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Blackmail The Universe - European Summer Assault

Reykjavik, Iceland - Sports Arena

I believe it was the heat that was keeping the subject awake. As soon as we hit Iceland the subject dropped into a deep and completely restful sleep. While it slept I went out sight-seeing with the guys and Wade and Suzy.

We saw the geyser named "Geysur" - which is the waterspout that all the others are named after. We saw several of its little siblings also. Because of the volcanic action the water is hella hot and smells like sulphur. You wait and wait for this thing, people snap pictures and roll video, I know I did. But you know, when you think about it, it's really just a big wet smelly ground fart.

We also traveled by van across the no mans land in the Atlantic ridge between the American and Eurasian plates. Basically these plates have been moving apart and the space between them is filled by hardened lava. As a result, the whole Island is constantly growing at a rate of about an inch a year. They tell me it is their long-term plan for world domination.

The whole country (pop est 295,000) is powered by geo-thermal and hydro-electric power. They have enough surplus energy to create hydrogen tablets. There is a hydrogen fuel filling station on the edge of town. They have been operating Hydrogen powered busses for 3 years now. The exhaust is clean water vapor.

Speaking of water, the water here is the purest water anywhere on the planet - what comes out of the tap has been filtered through lava rock for seven years. The whole island has virtually no indigenous animals. There are birds and insects, plenty of plant life. Trees once grew everywhere but they were chopped down in true Viking tradition. They are now being replanted in true Scandinavian tradition.

That's it though - no lizards, reptiles, amphibians, snakes, or mammals. So called "wild" sheep, goats, or horses are basically fleet footed free range animals, lost, or government subsidized stock.

This was an amazing place to end the tour. The people were great to us and the stark beauty and cool air soothed our tattered souls after our adventures. I hope to visit this place again soon.

Le Mans, France - Fury Fest

Le Mans is a charming town. We made friends with a local who helped us get our food order straight. Later in the evening a car ran over my foot.

By the time we reached Le Mans the subject was in full blown Stage 4. Its breathing was a ragged rasp of phlegm and irrational panic. It has started walking sideways like it is constantly dizzy. It has started referring to itself in the third person insentient form. It sometimes drifts into a semi-conscious state for brief moments and then screams and claws at itself to shake off imaginary spiders.

I have also noticed that the talk of hair growth occurring only during sleep seems to be true. Although the subject usually has a thick shadow within minutes of shaving (aka the Neanderthal Effect); I have noticed that his current shave has lasted nearly 40 hours without the barest trace of stubble.

I have also noticed a curious effect which will be the subject of my next paper. I have noticed that as the subject progresses further into Stage 4 it loses the ability to accomplish simple tasks. Because of this, the tasks tend to back up; the "to do" list gets longer and longer. The name I have given this effect is Exaustipation.

Inevitably the subject will sleep if it survives the experiments. I have seen this sleep before in previous experiments. The subject drops like a bomb onto the bed is out cold for 72 hours straight. I call this effect Unconscioria.

Dessel, Belgium - Graspop Festival

The show was in Belgium, near the Holland border. Graspop is a well-established festival that has been going on for a while. We got to meet some of the people with Nevermore and Dillinger Escape Plan, who will both be joining us on Gigantour.

At Graspop the subject achieved stage 3 of sleep deprivation. When I catch a glimpse of the test subject now, he reminds me of that typing monkey from Amsterdam. Same sallow complexion; pounding away at the keys bleary-eyed, chain-smoking. It has developed a pronounced twitch in its right eye. It has conversations with furniture. It lost has ability sentence the properly structure. Its thoughts are cheeseburger and disordered. It has no sense of time, direction, or humor.

This time when I jabbed the subject with a pin to test its reaction time the subject savagely bit my hand. As a result if its rancid and obviously poisoned saliva my hand has swollen up like a sweaty flesh-balloon filled with puss-flavored jello.

Despite my fascinating results, I am once again considering terminating the experiment. Biting me is simply not acceptable, and there is the possibility it might attack someone else. The thing that makes me continue is how this particular subject has reacted in a completely unique fashion to the ongoing sleep-deprivation. I am currently writing a paper on my theories about this subject's inherent stupidity keeping it safe from spontaneous combustion. The term I have coined for this phenomena is Flame Retarded.

I must continue my studies a little longer. I have already placed the publication of my first paper gleaned from this unique subject - it will be coming out in the next issue of Pyrotechnics Quarterly.

Tel Aviv, Israel - Metalist Festival

In Tel Aviv our subject reached stage 2. This is the land of the shambling dead. All previous symptoms continue and are intensified. Fluid levels are down. Absence of distractions for more than three minutes will cause hibernation mode (the listening snore) or spontaneous reboot (Where am I? )

Subject seems to have lost his fundamental grasp of such things as gravity and the concept of a third dimension. Time and again the subject went to the correct room on the wrong floor. Four times I watched him attempt to set a glass of water in mid-air and then was shocked when it crashed to the ground.

When I jab it with a pin now, sometimes it doesn't react at all, other times it shakes its head and heaves a heavy sigh. It is resigned to its fate.

But I didn't waste time with my test subject in Tel Aviv. I just soaked it in the sights. The festival was on the beach. The Mojo barricade had been signed off by the police. The same police that were running security. The audience seemed like it had most of the fight cooked out of it by the summer sun. The beach was there but no breeze from it - all it was good for was a giant reflector.

When Megadeth took the stage the audience woke itself up like a giant beast shaking sleep from its shoulders. A wave of humanity surged forward. They hit the barrier, which was braced for the assault by security. Security pushed back and the wave of humanity splashed back on itself and the ripples went out as far as the front of house mixer.

Then that crowd pushed back - the people in front were pummeled against the barricade. The barricade buckled.

You know, just as an aside, there are some moments that are so perfect that nothing else matters. There was a moment like that at the Download festival. As the sound effect of a jet did a fly-by in the sound system - a real jet had taken off and just crested the top of the stage - flying out over the audience - that was one of those moments.

This was also one of those moments too. Time stretched as taunt as you can get it. The band was still on the first song - Blackmail The Universe. I had time to look back over my life in that moment, and it seemed that if it came down now, it wasn't a bad way to go.

The security pushes back hard. The force ripples out into a thousand hot kids. They push back.

The barricade folds like towels on laundry day. It's laying there like a cat sleeping in the sunshine. Kids fall down. Security gets rough.

The band keeps playing. They are maybe on the second song. I tell the promoter that the barricade has broken. Extra security is dispatched to the stage, where they stand in the way of the guitar techs. The band keeps playing.

Security, which is Israeli army, make a human barrier where the barricade is down. The crowd gets unruly sometimes. Security gets rough sometimes. The situation is a powder-keg, the band is a lit match. No one has reached the stage. The band keeps playing.

After five songs the police stop the band. The barricade must be fixed or the show will be cancelled.

We talk anxiously backstage. If the show is cancelled, there might be a riot. If the show goes on, we need to stand by and be ready to roll. We wait. Rumor reaches us that new pieces of barricade are coming up by truck. We wait. We have them send a van up for the band, and a bus up for the crew.

We were still set to go. Still ready for show. But making preparations to get they guys out safe. After about 40 minutes the police told us that the show was cancelled. Now we could break down the back-line. But as soon as we did that the audience would know it was over.

So we had to send the band on ahead. They would only draw attention to us when we tried to get out. At the moment we had 2 prime objectives:

1) Break down our gear and get it onto the bus that will transport us back to the hotel.

2) Get a bus that will take us back to the hotel with our gear.

What was foremost on our mind was surviving the night. As they say in Israel, the good soldier knows how to improvise. But better than any tactics is a benevolent crowd. They were disappointed, some were angry, but that was it. They just went away.

To set the record straight, the police ended the show. The same police that had approved the barricade. No one involved with the promoter or Megadeth wanted to stop the show. It was a great honor to be there. It was a great disappointment not to do more.

When we got back to the hotel and Suzy called her kids, they had already read about it on the CNN ticker. What? Not another international incident!

Some of us were up first thing in the morning for a trip to Jerusalem. I should have slept but I had reached an epiphany with my test subject. Since I was the test subject, and since I was seeing-double from sleep deprivation, I realized that I could use the double image and a mirror to achieve complete objectivity with myself. Mind you the first good glimpse I got of the wretch nearly broke my resolve to continue my experiments, poor miserable creature, but science prospers.

So in the interest of science I locked the subject in an elevator for twenty-seven minutes, starting around 04:57am - this was a little bit after we had finally got back to the hotel. Lobby call was for 09:30am.

At first the subject just blinked in disbelief. It punched several numbers afterwards, no effect. He waited. He was sweating profusely. He invented some pithy combinations of cuss words. He chose one button and leaned on it.

Nothing. He looked around hopelessly, knowing that very soon he was going to have to urinate, somewhere. He found the alarm button and hit it. BZZZZZZT. Paced the elevator. BZZZT. BZZZT. `BZZZT. BZZZZZZZZZZT.

It waited several minutes, then pried the doors open with brute force. There was the third floor, right there, a floor there about thigh high. But there is a second door that cannot be pried open. The subject's whole body is pouring sweat. His hands are starting to shake as the first signs of shock show themselves.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT! Subject openly weeps. It punches all the buttons again, including the alarm. It pries the doors open again and tries to find the latch for the outer door. It closes the doors. It punches the buttons. It weeps some more.

The elevator finally moves, the subject freezes. The doors open and the subject darts out. It has always taken the stairs since this incident.

Istanbul, Turkey - RockIstanbul Festival

In Istanbul the test subject reached stage 1 of sleep deprivation. Stage 1 is the land of non sequitur. The subject said odd things and developed a nervous laugh when it recognized its mistake. It is taking longer than normal to respond to questions. It has developed a short attention span, and has no recollection of what had just happened. When I jab the subject with a pin it can take up to a minute to respond.

Fascinating. Also, being the test subject, I can comment that dreams start to toy at the edges of your consciousness. Reality, which is always suspect at best anyway, starts to spin itself into some precariously ridiculous possibilities.

In Istanbul JL and I walked out of the hotel and right into an old fashioned Turkish brick-fight. I showed him the shop that was right up a nearby alleyway; they sold the Kashmir scarves he was looking for. I walked up the street and began recording the ambient voices and noises of the marketplace with my digital recorder.

It seems that on this particular day my hand-held recorder acted as an antenna for my natural inclination to find trouble. As I held the device over my head a riotous mass of people rushed in from every direction. Within two minutes the whole area was a thrashing mass of people. They were chanting, and waving red flags.

The riot police deployed nearby, seemed well-prepared. They had kevlar vests, gas masks, riot shields and clubs, and of course the ever-popular gun; machine guns and pistols mostly. For my money, with a crowd that size, nothing clears a path like a shotgun, but to each his own.

We made it back to the hotel mostly intact and with a few decent pictures. We hung out in the lobby waiting for our ride for an extra hour, but we were used to travel SNAFU's by then. We got to the venue late, already behind the gun, and most of the rest of the night was spent at a dead run. Though it was a nice show, with an enthusiastic audience that had a great time.

Also, we crossed paths with Garbage again, that makes three times on this tour. Garbage played with us in Istanbul and at Download in the UK. They repeatedly showed themselves to be people of character and class.

Sofia, Bulgaria - Arena Musica Festival

We rattled out of Thessalonika and headed for Bulgaria. Out here on the perimeter you see some strange sights. People plow their fields with ox while they chat on their cell phones.

The AC worked for a while and then wasted away in the slow death fashion that this bus had taught me to expect. The toilet reeked so bad that Chip quipped, "We're not tracked by GPS, we're tracked by the EPA." It was foul, but true, like a homing pigeon.

But we had the evening off because we actually arrived on time. The PA was massive and the exchange rate was good. Jason and Shaggy walked through town to see, "Freedom in its infancy." Most of the rest made plans for sleep. German Hip Hop seems to dominate the Eastern Bloc MTV. The moon drags itself across the sky like a wounded animal, deathly slow like a snail on a razor. I try to work so that my brain is at least in gear, because without a load it tends to rev to dangerous speeds. I am too exhausted to order my thoughts, or create sentences, or focus my eyes, so work consists of blinking at the computer and yawning.

About the only thing of use that I could accomplish in this state is to pursue my ongoing studies in sleep deprivation.

I had originally abandoned my studies because it was simply deemed too cruel to the test subjects. A pity, it is fascinating stuff. Most of them, after four days will completely break down. I watched one man throw his whole weight against his choke-chain until he passed out.

But about 1 out of every 207 will become a laser of precision and can compute to twenty-seven decimal places in their head - then, every time, right at the forty-forth hour and four minutes - they inexplicably succumb to spontaneous combustion. Very strange and smelly business.

So when I noticed that day that everyone else was roasting and I had stopped sweating, I figured that I was four hours away from bursting into flames. I would go off during Holy wars and everyone would think I was a pyro.

I kept doing an idiot check on myself - that is, checking every few minutes to make sure I was still an idiot. If I stayed dumb I wouldn't catch fire. Every time I checked a clock and couldn't puzzle out the time I felt elation; another four hours of life at least.

It might be that my inherent simpleness has created a natural firewall against the combustion. Who'd have thunk that stupidity was an effective defense mechanism.

Well, this is fascinating stuff. So much to do; so much data to be collected. There could be no sleep now - I am the only test subject. I am far more valuable awake as a research asset, than asleep as ballast weight. If I start now I can have a full 6 hours of uninterrupted work before we get to Turkey. Test subject: myself.

Thessalonika, Greece - Moni Lazariston

We were graced with two shows in Greece. Athens was our trial - the schedule, the drives, the long days and short nights had all taken their toll. We were near the breaking point - in fact, any other group of people would have long since disintegrated into bickering and petty fights by Finland. Truth is that the frayed rope of our collective sanity nearly snapped in Athens.

But this is no ordinary crew or band. At some time during this trip each of us has stumbled, slipped or sprawled face down in some sort of mess, and each time someone has been there to pick them up, brush them off and point them in the right direction. That's what we do out here.

During the Athens show I was reminded of the story of Orpheus - the singer and songwriter of ancient mythology. His wife was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. He went down to hades and sung his heart out to Pluto (lord of the underworld - not the Disney character) and touched that old devil's heart so much that he relented and agreed to let her return to the land of the living.

Of course there is always a catch whenever you strike a bargain like this. The catch was that he could not look at her face on the journey back. Of course he did look (the Greeks did pretty much invented tragic drama - what did you expect?) - she was pulled back to hades, and Orpheus died a miserable wreck.

Moral: if you manage to drag your ass out of hell - don't look back.

In Thessalonika we started looking forward again. To the extent that we were successful, we enjoyed our stay. Shaggy hung out in hades a bit longer because they let him smoke there. Dax finally got some treatment for his Serbian spider bites that had been ripe with infection for days.

We tended our wounded. We buried our dead. We shook the sky. We ate some food. We hit the road.

Athens, Greece - Olympic V.Ball Stadium

Athens was a city we were all looking forward to, of course. We would be getting there after an 11 hour bus drive and have an afternoon off to enjoy the city. We were all in good spirits in anticipation of this.

Of course, this isn't exactly how it came down. The trip instead took 27 hours and we arrived beat to a sweaty pulp with no hope of getting enough sleep to function in any reasonable fashion. The AC was still broken, but we had borrowed some of the fans we use on stage and the interior of our bus was transformed from a blast furnace into a convection oven. We were grateful for the improvement, but our gratitude lacked enthusiasm, or patience - in fact our gratitude had a closer resemblance to a barely suppressed homicidal rage - but we all truly love each other up in here so we kept each other in check with comments like, "Now, now - we're not taking that chain off until you calm down" or in the less extreme cases, "Dude, you're frothing at the mouth again."

But we kind of saw some of Athens; at least the part that could be seen from the top seats of the open-air venue. It was kind of like LA, but with older graffiti. It was also beautiful in a way that reminded me of the old world charm of Granada. This is something Greece has in spades, a fierce romanticism that is undeniable, obvious, and breathtaking.

And of course the food. These people have had about 5,000 years to perfect these dishes, and it shows. All I can say is, "So long and thanks for all the feta."

Bucharest, Romania - Arena Roman

Romania may be an eastern bloc country, but when you get there you find it has much more in common with its Roman roots than its Slavic neighbors. The language has retained the cadence and inflection of its Latin origin to the degree that, to the untrained ear, it would be indistinguishable from Italian.

The people also had retained the a striking physical resemblance to their Italian cousins, and some architectural resemblances also endure. The Arena Roman was a perfect example: an open air arena in the style of the Colosseum in Rome - simply breathtaking.

The audience also had all the passion and enthusiasm of their Italian cousins - with one notable exception: our driver Alexander took us to the venue at a moderate speed and kept both hands on the wheel. My experience with Italian cabbies is that they will forgo shifting gears simply to keep a hand free for flashing obscene gestures to other drivers. It was an unusual drive for that reason, but very pleasant.

He also answered some of our questions about Transylvania, which is a region in Romania. I'd never really made the connection before, but I guess this means that Dracula is a wop.

Wow, that really explains a lot. You know, not the blood sucking thing, but the flair for dressing (come on now - only him and Batman can pull off wearing a cape and not come across as a fruitcake), and of course the way he can play woman like a video game. And the way he runs that whole town with unquestionable authority - very Vito Corleone. Now that I think of it, I can't understand a freaking word that dago says either.

Belgrade, Serbia/Mont - SKCS Courtyard

All night we crawled through the mountains on roads so bad they would cripple a donkey. Because we were headed so far east on this leg of the tour the only bus company that was willing to take us there gave us the most battered pieces of crap I've been on. The air conditioning doesn't work at all in the band bus, the windows are sealed so there is no air flow, and the toilet reeks so bad that our eyes feel like they've been maced.

Also the farther east we go the worse the roads get and the harder it is to follow or depend on the road signs - as a result the drivers keep getting lost and all estimates on travel times a pathetically far off. So we spent all night reeking and rolling through treacherous mountain roads into Croatia, then north through the de-militarized zone and on up into Serbia.

It turned out to be the most restful part of the trip so far.

It seems that Serbia is on the verge of breaking away from its troubled past. There were still some signs of recent conflict, buildings that were still caved in from missiles or mortar shells. But there is also a sense of a society on the upswing.

One thing is for sure - they were happy to have us there and did everything they could to take care of us. The fans were amazing. The venue was packed wall to wall and there were at least as many kids outside hanging around to listen as there were inside watching. Also there were fans on nearby rooftops. Fans precariously balanced on stone walls peeking over the edge of the venue. Fans in trees grinning through the leaves and banging their heads on the branches.

Sorry Finland, Serbia actually managed to beat you out in the manic enthusiasm department. But before we pass out any trophies, I'm waiting to see what South America has in store for us.

Bologna, Italy - Gods of Metal Festival

Flying out of Finland was the most brutal lobby call to date. Thankfully my brain has partially melted away and most of the horrors of that morning dripped away in the process, but it was something like two hours before we went to bed we had to be down in the lobby ready to go. So there we were, a ragged platoon of zombies staggering out into the gathering near-arctic 4am gathering dawn, lugging the remainder of our gear and dragging our ragged butts through another day - onto another two prop puddle jumper to Copenhagen, then to De Gaul, then to Italy for the Gods of Metal Festival.

The first of many issues reared its ugly head when we arrived in De Gaul International Airport and discovered that our guitar boat was missing. In the big scheme of things it was a pretty minor issue, definitely not a show-stopper, we had another one. But as is often the case, it was a portent of what was to come.

The real issue came when we tried to leave De Gaul. Although we had managed to fly all the gear out of Finland on a puddle-jumper from an airport that was tiny compared to most Greyhound bus stops - it seemed that our gear was too much for Air France to handle. They balked at carrying all the gear and we had to leave behind our lighting director and tour manager to fly with the remainder in a freight transport.

As it turned out, they weren't willing to ship it by the freight transport either. Like so many other European languages, "No" is a word that translates directly from French. And "No" was all that Wade Perry and Shaggy (our tour manager and lighting director respectively) heard for the rest of the day.

As the day wore on, persuasion, cooperation, patience, and tact all led to the same dead end. What finally got the job done was appealing to that inescapable quality of any enduring culture - pride.

Wade pulled out our itinerary and showed them all the flights, all the pipsqueak airlines and puddle-jumper prop planes that had handled all that gear without complaint, then he asked them point blank "Why is it that all these little airlines managed to handle this gear without issue, but Air France, the greatest airline on the planet can't manage to do it?"

As you might imagine, the gear made it to Italy by show time, but just barely.

Meanwhile the rest of us were winging our way into Italy on a jumbo jet. Dax (our merch man) pointed out the window during the flight and I managed to focus my bloodshot eyes just long enough to catch a glimpse of the top of the Alps poking out through the cloud cover that rolled out like a cotton candy ocean to the horizon. It was one of those breath-taking views that manage to always elude cameras - his batteries were dead, mine was packed away.
Meanwhile Willie Gee (Glen Drover's guitar tech) had nodded off in his seat. He does this sometimes, but because he is more workaholic than narcoleptic he usually nods of frozen in a posture of attention. The Drover brothers were in the seat behind him and amused themselves by balancing a pamphlet on his head. When he didn't stir they continued to pile more things on his head. Over the course of the next twenty minutes they stacked the pamphlet, the safety instruction sheet, a plastic cup, a chunk of baguette crust, and a lemon wedge with a swizzle stick planted in it like a flagpole on his head. They also stuck three plastic spoons, two forks, and a knife in the back of his baseball cap like a makeshift headdress.

Now such aberrant behavior in the Drovers is understandable, they are Canadian after all. As for the rest of the band and crew, well let's just say that exhaustion had made us all a wee bit giddy. But I can make no excuse for the rest of the passengers and crew, other than to say, well heck there was no in flight movie on this trip so Willie's impromptu head sculpture was the only amusement available. Even the pilot snuck out to capture the scene on his mobile camera phone.

When we got to Italy I was reminded of why I have a soft spot in my heart for these people - they are crazy. So as I stumbled through the rest of the day, even though I was hot and sweaty and dusty and smelly and miserable and clogged with snot, I had a silly grin my face.

Grazie Italia.

Tampere, Finland - Sauna Open Air Metal Festival

At Download we had our gear, but not our buses; in Finland we didn't have either. We had to pack all the essential gear (six guitars, guitar racks, bass racks, guitar stands, cymbals, sampler, etc) on the plane with us. The rest of the gear would be rented.

We were flying out of Heathrow to Copenhagen and catching a double prop puddle jumper into Finland. We were all beat half to death, but the crew had taken the worst of it. Coming out of Download the vans we had rented stiffed us - they took the band, they took the gear, but the left the crew stranded, shivering in the cold for hours. We had rented, confirmed and paid for 4 vans, they actually sent 2. Our phones had run out of minutes and we couldn't figure out how to reload them because all the instructions were in Dutch on the web page. They tried to get some assistance but the bands that had been pelted with beer bottles we're really in the mood to assist us. They didn't get back to the hotel until after 2am.

Also we were running out of clean clothes, so a lot of the crew has been washing stuff out in the sinks at the hotels. This is always fun because the net result is laundry that is never quite clean, that gets packed away before it's dry, that starts stinking within half an hour of putting it on, and the dampness tends to double the weight of your baggage. Other than that, it's a fine way to spend your only time off. Of course we wouldn't have an opportunity to do this until we reached Serbia.

Despite all this, we enjoyed ourselves in Finland. The show rocked. The audience rocked. The weather was pleasant. The city was beautiful. Dave caught up with some Finnish hockey players that had become friends while they played for the Phoenix Coyotes.
I also discovered why the country is called Finland. It is because the people here drink like fish.

Derbyshire, UK - Download Festival

Up in Denmark at this time of year the sun stays out until about 10pm and starts shining around 2:45am. I was still awake, trying to relax but worried that if I shut my eyes I would miss the 5:30 wake up call.

We still had all the extra gear that we needed for the show and had to check it as baggage on the flight. It was rough and we all knew the worst was still to come.

We made it though, and when we got to Download we found that the audience was ours, despite being fourth on the billing due to the scheduling crunch we were under. Some of the bands before and after us were pelted with beer bottles and practically drowned out by chants for Megadeth. One band actually stopped during their set and told the crowd, "We're not Megadeth."

Yeah, like the crowd didn't know.

Solvesborg, Sweden - Sweden Rock Festival

After Dortmund things started getting hairy. The truck with the gear left for the UK to make it to the Download festival and we packed all of our essentials onto the buses with our luggage to make a show with mostly rental gear.

When we got to Sweden Rock Festival my first thought was, "This can't be a festival, where's the mud?" I found out later that the rain and mud of Waldrock was actually bad enough to make a subway collapse not far from the festival; thankfully they were able to dig them out and no one lost their life.

Despite the lack of rain it had all the other amenities of a festival - three stages, dozens of bands, and thousands of screaming bands. The band rocked the place hard and we cut out for Copenhagen where we were to catch the flight to the UK first thing in the morning.

Dortmund, Germany - Sound Garden

Dortmund Sound Garden was a gig where it seemed like the whole night was at a dead run. I don't mean some track and field type marathon either - I mean one of those nightmarish something's going to bite your head off if you slow down type of days and somehow you end up in a bog where every step threatens to suck you under and suffocate you. Wait, maybe I'm remembering Waldrock. My memories are starting to run together like an Edvard Munch lithograph that was left out in the rain - you know the one I mean - The Scream.

Between sound check and the show the band had an in-store appearance that was a 40 minute drive away. By the time we got back to the venue the Dungeon was already on stage and we were on full press to get the show on the road.

Of course the Band and crew were more than equal to the task. The show was great, but I had a lingering feeling that things were going to start getting difficult.

This turned out to be just a small taste of what was to come over the next four days.

Stuttgart, Germany - Longhorn

My stay in Stuttgart was equal parts magic and utter stupidity. Being who I am, I found the stupidity first and it managed to dominate most of the day.

I woke up hungry and went out in search of food. I hit the street and made a right (first mistake) and started walking. It was Sunday and the whole town was on lock-down. Everything was closed. Even the churches were closed. I methodically combed a radius of 10 blocks moving in a clockwise direction of due east.

Eventually I found "the restaurant that is always open". Most places have them. It wasn't more than 500 meters from the hotel - it was left instead of right, and it was down an alley and invisible from the street.

When I sat down though, I realized I only had 10eu - which might have been enough, but it was cutting it close. I knew I had a fistful of coins in my hotel room, probably another 8eu, so I could avoid having to find a bank for another day.

When I walked back to the hotel, I found that it also was locked down. The staff had evidently let us in the back door, which is also the way I came back out. But these doors locked behind me. I walked around the entire perimeter and found a small plaza with flags planted in the center and five paths that led to five doors. None of then really looked like the entrance. None of them were. None of them had card readers that would open with my room key.

About that time Shawn Drover poked his head out of his window. We chatted a bit. He said he had a photo shoot, I said I was trapped outside. He laughed, and went back inside. You know, this sadistic streak I see in him from time to time can really help to explain why Glen is the way he is.

I felt like I was trapped in a video game, and a monkey had just thrown a barrel at me. If I could only find the glowing blue stone, or the big gold key or something - then the door would open. Eventually someone left out the back and propped the door open, so I got back in.

By this time I had surmised that the entrance must be underground and the real reception desk was in a different building altogether with a secret underground tunnel connecting them. I know that sounds a bit crazy, but that is exactly what it was. It turns out the restaurant I was at was closer to the hotel than the lobby.

Eventually I did get back to the restaurant, had a very pleasant meal and got back in my room just in time to be invited to crew dinner by Dave. I had coffee.

Later a little black bird with yellow under its wings flew in my window. It flew around the room a few times. It perched on my laptop, soiled my toothbrush, and posed for a few pictures. Much later it flew off into the night.

The next day it flew back though, and hopped in the window right before I checked out. I thought that was nice that it would pop by to say goodbye. That is kind of my lingering impression of Stuttgart, a place with polite birds.

Holland, Bergum - Waldrock Festival

It was our last day in the American Hotel in Amsterdam. It is a nice place. I especially like to watch channel 1 on the TV when I'm in my room. It shows the view from a camera mounted on the corner of the building. I like to open the window and try and place the sounds with the images.

The hotel seems to be favored by music types, we were there longer than usual because we had our production rehearsals here. During our stay Garbage stayed there, and I walked past David Crosby typing on his laptop in the lobby.

Later James, the Drovers and myself were gathered in the lobby and Graham Nash walked in. He looked us over once, his face broke out in a broad grin and he said, "Well, there looks like a load of trouble." None of us said anything, he looked like trouble to us. Hanging out with an archetypal hippie in Amsterdam - nah, no danger there.

Of course that encounter turned out to be rather portentous since the Waldrock Festival turned out to be our own little slice of Woodstock. Well, at least the mud part. Mud everywhere. Buses stuck in mud. Sliding and falling in mud. Trying to scrape the mud off the mud with a fistful of mud. I finally understand those nutty wooden shoes - you need some sort of shoes with some buoyancy or you're going to get sucked right down like quicksand - what a horrible way to go - like some spa treatment gone horribly wrong.

The backstage area was pretty much packed with people. You couldn't throw a stick without hitting a band. It got so bad at one point that the bands ganged up on me and took away all my sticks.

Still, even with all that it was a good day. I got to see some friends again and got to hang out in Holland one more day. I was reminded of why Holland is one of my favorite countries, reminded again of the quality of the people, and their great heart. This is the country that embraced outcasts like Anne Frank and Baruch Spinoza, took them in and cared for them.

I don't care if I am covered in mud; any day in Holland is a good day.

Holland, Amsterdam - Melkweg Max

There's something extremely peaceful about that midway point on an overnight trans-Atlantic flight. You look out over the wing at the horizon and the first blush of sunrise to see strange Van Gogh colors from the land in between sleep-deprivation and psychosis. Shy colors awaken from sleep and unfold into a bed of clouds, as far as the eye can see. The sun sharpens the horizon into stunning clarity and focuses every quirk and wrinkle as the vapor catches, holds and reflects the radiance of the sun.

I had spent my off-time between tours mixing and being a taser-gun test subject. Not only was I sleep-deprived; I was no longer even sure how sleep went. I had some vague notion that it involved a piece of furniture, but my experiments with tables had left me frustrated and had angered several people.

I've given up. Whenever I reach for something I have been adjusting to the triple vision by judging echoes from surrounding objects. Of course to do this properly I have to make a loud screeching sound in my throat (quite loudly - 60dBu minimum to be effective). Some people find it a bit disconcerting. One poor woman went into hysterics when she heard it. Yeah, that part wasn't so cool.

But Amsterdam in general doesn't suck. Holland in particular is a wonderful country. So it's kind of a no brainer that Amsterdam would be pretty cool. And of course it is.

As I've been staying here I've been trying to devise an advertising slogan for Amsterdam. Something like the "I love New York" thing, but let's face it - New York had a pretty bad rep back then - it needed a bunch of high profile celebrities to come out and say it was safe.

Amsterdam doesn't need as much as that. You just need to remind people that it exists. The place is already packed with tourists as it is.

I think the slogan for Amsterdam sould be something like - "Amsterdam Sucks".

Now wait, hear me out on this one - We show a series of vignettes from around the city, People of all sorts, blondes on bicycles, groups of schoolchildren, toothless panhandlers - each one of them smiling and waving and calling out, "Amsterdam sucks".

Fade to black and complete silence. Then the kicker - the letters fade up, "Come and prove us wrong."

As the French say, "There it is." You may forward the check in care of the webmaster here, or deposit it directly into my Swiss account.

I was told by an artist friend that there are all sorts of government grants for strange writers in Holland - maybe it's that whole artistic legacy of Van Gogh thing.

What I was thinking was that I'd chain a monkey to a typewriter until it has banged out several pages and then find a clever Dutch translator.

Unfortunately she told me they would prefer to use the English version. I had to fire the monkey, he was devastated. He told me that he thought the chain was very decorative, and tearfully told me of his young son, and their hopes of having his crooked tail corrected by surgery. I knew of course that the poor wretch would be ineligible for unemployment compensation because from a tax standpoint he was considered a self-employed animal. My hands were tied though. I was at the mercy of these fickle government grants.

I suppose that bureaucracy is a mathematical constant, as unavoidably as gravity. It is as inescapable as a black hole, where no light or monkey can escape.

I guess Amsterdam really does suck.

Go ahead - prove me wrong.