from the mundane to the mundane and back again

Graz, Austria, 7/1/11 (12:30 am)
Lots of Things Break on Stage & The Inherent Shittiness of the After Show Rock Disco
Good Christ, it was a tough one tonight. Two or three strings broke during songs, problems with cables, a drum pedal crapped out and problems with the sound board. Other than that it was pretty good. After the show in a horrible Euro weekend rock club tradition, there was the After Show Rock Disco. In a failed attempt to keep the crowd in the building after the show, the club usually starts playing a bunch of old “Heavy Alternative” rock songs, complete with smoke machines going full blast and every pulsing, strobing dance light is on the “annoy” setting.  So breaking down gear during the After Show Rock Discois like a failed combat mission and I’ve lost a shitload of stuff throughout the years, hopefully none tonight.  It is so goddamned angrifying. This morning it’s short drive to the Volt Festival in Hungary and then off to Greece, if it’s still a country by then.

(Fig. 1) In Graz, illegally parked cars are not towed, they are hoisted away by giant cranes or helicopters

(Fig. 2) please see caption for Fig. 1

Maribor, Slovenia 6/29/11

I really wanted to use the phrase “they put the slo in Slovenia” today but I couldn’t, the local crew was pretty solid.  Even with the language barrier being more of a language barricade, it worked out fine.  Crowd was really good as well. It was a weird festival, outside in the old part of town, near a river. It seems like a two week long street fair featuring foreign bands that no one has heard of.  The port-a-john next to the dressing room had an odd smell, besides the usual acrid shit, it had cherry cough drop smell as well.  therefore ruining cherry cough drops and shit for me.  As we were staying at a ski resort a bunch of us took the ski left to the top of the mountain, which seemed like it was 5-7 miles straight up.  After the cries of “These things go down” subsided we settled in for an almost pleasant journey. I heard that it was going to be hot around here but I have no handle on the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion equation, so I did one of those online converter things but I picked Kelvin instead of Fahrenheit so the temperature I got was 400 degrees Kelvin (that bit goes out to Jon Kleiman who’s a big fan of Kelvin, and to Art Buchwald who’s a big fan of ex-Met Kelvin Chapman).  Greece in 3 days, with all the unrest and strikes I’m not worried about getting in I’m worried about getting out.

when I was a kid, we would make words "russian" by adding "ski" to the end of them. Who knew we were right?

Stuttgart, Germany 6/20/11

We played the Hurricane/Southside festivals on Saturday and Sunday, they are back to back festivals on either side of Germany. The most interesting part about the Hurricane festival was I got a picture of a couple of human statues eating lunch. I firmly believe that human statues should conduct all their “human” business in private so as not destroy the illusion. Seeing the human statues eat shook me to the core. The Southside festival was interesting because everything on the ground that wasn’t asphalt was a soul sucking quagmire of mud and shit. Since the Krakow show was canceled we have two days off in Stuttgart. There was a giant protest outside the train station, I’m not sure what it was about, but hearing a loud impassioned speech in front of a large crowd in Germany left me a little unnerved.

mud won't stop fans of British Sea Power (the band, not the navy)

human statues blowing their cover