The Civic Chronicle #7

Leaving Rape Town was a sad experience. But we took away some priceless memories and a fistfull of parking tickets to cherish on the drive down to Malmo, a small city just across the water from Copenhagen.
Aaron was in a jolly mood, having bested Jonk in a brief but bloody fist-fight over the last can of Carlsburg that morning, and he punished me with bad jokes and old tour-stories full of humiliating sex and stupid, one-sided violence. All I could do was wash Valerian tablets down with warm beer, so that his cruel, infantile humor came to me through a groggy mist.

But the drive was mercifully short, and after 3 hours of scaring Swedish motorists shitless with Aarons erratic driving in our massive, quasi-military Tour Vehicle we rolled up at the venue.

Debaser is quite a joint. To my sensibilities it is more like a French summer palace than a venue.
A big main room, clean and well decorated, with a massive sound system and stadium style lighting rig. A restaurant and a large beer garden strewn with modern lounge furniture looking over the grounds of a large, leafy park. There was an actual back stage area, with a shower and couches and bowls of fruit!!! Fuck me.

 Aaron, tuning in the swank, cafe-style back-stage. Looking at this frail, lost creature, 

who could imagine the terrors he unleashes on the world every day?

We ate braised ocean fish and fancy salads from the venues own kitchen, and sat around in the brilliant sun, drinking beer and oggling a small clutch of ridiculously striking Nordic indie-kittens.

Yes, we received red carpet treatment from the staff, captained by the promoter of the night, Jonas.
I'm sick of having to talk about how the various promoters we've dealt with have been fine, good-humored, free-wheeling humans, but I can't stop now. Jonas is a "Top Bloke", and so are his cronies.

The good-vibes started to turn queer as he hours rolled by and there was neither word nor sign of the headlining act (Ganglians, U.S). We soundchecked on the massive stage until we were properly convinced that we could crush all opposition and then ate more, drank more and stared at more girls, but still no headliners.
So our stage time was pushed back, and back, until Jonas (who had been prowling up and down the street screaming into his phone and kicking dogs) finally gave us the go ahead.
"Fuck it" he snarled "play as long as you want. If those Ganglian fuckers turn up, you guys can kick them once we've got them on the ground."

Due to the potent combination of fruit-bowls, eye-candy and a massive sound-system we played with Zeppelin sized egos and reveled in our own bad noise, thundering out of the crisp, loud wedges. The stage was so godamn high I could hardly make out the faces of the smattering of Malmo hep-cats who had slowly coalesced in the room. I pulled the silliest, most melodramatic rock poses my body could handle and still the stage felt too big. Need to work on that.

Is that Madison Square Gardens? Or just some nightclub in a small Swedish town?

Aaron got worked into a Townsendesque froth and sawed the tips of his fingers off on his guitar strings, so that when he played his keyboard, small blotches of blood appeared on the keys.

..and as the last note of our set rang out in that well appointed hall, the Ganglians filed in, lugging amps and whatnot and looking like shock victims. They had driven overnight from Paris and claimed to have an email stating their stage-time as being 3 hours later than was the case. I gripped Jonas from behind to stop him from throwing punches, and he seemed to go along with it, but he hissed awful curses at their road manager and when the guy started insisting on being paid imediately in cash Jonas´ eyes rolled back in his skull and he let out a deep, cracked laughter that sounded like a 60 kilo raven.

I'm not sure what happened after that. I decided my help wwas no longer needed, having been instrumental in preventing imediate violence. What I do know is that Ganglians played, Swedes watched, we hung out with their bass-player a bit afterwards and swapped tour-tales.

Ganglians salute the Debaser crowd after a shredding, tearing set.

 Then we all hauled our warm corpses to our Hotel down the street (they had booked us into INDIVIDUAL ROOMS!!! I was so excited to have my own bed in my own room that I had to masturbate about 6 times just to get to sleep).

Well, if you insist....

All's well that ends well, people. Thankyou Jonas/Debaser for the fine treatment and top notch facilities. Sorry about the mini-bar tab. I'll fix you up next time.



As a concluding note, please ponder this question, posed in writing by some puzzled Malmo retard on a building site on the way out of town.

Where indeed. Nice cock, by the way.

NOTE: When this entry was originaly posted I got Jonas´name wrong, and repeatedly reffered to him as Johan. This is unsurprising, since I spent the entire tour whispering in Aarons ear ¨What´s that guys name again, what´s the bar managers name, what´s the sound guy called, who is that guy with the wig???¨ect ect.

Anyway, my deepest, most grovelling apologies to JONAS! A fine young man who deserves to have his name correctly presented, at the very least.