Looking back on the finish line

Been back for a week now. Good thing I did a lot of walking in Europe--made it easier for bikeless work days this week. I'm not sure I fully appreciated my separation from cellular technology over the summer; being back to work demands an indentured relationship. Oh well. First world problems...

I can give any and all of you full versions of various tour anecdotes in person, so I'll keep this last bit brief in the interest of, well, my own interest. But I did want to recap the last two weeks here so I can move on to posting other stuff.

I left you in Potsdam after our show at Archiv on July 10th. We had a few days left in Germany starting in Mainz, which is outside Frankfurt (of which we saw nothing). The show was at a house that was on a university campus, though I think none of the residents are students. It had started as a squat at some point and evolved into a more official relationship with the school. The bathrooms were in a trailer on the same plot of land, and we played in a garage that was also part of the complex. This was the second of three shows on the tour featuring us as the only band. But the people were great, the acoustics in the garage were surprisingly good, we played well, and everyone had a good time. I asked about bathing facilities after the show, since at that point it had been a week since I last got under a shower head. The next morning we were taken to a campus building to shower, and for anyone planning to send me and my chops anniversary cards, that was the beginning of our relationship.

Next was Nuremberg, where we played with The Assassinators, whom we had met in Gdansk. They're a fun band, and I think they could get pretty big. Both of their 7"s are worth picking up. That show was ok, the sound guy kinda sucked, but whatever. We slept at the venue--or rather I should say other people slept. For some reason I couldn't fall asleep all night. Could have been the mate soda I drank that night, but I've never had caffeine affect me like that.

The next two days and nights were spent at the Yellow Dog fest in Packebusch out in the country. Best of times and worst of times, I guess. We had all been looking forward to it as the biggest show we would play on tour, and there were a number of other bands playing that we all liked. We knew that we were slotted to play the first night, but we didn't find out till after we got there that we would be playing last. Some of our set was really good, and some of it was terrible. There were a number of contributing factors to this. We went on really late and were all tired and/or drunker than we should have been. We played after To What End?, whose set was interrupted by multiple power failures. This happened to us once as well. The acoustics in the crowd were actually good for an open-air show, but up on stage it was a different story. The drums were set up way behind everything else, and so we all had trouble hearing each other. The first two songs went fine (and are posted as a video on our myspace page in the comments section; the sound is good, but there's a really annoying disjoint between the audio and visual aspects. Oh, and a wasted Justin will flip you off after the second song). But then on the third song I totally spaced out and created a train wreck. I can think of only one other song I've fucked up so badly live. The rest of the set was a mixed bag--no disasters, but we were a little off on a few songs. Thank god everyone watching was drunk by that point in the night.

I was furious with myself afterward and went straight to bed. None of us was happy with the performance, though we got some unexpected positive feedback the next day. A lot of the other bands on the bill both days played pretty straight d-beat, so at least we stood out stylistically. We were counting on selling a lot of merch at the fest, but that didn't happen (though I think that actually had nothing to do with our lackluster performance; we didn't sell much anywhere on tour). Standout bands were the big names, Wolfbrigade and Guided Cradle, and I was impressed by a German USHC-styled band called Solid Decline and by Vae Victis from Australia (whose tour ep I just threw on the stereo). They're friends with an Aussie friend of mine, and the singer was in a band called World On Welfare who did a split 7" with AOS that Shravan put out.

The effect that various substances had on various bandmates the second night of the fest is better relayed in person, but suffice it to say it was a quiet van ride to the Czech Republic. We didn't have border issues anywhere, and crossing into the CZ was no exception. I'm really amused that I left the US with zero Czech Republic stamps in my passport and came back with four--two with lil' cars, one with a lil' train, and one with a lil' plane. Our first show was there was in Kladno, right outside of Prague. We were warned that there was a high concentration of Nazis in the area, so we didn't do any wandering. Turned out that Justin had wrecked himself so badly the night before that he couldn't perform. Frustrating as that was, Shravan did an admirable job of faking his way through the songs Justin normally sings, and we actually played a good set. We stayed a house a block away from the pub that was some kid's family's house with the parents out of town. It was one of the coziest spots we slept in on tour. The next day we got a brief tour of Prague courtesy of Brian, the singer of the band we had played with the night before. Brian's an American who's lived in Prague for eight years, teaching school most of that time. He and his girlfriend served as hosts and tour guides for me and Julie when we visited after tour.

We walked around for an hour or so and ate a vegan restaurant called country life in the old downtown and then hit the rode for Liberec, which is north of Prague. Liberec was the first of three consecutive show played in band practice spaces. This one was on a university campus, and the turnout was ok. The weather in the Czech Republic was standard summer fare, but we had experienced hardly any heat since we left Italy. I think I favored pants over shorts for the middle two weeks of tour. So, as practice rooms can tend be, it was pretty hot in there. But it was like a walk-in freezer compared to our show the next day in Brno. It was oh-let's-see-if-I-can-make-it-through-the-set-without-passing-out hot. The only other time I've felt like that playing a show was in a basement in Philly last summer. Great show though! We played with a Mexican band called What If Gods Lie, who we had met in Gdansk. They're all good people. And Marek from Gasmask Records was there with the completed Aghast discography cassettes he had been working on. AND, those fucking kids lifted Justin off the ground during our set. That's a first. Someone must have pictures of it, and I can't wait to see them. A bunch of us went to a bar after the show, and I actually had a good time hanging out. I spent a lot of time talking with the guitar player from What If Gods Lie. He tried speaking to me in his limited English, and I tried speaking to him in my limited Spanish. After spending a month surrounded by a half dozen alien languages, it felt good to have the opportunity to actually get to speak something other than English. The Mexicans want to set up a short tour for us down there next summer. Nothing's definite, but we would love to play down there.

We got to the show in Otrokovice early the next day, and the self-storage shed/practice room we played in happened to be adjacent to a lake. It was a beautiful day, so I sat by the water and read for an hour. We played with WIGL again, and I think it was the last show of their tour. Not a bad show, but like in Brno, I was tormented by playing on cymbal stands that kept moving all over the place, which makes for a frustrating drumming experience. And I remember being eaten up by mosquitos after the show. That ridiculous Malignant Tumour video I posted was from that night, when they were hosting an MTV metal show.

Our show in Vienna was the last one be set up; I think it had been booked only days before we left. There punk scene there is negligible, and the one squat that often hosts shows is closed during the summer. So we played a new spot that had opened recently. Aside from the thick cloud of cigarette smoke that polluted the evening, we had a surprisingly good time. We were the only band, but the turnout was excellent, and we got 80 euros strictly in donations from the door. (The picture at the top of this post is of our merch setup there.) I walked around for about an hour before the show, but I didn't really get to see any of Vienna. Though I did walk past a clothing store called Urban Tool that I would like to franchise.

We had gotten word that Italian border agents were weighing large vehicles, which would have been bad news for us since with all of our persons and our merch and our equipment, we were surely over the legal weight limit for our van. So we took back roads into Italy and passed through a tiny border crossing, and it paid off. No weighing, no fines, no unhappiness. We were driving to Pannone, a mountain town near Bolzano where local kids set up a two-day fest in the woods. We got there early, so I had time to take in a view of Italy's largest lake, which you could look down on from a point only 50 yards or so from the stage. I regret not taking a picture, though I'm sure it wouldn't have done the view any justice. You'll just have to picture me sitting on a bench watching the sun go down and reading Another Country. As cool as it was to be playing another show in the Alps, we were all ready for tour to be over and just wanted to play and get it over with. We played second-to-last on that first night and took off for Bologna the next morning instead of sticking around for another set of bands. Which was wise.

We had built five days into our travel plans for post-tour hanging out in Bologna, but it was mainly recovery time. I slept and read a lot, which meant I didn't get to see as much of the city as I would have liked to. My bandmates flew home on the 25th, and Julie arrived on the 26th. We left for Venice the next morning, and I'll share a little about that trip in another post. We're going to compile an online photo album for y'all that will have some great shots, so stay tuned.