of Il Papa out side and a tobacconist. Makes you wonder why in all history people have been fighting over this country.
But then we go for a walk, and it’s not easy coaxing the kids and their hangovers to try one more corner, knowing that somewhere is hidden the quaintness, the history, the actual stories. “lets stop here, get some food and go back to the venue,” they moan. One more road. And then there we are, old town squares, statues left half standing by war, nice restraunts, and organ grinder with a monkey (stuffed) cranking out I just called to say I love you. On the way back we pass war memorials and museums we wish we had time to explore. There you go. It’s not that bad at all is it?
The venue, however grandly situated, is four flights of stairs up. There we are, carting gear, amps and pianos and egos up to the gods, and then we’re being met with the uncaring gaze of the cool, so you’re the band, they say, you better not bore us.
Around seven, spirits are lowered by remembering that one hasn’t had sleep in three fucking days and the venue are giving us beer that’s so drinkable. Tonight I’m going to sleep, not booze, is blandly muttered here. WE soundcheck and wake our selves up by taking in some local cuisine, and a quaint little place they call Pizza Hut, that sells gelatinous pasta straight from the microwave. On the way back we traipse through one of those bunkerous shopping centres searching for a bargain, and the best we can do is a t-shirt that says Mission for Love in silver letters on a black background, and is vaguely the shape and texture of a seven year olds bathing suit. We give it to Paul, who, obviously thrilled, wears it for all of two minutes.
So, there was a gig? We watched the Walls and some had boozes and felt vaguely awake. The crowd who stay to the end are there coz they want to be. We play pretty good, finish on a high, and they scream MORE and we’re like, Jesus, thanks, but… we’re fucked. MORE, they say, and who are we to argue, after the two weird previous gigs, now this. We do more, and finish and they jump on tables and kick up a stink and shout MORE and we’re kinda of wondering if they displayed this kind of fervour back in ’39, would there have been a war? We play one more. Superlady, till at the end there’s us and the Walls and, well, everyone on the stage making some kinda of noise and we’re all sinking to our knees and then we’re finished, but energised by the vibe and we’re like COOL! We’re on fucking TOUR! And then Donal says, nice one, we’re leaving in 10 minutes. Pack up the gear, down four flights of stairs, in to the cool evening, onto the stifling bus, off to the late night filling station for booze. So Poland, we came and tickled you, or tried. She wouldn’t put out till the third date, non plussed by the sight of us, all posturing and sloppy tongues and wheaty, hopsy, barleyish breath. We made amends, we pulled our charm out of our holes in Krakow, and she appreciated our efforts, but shunned us still, after nary a peck. But tonight, probably knowing we shipped out in morning, she gave in. We stuck our musical fingers in all her holes and she fucking loved it. So we drifting off to sleep, eventually (finally – practically anaesthetised by the booze) with a smile of smug self satisfaction, and thrill of what’s to come like the time we brushed off a booby aged ten.
One loves a yellow door, one does.
“Hello…. I’m still in Katowice”
The drive to Krakow is grand, white snow-snug country side, with stubbly trees, bumpy road that throws one from one’s bunk. We get there and check into the day room in the hotel to have a wash and a bit of breakfast and try and get some humanity back into our souls. We realise, and not quickly, that we’ve gone and left Jurgen behind in Katowice. He calls Lisa from a police station. One day in, disaster already. Krakow is far more pleasant on the eyeball than Katowice. We stroll by the river up to the castle, along the wide boulevards and into the old town. We do stupid tourist things like walk reverently, sight-seeingly into churches, like there were no such things at home. We buy cheap, but impressive looking, girlfriend-friendly trinkets in the market and reckon we’re going to look pretty fucking cool when we get home. John D buys a walking stick, Simon buys leather gloves. Everyone buys fancy wooden chess sets that we know were mass produced in a Polish factory somewhere. John and I stock up in the supermarket next to the hotel, Danone Activia and cup a soups, tea bags and bottles of vodka. You know, the essentials. Around the corner form the bus looks like prostitutes and murder once the sun goes down. The venue is like a baroque beatnik café, situated right on the old square. The room is lovely, but more suited to poetry readings or something. Mike gets the best out of the place, and, while waiting for the magic to happen, we sip on the beers. Except Paul who’s learnt some kinda lesson, and Jurgen, who’s had about fifteen minutes sleep and is goggle eyed with delirium. We bang out a couple of sets. Hard to gauge the vibe, but the Walls did pretty well and are sitting at the bar watching us and eying birds and sipping cheap beer and I’m on the stage thinking, Jesus, this could be alright couldn’t it? Shows what I know. Later after a few beers, and me still all hunched over with residual unwellness from the flu I had brought with me, I bump into Steve Wall from the Walls and ask him which way back to the bus. Oh, over there, he points. Sure? Pretty sure. Half an hour later, walking down quaintly underlit, quaintly serpentine, quaintly prostitute and murder infested roads, I jump out in front of a cab and bugger off to the bus (in the opposite fucking direction). Sleep evades and I can’t seem to get the fucking tv to work.
"no snow, no show" we said. And we fucking meant it too.
“Vinnie is lying in the snow. There are soldiers”
Like Roy Orbison, we drove all night. We had landed in Prague and it was dark and cold and we were all excited at the sight of our bus, long and purple and sleek, so we dumped the gear and bagsied our bunks. Then off we go, stopping once at a service station and buying so much beer and crisps (paprika flavour) that we crash their computer system three times. Then we’re all sitting up till the wee hours, getting drunk and watching the road unfurl beneath us. One by one we go to get Vinny a beer, and drift in to uneasy, buffeted sleep.
Katowice is Poland. We have time to stroll around looking for nosh and marvelling at the amount of shit there is on the streets, brought into stark relief by the melting snow. We go for lunch somewhere and the owner fills us with shots of vodka. Vodka means hello and goodbye and how’s the gammy leg in Poland. Vodka is like the Bablefish. We are not yet insane.
We taxi gear to the venue, some trendy pub stuck on this never ending road of industrial nightmare and dilapidation. It’s not strictly speaking a venue, so we sample the local cheap brew while we wait for the pa and all that sound crap that has to go on before the magic happens. We’re at the bar exchanging bawdy stories and making small talk with the bar girl. “In my country, I am VERY famous.”
John has just remembered he forgot to bring the pictionary. Aww, will some vodka help?
So, after a swift dinner of kebabs from next door we do our gig. It’s pretty awful, first night jitters, perhaps, or the fact that the Piano Has Been Drinking so much that he can’t remember the songs, or when he does, he butchers them. Mumbling into the microphone at a table of blonde girls and soaking up some bizarre vibes from the Nepalese Surgeon who’s dancing manically and screaming “Irelandia!” inches away from us. So glad when it’s over. Crazy Tibetan guy speaks in odd tongues and touches some ladies. The club music comes on, Euro Trance stuff. I’m off, to load and unload the van and watch a DvD on the bus. Seems I missed nothing, at least nothing that is printable here. Suffice to say, some of our number end up in the snow drifts, while the soldiers slink by, and some happy Tibetan chases us up the road begging for just one more photo.
