The Middle Road and The Blur

This is a rather lengthy post, so don’t try to read it at work (I had a lot to say about Berlin).

Erfurt

I never imagined it would be so hard to distinguish the cities from each other; I didn’t know we’d have so few chances to leave the venue. In fact, this might have been the point when this whole touring business started reminding me of my theater days:  Every night it’s the same show, though in the case of a music show, you have the flexibility to change the songs, costumes, blocking and sounds.  However, many more things are the same:  the schedule, the comraderie and the inside jokes.  I’ve laughed a lot during the tour but I wonder if an outsider would even understand what we were laughing about.  Anyway Erfurt was perhaps when the blur started setting in.  Considering that we were arriving from Switzerland (which meant that we must have gotten there late) I remember the venue being clean and it seemed somewhat modern while still reminding me of a German version of the city hall building in Placerville — 70’s architecture made of boring, artificial materials.  Also this was the time that I noticed that Europe seems to have a lot more mid-sized “venues” than America.  What I mean is that America has big theater style venues like The Greek Theater or The Hollywood Bowl and then it has bars like The Viper Room, Spaceland or Bottom of the Hill.  But in Europe there seem to be a lot more mid-sized venues like The House of Blues in Hollywood or The Fillmore in S.F.

I think I recall that at this point I had been limited to WAY too many ham and cheese catering experiences and when I saw an opportunity to get a hot, healthy and nutritious vegetarian meal I jumped on it big time.  Because Switzerland had made us late again (thanks Switzerland … pause NOT) we were rushed for time.  For some reason we all felt desperately in need of a shower – maybe it was because we were forced to spend so many more hours that day stuck on the bus, parked at the Swiss border.  Since our show time was much earlier, Mark from Mesh was gracious enough to let us cut in front of him in the shower queue.  We moved at lightening speed — Da5id had no time to get into his usual singing Tourettes shower trance (of which I have recordings…. But don’t tell him yet… he’ll never read this).

When we got on stage we saw that the place was crowded to the gills which pushed the crowd all the way to the stage and placed (as Tyler put it) “the people in the front row’s faces … right at our balls.”  At one point during the show, Tyler referenced this fact over the mic by noting that this was the most “intimate” shows we’d played.  I followed up by commenting, “so I’m extra glad we showered.”  And we were.

There was an after party this night down the street.  It was fun to walk away from the venue (as it always is) and get a small taste of what it’s like to live in that city. It was a pretty small party, but still fun.  Tyler got wicked drunk (as usual) and at one point was dancing on a table taking pictures with his weird mail-order “classic” film cameras from Japan and Russia.  The place was an old stone cellar and they were playing Depeche Mode, like EVERY other place we’d been.  I mean, it might be because of the type of music we are playing, but it does seem that Depeche Mode is WAY bigger in Germany than in the states.

Frankfurt

Janosch said that he had played this venue before and it was like Erfurt except dirtier.   He was right: there was graffiti all over the back of the building including a picture of Frank Zappa complete with a caption that read, “Bobbi Brown” (which was so random, it made me laugh several times during the day — I have pictures… of the graffiti, not of me laughing… silly).  There was also some awesome graffiti of the entire Muppet band (of which I also have pictures).   I woke up late again this day and grabbed some coffee inside the venue.  Although I tend to wake up later than the Brits (Mesh) I tend to be the first of the Americans to wake up.  So I quite enjoy this time chatting it up with Mesh and the crew over coffee.

Tyler, Da5id and I had some time to go for a walk around the city after food and showers.  It was pretty mellow because I think it was Sunday — lovely nonetheless.  We managed to find a park to walk through and I think it was here that I started to notice that “graffiti” in Europe is superior to the graffiti in the states.  There’s a lot less “tagging” and a lot more murals.  And when someone does a good job, other graffiti artists seem to respect the territory instead of tagging their lame, chicken scratching signature over it – the one that only they and their cut-and-paste friends can read.  I took some pictures on our walk that I will try to post later.  I remember dinner being quite tranquil.  I took my time – relishing one of the first times I had to really just chill.

We had been having one of Mesh’s fans (who had come to almost ALL of the shows!) film certain songs of our set from several angles from night to night so that I can cut together a live video for one or two of our songs.  This night, I asked the ‘merch girl,’ Sandra, if she would film us from onstage looking out at the audience. I chose this night because I was told it was going to be absolutely packed, which I thought would look cool.  Sandra was uncharacteristically shy about filming from onstage, so she filmed from the wings instead. We had more technical difficulties but this time it “broke the ice” and connected us with the audience and each other.  I remember that more people were into the show at the end and I felt like our composure and persistent energy level seemed to pay off.

Berlin

There was a lot of buzz around Berlin.  It was slated to be one of the biggest shows — Berlin being such a major city and all.  In addition, the head of the band’s European Label was expected to be there to check in on our progress since Hamburg.  We felt up for the challenge and to kick the show into over drive, the “Merch Girl” Sandra was going to pick up some of the keyboard parts and join us on stage.  I should say that from now on I will just refer to her as Sandra since every time I refer to her as “the Merch Girl” I feel like I’m demeaning her in someway, which is not my intention – Sandra is the bomb.  I was determined to see the Berlin wall (or what was left of it) while I was in Berlin and was surprised to find no one else on the tour shared my interest. It’s possible that I’m the only one who hadn’t seen it before but it’s also possible that the malaise of the tour schedule had raised the perceived importance of what would appear to be more trivial pursuits like: getting one’s hair cut.  Although I suppose, there was a third explanation: that no one wanted to spend his or her free time hanging out with me.  This is entirely possible, though I think Sean from Mesh would have come with me if his  sound check wasn’t so early in the day (which made going, for him, nearly impossible).
I grabbed some breakfast which (besides the usual menu of breads, cheeses and jam) included access to one of those George Forman sandwich-press thingies and a juicer.  I seized the opportunity to get (what I became known for referring to as) “Actual Nutrients” and made some fresh carrot juice.  I asked the chef which train stop to get off at and left the venue.

Berlin’s subway system was no different than any other subway system I had ever encountered in the world: the designers managed to forget to include clear demarcations on the platform indicating WHICH DIRECTION the trains are running on either side.  Just as in San Francisco (even if you do speak the language) your best hope is to try to find a station that is also in the direction of the station you are headed towards and hope there is some mention made of that station.  It’s quite frustrating (even when I first moved to San Francisco) that train stations don’t simple label tracks as “North Bound” or “Sound Bound” etc.  In San Francisco the lines are clumsily referred to by the name of the last stop on that line (which sometimes isn’t even the last stop).  This system works ONCE YOU KNOW about it, but if you don’t know the sytem, then you are left wondering what direction “Baypoint” is – searching the entire map for “Baypoint” and trying to figure out how this relates to where you currently are (if you even know that much).  I’m just saying, “Hey subway designers: try throwing a ‘North, South, East or West’ in there once in a while for those of us who like … READ MAPS!” (Ok Rant over).

Luckily for me, all Germans I encountered speak “a little English” which is to say:  They had 10 years of English in grade school and use words like ‘insidious’.  I asked an older lady which direction was towards “Checkpoint Charlie” (which is actually the sub-name of the station) and she pointed me in the right direction.  Once I got there I was unimpressed with the touristy nature of this particular spot (not that I didn’t sort of expect it).  And, like most tourist spots I’d ever encountered, it was complete with a crappy Italian restaurant lit up in its full, cheesy regalia and armed with a set of waiters ready to goad some sucker into paying 25 Euros for a bowl of spaghetti and then somehow still have the nerve to make you feel like a cheap bastard for not ordering desert.  Luckily for me, I had already eaten and have developed pretty good tourist-trap-detectors.  I managed to walk down the street till I found a section of the wall that still remained.

I was surprisingly unmoved.  I mean, I felt the gravity of the place, but I think what I was sensing was the meaning that this place had for other people – but not for me.  To me I was surprised to find that this piece of history meant little to me.  Perhaps I am too young to know a world truly in the grips of the cold war.  Or perhaps I felt, considering Germany had demolished much of Europe and slaughtered millions of people in cold blood, that having the country split in half by a wall wasn’t a totally unreasonable response.  Maybe my lack of sentiment for the remnants of the wall stems from both the conditions I just described.  Regardless, as if to reciprocate my indifference, circumstance responded by draining all the power from my camera’s battery just as I was about to take a picture of the wall.  I wasn’t too heartbroken; in addition to my indifference, it had already started to rain heavily and so I made my way back to the venue.

As soon as we started sound check, I was pretty sure this show was going to be a disaster.  As the opening act, you have to roll the dice with whatever sound guy the venue provides and in this case we got one of the worst possible characters:  indifferent and/or incompetent. During the sound check I wandered (with my wireless guitar unit) into where the crowd would be and heard many problems with the mix.  I went back on stage and after the song was done, I very politely tried to explain to the sound guy how I would like him to change the mix.  My input made no noticeable difference (assuming he even implemented any of my requests). It is at this point in the story that I’d like to talk just a little about “the business of music” for which this scenario act’s as a perfect example. I know this is already a very long post, but I feel inclined to make a point here about the frustrating intersection of creativity and business.

Here is the dilemma: As soon as I said something to the sound guy about the mix he became offended because he took my requests as a criticism of his work.  From his perspective I am just a “Prima Donna” artist who thinks he knows it all. Even though I spoke very politely, he will resent me for “criticizing his mix” and may even go out of his way to make me sound bad.  On the other hand, if I say nothing, I will surely sound bad (this is a known quantity that I had already auditioned).  It is a lose/lose situation.  What’s sad to me is that this is almost always the case in any creative situation, particularly if you are good at what you do and you know what you want.  Other people will almost always see you as a megalomaniac when it could be the case that you are actually good at more than one thing.  So it seems sad to me that in this world of only greater and greater specialization there seems to be increasingly no room for generalists who know a little (or sometimes a lot) about more than one thing. These days it seems like it’s socially unacceptable to be good at more than one thing because most people are uncomfortable with people who are difficult to label.

The extra boost of energy emanating from Sandra onto the audience was not enough to make up for the fact that we sounded awful.  And this had nothing to do with our performance.  The head of the label, Stephan met us back stage and complained about the awful sound — pointing out all the same issues we had mentioned to the sound guy during the sound check.  I was overtly angry and henceforth referred to the sound guy as “the mule.”   From my perspective I wasn’t mad at the audience for hating us, but mad because the sound guy had just not done his job.  He either was incompetent or wanted us to sound bad.  Either way, I felt the mule’s actions were grounds for firing him and even hinted to Stephan that I’d like to see that happen.  Being someone who has worked fairly hard to become good at what I do, I have no sympathy for people who are not good at what they do or deliberately do a bad job.  There must have been 100’s of competent and enthusiastic sound engineers in a big city like Berlin.  So I mentioned the point again: this guy should be fired.    And in a way, the situation for the mule had become a case of self-fulfilling prophecy:  I had become the Prima Donna he so desperately wanted me to be. In actuality, I don’t think I actually acted like a Prima Donna, but I did sense the rest of the people in our dressing room getting afraid that I might “go there” (likely because they had seen it too many times before).  I quickly recalibrated my tone, but refused to apologize for being justifiably angry.  I saw that everyone else was angry too, and suggested that it was ok for them to air their frustrations within the comfort of the private dressing room.  But like everyone else that day, they ignored my advice.

Perhaps this was another part of this whole music business that really was different than the Theater:  the actors, in this case, are less aware of their craft.  I mean an actor backstage expressing anger is almost, to a certain extent, encouraged.  From my training and experience I know that I can’t put on a good show or create art of any value if I am not comfortable with my emotions (particularly the uncomfortable ones). This principle is part of ‘Acting 101,’ but I guess for some musicians, it’s a topic they’d rather leave alone.