#gothenburg

Fin

8/26/10 – Denver, CO

We make the epic drive to Denver for our final show. At some point, I realize, holy shit, we’re going to make it through this.

We permit ourselves several dawdling stops, including Gothenburg, Nebraska, where we all buy souvenirs at an old Pony Express station. Last summer, we played Gothenburg Sweden, and now we realize that this town was actually founded by Swedes, in honor of their hometown.

We’ve grown a little quieter around each other, realizing our separation is imminent. Real life means lots of comforts, but it also means contemplating things we’ve shoved into the dark corners of our minds for the last three weeks. Money, work, dishes, taxes–the list is endless.

The folks in Denver are just lovely. The final band, Hindershot (containing two ex-Nebraskans!), is having so much fun onstage I swear we could all leave and they’d just keep playing. It’s a rare quality in a band. I suppose it helps that the music is great.

My battered keyboard stand, which was being held together by a wedged-in Allen wrench, gets abandoned at a dumpster. It is our final farewell. It feels like a viking funeral, watching that spindly thing recede as we drive away.

Day 8 – 1 August 2009 – Malmo

We sleep like the dead, having stayed awake for 40+ hours. But we wake up much later than we hoped, and it’s stress from the get-go. I have to figure out how we’re going to get to our next show, I have no idea when the trains or buses leave, and I realize that it’s possible we have made a serious error by not taking care of this sooner. We also are supposed to get to the club by 11AM, which is when we’re meeting everyone to liberate the equipment that we left there overnight. Leaving stuff at clubs makes me nervous. There’s the obvious question of theft, but I find that “club time” is extremely nebulous time. 11 AM could mean 2 PM, which would make us miss sound check for tonight’s show.

We get lucky and everyone’s there. We load up, schlep all of our shit to the train station, find a train, and depart for the fair city of Malmo.

We somehow also don’t know where we’re staying in Malmo, but Love is All has told us that when ever they play the Debaser club, they stay at the same hotel. We’re going to just show up at this hotel and hope that we have reservations there. Otherwise, we’ll have to go to the club, find someone who knows what’s going on, blah blah. I just want a shower.

Yoshi and Heather with bags

This is our second day of traveling without a car, and lugging all of our stuff around is getting to all of us. On the walk from the train station to the hotel that we may or may not be staying at, we have to keep stopping to rest. Luckily, Yoshi has played Debaser before, and has also stayed at the hotel that we may or may not be staying at, so Nick and I can just go on auto-pilot and focus on putting one foot in front of the other while Yoshi navigates. When you’re never, ever alone, auto-pilot is the closest you can get to solitude.

Miraculously, the beautiful woman at the front desk has a reservation for 2 rooms in Yoshi’s name. We haven’t slept more than a foot away from each other for a week. Now, Yoshi gets his own room. We’re high rollers here in Malmo!

Nick and I go to our room and watch a terrifying movie called Quarantine while we wait for sound check.

At the club we meet friends that we hung out with last night in G-burg–Ake and Marcus, who is one of those people whose every facial expression throws me into fits of laughter. Like many great characters, Marcus has a catchphrase: “Dude, come ON!” This isn’t some affected bit of personal branding but rather a spontaneous expression of his joie de vivre, an interjection affirming that, indeed, the world is fucking awesome. Yoshi’s bandmate Jamie has also come to the show from Copenhagen, where he’s decompressing from what sounded like a very crazy Still Flyin tour (are there any other kinds of Still Flyin tours?). The presence of these people is a perfect testament to the incredible small-worldness that accompanies band-dom. I’ve never been to Malmo, Sweden, yet we have a little gang of friends to hang out with backstage. Who’d have thought?

Tonight is a club night, meaning we’re the only band. This may mean that a good chunk of the crowd is just waiting for us to finish so that they get on with dancing to the DJ. However, once we start playing, it’s clear that the crowd is in the mood to dance to us as well. They’re actually going a bit apeshit, screaming and jumping around. Nick and I can’t stop laughing. Hey, come to think of it, Nick seems kind of drunk. Plus Yoshi’s kick drum pedal broke 20 seconds into the first song and he keeps stopping the set to duct tape it, forcing Nick to tell jokes. And then there’s the smoke machine at the rear of the stage–it’s relentlessly pumping out humungous clouds that envelop us; it’s like being stuck in a Cheech and Chong movie. After our last song, the crowd chants, “Ex ah-TRAYS! Ex ah-TRAYS!” The whole thing is a glorious mess. So fucking fun.

We dance and drink and laugh, and soak up the Swedish lust for life. Finally, we retire to our Palace of Separate Rooms. About an hour later, I’m awakened by a gang of gleefully-singing drunks on the street. I can hear Nick laughing on the other side of the room. “They know how to have fun here,” I say. “Yep,” Nick says, and we fall back asleep.

Day 7: 31 July 2009 – Gothenburg

As soon as we leave the stage, a headache hits me, the likes of which I’ve rarely experienced. The room is spinning. I ask the first person who I meet if he has any painkillers. He probably thinks I’m trolling for Oxycontin. And come to think of it, Oxycontin might improve tomorrow’s multi-nation commute.

I take two aspirin. I go sit down and try to breathe. Lawrence sits with me and I feel stupid because I can barely speak, but it’s very kind that he’s keeping me company.

We leave the show with our friend Alice and head to her apartment. She has promised Nick and Yoshi a private screening of Revenge of the Nerds. I fall almost instantly asleep.

They wake me an hour later when the cab has arrived and our epic journey begins. We’re on Ryan Air which is like the Greyhound Bus in the sky. Very strict luggage policy, horrible lines. We manage to muscle through it and several hours later, we’ve landed in Oslo. Now we take a bus from the rural Oslo airport into the Oslo bus terminal.

From there, we must take a bus to Sweden. While we wait we decide which Norwegian concessions to sample. I buy a delicious waffle with strawberry jam. Nick gets a sausage. Yoshi gets…pizza.

We have no working phones and are trying to communicate to Wyatt, Yoshi’s bandmate from the Aislers Set, that we’ve missed the first bus to Gothenburg and will be 2 hours late. Yoshi roams around the station holding his iPod Touch in front of him like a crucifix, scanning for wi-fi signals. [If Yoshi were an action figure, he would come in four versions–Sleeping-While-Sitting-Up Yoshi, Destroying-the-Drums Yoshi, Cracking-Everyone-Up Yoshi, and Wi-fi-Seeking Yoshi.]

We send Wyatt the message and hope for the best.

The music coming through the speakers on the bus is hilarious. Late era Kiss prevails, such as the gem, “Heaven’s On Fire.”

Deboarding the bus, I see two metalheads who are paradoxically, totally over the top, yet totally authentic looking. They are filthy, carrying a case of beer each, in tattered denim vests and paper-thin Iron Maiden tshirts. They look like Vikings from Hell. “Wow!” I gasp. Yoshi explains that these kinds of fellows are a dime-a-dozen here in Sweden. I want to meet them all, right now.

Miraculously, Wyatt is waiting for us and he leads us on yet another bus to his lovely apartment high above Gothenburg.

Tonight we will be playing with his wife Josephine’s band, Love is All.

U2 is in town and once we arrive at the club, we realize it’s been booked for both a U2 pre-party and a U2 afterparty, with Love is All and Eux Autres in the middle like a couple of slices of bologna. The club is packed with people who are just bursting with excitement to see U2. The playlist is all U2. The projector screens show U2 videos. Everyone’s wearing U2 tshirts. “Don’t worry, they’ll all clear out,” the sound man tells us.

Uhhhhh.awesome?

The show is great. Love is All are absolutely riveting. Plenty of the citizens of Gothenburg blow off U2 in favor of some authentic Swedish rock with an American aperitif.

We hang out with tons of people after the show, winding through the streets of Gothenburg, and closing the night at a crepe stand at 3:30 AM.

It has been a long, long, beautiful day.

Heather and Yoshi @ Parken