If a picture says a thousand words, then let's not leave those thousand words to the imagination. I am cursed with first-hand knowledge of the circumstances under which this gag-inducing photograph was taken, and a thousand words are probably just about right for putting it in context.

Sweet Jesus, just look at that awful fucker, mooning at the camera like some sort of drugged grunge-puppy about to be molested by an extra from Flashdance.

How could this hideous fucking scene have come to pass? What is wrong with the world?

Well, the truth is it was really, really hot.

We were playing in a tiny basement club in Bordeaux and from the first moment we got there everything felt wrong. The owner thought we were tourists and tried to throw us out until the local promoter turned up and set him straight. The sound engineer was a sixty year-old soak who was deaf in both ears and kept a soldering iron in his fist at all times, in anticipation of the next part of the sound-system to blow up in a cloud of grey smoke.

Bewildered and pessimistic, I went for a quick walk to clear my head, but the neighborhood seemed rough and borderline chaotic. I became terrified by a group of Jamaican toughs who followed me down the street, mocking my walk and my clothes in thickly accented French.

I was sure I was going to be shived, or at least pushed around and kicked for a while. They could smell my fear and found it hilarious and in the end I think they took pity on me because of it. I made it back to the club in a near hysterical state and Andy Inglis was forced to play bass for our sound check while I sat shivering and mumbling in the car and listening to Unleashed to shore up my manhood.

For Andy this proved to be the last straw. He had been nursing a growing resentment towards me for days. I had been brutally ridiculing his fastidious personal habits, just to relieve the boredom and inject some high-school levity into the tour. I thought it was all a game, but Inglis is not a man to be trifled with, and underneath his impassive demeanour a black hatred was congealing like hot milk.

It would be much later in the tour that this hatred became physically manifest, with bloody results, but at the time I was none the wiser and had bigger fish to fry.

A gaggle of mismatched locals were shoving their way into this place to check the action. They were a motley collection of hipsters, nerds, burn-outs and drunks and taken as a whole they looked wise and hard to impress.

But despite this appearance they gave a warm welcome to Pere Dodudaboum, who kicked off the proceedings with a blizzard of finely crafted and exquisitely skewed dance-pop, delivered from behind a lap-top and wearing nothing but a floral apron and a gingery beard. He was awesome, into-it and on-top of it. I became a fan in ten minutes flat.

But that was the fun part.

It is impossible to describe the awful fucking heat in that room. Both The Baaron and I were amazed that any kind of electronic equipment, let alone humans, could function in temperatures of over 50C and 250% humidity. Recycled sweat was falling from the arched ceiling like a slow, salty rain and there was at least a centimeter of perspiration/beer sluicing around on the floor.

I can remember kissing and hugging people in the front row and being tackled around the knees by crazed drunken locals mid-song. Every number we played felt like running the Honolulu marathon twice. It was completely fucked up. Completely.

But The Baaron was of course carrying much less fat on his bones than I, so he suffered less from the brutal heat and humidity. That's why at gigs-end I staggered up onto the street and collapsed in a doorway like a bag of foul black laundry while he sat around schmoozing local chicks with dehydrated panache.

Is that a thousand words? Microsoft says it's barely 700, but I think we're all on the same page now. Bordeaux was a nightmare of menacing rastafarians, shitty sound sytems and terrible, terrible heat. 

I loved it, and so did my travelling companions, Baaron Von Cuddles III, Andy Inglispronouncedingles and Almond The God. 

We're going back as soon as possible.

Video footage courtesy of Andrew Inglis.

As the days shorten and the leaves turn to reds and browns, let us look back on the summer that was and smile.

For me the summer of 11 was a time of simple pleasures. I was travelling in the company of Baaron Von Cuddles III, performing pop-music concerts in various shitholes throughout continental Europe. It was a time of car-stereo fights, finger-food, hang-overs and borrowed Ampeg 8X10 cabinets. Who could ask for more?

This sizzling summer adventurescape included a four-gig stab at Italia, a country we'd had very little experience of up until then. Aaahhh, the memories come flooding back. The pizza, the chicks with moustaches, the pizza, the emphatic hand-gestures and of course the pizza. Let's have a quick look at some highlights, yeah?

Gig one, and before we've even reached the venue, trouble. The Baaron decides that necking a shitload of 600ml Morettis is the best way to kill time and starts to get loud and belligerant. But worse is yet to come.

Here's me after diving head first into a submerged rock in a little beach town outside of Genova. The water was completely opaque, so I just dived head first straight into the fucking thing. I was amazed that I didn't shatter my nose. This photo was taken after I staunched the bleeding and cleaned myself up. There was alot more gore before I hit the napkins.

For the rest of the tour it became a nice little talking point.

-"Hey, great gig. What happened to your face?".

-"I got in a fight with an off-duty cop / I shot up some dirty smack and fell out of the car at 90kph / I hate myself and only feel right when I'm smashing my own face with a coffee mug".

-"Ooooooohh. Well...hey...great gig!"

No, we seriously played a gig here. The grumpy old yacht-rocker who owned the P.A system had the song "Up Where We Belong" on a continuous loop the whole afternoon. The Baaron tried to make me see the bright side, but I told him to go fuck himself and sat in the car crying and listening to Unleashed.

We played at sunset in front of eight Italian grandparents, ten parents and about a dozen under ten-year-olds, all seated on those fucking pink plastic chairs. They were polite at first, then restless and then started booing us loudly and wandering off in chunks. The experience was partially saved by a small knot of Genovese hipsters who had driven out to check the action and do some friendly heckling. We ended up selling a bunch of merch and hanging out. Life is like a box of chocolates.

These are the dangerous Genovese fucks who set the whole thing up. 

In fact they were, like, super extra nice and took us to their favourite late-night panini spot. The Baaron ate about twelve fucking foccacias in twenty minutes and the other patrons were vocally shocked and sickened by the spectacle of that much dough disappearing so fast into such a weedy human. Good old Cuddles. He knows how to put on a show.

On our way up the coast (after we got chased out of Pescara like scabby stray dogs...see last post) we dallied in this little resort town for a few hours, licking gelatti and hitting on rich, leathery old Milanese women for fuel money. 

 Our next show was in Faenza, where it's traditional for touring acts to blow bubbles for the local children.

The Baaron was shocked and saddened to learn that we've been an American no-wave garage power-duo this whole time. I have tried to tell him on many occasions, but he just laughed it off. Turns out the joke's on him.

We played in this little cafe/art-gallery/wine-bar/restaurant type place, run by an atom-bomb/woman called Morena. She did our sound and mocked our fears and created this fuck-off incredible three-course meal which remains unchallenged as the Best Food Ever consumed by Any Touring Act Anywhere.... ever.

The gig was pretty cool. Not super-well attended, but fuck, it was a Monday in a small town on the Adriatic coast. Whaddaya want? So because the gig went well and they had a selection of good Deutschen brau on tap I don't remember this scene at-all. Could be something to do with Cthulu.... again. Don't remember.

In another "box of chocolates" twist, we played bottom-of-the-bill at a metal festival outside Milan and were not beaten into bloody comas by outraged Italian metal dudes. No-one even yelled "Faggots!" and some of the long-hairs actually seemed to think we were pretty funny.

The Baaron pulled on a black sleevless number and Rob Halford cop-shades in deference to the atmosphere, and I think people appreciated the effort.

 I was curious to check out Kylesa, who I'd never heard but remembered had been included in Pitchforks "Top 50 Albums of 2010", but alas they were sucky and proggy and wussy and psuedo-brootal. Boooo, Pitchfork endorsed metal, boooo!!!

Japanese retro-doom-groovers Church of Misery, on the other hand, were stoneriffically, chuggatronically bongtastic. They had the biggest flares and the longest hair and the crowd went beer-zonkers to their sabbathy soundzzz. Italo-crowdsurfing and everything. Good times.

On our way over to Sweissreich at the end of our Italian adventure we stopped for luncheon on Lake Como and tried to mingle with the Porsche driving, villa-owning locals.

But our clothes were stiff with gig-grease and passers-by were visibly repulsed by our "musk". Even the waiter at this shitty pizza restaurant seemed to deeply resent our presence and treated the act of serving us as a vicious assault on his dignity. So we kicked over a few garbage bins, spat on a few statues and smoked rubber out of town. Take that, rich cunts!

Yes, it was an Italian summer holiday to forget. What was I talking about? Fuck it, let's score some more of that dirty smack.

P.S. All these shows really deserve a full, frank post and all the people involved deserve big back-slapping onyas, but since I've trashed the notion of posting for every show, this sort of truncated, amalgamated overview will probably become more common. But seriously, to all involved, big bigups and sloppy kisses. XXXXXX

 

Ready access to beer is one of the key indicators I look for when first casing out a venue. 

Most of the clubs we play in Europa seem to follow the same basic model. There is a large, glass fronted refrigerator back-stage which contains around two dozen beers, for all acts to share, and if attendance is good and spirits are high it may be re-stocked at some point throughout the night. On the face of it it's a totally reasonable system. 

However, I usually become paranoid that at some point I will be struck by The Thirst and the fridge will be empty, so I'm in the habit of shoving 3 or 4 of the buggers into my soft-case during soundcheck, as a strategic deposit.

This system has served me well, and seven times out of ten I will indeed be forced to utilise these back-up beers. But occasionally they are not necessary and there is a nice, hot can to sip on during the next days drive.

Yes, I am a man of simple vices.

When the venue is generous and the gig goes well and there is camaraderie and back-slapping and whatnot, I have a pretty reliable tendency to become slobbering drunk. As a result there have been quite a number of occasions where my behaviour has become sub-standard. But most of these episodes have been pretty harmless and forgettable. 

I am not generally a belligerent or theatrical drunk.

 

There have, of course, been some truly humiliating exceptions to this rule. The most glaring recent example would be my post-stage antics in Pescara (IT) at the "IndieRocket" festival (I won't go into details about the festival itself, because it was noteworthy in many respects and really deserves it's own post).

Their solution to the beer question was simple and effective. They had these small, self tapped kegs of crappy, psuedo-bavarian pilsner which they replaced at regular intervals, and a stack of plastic cups close to hand. So the beer was quite literally "on-tap". This proved to be my undoing, since I started necking this stuff during our lunchtime soundcheck and kept hitting those kegs every 15 minutes right through to our (awesome) midnight set and beyond.

Holy cow, just look at that action pose the Baaron is pulling. Anyone would think he was the drunk one.

One of the only clear memories I have after we left the stage is of The Baaron holding me by both shoulders and yelling "Chill the fuck out, Green. You're making enemies.... for both of us."

He says I was standing on a big concrete block right in front of the stage during the headline act, hurling half-full cans and screaming primitive abuse at the band. The people around me couldn't understand what I was yelling, but there was no mistaking the tone, and somebody from the festival staff had gone to find a security guard to come and deal with me.

So The Baaron grabbed the waist-band of my jeans and yanked me rudely down off my pedestal. I fell sprawling on my face, only to spring up like a jack-in -the-box with both fists cocked, ready to rumble. So he slapped my face hard enough to shock me immobile and that's when he took me by the shoulders, like a concerned parent, and asked me to calm down.

I remember thinking...
"The Baaron wants me to tone it down. I must really be shitting the bed here." 

So I just nodded meekly and weaved back into the "artists area" to hide. But by all accounts I continued to drink heavily and make a complete fuck of myself throughout the rest of the night.

I tried to hug people I'd never met and became hurt and abusive when they shoved me away. I buttonholed two members of the headline act and mocked their outfits and stage personaes to their faces. I did alot of staggering, ranting, drooling and falling over. Whenever anybody laughed at me or cursed me or tried to pretend I wasn't there I would lurch upright, puff out my chest and say "Yeeeaaaahh, I'm that guy."

Meaning the guy who is making a sorry spectacle of himself. I was, at least, aware of my own shame.

The only existing photographic evidence of that shame (I hope) is this one shot, snapped by the Baaron shortly after I came around after a twenty minute blackout. 

He says I was leaning against that metal pole and talking to myself for while. Then I slowly folded up, like a giraffe with a fat tranquilliser dart in it's neck, and took that big white board thing I'm sitting on with me. When he returned a while later I was still in a pile on the ground. 

"Photo op!!" thought Von Cuddles, but just as he was going to take a snap I suddenly sat bolt upright, looking really pleased with myself as you can see.

Note the kegs of "Kaiser" in the background. That was what done me in, your honour.

Anyway, I've already availed myself of a popular social networking forum to apologise for my behaviour that night. But if any of the people affected are reading this, once again, I really am sorry.

I'm not usually that bad.

P.S Big thanxxx to Paolo, a great host, and the whole Indie Rocket posse...and to Borracce Di Poesia for the T-shirt. It's my favorite, and it makes Italians laugh.