Needless to say, the invitation to play on the Interstellar festival in Linz was accepted without a trace of doubt and this caused us to try and sort out some more shows to play in the direct vicinity of Far Away From Home while we were on the road anyway. As Gone Bald are still proudly not in the possession of driver’s licenses, we once again had to find people prepared to drive us around for about a week. This turned out to be fairly easy for a change and all of a sudden we had two drivers at our service, Maureen and Larz. Finding places to play was another story, featuring hours and hours spent on sending e-mails to a seemingly endless amount of people and getting a accordingly seemingless endless amount of no reply’s, learning to overcome desperation, clinical depression, famine and repetitive strain injury. However, all this effort proved out to be not completely without results and we managed to get a show in Nijmegen, in Frankfurt together with Gentle Veincut, who I already met some time ago in Nijmegen when we both played there and Nurnberg, together with the Heideroosjes. Meanwhile, some of our Austrian connections eventually turned out to be helpful in getting two more shows in Austria, which meant that we were looking forward to a nice tour after all.
This typical old fashion ‘on the road’ feeling got a hold of me as soon as we made our first stop at a gas station to buy some drinks and chips. Sure, the fact that we were still in Holland and most of the people there talked Dutch, diminished the actual feeling of being on an adventure in a strange country and reduced it to an experience comparable to going from my bedroom to my livingroom, but if that’s all there is to make it sound interesting, so be it. Anyway, the sight of Bifi-sausages, just collecting dust by lying there for ages without being touched by anyone, got me high straight away. Nijmegen and the venue weren’t particularly hard to find. The fact that we were the only band here on this wednesday evening, due to a cancellation by Malkovich, got us a bit doubtful about wether much crowd would come to see us play. Indeed, the Onderbroek wasn’t a tightly packed place that night, but we had a nice evening anyway and since we had all the time in the world, we played two sets. After the show, we drank beers. I know there’s really no use in adding this information to the story, but hey, it’s too late now, isn’t it?
Optimism can be a bitch, especially when a little honesty towards yourself tells you that just about everything you’ll find out about reality surrounding you will only give you all the more reason to abolish any optimistic thought that might pop in your head. Somehow we had the impression that Frankfurt was located on an acceptable distance of Nijmegen (fact: this impression is wrong). Optimism and road maps usually don’t get along so well and that’s exactly what we found out when we had some delay taking a wrong turn somewhere and decided to buy a map, just to be on the safe and responsible side of human behaviour. Unfortunately this didn’t keep us from getting lost in and around Köln. A brief explanation of our situation over the phone, forced the guys from Gentle Veincut to change some of the original plans and go to the venue to meet us there. A couple of topographical misinterpretations later we had actually seen a lot of the wrong side of Frankfurt and after a spectacular rescue operation by Gentle Veincut (including a spectacular car chase sequence), we finally arrived at the venue, where food and drinks were waiting. Later that evening, the place got packed with a lot of people, seemingly very interested in noiserock. They witnessed an excellent show by Gentle Veincut and most of them, the ones that stayed inside the bar that is, also saw a great Gone Bald show afer that and after that: more beer.
Bubba & Tariq
As we might have expected, there just wasn’t the slightest possibility that we would have learned anything from all the road trouble we experienced the day before. Optimists at heart (as mentioned earlier and still of major influence on our travelling habits), we unconsciously decided not to pay much attention to the fact that Frankfurt and Innsbruck are not exactly close to each other and took our time to enjoy a good breakfast, talk with the guys from Gentle Veincut (who deserve all the credit for the aforementioned breakfast) and just walk around in circles in the hallway, doing Chriet Titulaer-imitations with inflatable pillows and a Sesamestreet laugh-alike contest before finally hitting the road to Innsbruck. Once again, it didn’t take much more than a quick glimpse on the map to realise that this trip would take longer than we calculated earlier, when we were drinking beer and not looking at the map, that is, but after a good cry about it, we decided not to panic and take comfort in the probability that we would get there eventually somewhere before closing time. It took some time indeed (and for anyone who might be interested, we passed a town called Vomp) but we got there just in time to put up the equipment, allowing Tracker, the first band, to do a short soundcheck and start playing. Beer.Gone Bald played a spontaneous and very chaotic show, spending a lot of time around procedures around Disko breaking a bass string, trying out a bass guitar supplied by the bass player of Tracker and subsequently deciding to put on a new bass string on his bass guitar after all and doing so, while Razorblade and I were jamming around and subsequently playing some more songs to a crowd that apparently already got somewhat lame, maybe due to watching the chaotic events that took place during the gig so far, or perhaps this was just their natural state of being. After the show, someone who will probably want to stay anonymous on this matter, but for the sake of the story shall be referred to as Larz, found himself involved in a painful confrontation with a piano in a rehearsal room in the venue, not being able to get his fingers on the right keys at the right time. This probably had something to do with alcohol, which makes it more understandable, but still, it was a sad sight to see him desperately try to play the well known Thunderstruck theme and not be able to get it right. I had a hard time with it as well, but hey..I’m a drummer.
After a couple of days of being on tour, I think none of us were really interested in spending all these hours on the road in having longlasting and meaningful conversations about things that really matter in life. I know I wasn’t, but perhaps this was mostly due to the fact that combining excessive drinking and lack of sleep usually means that none of my thoughts seem to last more than three syllables (‘Bubba drink..’, ‘Bubba sleep...Bubba drum..’Vomp’, ‘Neuss’, ‘Weet toch’…).We had been killing a lot of time playing games connecting the last and first letters of names of people who have experienced attention in the Dutch media at some point in their lives, preferably for doubtful reasons and a long time ago. Any given Canadian could be used as a joker. It’s pretty bizarre, almost sickening, to find out how much redundant information can be stored inside the human brain for years, never to be used, if only for a rare occasion like this. It’s also amazing how few Canadians we actually know besides Alanis Morisette and Paul Shaffer (although we did forget to mention people like Tom Green, Celine Dion and Avril Lavigne). Linz wasn’t exactly very far from Innsbruck and it wasn’t particularly very hard to find and the game wasn’t nearly finished at the time of arrival. In fact things got more intense by the minute and little did we know that this would be going on for days. In the venue we met Andreja, Razorblade’s sister, who would join us for the rest of tour to get to Holland. Unloading the equipment and beer. Fatigue hit me definitely at some point, leaving me with some vague memories of staring around while being involved in an interview and doing very inexplicable schizophrenic monologues in front of a camera. I heard we played a good and spontaneous Gone Bald show. After that, more drinking, more namedropping, less logical thought, the usual.
Larz. In the daytime, a dedicated driver. In the nighttime, a depressed new-wave wuss...
Because no one in the van actually paid any attention to the fact that Wolfie from Sensual Love pointed two different locations in Vienna on the city map he gave us, (his house and the venue), we got to see much more of Vienna than actually would have been necessary to find the venue. In itself that didn’t have to be a problem, because I reckoned this was to be the only chance to see anything of Vienna (Disko had suggested the possibility that we might actually have time to see more of Vienna the next day, but I guess we all knew that that was a pretty useless thing to say). Since we were driving around in circles for a major part of our quest, I suppose we didn’t get to see a lot of it, at least not the most spectacular parts of it (if there are any). Eventually we found the place, where Sensual Love were already waiting for us. Beer. Apparently someone had locked the ingredients that were supposed to become our dinner in some place out of reach of anybody involved or responsible, leaving the cook with no other option but making something very basic for survival purposes. Survival is nice, but luckily Larz and me found a McDonalds just around the corner and we treated ourselves to some pieces of dead animal. When we returned, it was already getting late and Sensual Love was just about to do their thing and then they did. They played well and then Gone Bald was up. This one was an especially amazing gig with a lot of people already screaming and moving along with the first few chords that blasted out of the amplifiers and things would only get more intense as the show proceeded and eventually we did two encores, Andreja joining us on the trumpet on an improvisational and superb version of the Exotic Claustrophobia. Triumph, merchandise leaving the table in exchange for hard cash and beer.
Sensual Love @ EKH, Wien
Nürnberg, Kunstverein
Earlier, Disko had suggested to take some time to act like tourists and
do some sightseeing in Vienna, but, as was to be expected, it didn’t
take much calculating to find out that we would have a second to lose
if we wanted to arrive in Nürnberg in time. Breakfast and getting
ready for a quick departure was therefore a particularly stressful event,
especially for me, as I found out that Maureen wasn’t the only one
who was so unfortunate to accidentally dip a shoe into a pile of shit
on the street during the three minute walk from the van to Wolfie’s
house. It turned out that the same thing had happened to me. This could
either mean that there was a lot of shit on the street or we both had
a very bad sense of direction. Luckily for me the fact that I had a cold
prevented me from actually smelling it, but even then, this is not the
most convenient thing to happen when you’re staying at somebody
else’s house. I could say a thousand things about how I felt, cleaning
my shoe in the toilet suffering from a severe hangover, while people were
chuckling about it and taking pictures, but I guess
anyone who has ever been in this situation can imagine that it wasn’t
pretty and anyone who hasn’t, will only laugh about it, so I’ll
just leave it to that. Eventually the initial panic caused us to get in
the van not much later than we had planned and we hit the road. After
driving around for a couple of hours, Nurnberg turned out to not exactly
that long a drive as we thought earlier and this provided us with some
time to unwind, room to breathe and stomachs to fill with tasty and carnivore-friendly
fastfood. Eventually we got in Nurnberg in time. We already expected that
the fact that we were playing with the Heideroosjes meant that we would
play for punkkids mostly and this was exactly what we got. Needless to
say, they couldn’t really be bothered with us starting the set with
a few of our less complex songs (in a very seldom and outrageously philantropic
attempt to have some mercy on their 4-count punk hearts and give them
a headstart in a first impression of Gone Bald) and didn’t respond
with any enthousiasm worth mentioning (well, now I mentioned it anyway…).
Needless to say, we couldn’t really be bothered with that and continued
to treat them on a total math attack. Needless to say, they couldn’t
be bothered with the fact that we couldn’t be bothered about the
fact that they could give a shit wether we were playing there or not and
everyone was mostly just standing there, motionless and/or drinking beer.
This feeling was mutual. We played a tight set anyway, knew when to stop
(probably a bit later than the audience would have liked) and that was
about the end of this tour. We cried for a while, drank our sorrow away
and lost conciousness.
Gone Bald are still carnivores.
Gone Bald are optimists at heart, especially when one takes into account the fact that basically just everything that might go wrong, goes wrong indeed (but just never in the worst thinkable way).
Das ist nicht nur Frankfurt, das ist Frankfurt am Main!
The fact that Austria has a town called Vomp is not very widely reported, but definitely still a fact worth mentioning in Bubbacultcha.
Officially, the Austrian language is very much like German, but this doesn’t exclude the possibility that you can hear Austrian people talk in their native tongue for hours and not understand one word of it.
Newman Paul is not an actor.
The fact that Arno Kolenbrander is a singer is not very widely reported: let’s keep it that way.
If Razorblade tells you a thousand times that he can tell you a thousand things before telling you only one, you would think that he would eventually run out of things to say.
Back then we didn’t know how Yannis Kyriakides would feel about the fact that he was an important weapon in the Y-pool. We do now.
