European Tour Diary 2018: Day 9 Stuttgart

The day begins in glorious fashion.  I have a shower in a large clean unit, a place where normal human beings live their lives.  I wrap myself up afterwards in a large fresh soft towel.  I then sit in the morning sun at a round table enjoying a nice breakfast of the ubiquitous rolls and cold cuts with Jochen and Sarah.  I have hit the point where I don’t want a ham and cheese sandwich first thing in the morning any longer, so I spread nutella on the fresh roll like a six-year-old.  I have eaten more bread this week than I have the rest of the year combined.

We are on a tight schedule for me to visit Felix, a mutual friend of the team.  He is a winemaker locally with vineyards in the south Pfalz and a small hotel to receive guests.  He is the 5^th generation of his family to be involved with winemaking and he has radically increased quality from when his bulk minded father ran the operation.  Felix is generous with his time as he is still at the tail end of harvest.  There is some sauvignon blanc and Riesling still hanging in the vineyards, some with noble rot, in the hopes to make a high quality beerenauslese style wine.  The fruit looks good.  He just needs to white knuckle some more quality hang time.

We drive up a ridge to see a special vineyard, a Riesling vineyard on a slope overlooking the valley.  It’s a panoramic view, the entire valley up to the Black Forest is visible.  We head back to his cellar and he and I start to get wine wonky talking about fermentation vessels, indigenous yeasts, and old oak casks.  This is about the point that Jochen and Sarah start to glaze over.  It must be absolutely brutal if you just have a passing interest, but for me it’s a great learning experience.  This only gets compounded for the couple when we sit down to taste Felix’s wines and bomb through 12-16 wines including a low dosage sekt, scheurebe, pinot gris, and pinot blanc oaked and non-oaked.  Then we get down to business with the Rieslings.  As expected, the sloped vineyard is special.  I buy two bottles of the Riesling and one of the oaked pinot blanc for Sugar’s birthday.  I wish I could carry more home.  Felix and I go back and forth with talk of acidity levels, secondary flavors, and speculation of aging potential while poor Jochen and Sarah must want to kill themselves.  They show admirable patience with me.

I have to take a train to Stuttgart to meet the band for soundcheck.  The combination of the Germans having no faith that I can take a train by myself mixed with the potential fury of the Stuttgart concert promoter Robin “Reverend Reichstag” Baeur has everyone petrified.  This fear has Jochen walking me to the platform to insure I get on the right train.  There are only four platforms.  Each one of these platforms is clearly marked.  I could not fuck this up if I tried.  I try to explain to Jochen that I am the “grown up” of the Whiskey Daredevils organization, the go-to person for logistics.  He can go home.  This has no impact whatsoever.  Jochen shakes his head.  “If anything goes wrong, I want Robin to know I did my job and put you on that train.”  It’s that type of thinking that explains a lot of how World War II happened.  I’m not being judgmental, just observant.  I also don’t blame him.  Robin will lose his fucking mind if I am late.

I switch trains in Karlsruhe.  It’s a tight switch and I have to hustle over to Platform 10.  I make it with about a minute to spare and the train lurches from the station.  I note on some railroad materials in the seat pocket that “Stuttgart” is not at the end of this line.  Instead it is some town I have never heard of.  Oh no. Did they switch the platform?  If I am on the wrong train, the consequences will be devastating.  Not because I can’t figure out how to get to Stuttgart on another train in time for the show.  That would be easy.  The real disaster would be the ceaseless wave of criticism I would receive from Christoph for messing up something so simple as a train trip.  It would be a dishonor I would literally hear about it for the rest of my life.  “Ah, Mr. Jagger…  You cannot be trusted to get on the correct train!  How could I trust you not to lose the van keys?  I had better go with you to unlock the door!”  Let me assure you that for the rest of my days I would hear, “…just like you took the wrong train from Landau” as a feature of every future conversation. 

There is no question I will do whatever is necessary to avoid that scenario.  If necessary I will exit the train at the next stop, buy a car, and then abandon the vehicle in Stuttgart without a word of it to anyone.  No expense is too high to avoid a smug Christoph.  A text message pings in from Sister Ant.  “Are you riding on the train to Stuttgart right now?”  I can practically feel the nerves crackle across the phone.  Sister Ant is now on the clock and facing the potential wrath of Reverend Reichstag.  I am “the package” and I must be delivered to Robin.  I respond.  “Decided to smoke cigarettes and drink Desperados with some cool Turkish guys I met hanging out at the train station.  I’ll get to the club eventually.”  She knows I am probably kidding, but she can’t be 100% sure.

The train makes a local stop.  Rapid fire German comes across the PA speaker.  I think I might be OK as I pick up a couple of words.  I am not 100% sure, but the position of the sun lets me know I am at least headed in the right general direction of Stuttgart.  The topography begins to look familiar.  Stuttgart is a city sitting inside a giant land bowl and the train cuts through tunnels cut into the hills.  The station approaches.  Thank God I don’t have to haggle in a German used car lot this afternoon.

I have to take my roller bag about ¾ of a mile to the club.  The train station is filled with Oktoberfest revelers in non-ironic lederhosen and St. Pauli Girl dresses.  Most of these people are in their late 20s/early 30s and look a little wasted now from “pre-gaming” on their way to the event.  These look like the same guys that cruise every nightclub strip in every city on the weekend.  It’s like an NFL tailgate with no game, just endless binge drinking.  It’s a German Bro scene all the way.  Rumor has it the beer tent gets pretty “rapey” starting around 9p.

I have to walk through a street fair for a portion of the walk.  It’s the Cannstatter Volksfest, an Old World version of a County Fair.  Carts with faux old time adornments sell German versions of funnel cakes and cheese on a stick.  In this case that means wild game sausage, cheesy flatbread, and chocolate covered gingerbread cookies.  I pass a ride that spins around and around over small hills.  I think they call it The Alps at most amusement parks.  Just like every one of these I have ever seen, there is a big PA system blasting 70s rock music with no inherent connection to the old fashioned Alps recreational scene on the ride.  I don’t know what Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldier” is adding to the ambiance, but perhaps it is better than Foghat.

I get to the venue, Goldmarks, and find the backline has already been set up.  Robin’s mother has cooked dinner for us, which is the norm.  She always makes us regional home cooked meals, which we love.  Stuttgart is always a special show on the tour for me, and I can already feel an electricity in the air.  I am ready to play today, and we are doing two full sets.  Hector sits across from me and tucks into the meal, which is a chicken dish served with rice.  He seems really happy that it resembles Puerto Rican food.  It can get tough after a week of eating oddly named sausages.  Leo and Sugar nap in a room on the side of the stage.  It feels like we are in a good place to bring it tonight.

Friends we have made over the years begin to trickle in.  I get a pair of briefs from the guys in the Klapprad Motherfuckers, a really funny idea where a small group of guys race these fold up bikes while wearing gang type color jackets and bushy 70s porn mustaches.  These guys show up at these mild recreational events waltzing around in dangerous looking jackets with “Klapprad Motherfuckers” on the backs facing off against suburban looking competition that don’t seem to have a grasp of what these guys are all about.  It really makes me laugh.  I would definitely join if I lived here.

I meet an interesting man known as “Frau Schmutz”.  He is a guy in his late 50s that is a local character.  He is wearing a sparkly tight red top like a superhero.  Silver bikini briefs are stuffed like an enormous cock Superman.  These are worn with assless leather chaps.  We talk for a bit and I learn he is on welfare, which is not surprising in that I think most offices have policies against assless chaps.  He carefully plans for special events like this by being very careful with his money.  He maintains a focus on his own personal fashion sense as his identity, making most of the outfits himself.  He plans on doing some dancing tonight.  He is a real character, an important part of any real scene.

We play our two sets to the best of our ability.  The crowd responds with a lot of energy.  This is a good room.  Hector is killing it tonight.  My voice, which is really tired, is somehow raising a tick to the challenge of the two sets.  We play a total of 37 songs.  Frau Schmutz is dancing like crazy with a preppy young girl he just met.  People are crammed in tight.  It’s loud, but in a good way.  The room just feels good.  It is my favorite show of the tour so far.  I’m proud of how we played.

We are still in the “Official Sugar Birthday Window” (as defined by Sugar and Antje).  They are now completely focused on the dance party after the gig. A DJ starts spinning really good genre friendly tunes.  Antje has connected with a man in a cowboy shirt that we codename “The Gigilo Cowboy”.  Sugar dances with Frau Schmutz. I am knocking back some really good local pils making shit talk with some guys when Antje orders me to take part in “Dance Party”.  That rockabilly re-make of “Tainted Love” comes on the sound system.  I do a special dance where during the two beats before the “Tainted Love” chorus I make exaggerated pelvic thrusts.  Sugar sees this and screams out loudly over the music at me in a frustrated rage.  “YOU ARE RUINING DANCE PARTY!”  My plan has worked. I am off the hook.

I am staying with Antje’s friend Oliver again in his apartment on top of an office building in the Stuttgart City Center.  He is the guy that I mistakenly assured that Trump wouldn’t win the primary much less the Presidency, so he could just relax.  Oops.  It’s late.  We walk back to his place through the shattered remains of the Oktoberfest Bros.  Guys weave and piss in the shrubs.  A girl sits with her head in her hands on a bench.  I roll past with my suitcase, the wheels making a racket on cobblestones.  Rudy the Cat greets us as we get into the apartment.  We discuss Oliver’s separation from his girlfriend over scotch.  She did the 2018 version of opening a cupcake shop.  She left all of her possessions and relationships behind to become a wandering yoga instructor.  This yoga shit is dangerous, like Scientology.  People just get in too deep. 

I sleep in a bed with mosquito netting as Rudy the Cat looks on with disapproval.