Beren's World

Since so much has happened and I'm a few days away from being home, I've decided to highlight the best part of the tour so far and skip over a few stops (I'll get to them in the next blog).

I played on a cruise ship. While it was moving. The Misfits also played, as did the Black Lips. If you know me, you know that the Black Lips have been one of my favorite bands for a very long time and playing with them was a dream come true.

The cruise was called Rock Batten and set sail from Stockholm and cruised overnight to Helsinki, Finland. There were a ton of bands on board; Monotonix was there, as was Annihilation Time (who got kicked off in and thrown in jail in Helsinki), and Apache. All the bands were awesome, and did I mention it was on a boat? We got to have three delicious meals, buffet style, with all the other people on the cruise, like older people on board to gamble or vacation.

While we were playing, the ship was rocking oh so slightly. I thought our guitar player was going to hurl. The show was good, and I spotted Cole and Jared from the Black Lips up front. Fun times. After we played, Cole and I gambled a bit and lost 5 Euro; not so good times.

After getting back to Stockholm, we made a mad dash to Debaser, the club where we played another show with the Black Lips and danced until it was light out. Wait, it never gets dark in Scandinavia.

Where are my englishbabies? I was in Roma, Torino, Valencia, and somewhere way out in the country and have had nary a sighting. I am going to sweeten the deal a bit: come find me at one of the remaining shows and you will also get a free CD of my band, the Professional Man, featuring one half of the Intelligence.

Anyway, Italy was a blur. i was promised a wild show in Torino and it was delivered. Lars got crowd surfed again, but landed safely on his feet. The young gentlemen who had puked on the previous Intelligence drummers kit last year managed to not get jostled too much this time and puke on me. Thank goodness. Rome was surprisingly tame, but they must have loved the show cos they bought  a lot of shirts! Thank you, Rome. After some more quick pit stops, we were in Madrid, Spain. The show was awesome thanks the to the booker Nacho. No one was injured and the other band, Luter, played a killer mix of Krautrock mixed with some good psych revival. Right up my alley.

After Madrid, we headed to Barcelona, a city I had never visited but had dreamed about. We were there to open up the legendary Primavera Festival, an awesome week of shows headlined this year by Neil Young and Sonic Youth. We played the first night in a tiny but packed club; it was awesome. Nacho hooked us up with passes for a day and we caught Art Brut and Spiritualized. Check them out.

Alright, that is all for now. I am doing my laundry at a club and also trying to get my gear together for the evening. Come find me! 

Hello Englishbaby! Sorry for the infrequent updates (as in zero), but the whirlwind schedule of touring and lack of a traditional qwerty keyboard has taken its toll. I apologize for the brevity and lack of coherency as well as mispellings of French citites in the last blog. However, we are now in Italy and qwerty is everywhere! Last night we played in Bologna...a cool collective squat type place with a big pot of pasta.

Since quite a lot has happened since my first post, I will backtrack a little. The show in Paris was sold out, and we played with a rad band called Frustration. Definitely check them out! I thought we played decently. We have been playing big venues and it has taken a while to get used to being on a giant stage. However, after a few initial bumps, we finished the set and played an encore. I also took it as an opportunity to stage dive. The crowd sent me to the back of the room and out the door. My apologies to anyone who got hit with sweat; we have been playing longer sets and it gets pretty hot. 

We played a few shows along the way to where we currently find ourselves in Italy, the most notable being the show in Poitiers, where Lars ended up getting dropped on the ground after being lifted up by the crowd. He fell. Hard. During the confusion that ensued (we were playing our last song of the encore), it was unclear as to what had exactly happened. I expected him to pop back up onstage and finish the song, having not seen the impact. It looked like your classic stage dive collapse where the whole crowd and crowd surfer end up on the ground in a somewhat gentle manner, but this was not the case. Apparently he fell straight back on his head after being dropped pretty from pretty high up! Blood was pooled on the ground and an overnight hospital stay was in order. Luckily he was fine, and we played a show the next night! A true rock and roll soldier! He actually played better than the rest of the band, and for that, I salute him. 

Tonight, we play Torino, and I am sure more chaos will ensue. 

The above photo of me is by a nice person from Strasbourg. Here's one of Lars. This is a few days before he hit his head.