"ROADKILL: 2007" EUROPE 2007 - "Blame Jane!" Tour |
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The bruises had barely faded and the swelling had almost gone down when we launched ourselves back out on the road. It's not considered to be a full calendar year for us if we don't take some time to terrorize Europe. But our yearly sojourn to Europe was JT's first time going over, which meant we needed extra sass for the occasion. Armed with his camera, he was intent on documenting the whole thing in digital pixels to later be used for blackmail material. We were bringing along old-school Voodoo Doll Lil Luvroc to keep Little Miss Risk company. She had done her share of road miles, but she had never been over onstage with us outside of North America. So we had a drummer/Voodoo cherry poppin' combination to work on…
They were happy to go back to Germany and pick up the usual glam-van (aka the Blue Behemoth) and they immediately fell in love. Her name was Jane and she is a GPS. But more importantly, she's OUR GPS and having her along made the difference between sCare-oline murdering John when the drivers ignored her navigations with the map book and a pleasant time driving through Europe. It took some grappling, cussing, and furrowed brows, but finally between John, sCare-oline and the guy at the local electronics shop we had a talking GPS with a woman's voice and a London accent. And it was nice change to be able to blame Jane for random weirdness, rather than them trying to blame me (Todd) all the time. In any case, I had been left at the bottom of a barrel, festooned in ladies' undergarments. So they had a new pal to guide them (or misguide us, as the case sometimes was) through the European continent. Now I'll leave it to them ... We started off with a few days to orient ourselves in Hagen, taking over our good friend T-Base's house (watch out for his band, The Cheeks... they'll rock your socks off) We walked around in a daze from jet lag and began to wonder if the strange sights we were seeing weren't just post-traumatic flight syndrome...
We noticed that there was something a little amiss when we wandered around but we simply chalked up the appearance of the giant dinosaurs all over Germany to one of two things: A) Jet Lag B) Having missed out on dinosaurs the first time, the German people decided to have dinosaurs roam the land in the present day. The latter stands to reason, since you'd at least be able to appreciate them now as opposed to looking at reassembled old bones and trying to imagine how they looked with skin and such. Performers have good imaginations, but sometimes we're just plain lazy. But after a few days of deep sleep and gathering the gear, we were set to go and hit up Munich at Monofaktur. It's not a night in Munich if sCare-oline doesn't wind up getting bested by the German beer. After doing a dance with a few bottles, she was down for the count. It gave the rest of us a chance to drink with Voodoo Rhythm Records recording artist CW Stoneking. His fellow banjo player had seen us the year before while he was performing with Serpents Of The Nile at the Patronaat in Haarlem. We never forget a banjo in this group! After one too many absinthe's, we noticed while we were parking the Blue Behemoth that a sneaky Mini that had slipped in between us and where we wanted to park...
In the golden morning, we had our first romp with Jane, when we discovered that if Jane doesn't have an exact address, she'll send you to the next best place - the middle of nowhere. If this wasn't a signal that she was trying to leave us out in the wilderness to die, then I'm hard pressed to find a better example. The little scamp would have to do better than that to take us out, though. After we finally had our way and got to our destination (the music store, which was only a few doors down from where we had started) we were on our way to Austria. I can think of no nicer way to spend the day than to spend it en route to such a lovely country. We arrived with no major body trauma in Graz and upon getting settled into our Etap hotel, engaged in late night hotel games (who can flip channels the fastest, who can touch all the walls at once, etc). In the morning, we all went out in search of the glories that Graz had to offer... aside from the lovely setting, and amazing old establishments, the girls fell in love the with an old bakery...
If you look really, really closely, you can see the marks on the wood from the girls' fingernails where we had to pry them away from the bakery. But, Nonstop Kino awaited, and we had a blast playing this old porn theatre with Moonstruck. We had a hard time getting Little Miss Risk to pay attention to the show at all, since she was busy riveted watching Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! on the big screen. After the show the Moonstruck guys took us the one of the old hang outs underground. For some reason it had started to rain heavily while we were doing our show, and as we came out of the after party, we were struck with the urge to gather two of every animal. That's saying something since we're from Vancouver!
It had cleared up the next day, and we made our way to Italy. It was hot a beautiful and a change from the heavy wetting that went down the day before. All around the Italian countryside was beautiful and picturesque…until we tried to find Sabotage. Again, Jane was assuring us she knew where it was - in the middle of an industrial park? But never second guess your GPS for they have strange and spooky powers. Sabotage was, indeed in this area and after a lovely meal, and much Grappa, we got onstage and into full swing! The crowd was full of beans and high spirits and left us loving Italy. After the show we went back to our accommodations (an amazing bed and breakfast above a bakery). In the morning, JT, sCare-oline and Lil went out to join the wine festival happening on our doorstep and had champagne for breakfast. Sorry Dita, it doesn't get much more rock and roll glamorous than that! With tiny bubbles talking to a Doll and Bassist, we headed for the Covo Di Covo Festival and came up against our fair share of problems … although it started out well with being led out to the venue by motorbike.
The "venue" was at an ancient farmhouse overlooking vineyards as far as the eye could see. The bands on the bill were 100% punk balls to the wall. We won't go into gory details about our own set, but it was definitely one-of-a-kind. And let us reassure you that the Voodoo Dollz are NOT petting zoo - especially when they're armed with fire! Just a warning … After our escape from Valenza, we drove to Switzerland. Lil had to do her best to not break into songs from The Sound Of Music, running over hill and dale. We holed up one night in Bern where we dropped in on an unsuspecting Reverend Beatman at Voodoo Rhythm Records. He closed up shop and we all went out to lunch Hand then he gave us the Historic rock'n'roll tour of Bern after which we proceeded to buy him out of Voodoo Rhythm merch. Our next night we were in Thun, arriving early enough to ty recall a little misplaced North America and have dinner at Hooters. Seemed wrong so John decided we HAD to do it. Thanks John. Our show in Thun was at the fabulous Café Mokka with Moonstruck. After the show there was waltzing upstairs (drunkenly) and a DJ playing psychobilly downstairs in another room. If ever there was a definition of cool, then this club should have it's photo next to the word in the dictionary.
Back to Germany the next day through bleary eyes. We perked up when we saw our friends Tomas, Alex, and Rob. Alex and Tomas both are German natives, but our friend Rob was visiting from Canada where he was taking a break from running around for killer clothing lines to work it while visiting the sights of Germany with us. So we took the stage in Dartmstad at 603qm and rocked out. Afterwards we narrowly didn't get back into our hotel due to someone being asleep at the switch, but we managed to drag our tired bones up into our hotel rooms and sleep off the nights excesses. Over to Chemnitz to play Atomino where our favourite usual suspects were there - dressed to the nines with looks sharp enough to prick your finger on. Atomino had moved from it's old location and was now two stories up, which surprised John and s-Careoline but after putting our backs into it, we got the Blue Behemoth unloaded and had a great time. It's hard not to when people keep pounding the stage with their hands. But we can only stay but once a year and sp we loaded up the van and headed to Berlin. The Berlin show promised to be ten tonnes of fun, with two rooms at an old air force base. It was a secret MySpace party but it didn't look so secret with people jammed into both rooms for dancing and fun. BJB even did a shameless bar crawl which to this day still amuses us all. It was exceptional in that he didn't spill his drink or lose one note on hit guitar. Now THAT'S skills! Scare-oline was aflutter at the smorgasboard of lovely boys there too - if you dress up, that girl will take notice. The next day we headed to Flensburg for our show in the beautiful little town - the last thing before you fall into the ocean. It was just as much fun offstage as it was on. We wound up having a karoke competition with Lil and BJB belting out the Bon Jovi, Little Miss Risk rapping, sCare-oline crooning and JT winning the prize of the night - who knew that he was hiding such great pipes behind the kit? Or is that kilt? Enough of that!
Over to Copenhagen (we didn't see any gargoyles over it - I'm sure everyone who has listened to the Necromantix has looked up at least once when there). Little Miss Risk dictated we all take a detour to see the Little Mermaid statue. She didn't get close enough to put pasties on it, but she was thinking about it. At Loppen, in the heart of Christiania, we shared the stage with Los Plantronics - those guys put on a helluva show complete with shirtless stand up drummer in a luchador wrestling mask. And oit was the second time the band has played with those lads - remember John's birthday in Oslo in 2005? Too cool! After Copenhagen, we departed Denmark to come back to Germany where we took over Lila Eule and were greeted by our opening act, burlesque ingenue Eve Champagne. Not only did she have champagne waiting for us but also amazing drinks in hollowed out pineapples! She did her bump and grind before us and took us on a tour after the show of the sights of Bremmen, but not before getting down with Little Miss Risk…
After wiping the remnants of pineapple juice and vodka off our mouths the next morning, we headed for notorious party city, Hamburg. We were playing Drafthouse but after the show the after party with club hopping, bar dancing, hooker hassling and almost naked hula hooping dwarfed anything that Edmonton ever boasted (and it's boasted some pretty fun times). Unfortunaly BJB went partying with freinds and got locked out of the hotel. Another fun-filled night in the Reeperbahn!
The next day our hangovers found us in Lubeck where we played with fun surf band, the Splashdowns. They played a great set and got us fired up enough to shake off the excesses of the night before and get down… one young punk enthusiast had Scare-oline sign is arm so he could get her autograph tattooed on his arm… we fully expect to see that in 08, my friend! We'll be disappointed if we don't. We decended on Hagen yet again in order to play a show in a converted old school house. It was a blast and we wound up having a little too much fun. Something about midnight snacks, pasties on a trampoline and shots at the bar? Sounds like a recipe for fun (or rehab) to us!
Our last show for the year in Europe happened in Hannover. Ah, Hannover. The club in question was commonly a gothic/industrial club so we took to it immediately. John often times won't admit to his goth/industrial/metal roots, but we know the truth. We also know that LMR and Scare-oline have no trouble admitting to their active love of both genres and so they have a soft spot for Soma… After the show we loaded up the big blue bus of doom and headed over to Frankfurt where we parted ways with European soil… for at least a year… See you in 2008!
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