Well it’s been a whirlwind and I haven’t had a lot of time to post any blogs. I’ve been taking plenty of pictures and movies but I haven’t had a chance to upload them — particularly since I need to have access to a local network to handle the kind of data transfer capabilities needed for video and photo uploads. Anyway… I’m going to try to summarize a few things about the cities we’ve wisped through in the last week:
1) Copenhagen:
The venue was really clean and the people were very nice. The food was EXCELLENT (maybe the best we’ve had) and the venue looked like “The Hatch” from the T.V. Show “Lost.” There was a climbing wall on the backside of the venue. We had one of our best shows there. The crowd was REALLY energetic and we had a lot of good energy on stage (likely because the Record Label Exec. gave us some good advice after watching our first show in Hamburg the night before). The backstage had a wicked complicated tunnel system to get to the stage (just like that scene in Spinal Tap). I made a video of the route to stage (making sure to capture someone’s graffiti on the wall that actually references Spinal Tap with a “Hello Cleveland!”).
2) Rostock
The club was right by a body of water (name?). We actually got some time to wander around the city that was small and quaint. I think there must have been a musical school or conservatory there because I saw lots of young ladies walking around with instrument cases. Unfortunately I had no time or knowledge of German to meet any of these lovely ladies. On the way back to the venue we came across a giant protest in the street (which I have a little footage of — I didn’t want to provoke the police who seem these days, regardless of the country, to dislike being filmed). We found out later that the protest was about some local students from Rostock that had been imprisoned in France after being arrested at a protest of the G-10 or G-8 summit (or whatever they are called now). These 17-year-old kids were apparently being held “Bush style”: without access to legal council or communication with their families etc. Anyway, the show was one of the best we had because we ACTUALLY had FANS there 
There were a group of hard-core fans front and center, jumping up and down and singing along the entire time. After the show, we met most of these people and they were super sweet to us. One of these fans’ girlfriend got emotional when I said goodbye so much so that I thought she was pulling my leg. I still don’t know whether she was being sincere; it doesn’t really matter to me, but it was kind of odd.
3) Braunschweig
At first, I didn’t remember this show at all. I asked Janosch Moldau (the opening, opening act) to remind me about this show. He said: “This was the one where the audience was full of insurance agents”. Now I remember. The show itself was totally forgettable. The audience was full of folded arms and skeptical glances. I do remember some things about the day before the show because it was the only day that we got off (which came too soon). The reason for the day off was that the show was originally meant for Sunday but we had to move it to Monday because the mayor of the town had declared that “there would be no dancing” on that day. Apparently that day fell on a German remembrance day for the dead — sort of like German’s version of “El Dia de los Muertos.” Anyway, as a result we had a totally forgettable day off in an extreme outskirt of Germany where nothing was happening (a bit of a shame really). The upside was that we had a great Italian dinner that night at a restaurant at which Janosch told me the story of how he met his wife at McDonalds. He said, “I NEVER ate at McDonalds before because I hate it. But my friend urged me to go one night, and I ended up meeting my wife there. Now I’m loving it (pun intended)!” After dinner I went bowling with Mesh and the concert promoters. The guys from Mesh all made fun of my spinning bowling style, though they weren’t laughing after I hit 3 strikes out of the first 4 frames (thanks Sam Derby). They promptly incorporated my spin style into a nametag that they posted over my bunk on the bus. I just remembered one more thing about Braunschweig: every time the patrons flushed the toilet, we heard it in the dressing room over our heads and it was somewhat disturbing as we tried to eat our catered meals there.
4) Leipzig
This place really seemed like an old building and it was surrounded by a neighborhood that seemed very European (I’ve got photos and video which I will try to upload later). I was frustrated with the Bass guitar sound in this room. It was so boomy that I felt like I need not play anything faster than a quarter note because it would just get lost. I adjusted my playing accordingly. Before the show we had time to go into the city center because there were some provisions that we needed to buy. My “Day Shoes” (we only had room for VERY little because of the weight restrictions on checked luggage) had fallen apart and I needed something to wear besides my boots. Anyway, we drove into the city center and I found some cool shoes very quickly. Note to self: shoes in Europe are WAY more stylish… It took me 2 minutes to find 2 pairs of shoes worth buying. We got caught in rush hour traffic on the way back to the venue but this allowed us to see some cool sights from the car including one of Europe’s biggest train stations. The show itself didn’t go great. They put me in charge of controlling the “backing tracks” but failed to mention that they had switched the laptop into a different mode whereby I would need to click with the mouse instead of switch with the down arrow. As a result there was an awkward pause at one point where the next song wouldn’t start. The guys from Haujobb came to the show and met us backstage. I don’t know their music but apparently they are well known. I don’t think they liked our performance, but since I am not familiar with their music, their approval meant even less to me than it would have anyway. I was told that I was quite drunk and funny on the bus after the show, but it seemed like any other night to me. I don’t remember being drunk or funny.
5) Vienna
We got to Vienna quite late because of traffic though I wouldn’t know because I was asleep on the bus. This meant that when we got there everyone had to help the crew unload and set up. Mesh has a pretty big setup: lights, riggings, boards, drums, giant flat screens, LED’s. It was quite humbling to step into the shoes of the crew for a few minutes. These guys do this EVERY MORNING and EVERY NIGHT. Anyway, once we were unloaded we had a little time to shower, walk around and eat. Da5id, Tyler and I walked around and I fell in love with the city instantly. One beautiful gal smiled and waved at me for no reason as she got onto the train and I felt at home somehow. Unfortunately it was already dark and late by this time, so most places were closed. We wandered into a mom-and-pop hardware store because Tyler wished to replace the flashlight he had lost the night before. There was no catered dinner that night but rather a “Buy out”: the promoter had given us 45 Euros to buy dinner on our own for the three of us. Unfortunately the vegetarian place directly across the street from the venue was already closed but we managed to find some decent falafel in the restaurant right under the venue, though the smoke inside was almost a deal breaker. I think it was at this moment that Da5id summed up our feelings about the smoke into a good catch phrase: “I will miss Europe, but I won’t miss the smoke.” Everyone smokes cigarettes indoors in Europe and it’s quite annoying especially when you have limited access to laundry facilities. As Tyler said over the PA during the show, Vienna was the best looking crowd we had played for so far. As I found out later, Vienna has a significant fashion industry, which explains why some of the people in the audience seemed to look like models. This show was also noteworthy because we had a hardcore fan fly in all the way from Finland and a group of girls that came from Slovakia. I was so blown away by the Finish fellow’s effort that I made sure to spend some quality time talking to him at the bar afterwards. He was a super nice guy and I made sure Da5id and Tyler signed all his CD’s. After the show, I also met the three lovely ladies from Slovakia. They were some of the most friendly and approachable people I had met so far, which made me wish we had booked a show in Slovakia. Later in the evening I met a gal Bina that looked like a model though she swore she was not. She was there with her brother Ernst. When she tried to introduce me to him, she insisted that I couldn’t pronounce his name correctly. The ensuing dialogue was one of the most ridiculous conversations I’ve ever had AND will be re-enacted by Tyler, Sandra (the “merch girl”) and I in a short piece we have already entitled “The Importance of Being Ernst”. Seriously… there will be a video of this to watch later; Likely we will film this in Berlin.
6) Munich
I was looking forward to Munich because it was here that I had been hooked up with Jarkko — the foreign exchange student from Finland that I had met years ago. He had graciously offered to show me around Munich and I was quite willing to seize the opportunity to get away from the venue and the bus. I was quite tired from Vienna and slept in very late. By the time I woke up, it was time to connect with Jarkko. He swung by and picked me up and we swooped over to the schools o get his kids and take them home before we could hit the town. Munich is beautiful: so many old buildings and a surprising calm for a place of such stature. Jarkko took me to the city center and we starting developing an idea to get some classic beer. Though a touristy choice, we ended up heading towards the original Hofffbrau — I think mostly because I wanted to stick a flag in the ground for “Team Beer” in our ongoing battle with “Beer Team” (If you don’t get this last bit it’s because you aren’t part of a certain internal Digidesign feud). On the way there a woman crouched down on one knee in front of me with a camera and I thought: “why on earth would this woman want to take a picture of me?” Then she said: “Could you please move to the side? ” So I did, knowing that there must be something behind me for which my side moving was needed. I turned around curiously and was surprised to find literally a line of 100-150 female models walking in a single file line (I have bad pics). They were all wearing the same outfit and I can only assume that it was some publicity stunt for Prada or the like. Never before did I wish more that I had had a stack of flyers for the show in my pocket so that I could have stood at the front of the line and passed out flyers to the models as they passed by — all the while uttering the words of Mitch Hedberg: “Here, you throw this away.” Nonetheless, I couldn’t wait to rub it into the guys faces back that venue: “Hey guess what you missed while you were napping on the bus? Yeah….. A marching army of models!” Anyway, the show was OK though we had some more technical difficulties. The crowd wasn’t particularly memorable and I suppose neither was our performance. There was an after party which we later called “The Depeche Mode” party because it seemed like that was the only music they were listening to. I tried to meet some people there but it seemed like unless I was actually IN Depeche Mode they had no interest in talking to me. I met one gal who was dressed up in a black nurses outfit. We seemed to hit it off. Later I asked her if she wanted to dance and she said, “No thanks, I don’t like this song.” Having reached the age of 33 as a man, I’ve accepted some rejection from women as just par for the course, but I have never become accustomed to insincerity. I was annoyed that she couldn’t have just said no, as if the song had anything to do with why she didn’t want to dance. It made me wonder if women knew how little men actually like dancing in the first place. I think most of us just look at it something you have to do sometimes to meet women. So the fact that she didn’t like the song was particularly annoying to me considering that I was the one asking her to dance and I don’t even particularly like dancing. I was annoyed and tired and headed back to the bus early for bed.
7) Prattein (Switzerland)
The first and most obvious memory of the show in Prattein is that getting in and out of Switzerland was an absolute bitch. We got held up at the border on the way out for 6 hours. YES 6 hours. Apparently they needed to check the merchandise to see what we were selling and estimate the taxes we’d owe them. Mark, the lead singer of Mesh, was taking a smoke break outside the bus and was also taking some pictures. One of the border police didn’t like that, and told him he had to delete the pictures. I joked about talking pictures of him having to delete his pictures, but by this time, no one was in the mood for jokes about things that might lead to more waiting. Earlier, while I was sleeping, they brought the merchandise girl into the office to question her. The whole ordeal seemed absolutely ridiculous and arcane, particularly the part about how the Swiss base some of their tax estimates on the weight of the merchandise as if this is somehow related to the value of the merchandise. Anyway, finally we were on our way and when we arrived, once again we had to help the crew unload to make up for the lost time. This was absolutely the biggest venue of the tour and for the lighting tech Pete, it was an absolute dream. Pete, being the wizard he is, has a whole automated lighting board and computer system that he takes with him which can quickly assimilate the house lights into the show he already has planned with the lights he’s brought. He’s a wizard and we have a video of the entire show almost just for the lights. All over the back of the venue were pictures of bands that had played there before. There were a few names that I recognized like Alice Cooper, Cannibal Corpse and Helmet, but mostly it was a cemetery of unknown bands with the worst names you could possibly imagine like: The Company of Snakes, Mother’s Pride, Axxel, Birth Control and a gang of others so bad that the part of my brain that held this information erased itself. Deep down it reminded me of the night earlier when we had watched the documentary “Anvil” on the bus. It’s a real life “Spinal Tap” movie and it hit us all hard because deep down we’ve all been there before: struggling musicians who are hardly known and always a day away from being totally forgotten. Another reference to Anvil colored our Prattein experience insomuch that the venue was huge we had no hope of filling it (which reminded us all of the scene in Anvil when they played a “festival” in Europe: capacity 2000, attendance 178). It was quite annoying that the venue had no hot water, soap or towels in the backstage bathrooms. I had to wash my hands with shower gel and shake dry them. The food was quite good though and finally we were able to do laundry. Though, in an effort to make sure I capitalized on the laundry opportunity, I accidentally threw my stage pants into the washer. It was a race against time: the dryer vs. my call time. Luckily the pants won and I didn’t have to play the show in damp pants. All in all the show was good, and we sold a lot of merchandise even though it seemed like there was no one there (the room being so huge and all). I was a little annoyed with the Venue’s crew who were smoking the entire time right under our dressing room. The smoke wafted right up into my freshly cleaned clothes. I joked later with the guys on the bus: “Hey… maybe next time the crew can blow their smoke right into the dryer. I’ll make sure to set up an ash tray on my luggage next time.” Europeans are generally progressive people, but on the smoking thing, they are behind. Europe : Smoking :: America : Cars. We had to sleep in the parked bus at the venue because the border guards wouldn’t be able to deal with our crossing until 7 a.m. so there was no point in disconnecting from the electric power we were getting from the venue. Once we hit the border again, they held us up for 5 hours and, all told, squeezed €70+ in taxes out of us and €200+ in paperwork fees. In the end, we all agreed that playing in Switzerland wasn’t worth the hassle.
ERNST!!!