Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Update.
9am. Somewhere in rural Germany. Been a busy couple months. After a month of touring European rock clubs in the Highway Tiger throughout May and into June we find ourselves back here again hitting the festival vibes, and we've stepped up our ride to a "mini-bus" driven by a nice German young man named Reiner (as in Rob). At the completion of the last trip we all got on our separate flights (cause we cant stand each other any more) out of Amsterdam, the others heading home to Vancouver while I instead opted to fly to Toronto to check out the Sadies opening for The Raconteurs, pick up some friends and then hop on a jet-airplane down to Costa Rica for a week of no music and rest. After riding a hammock for a week i had a relaxing 20 hour trip back to Van for a few days before this tour which i spent with friends celebrating Kerstins B-Day, Deandras B-Day , and shooting handguns at the new range out in PoCo with Andy , Kerstin, and Shira. And i got to spend a couple days with Wendle too. Back in Hellish pit of despair called "The Airport", I took a ten hour flight back to Amsterdam for a couple hours and then another to Oslo where Remco picked us up and drove us another 5 hours to the site of the first festival in the south of Norway. Not much to say about that except it was in beautiful Norwegian cottage country and filled with 15 year old goth kids. Kid of a strange sight out in the bush actually... I suffered from jet lag and the set was fun. Back in the van, 5 hours to Oslo and onto an airplane to the asshole of the Earth, Heathrow airport in England. After spending another couple of hours waiting in lineups for immigration and customs and whatever else they can think of to make your life hurt in airports we were reunited with our other favorite crew member, Chris Frey who at the end of our last Euro tour we left in Berlin to pursue his new life as a German. Then off to the Glastonbury festival with a short pit stop at stonehenge to see where the inspiration from Spinal Tap came from.... Glastonbury should be included as one of the great wonders of the world, It is hard to impress the magnitude of this festival without being there suffice to say it is literally a small city built from the ground up for three days every year. After wandering around all day to the twenty-something stages i am pretty sure i only saw a tenth of everything there was to see... it reminded me of a more rock and roll, less irritating Burning Man. We had an early set time in the afternoon and played to a few thousand bleary eyed campers which was fine with me cause i was just there to see Neil Diamond and Leonard Cohen which i did, and they both killed it. Leonard Cohen especially will probably go down as one of the most beautiful shows i have ever seen. Never before have i seen somebody play in front of 100,000 people and hold them all in complete rapture as if they were seeing him in a tiny rock club like Lenny did. I swear during "Hallelujah" there was a tear in my eye while i took rock and roll notes from this 70 year old man charming the pants off of every woman in the audience. Oh yeah, and some other bands played too.... Back in the mini-bus and to Dover for our ferry ride to the continent and onto Germany where i have awoken this Am. Today we drive to Vienna where we play another festival tommorrow... x
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