You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July, 2008.
Free gig, no recession excuses here, and i didn’t rain either, so it had better be full, we mused. And it was, it was well full. Which cheered us up no end, cos last time we played in Galway it was shit. Or we were shit. Thankfully there was no-one there to witness it though. Not this time, 13,000 eyes upon me as we opened with The Day The Arms That Came Out Of The Wall and i started to play, fingers plucking, strings held, only for there to be no noise, not a squeak, not a peep. Nothing. Colour me fuck this, as we struggled to make sure everything was plugged in, and it was, and on came the noise briefly, before embarrassingly fucking off again.
So i kicked the amp, for fucked it was. The head had stopped with the power, and as the soundlad has taken the signal direct from the head, there was nothing coming out. Eventually we got a di box up, and for fun we kept kicking it so that the entire rig would bark and crackle and the monitors would spew earache right up at us. I struggled to hear myself, i probably wasn’t in tune, so i postured instead. Luckily the whol thing even out, and we played quite well, quite raucously when we could. Everyone had a great show, and Jurgen did his dance again, which, as ever, aroused me. Afterwards i was maudlin, i hate when things fuck up like that. Tru to form the amp’s worked fine since then. Some dodgy electrics or somefink, what do i know, i’m not an electrician.
We cheered up by drinking a lot of booze and some how convincing ourselves that we smartly hit the sack quite early, so as to be fit for the drive home the following day. Although on close inspection it appeared that this was in fact nonsense, as we hadn’t even left the venue by half four. Of course the only evidence of that is some dings and craters in the front of John’s car that you would hardly not even notice. If you were facing the other way.
All in all I’d like to think we rekindled an old flame, indeed some people were dancing up front, right under my nose, just like the Warwick days. Gugai was pleased, but i suspect he might charge in next time. Be warned.
And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for us meddlin kids.
To celebrate our being asked to play at the Transmission festival in Kufstien, Austria, and subsequently being told, with three days notice and nearly 3 grands worth of nonrefundable plane tickets, that the show was now a no-go, some of us, hardened by age and cynicism and thus able to absorb this disappointment, hopped a plane to travel about the alps in search of a decent pint and more’s the point, the Perfect Schnitzel. During this sojourn we hoped to perhaps learn something of ourselves, each other, the way of the schnitzel and to quell the inner monologue urging one to seek out and exact revenge for this latest, wallet annihilating slight.
It started well enough, with our resident Deutschophone Jurgen bargaining us a hire car by putting on a lamentable little boys voice and saying “for only 50 extra euros we could have had a GERMAN car.” The frau took pity on us, perhaps reading in our faces the recent hurt of a 3 grand excision, and avanti! we were off, into the Burg of Munich, in search of a bed, pint and the first of many Schnitzels.
The first schnitzel encountered was outside Jurgens hotel, and it wasn’t bad, although it was turkey, and this is a schnitzel so-so, according to our Teutonic captain. I chose a rather nice Dunkel to accompany my dinner, it was full flavoured and fruity on the nose, a good beer. The second, equally magnificent. And so on. It was warm and the air around us had never tasted the sea, it sat heavy and grainy and unmoving. It wasn’t bad. We travelled around looking for interesting bars, but every we went seemed to be closing, or playing euro-trance. In booze desperation John asked some random Munchener who was leaving a bar that was also, exasperatingly, closing early (it was about 11.30. On a Friday night!) Oh sure, says our new cohort, there’s a place just around the corner, so gleefully we followed him down Hamlins tiny streets, like so many rats. The place he led us to was called Fan Arena, which is a shit name, and had a Bayern Munich crest on the window. So maybe we can talk football, or something, eh? I entered after Vin and John who stood there in front of me, looking around. The barman came from behind his bar to stop me from going further. “Private Party” he said. “You can’t come in”
“I just want a scoop” I attempted to argue, to no avail. Meanwhile John and Vinnie made their way back toward me, quicksmart. “lets go.” Turns out it was a private party. A private Nazi party if you will, full of skinheads and tattoos and slogans on posters that you didn’t need to be necessarily fluent in German to understand, such is the universality of the language of hate. We hopped it, but our random friend who had led us to this den of iniquity wanted to argue the toss with the bar man and his cuddly looking sidekick. “Assholes! We just want a drink”, as bearla as well, if you don’t mind. Eh, it’s grand, we insist, we weren’t that thirsty anyway.
Luckily for us, we found ourselves standing right outside our hotel, and next to the hotel there was a much more welcoming establishment, that had beer and ashtrays and a bar woman who poured herself a generous helping of red wine everytime some body ordered a drink. Which was often. A regular, who collapsed into a somnamulistic heap on the bar at about 3 in the morning, made us look good. At least we weren’t bathing in our own drool. Not yet anyway.
