The civic chronicle #8

Face the gig that should not be…in Bloggness you dwell.

While booking the tour Aaron had offended so many promoters with his arrogant, demanding emails that we had ended up with a 3 day gap in our itinerary, between Malmo and Paris. A Civic with time on it’s hands is a dangerous Civic, so on the first off-night as I was dealing a hand of Old Maid in our filthy hostel outside Malmo I decided to try and manipulate Aarons obnoxious sense of entitlement (and his hopeless gambling addiction) into some work for our idle hands.

I made a bet with him, against a gram of ketamine I had found in the female toilets at Debaser, that he couldn’t come up with a gig for the following night anywhere along our route.

Well, that ketamine changed hands in the morning, which I saw as a “win/win” situation (Ketamine, in my opinion, is the filthiest, most degenerate drug on the planet, turning the user into the pharmaceutical equivalent of a late-stage alcoholic in 10 seconds flat. But the endless quirks of Aarons’ freakish metabolism seem to convert it into a mild anti-psychotic, a desirable result).

As I dreamed peacefully, Aaron spent the night firing threatening and quasi-abusive emails to club-bookers, and amazingly a suave young guy called Ollie in Cologne was so amused by Aarons obnoxious tone that he convinced a local act holding a disc launch at his club to let us play support.

No fee, but we were garanteed a couch to sleep on and as much Weinstephaner as we could hold in our bloated guts.

To Koln!!

Pretty evil, huh? That´s where we´re headed, to face the elder gods..

The giant 16 cylinder engine of the ATV rent the early morning air like a sub-stratospheric nuclear test and the other hostel patrons gathered on the street in their night-clothes to stare at it, having been rudely awakened by the terrifying roar.
After grabbing as many towels and mini-soaps as I could carry I clambered into the cabin, punched in a half-chewed Slayer cassette and we…you know… hit the road.

Get your motor runnin’, dow dow da dow dow…


Four hundred thousand more to diiieee, dow dow da dow dow…..

Stopping only to take on fuel and snacks and to offload urine and other refuse, we hammered down the forest-lined German highways. 14 deafening repeats of “Reign In Blood” kept our sense of urgency keen and prevented any slackening of pace, and a few lines of “K” off the dash kept Aarons’ sociopathic instincts at bay. So we made excellent time without causing any scenes of terror along the way.

Bueno.

Not so Evil in the daytime.

Cologne/Koln is a pretty town which mostly escaped the horrors visited on other German cities by the RAF, so it still has most of it’s old centre in-tact. Aaron was starting to lose concentration as we entered the city center, so we ended up doing 2 or 3 loops over the river, which from a sightseeing point of view was a good thing.
Having located the venue and loaded our crap inside we became aquainted with Ollie, our patron, a dapper Deutsche gent with a quiet but friendly disposition. As it turned out, Ollie had recently purchased one of our fine 7” singles on the webernet, so he was at least familiar with the brand of racket he had invited into his life.

The club was a small, hot, underground box called “Tsunami”, and looked at first blush to be entirely appropriate. 100 capacity, low stage, mid/highs on stands, a mono sub in the corner.
We arrived as our other hosts (the 5 piece band who had accepted us onto their bill) were soundchecking their insanely complex set-up, so we had time to kill.

Ollie, being taste-full and astute, suggested we wander over to a local “experimental” record store where none other than the Awesome Tapes From Africa guy was doing an in-store set that evening. Hurrah!
Armed with beer and kebabs we ambled through the pleasant, leafy Koln streets over to said record-selling-place, where Mr African Tapes was plying his nerdy trade.

Sure, Aaron could have taken a shot from inside the shop...but...

Aaron frightened the poor guy to death, simply by requesting some Algerian screamo-crunk and giving him one of our casstette EPs. But having a smelly, emaciated serial killer make stupid requests and hustle you with merch can ruin even the most stoic deejays night.

Oh…and in case you’re wondering, yes, Mr African Tapes does in-fact deejay off multiple cassette decks. Awesome Cassette Decks from His House.
Anyway, having sampled some global webernet meem-culture in the flesh, we shambled back to Tsunami for some drunken noise-making of our own. Freeeooowwwww!

The “show” went “swimmingly”, despite the cramped conditions on-stage, and many attendant Kolnites bought “merch”, which I took to mean that they “dug” our crazy “soundz”.

Hanging out on the street afterwards (to get some cool air into my charred lungs) I made the aquaintance of Andy, a local promoter/producer/hepcat.
According to his boozy nymph side-kick, Andy had just recently taken on the job of being “Colognes number 1 scene-chick” after the previous number 1 scene-chick moved to Berlin (where she will start as the number 46,081 scene-chick and work her way up that greasy, greasy ladder).

Cool fucking guys, or WHAT? Andy and Ollie in full moderne man mode.

But being number one scene-chick in any town is a big responsibility, so naturally I treated young Andy with all due respect. He in turn expressed an interest in booking us at a later date for one of his club nights. Poor fool.

Once the night had wrapped up Ollie took us to an apartment belonging to one of the bar staff, the lovely and good-humored Manu (Note: I suspect she an Ollie might be “doing it”). Manu surrendered her well-appointed bedroom to us so that we could lose consciousness in comfort, and damned if we didn’t do just that.

Manus´room is filled with golden light, to keep the Shoggoths out.

She even made a hearty breakfast for us next morning, featuring at least 19 different kinds of cheese!

Thanks Manu. Sorry about, y´know, the stains.

In conclusion, we faced “The Gig That Should Not Be” and returned sane.
In your FACE, H.P!

All that we need now to call a halt to this vile string of low-rent humiliations we call a tour is to get to Paris, “city of lights”, and rock with a rolled R!