Dop 'N' Jive!

Monday 11 May 2009

WHY BERLIN SUX ,A PERSONAL journey

This weekend i was fortunate to go play Berlin with blacktime ,im not being sarcastic ,not yet, as any oppurtunity to go play another country is fucking awesome, however this uber cool city bit us in the melon leaving a gaping mental wound that will take a while to heal. Heres the chain of events that went from rocking like Van Halen circa 1984 period to sucking like a Sammy Hager tribute band.

It all started after the gig(this gig ruled loads of people dancing and rocking) in Munster , at some point in the night not to sure when ,due to beer,it went from cool ladies and lads rocking out to black lips,gories ect to uber kool cockheads rocking out to the kills. The " trendy kunt wankey ness" of the clientele was further cemented by the arsehole that greeted me when i went backstage.

Basically it was some tool with a fringe telling Lemmy Caution (singer of blacktime) how we were trying to sound like the babyshambles , we not sure if this was supposed to be funny or if this twat had no ears.
Either way when it comes to music people have different opinions ,interpretations which is understandable but this prick kept repeating himself and then would add in other gems with each repetition .

Your singer looks like Brian Moloko

Ive just been to see Maximo Park but you were better

Anyway ounce he fucked off we had to get our gear out of the venue to where we were staying this involved pushing through a crowd of coked up ,dressed up trendy pricks who didnt see the need in gettting out of your way .

After this we went back to where we were staying and slept till 8am as we had to catch a train to Berlin.........

The train ride to Berlin almost tore to shreds my love of train travel basically our tickets had no reservation but every other german did so each 20 mins to an hour ounce we had a found a seat
some german couple would say "sorry we have a reservation" and hush us out ,and this was done to the letter what i mean is if there is 2 spare seats behind us and we sitting in 2 seats
they would have to sit where it is stated instead of , i dont know ,being complacent and sitting behind us and then obviously asking us to move when it got full.Iknow it sounds like im moaning but this went on for 3 hours so we ended up drinking some beer inbetween the carriages on the floor due to our unwillingness to play anymore musical train seating .

Getting into Berlin we met up with 2bad(bass player of blacktime) and went our seperate ways before the show me and lowdown went to the park and slept ,we also watched a football game and saw an awesome goal .It was while in the park that I noticed that it was mainley full of trendy english, americans and germans ,berlin is uber koel!!!!!!!!

When we all met up and arrived at the show we encountered the longest souncheck in the world this was due to 2 factors

  • weird amp configertaion ,which consisted of a massive bass amp and two guitar amps that looked like they had been cut in half ,its was only the speaker section of the amp ,the actual heads were in some racking ,so alot of time was spent trying to connect it all together,plugging un plugging and twiddling knobs
  • a soundman that was maybe a bit to professional for us ,fair enough he triend to get ze perfekt sound but it was in the cant polish a turd category .

so 2 hours was spent figuring out the amps ,the next hour and a half with the soundman telling us that it sounded shit turn up the bass, play a song ,no its shit take the treble off the guitar,no its shit, turn down the bass no its shit play repeat play repeat.....until Caution,thank fuck finally send i give up so we downed tools and left our sound in the hands of the gods.

We then left the club got some graze and tried to focus on the fact that the journey in sucked ,and the sound check sucked but the show is gonna rock ,cause thats how it usually works.

Well the show sucked a fat one,and it wasnt the fact that we fucked up some songs it was more the fact that besides the soundman telling us during soundcheck it was shit ,some punter told us during the gig it sounded shit whilst doing wanker and yawning gestures. Also in between each song you could a german fart thats how rawkus the response was,note the sarcasm.

After the gig as we were packing up the soundman came over to tell us how shit the sound was even though when i came to play the drums the snare was now miced up when it previously had not been ,and he didnt do much to twiddle the amp while we were on stage like i said i know he tried get it perfect but there was no point berating us after the gig of how bad our/his sound was .

After we sulked/drank/groaned/did a shot/laughed pitifully backstage this was only punctuated with Caution going out to maybe sell merch chat ect.

Only to be approached blacktime fan (i say fan cause he knew alot about the band eg: our records released and to be released ) where the following ensued

  1. He wanted to knowwhy our set was so short after noticing on the setlist we had more songs ? ,ummm cause no one clapping and someone told us we sound shit ,so we counted our loses.
  2. Upon hearing his knowledge of blacktime Mr Caution asked if he wanted to buy a cassette tape which had most of the stuff that is gonna be on the split record we doing with ty seagull ,whic he enquired about ,he said no,upon enquiring whether this was due to not having a cassette player he then told Caution , that he loved mixtapes and tapes in general go figure german logic
  3. He then started looking at the comic that was for sale ( a comic done by caution and tony mortis from los raw gosbels) and after scanning it cover to cover he asked how much ,upon hearing it was 2 euros he said no thanks he had to drive tommorow and need to use that money on petrol ,guess he was driving the most fule efficient car known to humanity.

After this delightful encounter we informed the promoter that we wanted to leave and go to where we were staying ,we then proceed to said place ,through a park in the pouring rain ,yes it sucked but compared to what had come before it was not noticed that much.

Our accomodation was the usual bed,couch mattress affiar however the owner was not there but his dog was ,the dog was about labrador size and build but didnt take to kindly to strangers in his abode so he barked at us and then slep right by the door of the room we stayed and and would growl and if you were lucky bite you as you walked past , there was no flesh pentration in the bite just a nip but still stress inducing.

Im gonna simplify the next cahin of events as re-living these moments are makin me ill ...

  1. woke up got bitten by the dog again
  2. waited for a bus to the airport that never came ,no one told us why ,there was no signage either people that were waiting there just left without telling there fellow travellers how long they been waiting ect bllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
  3. finally getting to the airport via two trains and a bus only to stand behind a massive queue for 20 mins

After that we finally got back to london and them played a awesome show later that night with a band called love is all ,that were fucking awesome ,so all was not lost.

p.s: i tried to prrof read it but got bored and emotional sorry about typos and not making sense

2 comments:

doppers