Saturday 21 August 2010

Bangers/Dirty Tactics Mordtour 2010 Titbit

This is a little snippet from the 15,000 word tour diary which I've been typing up since getting back from Europe. I've been writing it on floors, in beds, at desks, hungover, starving, coffee delirious and diarhhea stricken. Yet all this is nothing in comparison to the pain of recalling this bizarre tour. It was delightful in places, but alot of the time it was weird. I'll publish the whole thing in a zine soon, but until then check out these three days for a little taster, a little mouthful of poopie for ya. Sorry it's been a while by the way, I've been far too much of a professional vagrant for a blog.

Sunday 6th June
Hertsel, Dutch Belgium (De Choke Youth Centre)

Four hour drive to this venue in the middle of fucking no where seemed to take forever. There is a slow moving Sunday vibe in the air. The venue looks like a building out of Fight Club and my drums are set up underneath a drip, we are fed cheese salad sandwiches for dinner and instinct suggests tonight will suck a damp dogdong. About four people turn up and I get pretty loose on 8% beers. After the show I try to be polite to the strangely attractive androgynous promoter girl by kissing her on the cheeky, but they don’t do the kissing thing in the Dutch part of Belgium, so it became awkward and weird. She gets flustered and asks “What is happening here?!” Loosen up lady I’m just digging on your androgynous style.

We drive to Antwerp to sleep above a metal club called DE ROT. As soon as well pull up to the venue a cute, spacey girl called Flo comes and speaks to me. Something sexual was in the air and she asked if she could come up to the metal club. Before I could get to know her better, the van had to be moved. I did this then hurried back to De Rot to find Gary had stolen Flo away from me on his never ending quest to buy weed. I walked back to the van, slept in the van, and stayed mad at Gary until jerking off in the van.


Monday 7th June
Bremen, Germany

Awoke in a damp van next to a body of water in Antwerp. Some asshole on a tuba was jamming just outside the van and some freaky bitch was cruising around the waterfront on a pennyfarthing ringing a stupid little bell. Fucking Belgians. Antwerp looked exciting last night but no time to see the place or even take a piss – off to Bremen to play on a boat. Feeling haggard and delirious. Roo sits in the back playing pokemon for the duration of the ride, “De Choke would be a pokemon which shoots rotten beer out it’s dick.” Everyone’s feeling a little grizzled from the night before. The van ride extends to six hours. A lot of this time is dedicated to lewd fictious chat about what everyone did with Flo after I went back to the van including a “Jackson Pollock” an “Abraham Lincoln” and an impressive squirt off the balcony into Roo’s mouth, 40ft below. Chris attempted to justify this talk, “I’m only saying all this about her because…it’s all true.”

80% of Bremen was destroyed in WW2, prior to this it was one of the most prosperous cities in Germany. Thru solid bombing of the place we managed to transform it into one of the most porous cities. Now it’s an industrial diarrhea mess. Opposite the boat we’re playing is the Beck’s Brewery, just up from that is the Craft Cheese factory, and off in the red sunset is the outline of the Kellogg’s cereal plant. Two people are in the crowd, no one is feeling particularly inspired to play, so we make no effort and passively suck. Stayed at a hostel paid for by the venue and a man who looks like a genie buys me a beer.

Tuesday 8th/ Wednesday 9th June
Hamburg, Germany/Oskarshamn, Sweden

Left the hostel at 8AM feeling that kind of stupid tired where you just wanna cry at being awake. Arrived in Hamburg which is the first city I’ve encountered in Europe which has that hot dust and seedy smell of kebab shops and vice in the streets. The air poisons my mind and I split away from the pack to buy a handjob off a 60 year old hooker at three in the afternoon. I liked the way she held herself, she looked homely and sexual to a degree I’ll never comprehend. The likelihood of a woman like this giving me a bucks fizzy in the “real world” was nigh on impossible. Alas, her sultry, erotic countess looks placed her far out of my bracket, so I left her in her window to finish reading her copy of Good Homes magazine. As I walked out of the red light district I bumped into the drummer of Pantera who was taking pictures of the outside of the hooker alley. It added to that surreal feeling of having gone up to a woman and asking “How much for a handjob?” Whilst making a wanking gesture. I felt like a real tool for about 2 hours after this.

Morale is low today and the thought of driving 12 hours to Sweden straight after the show makes it hard to enjoy tonight. No one comes to the show again, so that’s three in a row. I don’t wanna go home, but I would like to feel that what I’m doing is worth something to someone. Feeling bleak and despairing. 10pm, two people there – the show gets cancelled so we bail to Sweden. The venue is sympathetic and pays us 100 euros and gives everyone all the sauce they can drink. I sit in the van and wait to leave. It starts to pour down with rain. Carlin comes up to the van with vomit on his face; I refuse to let him in till he’s wiped it off. He doesn’t seem to care. We have a stockpile of whiskey, beers, and energy drinks to get us to Sweden. Everyone is loose and splashy. At the first services everyone needs to pee, but go thru the wrong door. An angry Indian man shouts at Chris, and then leads him down a back alley. I watched, intrigued as to what was happening. The man unlocks the door and enters; Chris holds back, shuts the doors and pisses all over it. What?

Overnight delirium drive up out of Germany, thru Denmark across 25 mile long bridges spanning vast grey stretches of water and across barren Sweden in the pale and milky early morning light. We get pulled over at the Malmo border. We look disheveled and insane. The van smells like pee, Gary’s asleep on the shelf, and there is booze all over the place. We try and hold it together.

“How many of you are there in the van?”

“Seven.”

“Seven? So why is there 120 empty beer bottles on the floor?!”

Drove another four hard hours along one straight road which is flanked on both sides by chilly looking lakes, desolate pine forests, and moose crossing signs. Bored and out of my mind tired, I stayed up the whole drive to keep Andrew, then Roo company whilst they drove. Arrived at Kalle’s house, drank a beer, and passed out. For some reason almost everyone in our troupe experiences sexy/aggressive dreams during the four hour nap before the show. Oskarshamn is in the middle of fucking nowhere, like most places in Sweden it takes hours to get between towns. Maybe this Scandinavian isolation would go someway to explaining the local girls nose for new blood. We go back to this guy’s house after the show and roll some of the most highly prized figures of Western sexual commerce - SWEDISH GIRLS. I met a cute blonde girl (of course) who smelt like wood and chewing tobacco. We chatted casually whilst she gradually backed me into a corner. Sensing I was an awkward nerd, she moved onto someone else. I met another one who was like a beautiful wild animal – spitting, burping, and crushing cans into her delicate forehead. We moved onto a bar and whilst I whittled the hours away talking to two boring dorks from a nuclear power plant, one of our party received footsy banana massage from Chewing Tobacco underneath the table. Back at the house I stood on the balcony looking out towards Finland feeling strange that we were in the artic circle, and we’ve still yet to go to Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

In the next part of the tour diary we encounter a Polish toilet so
damned vile that the stench of it broke my camera!