california,uber alles

more evidence

the holy land

Dec 4 athens off
The guys all h9it the after party in the sky, and then the acropolis. I manage some room service and a bit of paperwork. Greece has beat me, I have no energy for any of it. I hide in my room-away from five minutes, away from dodgy parking, away from slack promoters, away from the cradle of civilization, away from the numbers, from the souvlaki, and hairy backs,. I can tell you8, that the reason why the heart disease rate in greece is so low has nothing to do with diet. They simply could care less. The icing on the cake is at 9pm when our ride takes us(10people) to the airport it is a 50 passenger bus.
We get to the airport and wait forever to check in, wait 5 minutes for our sarnies, wait two hours for our lost luggage, and fall asleep in a beautiful hotel in tel aviv.
Dec 5 tel aviv hangar 11
Up and at it early with all sorts of press and not a real chance to see tel aviv. The venue is amazing, an old hangar down by the docks. Everything is above board and every woman is gorgeous, some of them even have guns. It is pretty fantastic. They serve up the best marble rye with the sarnies, and boureks and a beautiful fruit bowl. Top shelf catering to be sure. Merav is looking after us in a big way, the polar opposite of the neighbors to the north. Shuki, the promoter, takes us to his favorite fish restaurant in tel aviv. I can see why, the food is stupendous, the wine is spectacular, and the waitstaff is from the pages of a fashion magazine. Kind of distracting really.
We load up on all the fish that we can eat and head back to the gig, I give the local opener a miss, kind of like bad bjork singing in Hebrew. But hey! The rev soon take the stage and really deliver the goods. 90 plus minutes of their lush sounds, the audience is transfixed, even when they are joined by the keith morris of tel aviv. A rockin show, and a quick load, cos it is all rental gear. We are in mikes place in no time drinking overpriced liquor for a wee while until begging off for a bit of rest before the morn.
Dec 6 tel aviv/Jerusalem/London
9am photo op with the manageress of the hotel, then a hungover van ride through the holy land to Jerusalem. I am not nearly a skilled enough wordsmith to describe whaqt we hafve witnessed today, nor am I a religious sonofabitch, but wow! Even the lads who have been here before are impressed. I can truly understand what the hubbub is. And the falafels, muy sabrosa. After a whirlwind tour of mt olive, garden of gethsemene, church of all nations, the wailing wall, and the church of the holy sepulcher leaving through the jaffa gate, we are airport bound. Vip checked in and at our gate and on the plane and off to engerland. After what seems like days(I watch the wedding crashers twice), we arrive in the big smoke, whisk away in cabs to our hotel, and commence drinking all of the lagavulin in the joint, and suddenly there is an afterparty in the sky.
Dec 7 london
Off day, errands, accounting, English breakfast, the record and tape exchange, the tube,the hotel.
Myself, mercel, the kid, and big al the tshirt guy go off to eat at the bush bar and grill(kiwi pinot and roast turkey, yummm) before heading over to the Richmond bar to watch man u get eliminated from european futbol, then back to the shack for a drinkie poo with beth ortons tm, and everyone can/t keep their eyes off of joss stone who is standing at the bar, and I am thinking, ‘hmm, gary glitter is going to get himself hanged for this. The meatbox arrives with his own bottle of jack and I can take no more. Guinness and turkey(instead of the box wine) and no one/s gi joes to play with.

the evidence

magical mystery tour

Nov 27 barcelona razzmatazz w/ dirty 3 and decemberists
It is major catch up in the production office as we are heading to eastern Europe and Greece and are unclear about the proverbial connectivity issues. So I hunker down along with patch(d3/s tm), matt(decemberists) and squid and ogro as we get ready to chart new territories. It is the sinnamon girls home turf, and aside from a minor snafu at load in we are incredibly well looked after, as we have been throughout all of spain. There are good vibes abounding as the dressing room area is the most communal thus far, and it usually takes that long to acclimate oneself to all the new faces. The decemberists hit the stage 15 minutes past doors and play to a very loving and responsive audience. A couple of them even get a makers mark break in the middle of the set. Now that is my kind of band, and they invite me for a bourbon and soda(sans bitters). The dirty 3 continue the great music, and jim, their drummer, looks as if he is going to rip my head off for taking his picture, but hey LINK WRAY, warren made me do it. They are absolutely brilliant. But it is all rev for me in the end, another 100 minutes of beautiful noise. The crowd is completely in awe, they have been floored. Thus we move to the bottom floor, for the unofficial afterparty, the official one begins and ends before we have left the stage. All the bands invade each others dressing rooms, exchanging email addresses, and drinking one anothers booze. At 3 am, we begin the long march to croatia with an awful lot of talk about wintersports with crianza being the fuel of choice.
Nov 28 sur la route
A lot of beautiful countryside and an 8 hour stop in Trieste for an amazing dinner at LA TECIA wine bar(www.paginegialle.it/latecia). Ogro and Molina even eat horse. The novelli is divine, the tiramisu sublime, and despite the fear of avian flu, those of us that eat the chicken are well rewarded. A few grappas later, we settle up and the house gives us another round of grappa. Real nice. Hopper and a few of the lads go for some late drinks, hey now and ogro, climb the hill above town. Me , I hunker down in my bunk and start memorizing carnet registration procedures in 5 different languages.
Nov 29 zagreb club aquarius
So we make it through the first borders sans incident and drop our double driver len off at the ljubjiana airport before continuing towards Zagreb. We relatively coast through, and kormel, our propmoter escorts us to the gig which is located in the middle of a park and sports complex, in a TENT, on the lake. It is freezing. There is no connectivity, so I am off to the day room where the most hardcore hotel porn that I have ever seen is broadcast in room, 24-7. even I flinched during one scene.. back to the club, back to the task at hand. They are expecting 500 people on the cold rainy, foggy night. The guys go out with the promoters for a major meat fest. By the time they get back, we have sold all of our merch and the place is jammed. The rev get up, and deliver a scintillating performance. During opus 40 the crowd is louder than the band. It is electrifying. It reminds me of the yeahyeahyeahs gig in mexico city last year. Totally rocking, and at almost 2 hours, a real crowd pleaser. Everyone stays afterwards for the discotheque. I retire to the bus to process paper work for the border crossing in the morning.
Nov 30 belgrade dom omladine
So the double border crossing is smooth, the Serbian border guard gets one look at grasshopper with a beer in his hand and says, ‘ah, not terrorist or Mafioso. musician, go back to bed. Real cool. And we are met by dragan, the promoter and escorted to our secure powered parking at the central bus station. The same place where myself and schlosstein rolled in on a bus in 1988 or something and caught the bus to Greece.
The venue is miles away and it takes a double cross loade, but the local crew is totally keen and on the ball. The venue is like a large community center, with bookstore, cinema, café. It is so reminiscent of Budapest or east berlin of the 80/s. grasshopper and Anthony get held hostage at the hotel. ‘if you don/t provide passport soon, we will find you a room. A colder, darker and smaller room. I get there and it is a real mob scene, if ya know what I mean. I then go around the corner to change Croatian money with a guy who has four mobile phones and about 30k on him. Not to mention the track suit and gold chains. Dragan has taken the guys to the tesla museum. I am just digging the air. Really acity on the rise, or so it feels. A real spirit in the air. They take us out for the biggest meat fest of all time. Jamur, has fallen in lurve with the hospitality gal and the show takes off, and it is a repeat performance from the night before. An absolute blinder, the crowd is larger than the night before and louder as a result. I catch the whole show from sidestage. It is stupendous. Dragan and his crew(too numerous to mention, and all equally as important in their endeavours) are in bliss. They take the guys to zlotko(the production mgr)/s bar, the voodoo bar, where they get into some local brandies and can/t spend a dinar. To use the local vernacular of my roots, fucking awesome!
Dec 1 in transit to thessaloniki
We hit the Macedonian border and the woman on the serb side does not know what a ATA carnet. No worries, it is processed and we move to the Macedonian side. Very bleak, stray dogs wandering listlessly, broken down cars in the middle of the room. Long waits in the trcuk line. They process me with nothing more than a cut copy cd as a gesture. The country side oafter the border is amazing. Like the kern river valley of California, or Tehachapi area. It is so sparsely populated and beautiful. The rev have played here before and said it was an incredible experience. We make it into greecve without incident and soon we are in thessaloniki and at our hotel on the old port. We hit the rooms, and spruce up, and soon we are whisked off to dinner at mylos for some delicious greek food and wine with maria, our guide, and yiannis from the club. Some of the boys head out for the night to see some punk bands, I retire to my hotel early for juventus and fiorentina on the box.
Dec 2 thessaloniki club mylos
We play with a great local band called the broken seals who have a little gallon drunk thing going. Then nikki sudden from the swell maps joins the stage. We eat great octopus and more brilliant wine. The rev play a killer show, and I refuse to discuss the rest as it is minor minutiae in the grandf scheme of things. The crowd is happy, the band is happy and the club is happy. That is what counts, right. Afterwards the guys hit the bars, our bus is blocked in by an illegally parked vehicle. We feed Croatian meat to greek strays, and drink Spanish red on the road to Athens.
Dec 3 athens Gagarin
Cool club, in an old porno theater. Great crowd, good food, killer show, bad local band, all night partying for the band and the local reps. Me and squid took the high road with the flying Israeli gear and hit the hotel as early as possible