Euroween

After returning to NYC from New England, I had a couple weeks off before heading across the pond for some Ween shows. I filled it with a nice combination of keeping busy and being lazy. I ran back up to Boston for some more baseball, went to Brooklyn for culture twice in a week! (once for a Paul Simon tribute thing, then for a Samuel Beckett play with John Turturro), saw a Godot film with Bridgett Bardot at the Film Forum, and saw a friend's band (Film School) rock the ass out of the Mercury Lounge. Then it was time. Packing. Taxi. Airport. Plane. Airport. Taxi. Hotel. London.

I had decided to fly into London early which worked out perfectly as Lucas was in town (and at the same hotel) with his latest rock-n-roll combo, Death Cab For Cutie. In order to avoid paying for a night of hotel out of my pocket I crashed the first night with Lucas. I flew overnight and arrived at the hotel in the morning. After a lovely wander around the shit-hole that is Shepherd's Bush looking for that elusive, edible English meal, I promptly passed out while Lucas went to load-in. After sleeping all day I got up and found my way over to Camden, which is one of the "cool" parts of London, to take in a perfectly acceptable rock show. The DCFC folks seemed like a fine bunch of folks to spend months at a time traversing the globe with. We had some hotel room drinks and laughs and I was off to bed while they were off to Boston.

The Doc brightens up a rock-hole...

The next day Beana rolled into town so I made my way thru Hyde Park over to Waterloo Station where she was taking pictures at the Cans festival, which was basically a long, abandoned tunnel under the station that had been turned into a giant canvas for some really cool street artists. It wasn't typical graffiti-style stuff, more like Banksy-type stuff. I took a couple pictures but you should really check out Beana's.
Here's a small taste...

The Queen's gardens...

Hyde Park...

We then headed back to West London and Hammersmith Apollo where we were lucky enough to see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It was a stellar show. I've gone off enough about Nick Cave here already so I'll just leave it.

Now it was work time. We played the first show at Shepherd's Bush Empire, which is a fine little gig for London. Then it was on to Camber Sands, on the south coast of England. I should point out here that the weather was perfect the entire tour with the exception of some rain in the morning before we flew out of Amsterdam and in Dublin the morning we flew home. This was particularly amazing in Camber, given that it's an English beach resort, which usually means you'll be cold and damp. The gig was the All Tomorrow's Parties festival, which is sort of the English king of small, indie-hipster festivals. The lineup was full of all the bands you see mentioned on Pitchfork constantly but no one you know has ever heard. The festival was held at an old 'holiday camp' which is basically a cheap, family resort that was popular before it became so cheap and easy for the Brits to go to places that are actually nice for their holidays. It hasn't been remodeled since then either. All the bands stayed in "chalet's" which were basically shitty little motel apartments. Well, all the bands except Ween. They stayed in a nice hotel next door while they stuck their crew sharing the 'chalet'. Overall it wasn't a bad couple days. I spent some time on the beach, which was pretty empty the first day but absolutely packed with what looked to be the cast of a movie about the attack of the pillsbury dough people. I've never seen so many bloated, pasty and/or pink ugly people frolicking in the sun in my life.

I thought about swimming until I saw how much nasty was floating on the edge of the surf...
They had the lamest Go-Kart track in the world...

Housekeeping waiting for us to vacate our 'chalet'...

They should've been working on the bathroom window in the dressing room...

The show was the flattest of the tour as the hipster crowd wasn't really built for a 3hr Ween set. I didn't really see any other bands except Sebadoh for a bit. They were good. Everyone said Redd Kross was amazing. I couldn't bring myself to care. Afterwards, while I was sleeping off the jetlag, Mickey was partying with the Meat Puppets and, in an effort to avoid walking way out of the way to get to his hotel, jumped a fence (as one will). Instead of climbing down the other side of this 12ft. high gate, he jumped. Two words suddenly defined our tour: Man Down.
A broken heel and the other foot not much better. A big ol' cast and some crutches. It looked like we were going home at first but Mick's a trooper and muscled through. He played the rest of the shows sitting down with his cast up on a stool. He hates being in England/Europe already. This didn't help his morale.

Hospital Use Only...

Soundcheck...

Getting searched...

His mellow has been harshed...

Even his luggage was special...

And so we were off to Paris. After spending the afternoon at the festival/beach waiting for word from the hospital where Mickey & poor Dan Mapp (our illustrious tour manager who bears the brunt of every inconvenience) were getting the foot looked at, we hopped a train through the Chunnel and got to Paris in the early evening. Beana had made her way from London and we found a nice place for dinner and walked down to the Seine and Norte Dame. It was a gorgeous Saturday night and the river was lined with people sitting on blankets with bottles of wine and picnic baskets full of no-doubt delicious food. I could totally live in Paris if I could find a way to get these people to stop treating me like a leper. The Paris show happened, I can't offer much more than that, which is true of all the shows there except Zurich was really good and Dublin was pure madness. After soundcheck in Paris Chip asked me "have you seen the electric chaircut?". I had not. The venue was attached to an avant-garde type arts space and there was a cafe full of people facing a stage. On this stage was a guy with an amp on his back and all sorts of effects pedals strapped to him. These were hooked up to a set of electric clippers and some scissors (which must have had little microphones on them). He then gave audience members 'haircuts'. First, of course, he had to tape them to the chair with electrical tape, also taping over their eyes and mouth (surely symbolizing how society binds us and blinds us and forces us to conform to its idea of style, or some such pretentious bullshit). As he trimmed & snipped, noises came out of the amp, all twisted by the effects. The clippers made droney sounds and the scissors made percussive sounds. It was all very original and surreal, but also not really very good and seemed pointless. All I could picture was being at Art School and having to sit thru everyone's final presentation and all the talentless kids trying so hard to do something original. At least it was something I hadn't seen before. I wish I could've got video but all I have is this shitty phone pic...

We continued on thru Koln, Zurich, Amsterdam and ended in Dublin. Koln was forgettable. Zurich was like an entire city of the Upper East Side, so rich and uptight. The show was good though. Amsterdam was comforting as usual but way too short. Dublin isn't nearly the romantic place it pretends to be. It's mostly wall-to-wall drunk English assholes or posse's of English girls on 'hen-weekends', all dressed alike and embarrassing themselves one last time before getting married to one of the previously mentioned drunk English assholes. The show was great though. It was a tiny venue and the kids were packed in and going nuts the whole time. Fists in the air, beer flying...as it should be. Here's a video clip of the end of Blarney Stone, complete with Mickey's "tour diary" verse...



I didn't take many pictures of the shows but here's a couple from the Paradiso in Amsterdam. If you want to see some good EuroWeen shots, again, check out Beana's.


The tour ended in perfect fashion as we sat in the hotel lobby, preparing for our 6:30am lobby call to fly home by drinking pints of Guinness (which really are way better in Ireland). The previously mentioned drunk English assholes were represented in the hotel bar by about 5, 20-something, wasted (or 'pished') douchebags who proceeded to talk to the wife of a 50-something, drunk, hard-assed Irish guy. First there was yelling, mostly in an Irish accent, followed by some punching and lots of rolling on the ground and tearing of shirts. Security had all they could do to restrain the Irish guy, who wanted nothing more than to "tear out you throat you wee fuckin' prick!".
The police came and we thought this guy was going to jail, but this is Ireland and the nationalism runs deep. No Irish cop is arresting an Irish guy twice his age for beating up some sally English pricks. Ah, the bonds of country. Speaking of which, I'm back in mine, which is my favorite, even if it is in the shits.

Roots

I spent a couple weeks after my grandmother's funeral bouncing around New England in what seemed like one long episode of "This Is Your Life". I visited a steady stream of family, friends and places, many of which I hadn't seen in years. After a few days with family I headed to Portland to visit with Ben & Paula. Ben & I went for a drive up thru Cumberland (where I grew up) and Freeport, where we did some walking along a nice point at low tide. It felt good to get back to the places that feel most like home to me, even though I haven't lived there since I was 12. Back in Portland, we had a nice dinner at what I call "Takahachi North", a small sushi spot that Ben & Paula have made their own. The next day Ben & I headed NW to VT to visit with Jimmy & Anna. Jimmy's house in Mud City is where Jim, Ben & I lived together for a while. It was great to be together in that place again. There was still a ton of snow up there so we did some hiking/snowshoeing and just sucked in lungfulls of air bereft of exhaust and urine.
After dropping Ben back in Portland I went and stayed at my dad's, who now lives in Newmarket, NH which is where I had my first apartment ever in college. I stayed there on & off (more on than off) for about a week or so, venturing out to visit various friends in the area and see a couple Red Sox games and an amazing Bruins playoff game (both things I haven't done since I was in high school). While at my dad's, I had to go through about 12 boxes of stuff that have been languishing in various attics & basements over the years. This was where the 'memory lane' theme of this whole trip culminated. I spent hours looking thru box after box of mementos from all phases of my life, from early childhood to high school, college, dead tour, phish tour, and a hundred other tours I've done since. It felt good to be so immersed in the past for a couple weeks. If nothing else it really hit home how much of your life you forget.

The house I grew up in...

A real country fairground...
Ben loves the Maine coast...

Mussels at low tide...

Jimmy & Anna...

Shoes...

Ben loves Beaver Meadow...

Local fare...

Manny at Fenway...