Day 7 Utrecht Holland
Cars fly by us on the Autobahn. I have somehow once again bungled my
opportunity to rent a Porsche 911 GT in Stuttgart and drive as fast as an F1 race
car on the highway. I need to get one of
those. The 911 drivers appear to be much
more content than we are chugging along in our LSD Trips van. Then again they probably aren’t listening to
the Alcohol Stunt Band like we are, the magic of Chris Crofton winning new
converts in the Fatherland. We cross
into the Netherlands and stop at a truck stop where Christoph hurries in to
secure two packs of Chocomel, some insanely rich chocolate milk drink in slim Red Bull size cans. Also available are
cans of Elephant Malt Liquor, Europe’s version of Colt 45.
Christoph tells us about the last time he “spoke to the
Elephant”. He was unemployed briefly so
his favorite thing became going out on a Monday and getting totally
wasted. He really liked the idea of
people thinking “what the hell is wrong with that guy? It’s Monday for Christsakes!”. So in this particular incident Christoph and
his friends get three giant cans of the Elephant and knock them back in short
order. These things pack a 10% wallop,
so this is no joke. In no time at all
they arrive at the hardcore show where he is already almost totally
incoherent. He keeps the party going at
the club outside with friends. This
activity hits him like a freight train.
By the time the headliner hits the stage he is literally sleeping on his
feet in the back of the venue. He is
totally comatose at a hardcore show. It
reminds me of the time our old bass player Tony fell asleep in front of the
Cynics backline at the Electric Banana.
It seems impossible. When his
friends eventually carry him outside, he barfs all over the entrance of the
club, making it impossible to leave the show without sashaying through his
vomit. Rock and roll. I immediately start texting his friends in
Germany to get a copy of a picture from that night.
We roll into the Bed and Breakfast to get the keys to where
we are staying. It’s a pretty weird
scene. A tiny road is abutted on either
side by canals. Central casting has sent
people pedaling through on bicycles. Ducks lazily
cruise in the canals. We struggle to not
drive into a canal with the big van. The
B&B is an old farmhouse, and by “old” I mean 1600s. Not 1965.
There is a really nice sort of hippie family that runs the place. We have stayed here before and I remember how
friendly everyone was in the morning.
The main room that must have housed the animals has been converted into
some kind of jam area with small amps and bongos. I have a vision of the family doing shaky
versions of Grateful Dead songs. Crazy
steps that are really little more than ladders are the only way to get upstairs
to our loft room. There are six bunk
beds with a handwritten sign suggesting crawling out a space if there is a
fire. Hmm, that’s reassuring.
As we check in we see a middle aged guy with a man bun
in the driveway smoking a hand rolled cigarette or some hash.
It’s sort of hard to tell which.
Gary blows right by him dragging his suitcase to the ladder, I mean “stairs”. I stop to introduce myself and am surprised
to find out that he’s American. He
invites us to see him play some rock n roll tonight at a club, which turns out
to be the same club we are playing. His
name is Brother Dege and he is the opener.
I see Leo working his way into his inner circle after the gig after he
mentions that this is his first show after a stay in Amsterdam.
We leave for the club at the same time as the Brother Dege
crew. It has become apparent it is very
important for Christoph to make it to the venue before those other guys, so
much so that he drives across a pedestrian walkway and almost knocks down the
fence to get there first. Another small
victory for Christoph in a contest only he was aware of entering. I’m happy for him when the Brother Dege van
drives in as we are unloading. A victory
for German precision. We roll the road
cases into dBs.
dBs is one of those Euro clubs that is a co-operative
performance space, bar, practice space, café, coffee house, meeting place, and
maybe school. The club itself is a
medium sized space with a massive professional sound system. A little blonde Dutch girl adjusts the
lighting rigs. The sound man has a
shaved head, as all sound men must. It
is so professional here it is almost a shock to our systems. I always like the air of chaos in a
room. I like to wonder what is going to
go wrong. This seems to be engineered to
make the performance ideal for both stage and audience. Danny, the show minder, is a really nice kid
that makes sure we feel comfortable. I
saunter over to the bar to peruse the Belgian beers on offer.
I am delighted to see LaChouffe on tap. That little gnome has never let me down,
though it is a dangerous devil to dance with more than once. I stay with what I know and bypass a couple
of other beers with smiling cartoon characters on the labels. If there is one thing I can impress upon you
it is the need to treat these smiling Belgian beers with the respect you would
a rattlesnake. The more harmless the
label appears, the greater the chance you will wake up with a new Korean wife and
a tattoo on your forehead. In fact, I
will bet that is what happened to the lead bartender, who sports a tattoo of a
flame on his forehead. I sit contentedly
with my LaChouffe amongst the animated patrons and wait for Brother Dege to
begin.
The guys in his band have never played together. This is literally their first time. Dege yells out chord changes on the trance
hippie blues. These guys are all really
good players and adjust to where Dege decides to go. There is a lot of fog being blown around on
stage and he sings some song where he says the word “motherfucker” about 58
times. People seem to like it pretty
well. They finish and we get set up.
Remember how I said that this gig was engineered to take out
any chance that anything could go wrong?
Literally two seconds into it my boot heel catches my microphone cable
and it goes dead. I grab Leo’s mic from
the boom stand and sing the rest of the song from the limited area allowed by
his chord. I sort of look like Tony
Bennet in a cowboy hat barely able to move around. A short time later Gary breaks a string. I didn’t know he broke a string because I
didn’t hear him say anything about a broken string, so I assume he is tuning
and have a quick intro. “Ladies and
gents… This is the song!” I look left
and Gary’s face is scrunched up trying to needle a string through a hole in his
guitar. Oh shit. It is not easy to fill a long stretch of time
speaking off the cuff to people that don’t speak English as their primary
language. I do my best. It wasn’t that good. Gary winds up switching his guitar out and we
finish the set. It is surprisingly very well received
and we even get a couple of encores led by some guys yelling out of their
diaphragms. "YEEEAAAAGGGHHHHH!!!!" I need to learn that trick.
The club clears really quickly. We head back to the farmhouse. It’s
raining. We try not to drive into the
canal and drown, which isn’t easy as Christoph is as blind as a bat and refuses
to get glasses. We were instructed to be
quiet when we get back by the woman that runs the place, so we retreat to our
bunks and open some beers called Kompaan Bond Genoot. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but they
were good. Eventually I have to go to
Europe’s smallest toilet, which is right down the hall. I have been in
bathrooms in pleasure boats which are larger.
I literally cannot square my shoulders to urinate in the toilet so have
to turn at an angle with the door open to accomplish the task. I make a note to try and launch an Operation
Mad Ape in there in the morning just for the experience.
Tom, the slide player for Brother Dege comes by to hang
out. We talk about his home of Galway
Ireland, and what he claims to be a vibrant roots music club scene in
Ireland. If an Irish promoter is reading
this, we will come over to play. I’d
really like to see what’s doing over there.
Tom is a friendly guy. It was
nice to have met him. He gives me some
contacts over there which I put into my phone; undoubtedly to forget about and
wonder what they are when I re-discover them in a few months. I climb into my top bunk to discover Sugar
stole my pillow. Damn her. I struggle off the bunk to scare up a new
pillow. Mission accomplished I climb
back up and spend the night knocking a stick used to open a rigged skylight off
the ceiling into my legs every 30 minutes.
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