SUMMER EUROPE TOUR 2005 PART FOUR

DAY EIGHT
Hey so just in case you are still wondering, the point of these little diaries is to point out that there are bands out there where crazy life-memory type stuff happens every day on tour. It's nice to have money to buy smoothies everyday at M and S or Whole Foods, but it was also really crazy and fun to be the type of band that had no money and no idea what would happen to us every day when we woke up (at 5am). I have a terrible memory, and the fact that 5 years later I can remember all this crazy shit that happened to us on a daily basis to me anyhow, is nuts.

When we last spoke, we were just waking up in Beilefeld, all of us in crisp dry beds, except Josh, who had just wet his. Tonights show was in Hoogeveen (if you need me to tell you what country that's in, you have never been to Europe). It was this weird festival where we played with mostly metalcore (Morser) and hippie hardcore (The Spectacle) bands - we talked about it last week and we are pretty sure that Brian Dingledine was in attendance. We met our new friend Thijs (pronounced "TICE, like "ice" with a T infront of it [like how it's spelt duh]) at this show, who "ran" Burning Sensation Records (as in what happens the morning after you have a curry) and released those two Euro 7"s we did you see on ebay all the time. We got into lots of fights over email with him and were really pissed when the shirts he had made for us ended up costing like $12 euros wholesale, but the 7"s looked amazing.



We played the show and who knows what happened. I think at this point we had bought this giant plastic David statue (Michaelangelo, not Eliade) and had him on our merch table. This is one of the crazy things about going on tour that never makes sense - even if you don't have enough money for a hotel or food or gas (I ended up looking so disheveled after a tour once that I was given change while standing in front of one of those walk-in vending machines they have in "The Netherlands" where you can get hamburgers and Deim bars and shit [the stupidest type of stores in existence] without even soliciting because I looked so gnarly) you're still willing to throw money away at the stupidest shit. We stopped to piss (cost to piss in Germany: 70 euro cents) in some small town in Germany and in front of the store we stopped at was this collection of garden gnomes and other large plastic lawn fixtures. We would have left that store with an 80 euro plastic tiger if it had fit in the van, for absolutely no reason. Instead we settled on the David statue because a) it fit in the van b) it was only like 45 euros and c) we were all so nuts at this point that it totally made sense (to everyone except Sandy, who was kind of pissed).



Anyhow speaking of being poor, that night they made us sleep in the dining room of the venue. Because we were as worn out and tired as French orphans, we wanted to go to sleep before the show was done, which was happening in the next room. It was so loud. Josh, as you all know, is a really heavy sleeper. I have seen that dude fall asleep in all sorts of violently loud and disturbing scenarios. He falls asleep so often in the van that putting a penny in his snoring mouth was a daily tour activity until one time he woke up as I was doing it and punched me straight in the NECK for some reason and ever since I've been a bit scared of him even though he is maybe 5'2 on a good day and I clear 6 feet even when my hair isn't sticking up (also a good day). But the show was so loud and we were so tired that I remember Josh straight up throwing chairs across the room in frustration, like the actual literal definition of frustration, the kind you can only understand after having been on tour through the most decrepit buildings in a dozen European cities, eating tuna paste and frozen buns every morning (a pan-European delicacy), paprika chips all day, and vegan slurry every night, playing 8 hours of cards a day to try and hold on to sanity, and getting maybe 5 hours of sleep a night, woken up every morning by the same crazed chain smoking 16 year old that will drive your ramshackle van with no seatbelts into the ground.



DAY NINE
One good thing about touring Europe in the summer now is that we mostly just play festivals. Festivals are great for so many reasons - you get to potential hang out with MIA, Kanye West and all the other famous people who play (you never do. The closest we ever came to hanging out with a legit famous music person at a festival [and not the fake famous dudes Damian always hangs out with like Bob Mould] was the time we ate breakfast with Brandon Flowers, lead singer of The Killers, his baby and his wife at Leeds because Jonah sat there by accident because he has no idea who Brandon Flowers from The Killers is, because he is not in SFT or GHT or any other micro hardcore band that he would immediately be able to recognize the lead singer of and probably get a bit nervous. I on the other hand am so culturally observant/lame that I didn't even have to use google to remember what the guy from The Killer's last name was). Fests are also great because you usually get amazing food, don't have to worry about how many people show up (unless you are Kanye West or some other headliner), there's sometimes couches backstage or chairs and you get paid a shit ton of money usually. Anything Ieper Fest was our first ever European festival and was hilarious. It's a kind of tiny hardcore/metal fest in Ieper/Ypres which is in Belgium and was basically completely destroyed in the war, and then completely rebuilt to look like an ancient Belgian city. I saw more tattoos and Bold shirts at this thing than ever before...people in Europe take hardcore really seriously, and Ieper Fest is basically where all the most serious European hardcore kids go to be the most serious about hardcore. It's basically like the Paris or Milan (or Tokyo or New York) of European Hardcore. Even in 2005 we were not that kind of band so we just took the piss and laughed pretty much the entire day as we sold the most amount of merch we'd ever sold. I was so riled up that I played most of the show from underneath the stage, and made fun of a handicapped kid while playing until I realized he was handicapped and not just some weird looking Dutch person.





Later that night we got paid 350 euro dollars and felt more rich than ever. How rich did we feel? Instead of going to get a hotel in Belgium we drove to Paris to "hang out" because our show was there the next day. With no plan or friends or place to stay or wherewithall to actually pay for a hotel, we parked in the middle of the city at 2am, walked to the Eiffel Tower, and then slept outside again, in downtown Paris, on the lawn infront of some consulate or defense secretaries office or something. I am not kidding. Someone in our party literally shit in the bushes. Jonah slept on a bench but was so scared of getting caught or mugged or something, he just put a french newspaper over his face and pretended to sleep while he secretly kept watch and didn't sleep at all.



DAY TEN
Rested from our romantic evening in Paris, we drove to the squat where the show was that night to park the van so we could hang out in Paris. We all split into groups (babies vs cool people) because some people wanted to sleep (babies) and some people wanted to see the city (cool people). Me and Josh had a lovely time watching old men lawn bowl, exploring Les Halles, going to some Metro station that had an indoor swimming pool and generally talking in the cultural zeitgist of France (ie looking at cute French girls and buying chocolate bars and smokes). Beav stays home to do laundry and shrinks my wool sweater by putting it in the drier.

The show was rammed because that band Amanda Woodward was going to play their last set ever. Luckily for us, they decide to play before us. About 150 people clear out of the room before we play, so our show is basically the same as every other night. Except that for the entire set two women are disrobing and making out on a matress beside the stage, so we were all a little pre-occupied (except Sandy).

All I can remember about afterwars are tons of fights and tons of dogs outside. Also at this point Tim Molinari is with us for some reason. The promoter hooked us up with an actual clean amazing female inhabited apartment to sleep in (sans females, who were away) and we all had the best night of sleep ever. Since girls lived there, the showers were full of all kinds of soap and washing products. I took probably the longest shower in my life, and used about 6 different products on my body and hair.

DAY ELEVEN
The most unremarkable day of the entire tour. The show was in Giessen Germany, home of "Patrick from Giessen", who once had his house raided (or something) by the German police for ordering a Fucked Up 7" that had a picture of Nazis on it. We played with Kylesa in the middle of some crazy house/squat that looked like the haunted house level of Mario Kart (the new one where it's all green, not the old one that's all black).