Jealous of those of you who sleep on stationary objects
Bonjour from Flensberg, a scenic little German city near the Danish border. I'm in a reasonably priced internet cafe, so I can let my fingers do the talking for a little while. I either haven't had time to write or haven't been willing to pay exorbitant price to write in about a week. (Internet on the ferry cost €2 for 14 minutes. While expressing nostalgia last night for American Taco Bells' comfort food and comfort prices, Justin speculated that the same food here would cost "six euros and a kick in the dick.")
So let's get caught up through the past week or so. We spent two and a half days in Copenhagen. Day one involved driving 11 hours from Mannheim to play with Framtid. Great show. The next day it poured all day, so we just sat inside watching tv and doing nothing, which was frustrating. We stayed with a dude named Lasse, a super hospitable and, shall we say, resourceful punk (the kind who offers to get you anything you want and you know he can follow through with it). Our show that night was at a proper club with a "garage metal" band and a psychobilly band (the latter was actually really good). We got shit pay that night, but I swear we had a truckload of beverages at our disposal. Even I drank three bottled sodas. It's amusing to play at clubs with backstage/dressing room setups. It's nice to be treated like a "real" musician, but at the same time I catch myself thinking, "um, we can just piss against the wall outside and drink tap water and that'd be cool." Which is not to say that we aren't availing ourselves of the great outdoors with some frequency.
Day three in K-town allowed for some exploration. We didn't start our wanderings until late afternoon, but with sun in a barely flirtatious relationship with the horizon, late nights offer up the local sights just as well as afternoons. Mila, Shravan, Forrest and I walked through the downtown on our way over to Christiania. Copenhagen is pleasant enough to walk through (and almost everyone here appears to be in very good shape), but there's nothing breath-taking about the city center. The most unusual sight, to my Yank eyes, were all the bikes. They are everywhere here. I have never seen half so many in one place in my life. Apparently Copenhagen is as renowned as Amsterdam for its pedal power. Bike lanes are ubiquitous, located at a special elevation between street and sidewalk. Among bikers and pedestrians alike, there is a stupefying respect for traffic laws. It's understandable that everyone has to be more careful because of the cyclist factor, but man, if you jaywalk you are out there on your own.
Christiania is a part of Christianshavn, an island with bridge access from the downtown. I don't know all the details (I'm sure some of you know more than I), but Christiania was given to artsy squatter types by the city some decades ago. Now it's better known for its drug transactions than for anything else, I think. We were led the last few blocks there by some dude who was paying a visit to his dealer. He said that years ago Christiania featured open-air hash markets with 20 or 30 varieties. Things are more discreet now, but hardly underground. Across the street from where we stopped to sit and drink something, there were multiple people selling joints openly. Who knew you could cop a smoke outside the Woodstock Cafe on Pusherstreet? Apparently the cops roll in every few days just to harass the dealers, but they weren't around while we were there. I regret that we didn't walk around the lake and see all the makeshift dwellings that have been erected by squatters over the years. I'm not sure how the place is organized politically either. I need to read up. Anyway, it's largely a haven for burnouts, though there was something vaguely inspiring about walking under a sign as we left that read: "You are now entering the EU."
On our walk toward Christiania, I had seen someone handing out flyers for the Erotica Museum, which I had remembered reading about a year or two ago. We found it easily on our way back to Lasse's place, and we decided to drop €15 each to check it out. It was disappointing. The first displays you encounter are ancient representations of sexuality, but you very quickly find yourself surrounded by Playboy-era Western pornography. Forrest and Shravan, who had wandered ahead of me, were scarred by big-screen bestiality. By the time I got to that room, the screen was showing some tame 70s striptease video. Two rooms down (the last room in the museum) featured a wall of tv screens, simultaneously showing bad recent hardcore porn. One even had the Paris video. But...above those were a row of screens showing a skate video. And there was dance music playing. I believe the appropriate phrase is WTF? At any rate, with my understanding that the museum is unique, I wasn't expecting it to be so superficial. Eh, whatever, we saw naked people.
Our date in Malmö had always been tentative and didn't end up panning out (hence the extra day in K-town), so we drove to Gothenberg the next day. The bridge from Copenhagen to Malmö is hella expensive, like €70. Especially considering the ferry tickets to Finland and back, we got hammered money-wise in Scandanavia. If we ever tour Europe again, the northern countries might get the shaft. They're not remunerative enough to cover the exorbitant travel expenses involved. Our Gothenberg show was fun. We played with a Finnish band called Confusa (mid-tempo melodic punk with dual female vox, check 'em out if that's your thing) who played Stockholm with us the next night as well.
Stockholm was a big disappointment. Our show was in a basement in a house about 20 minutes outside the city. Three of our friends from Imperial Leather came to the show, and it was great to see them (Amyl and Kenko are pregnant with a future punk). We played with Confusa and a Russian band called Distress. The attendance was pretty low for a Saturday. We caught some dumb drunk teenage girls trying to steal shirts from us. I didn't have time to see any of my other Swedish friends, and we had to be at the ferry early the next morning, so we didn't have time to walk around the city. Total bummer.
The ferry from Stockholm to Turku takes about 11 hours, including a quick stop on the way at some place called Marie Hamina. I (ignorantly) expected most of the trip to be through open water, but we spent a lot of time passing through Swedish and Finnish archipelagos. We had picked up Borys, the last 1/3 of the Agipunk crew, in Stockholm, so we were rolling seven deep at this point. We got a pair of rooms down below (€16 for a room that sleeps four; not bad) to catch some shut-eye and shower. (Current shower count two weeks in: me, 4; Justin, 4; Shravan, 5; Forrest, 5.) I slept a few hours, showered, went upstairs (the ship has like 10 floors) and read for a while, rested some more. I had finally picked up a Cormac McCarthy book while in JFK when I realized the book I brought with me was in my checked bag. I'll pretend I chose it because people have been telling me I should check him out, but really it was the Oprah sticker on the cover that sealed the deal. If you're ever feeling a little too good about life, I suggest cracking open The Road.
Once we disembarked, we had a short drive up the coast to Pori. Our show was at a nice little bar with a good sound system, but very few people showed up. There had a been a fest in town that weekend, so playing on Sunday night was catch-as-catch-can. We stayed at an apartment less than a block from the venue. The guy who set up the show lived there, and he said he was going to go sleep at his girlfriend's once we got settled in. Instead he stayed up talking loudly and listening to music with a couple of his drunk friends. Our group had started out spread out between two rooms, but almost everyone quickly migrated to the bedroom when it became apparent that the late-night bullshit session wasn't ending any time soon. For some reason, Borys stayed in the living room, and the rest of us all had a good laugh when one of the drunk locals told him to "feel free to get naked" (to which he responded with genuine geniality that he'd "rather be sleeping"). I finally went out to ask them to take pity on our tired asses and shut up, and the dude who lived there was sitting on the floor naked puffing weed. I would have been moved to salute and sing the Finnish national anthem if only I knew the tune.
The next morning I popped into a record store next to the venue. It was full of rockabilly and other stuff I don't care about. If I had gone the other way up the street from the apartment where we stayed, I would have encountered a much better store and possibly gotten the jump on the Heresy/Concrete Sox LP that Shravan scooped up for a measly €15. We got to Tampere early, so I had time to walk around. Decent town, but the most interesting things I saw were a museum devoted to Lenin and an "erotic restaurant" discreetly named Big Tits. Tamepere actually has a long punk history, and we played at what I was told was a legendary club called Vastavilde (or something like that). We played with Selfish, one of the bigger Scandinavian punk bands going. We played one of our best sets of tour - and sold nothing save one record that was purchased before we played. There appears to be no logical relationship between how well we play and how much merch we sell. The punks have been very stingy to this point.
Oh, for the one or two of you who know Nahmi, we saw her in Tampere. She's living near there with Perttu. She's still totally fucked up, Perttu is still a drunken wreck...and they're having a baby! Hooray!
We had to drive all the Selfish dudes to the gig in Helsinki and make a couple stops along the way, so we didn't get there till about 8:30. That left essentially no time for me to explore, which was really frustrating. I had been looking forward to seeing the city. And the little bit of walking I did caused me to miss Kuolema's set, which was further frustrating. Otto, the drummer for Kuolema and Selfish, set up all three Finland shows and is a really good guy. And a really good drummer. Kuolema US tour in spring '08. Allegedly.
We went to a bar to kill time after the show before driving back to catch the ferry in Turku back to Stockholm. On the ferry, we immediately got a room and hit the sack. I must have slept at least 7 hours, though it didn't feel like it. I took a shower and got some food, and before I knew it we were driving off the ferry toward Malmö. We were hoping to have a place to crash in there or possibly with Lasse in Copenhagen on our way here in Flensberg. Neither panned out, so we drove all night. I caught some sleep on the floor of the van.
So here I am. The memory card on my camera is full, so I'm going to have to upload pictures for y'all sometime soon. Till then...
So let's get caught up through the past week or so. We spent two and a half days in Copenhagen. Day one involved driving 11 hours from Mannheim to play with Framtid. Great show. The next day it poured all day, so we just sat inside watching tv and doing nothing, which was frustrating. We stayed with a dude named Lasse, a super hospitable and, shall we say, resourceful punk (the kind who offers to get you anything you want and you know he can follow through with it). Our show that night was at a proper club with a "garage metal" band and a psychobilly band (the latter was actually really good). We got shit pay that night, but I swear we had a truckload of beverages at our disposal. Even I drank three bottled sodas. It's amusing to play at clubs with backstage/dressing room setups. It's nice to be treated like a "real" musician, but at the same time I catch myself thinking, "um, we can just piss against the wall outside and drink tap water and that'd be cool." Which is not to say that we aren't availing ourselves of the great outdoors with some frequency.
Day three in K-town allowed for some exploration. We didn't start our wanderings until late afternoon, but with sun in a barely flirtatious relationship with the horizon, late nights offer up the local sights just as well as afternoons. Mila, Shravan, Forrest and I walked through the downtown on our way over to Christiania. Copenhagen is pleasant enough to walk through (and almost everyone here appears to be in very good shape), but there's nothing breath-taking about the city center. The most unusual sight, to my Yank eyes, were all the bikes. They are everywhere here. I have never seen half so many in one place in my life. Apparently Copenhagen is as renowned as Amsterdam for its pedal power. Bike lanes are ubiquitous, located at a special elevation between street and sidewalk. Among bikers and pedestrians alike, there is a stupefying respect for traffic laws. It's understandable that everyone has to be more careful because of the cyclist factor, but man, if you jaywalk you are out there on your own.
Christiania is a part of Christianshavn, an island with bridge access from the downtown. I don't know all the details (I'm sure some of you know more than I), but Christiania was given to artsy squatter types by the city some decades ago. Now it's better known for its drug transactions than for anything else, I think. We were led the last few blocks there by some dude who was paying a visit to his dealer. He said that years ago Christiania featured open-air hash markets with 20 or 30 varieties. Things are more discreet now, but hardly underground. Across the street from where we stopped to sit and drink something, there were multiple people selling joints openly. Who knew you could cop a smoke outside the Woodstock Cafe on Pusherstreet? Apparently the cops roll in every few days just to harass the dealers, but they weren't around while we were there. I regret that we didn't walk around the lake and see all the makeshift dwellings that have been erected by squatters over the years. I'm not sure how the place is organized politically either. I need to read up. Anyway, it's largely a haven for burnouts, though there was something vaguely inspiring about walking under a sign as we left that read: "You are now entering the EU."
On our walk toward Christiania, I had seen someone handing out flyers for the Erotica Museum, which I had remembered reading about a year or two ago. We found it easily on our way back to Lasse's place, and we decided to drop €15 each to check it out. It was disappointing. The first displays you encounter are ancient representations of sexuality, but you very quickly find yourself surrounded by Playboy-era Western pornography. Forrest and Shravan, who had wandered ahead of me, were scarred by big-screen bestiality. By the time I got to that room, the screen was showing some tame 70s striptease video. Two rooms down (the last room in the museum) featured a wall of tv screens, simultaneously showing bad recent hardcore porn. One even had the Paris video. But...above those were a row of screens showing a skate video. And there was dance music playing. I believe the appropriate phrase is WTF? At any rate, with my understanding that the museum is unique, I wasn't expecting it to be so superficial. Eh, whatever, we saw naked people.
Our date in Malmö had always been tentative and didn't end up panning out (hence the extra day in K-town), so we drove to Gothenberg the next day. The bridge from Copenhagen to Malmö is hella expensive, like €70. Especially considering the ferry tickets to Finland and back, we got hammered money-wise in Scandanavia. If we ever tour Europe again, the northern countries might get the shaft. They're not remunerative enough to cover the exorbitant travel expenses involved. Our Gothenberg show was fun. We played with a Finnish band called Confusa (mid-tempo melodic punk with dual female vox, check 'em out if that's your thing) who played Stockholm with us the next night as well.
Stockholm was a big disappointment. Our show was in a basement in a house about 20 minutes outside the city. Three of our friends from Imperial Leather came to the show, and it was great to see them (Amyl and Kenko are pregnant with a future punk). We played with Confusa and a Russian band called Distress. The attendance was pretty low for a Saturday. We caught some dumb drunk teenage girls trying to steal shirts from us. I didn't have time to see any of my other Swedish friends, and we had to be at the ferry early the next morning, so we didn't have time to walk around the city. Total bummer.
The ferry from Stockholm to Turku takes about 11 hours, including a quick stop on the way at some place called Marie Hamina. I (ignorantly) expected most of the trip to be through open water, but we spent a lot of time passing through Swedish and Finnish archipelagos. We had picked up Borys, the last 1/3 of the Agipunk crew, in Stockholm, so we were rolling seven deep at this point. We got a pair of rooms down below (€16 for a room that sleeps four; not bad) to catch some shut-eye and shower. (Current shower count two weeks in: me, 4; Justin, 4; Shravan, 5; Forrest, 5.) I slept a few hours, showered, went upstairs (the ship has like 10 floors) and read for a while, rested some more. I had finally picked up a Cormac McCarthy book while in JFK when I realized the book I brought with me was in my checked bag. I'll pretend I chose it because people have been telling me I should check him out, but really it was the Oprah sticker on the cover that sealed the deal. If you're ever feeling a little too good about life, I suggest cracking open The Road.
Once we disembarked, we had a short drive up the coast to Pori. Our show was at a nice little bar with a good sound system, but very few people showed up. There had a been a fest in town that weekend, so playing on Sunday night was catch-as-catch-can. We stayed at an apartment less than a block from the venue. The guy who set up the show lived there, and he said he was going to go sleep at his girlfriend's once we got settled in. Instead he stayed up talking loudly and listening to music with a couple of his drunk friends. Our group had started out spread out between two rooms, but almost everyone quickly migrated to the bedroom when it became apparent that the late-night bullshit session wasn't ending any time soon. For some reason, Borys stayed in the living room, and the rest of us all had a good laugh when one of the drunk locals told him to "feel free to get naked" (to which he responded with genuine geniality that he'd "rather be sleeping"). I finally went out to ask them to take pity on our tired asses and shut up, and the dude who lived there was sitting on the floor naked puffing weed. I would have been moved to salute and sing the Finnish national anthem if only I knew the tune.
The next morning I popped into a record store next to the venue. It was full of rockabilly and other stuff I don't care about. If I had gone the other way up the street from the apartment where we stayed, I would have encountered a much better store and possibly gotten the jump on the Heresy/Concrete Sox LP that Shravan scooped up for a measly €15. We got to Tampere early, so I had time to walk around. Decent town, but the most interesting things I saw were a museum devoted to Lenin and an "erotic restaurant" discreetly named Big Tits. Tamepere actually has a long punk history, and we played at what I was told was a legendary club called Vastavilde (or something like that). We played with Selfish, one of the bigger Scandinavian punk bands going. We played one of our best sets of tour - and sold nothing save one record that was purchased before we played. There appears to be no logical relationship between how well we play and how much merch we sell. The punks have been very stingy to this point.
Oh, for the one or two of you who know Nahmi, we saw her in Tampere. She's living near there with Perttu. She's still totally fucked up, Perttu is still a drunken wreck...and they're having a baby! Hooray!
We had to drive all the Selfish dudes to the gig in Helsinki and make a couple stops along the way, so we didn't get there till about 8:30. That left essentially no time for me to explore, which was really frustrating. I had been looking forward to seeing the city. And the little bit of walking I did caused me to miss Kuolema's set, which was further frustrating. Otto, the drummer for Kuolema and Selfish, set up all three Finland shows and is a really good guy. And a really good drummer. Kuolema US tour in spring '08. Allegedly.
We went to a bar to kill time after the show before driving back to catch the ferry in Turku back to Stockholm. On the ferry, we immediately got a room and hit the sack. I must have slept at least 7 hours, though it didn't feel like it. I took a shower and got some food, and before I knew it we were driving off the ferry toward Malmö. We were hoping to have a place to crash in there or possibly with Lasse in Copenhagen on our way here in Flensberg. Neither panned out, so we drove all night. I caught some sleep on the floor of the van.
So here I am. The memory card on my camera is full, so I'm going to have to upload pictures for y'all sometime soon. Till then...
3 Comments:
http://www.thelocal.se/7650/
so a little web admin bird tells me your workers collective may be waiting for you to respond to an email re: giving the group i work for a generous in-kind donation. i thought it would be most appropriate to document that rumor here.
and ps, where are the incriminating shots of you w/hash pipe?
-a
you paid good money to see what?!!! That is sad.
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