the Tyre Rims They are A-Changin'

Ok, so we've just spent the night at a Croatian roadhouse/truckstop…. 18 hours and 600 euros later we're on the road again….not such a good day, but I digress from the chronology of our travels of late…

We eventually got emergency passports for Steve and Ryan, involving a major detour to Madrid to get them….then we had to take another detour of 500 kms or so to retrieve Todd's passport from a hotel where he'd left it in in Basque Country….so armed up again with our paperwork, we attempted the 2500 km slog to the Balkans, figuring it would take under 48 hours to do this…oh, how we were wrong…

Having shuffled around a show to make a bit more time, we finally copped some karma for all the ground we'd been covering (about 5000 kms in Spain in 10 days, totalling some 12000 kms by the time we'd left there) as the rear tyres of the Ape Module started slowly sinking, first the left, then the right….this started in Madrid and has been haunting us since. We got about halfway through the big drive when it became abundantly clear that we could go no further, the tyres were seriously leaking and we had no choice but to find solace in the central north Italian town of Brescia (incidentally, this is where Alex's 100 year-old violin comes from, he made a pilgrimage to the (closed) workshop….). What we were quick to discover is that Italians don't like working on Sundays… in fact, everything in this town, bar a couple of cafes, was shut, "It's Domenico, no working"…. so, negotiating our position by phone with Aleks, our Serbian promoter, we were forced to find a hostel and see the night out in Brescia. First thing in the morning we're at the Gomme (tyre) repairers, the dude there checks both tyres under pressure and tells us he can't find anything wrong - they are tubeless car tyres on a large van, there's already something wrong, as far as we're concerned. Shrugging, unsure, we elect to proceed on this moron's advice and make it about another 200 kms when we are forced to pull off the expressway again and limp it a couple of kms to the nearest mechanic in some little bumfuck town. They can help us by putting a tube in the problem tyre, but, oh, it's just turned 12pm, hence its lunchtime, and of course, this requires 3 hours, so see you at 3pm and we'll sort you out, was pretty much the gist of it. So we hit the restaurant across the road and spend the usual time on Iphones and laptops, generally ignoring each other as much as possible and sampling the dodgy pizza and excellent gnocchi. We conclude that we are now extremely unlikely to make it to the show in Belgrade, though Aleks insists that if we get there by 11pm it's still on; we grumble about his optimism….

So, tyred up, we hit the road again, this time making it as far as some little town in mid-Slovenia, where the other rear tyre gives out and we are forced to tube it up too (which should have happened days before); on the other hand, the guy at the auto shop knew our band well, which came as something of a pleasant surprise considering we'd just pulled into some random Slovenian village; we stuck him on the guest list for the Slovenian show later that week…

A small tangent - as i sit writing this missive in the Ape Module, we've just hit the first stretch of snow for the trip, hilltops iced over, the incredibly beautiful ambers and browns of the Croatian forest lining the road, we all want to go and play snowballs etc, but its pretty chilly outside…. ok, back to the complaining…

So, to cut a long story short, we belted across Croatia in the black of night, thru 2 borders, to finally get to Belgrade (too late for that night's show) to meet Aleks and his large long-haired sidekick, Filip (who is a ring-dinger for our ex-mando/banjo player, Gurr) in the carpark of some large 24-hour megamart. We had our first shots of rakia (Serbian grapa, sort of like fruit-tinged metho) in the supermarket cafe at about 1am, enthusiastically met by our 2 new Serbian men on the ground…

So, we'd finally made it the 2500 kms to Belgrade, effectively the eastern-most point of our tour…. and it had taken some considerable effort and stress, but hey, fuck it, what else are we here for? Got to see a bit more of Italy in the process, though we are now very suspicious of their dubious mechanics and work ethic…

5 nights in Belgrade (2 shows in the city, 2 in some towns about 100kms away) was something of a relief in that we could finally stop moving for a bit. We also quickly established that Belgrade also is home to probably (collectively) the hottest women in any city we'd been to at this point (Berlin and Paris now hold 2nd and 3rd spots, respectively), which certainly doesn't hurt, only kind of...

We played the first 2 nights in a small illegal bar called Zica (pronounced jheecha), run by the wonderful Tomo ( a long-time promoter/raconteur of the Serbian scene who resembles Alejandro Jodorowsky i reckon)….it also has zero ventilation and probably the most dense smoke/cubic metre anywhere in Europe, it was fucking impossible to breathe, and was a distinct trait of all Serbian shows, we all (smokers in the band included) gained a death-rattle in our chests from this omnipresent fog, not nice … a reminder to appreciate anti-smoking regulations elsewhere. I smoke, though not heavily, and i also sing, this was fuckin hard work, believe me… the rakia (moonshine) helped as usual…. the Serbs have a playful variation upon the 'Nokia - Connecting People' tag - 'Rakia - Correcting People'.

We also had the pleasure of some incredibly scrumptious Serbian restaurants, dining with Aleks and his girlfriend, Milica…we were embarrassed to be totally unable to consume even half the massive array of entrees in one place, and they're not generally that fat, a mystery… Aleks suggests the rakia is at the heart of the dietary regime.

Great shows in weird little places, great people…. including the travelling trio we picked up/adopted from our hostel to be an opening act for 3 shows (Rob, an Irishman, Will, an American, and Anja, a Belarussian/American), who are travelling around being musical gypsies, we befriended each other and they became our road-companions for a few nights, lovely folk, Will assisting us in correcting our rather fried version of Texas Hold 'Em poker rules,  and a refreshing change from having to talk to each other… Slovenian weed also deserves a mention, thanks to Filip and his ready supply of 'Adult Contemporary', a relaxing and mellow strain.

Filip's band (Rough Bull..?) with Ivan the guitarist (and owner of a magnificent Guild 64 Starfire … very sexy guitar, immediately co-opted by Alex) and drummer Bane became our support band for 3 shows too, incredibly good guys (Todd was their drummer for the last show, fine job) and a rocking act,  who we hope make it Australia one day. Thanks guys… Serbia was quite fascinating to us, it's definitely very different to 'Western' Europe…wilder, rawer, poorer, and very real…its a country (among many) that has suffered much, and the scars are quite visible, but some of the strongest, proudest people you could hope to meet.

We finally said our good byes to Aleks (my friend Predrag's older brother), who we concluded to be a wonderful madman, and Filip and trotted off to our our next show in Velenje, Slovenia. The countryside on the way to the smallish town in the hills was absolutely stunning - you just don't see the autumnal colours like this anywhere in Australia, a million shades of brown, yellow, orange, amber, stunning and gentle to the eyes, makes me wanna paint again. Now its just boring white, with the snow, much prefer the leaves…

Velenje was cool, playing at an ex-Communist-era youth centre, attended by a couple of hundred tanked-up young locals…made very welcome by the lovely and slightly pickled Sinisha(a Graham Chapman (Monty Python) lookalike) and the house production guy, Sasha, who took us the next day to visit a youth workshop in electric-guitar making being run by a local luthier called Sever (he made a guitar or two for U2 apparently), lovely people,  young folk from all over Europe madly grinding out various models of electric bodies, they welcomed us like we were the Beatles or something, wanting photos and autographs, shooting video, quite mad and very warming to our fragile little egos….

Next stop, Zagreb. The Croatian border let us through unhassled ("Weapons?" "No", "Cigarettes? Alcohol?" "No, of course not sir" etc etc) and we cruised into the very chilled out city of Zagreb to a cruisy, funky little bar called Spunk. In spite of the somewhat dodgy PA system (rendered highly workable after an hour or two by our genius soundie, Rendang) we belted out a cracker of a set to a full room (they're starved for music here, largely cos it's not EU yet, a pain in the arse for touring bands in general) and were then generously put up for the night by some local women/friends of Aleks: Sandra and Velna, who were super cool and fun to hang out with, thanks ladies!

Electing to make for the coast, with a couple of days off, we made it as far the next day (i.e. yesterday) as 50 kms to a roadhouse, where the tyre finally blew its last breath - a cracked rim, no less. Rendered completely immobile, we were at the mercy of an efficient (though pricey) roadside assistance service, who came back with a somewhat dodgy looking rim and tyre this morning (not much choice really), took 600 euros (almost AU$1000)  from us and now we're gleefully on the road again….we''ve just stopped for a cup of tea and to throw snowballs at each other (this is what Aussies do in this shitty, arctic weather right?) - that lasted for all of 2 minutes and now everyone's complaining about the cold… 

Italy's next on our hit-list, 2 shows there and we're back into France for the final leg of the tour…. only 11 days to go and we're done….oh la la…

Operative me sign off for momentary.

The Ape Team

With our fearless drummer currently manning the helm, we charge at 130kph back towards the centre of Spain, to Madrid, for the second last of our shows here in Spain. It'll be 9 shows in a row here, each day also requiring a drive of, on average, 600 kilometres…. it's a surefire way to get to grips with this rather large nation, and we've seen many of its numerous autovia roadhouses now… in fact, we are starting to think we may have stopped at the same ones more than once by now…. we eagerly anticipate pulling off the toll roads, tired, grumpy, hungry and smelling increasingly bad (none of us have had any clean clothes in over a week, and its hot here, so sweat is at a premium too) and entering the rather irreal combination service station/restaurant/giftshops, all terribly overpriced and not particularly ambient, a certain Stockholm syndrome affection for them has arisen as they have provided the only respite from the approximately 5000 kilometres we have driven here in the last 8 or 9 days…. in short we're fucking sick of driving, but hey, we've only got a 2000 km in 48 hours haul to Slovenia coming up in a couple of days so why think about it too much….whinge, whinge, it's great fun too.

But yes, its starting to take its toll, its been a month now, and we smell bad…we're becoming increasingly conscious of, out of politeness, not getting too close to the local populace, as friendly and affectionate as the Spanish and Basque people, without doubt, are… we don't wish to offend them with our ApeStench…it is now innate in all we do, all we emit, all we radiate, a giant collective fug of sweat, farts, booze, street grime and general foulness….we still find ourselves outdone, however, by the frequent pigfarms we pass in crisscrossing this barren brown land, so we retain vestiges of humanity, but, we increasingly suspect, only just. I've been sick, battling a sore throat (hanging in there, local herbal liquors proving a great ally in this) and Todd was out of action with a bad cold for a week or so (he's pulled through, but it's not easy to get fighting fit again when you're playing every night, driving all day), but that's par for the course really.

From the point of view of shows, audiences, and general support, Spain (and the Basque country in particular) are where its at for the Kill Devil Hills… it's been an absolutely fantastic reception for us here, we've been quite blown away. It was always the hope that Spain would be kind of the locus of all our time in Europe, but was looking kinda shaky when our original promoter fell thru (to suspected cocaine problems) only 2 months before we were to be here (which, in promoter-time, is fuck all time to do anything). However, we have had the great fortune of falling into the hairy arms of some exceptionally switched on and supportive promoters here (juancar, Victor and Pepe) who have put together a very rigorous (i.e. drive ridiculous distances) and well planned tour - people know us here, we've been on national radio, community TV, done umpteen photo shoots, had full page newspaper articles…its been quite a surprise to see this all happening here. Some rather grumpy email interviews I did actually came out quite well in the press (I can half read Spanish and glean that they like our shit and think we're exotic drunkards and bandits - which is, of course, exactly what we are….hmmmm). So, that side of things has been well beyond our expectations and we are already into planning next year's tour here, gotta run with it. Mention is also to be made of the Bang Records guys, Juan and Gorka, who've been putting out our records here for the last 4 or so years (man, You Should Explode just came out on vinyl here, looks way cool, and the punters are snatching them off us no worries)… without those guys, this wouldn't be what it is.

Inevitably some tricky and precarious things must be handled when doing this kind of thing…Alex had his Iphone pickpocketed by a street whore (there's no other 'nice' word for the 2 women he and I were accosted by, they made semi-decomposed trolls look sexy, no shit), grabbing us directly by the dicks, while fingering our pockets. We got the phone back but it was a small lesson learned about Barcelona ladies of the night and trannies (we were smack bang in the middle of the red light district of course) and general vigilance in the face of a great lineage of European street banditos.

However, the main predicament we face at the moment is that 3 of the group are currently without passports, and we have to be in Serbia and Croatia (non EU countries that we cannot enter without passports) in less than 3 days. This poses something of a problem at present. 

One passport has been left in a hotel fuckin miles away (sortable but tricky). the other two were casualties of our Ape Module/van being broken into and stolen from by some evil motherfucker 2 nights ago. in what was evidently a quick hit and run, probably while we were playing, someone got in and filched Steve and Ryan's bags, containing their passports, cameras, personal effects etc. Steve was most upset about losing photos of his dog; Ryan of losing a giant ceramic German beer mug he'd grown very fond of, casualties of the road….

We trawled through street dumpsters for an hour at 3 in the morning, exhausted from the day's drive and show, trying to find the (hopefully discarded) bags, but to no avail. It must have looked a bit strange, 5 or 6 foreign guys wandering around  in the middle of the night, searching through all of the many giant bins on the streets there.

So the next morning, sleep deprived and glum, we spent an hour or two at a police station in the Basque town of Vitoria, lodging the theft report, aided linguistically by the wonderful Asier, a local new friend who proved angelic in the very trying circumstances. All good, all done. Steve spent most of yesterday passionately listing the various sadistic (and i mean real nasty) forms of retribution he would deal to the 'stinking filthy Mexican' if he could only get his hands on the individual responsible…. it was not easy listening to the more scary and dark regions of Steve's vengeful imagination, believe me, not nice at all. We all sat trembling til he grumbled his way back to blackened silence. But still no passports for Steve or Ryan, that still remains to be sorted.

So, its getting interesting….Spanish food is being very well received, each region offering its own delights, mostly in the various modes of tapas available. Todd, Steve and myself dined on beautiful fresh warm diced octopus drenched in oil and salt and paprika, with bread, coffee, for brunch, something else… the 'jamon iberica', a beautiful, smoked dark ham thats ubiquitous here, puts most regular hams to shame, bars have a leg mounted in braces across the bar, next to the beer taps, to slice thin lengths into crunchy fresh rolls on request. Beer's great too, wine a bit average after France. These morsels of gastronomic experimentation make it all a worthwhile pleasure when we may finally squeeze an opportunity to actually eat a proper meal in, relished moments.

That's it for now…. next report from the Balkans, assuming they let us in.

Adios.

The Bird Surgeon and Other Tales of Twittery

So, we're travelling through Fistful of Dollars territory as this is written, en route to Madrid and the beginning of the Spanish leg of all this gleeful madness.

Sine the last missive was posted we have been trouncing around France for the last week or so (the specifics are starting to get difficult to recall, any notes deteriorating rapidly in the moist fug of the Ape Module) having quite a marvellous time really, predictably with very long stretches of driving to ignore each other and recuperate in.

The francophilic (i.e. frog-loving) tendencies of a certain American in the band have been confirmed absolutement … he's like a combo of Last Movie-era Dennis Hopper playing around with the edit of Godard's Breathless - for those of you not familiar with cinematic intellectual drool, that translates as 'a rather cool oddity in time and space'. There was a grief welling in the man as he drove us, against his own iron will, across the Pyrenees border into Spain, which, according to this worldly gent, has no proper language, cuisine or road-sense. Given that the sunblasted stretches of Spain we're currently in seem to ensemble a quite hilly version of Meeekatharra, certain of the rest of us actually feel quite akin to this rugged landscape. We're also secretly fucking glad that we don't have to endure French cheese any more; as good as it is, it has been at the epicentre of a foul stench emitting from our Ape Module's fridge and will not be missed in the least, except of course by you-know-who.

After a show in Lille, we made our way to Bretagne, which, at the risk of  being misinterpreted, I would describe (from the little seen there) as the Tasmania of France (and I mean this in a good way, we love Tassie) It was a very wet and welcoming place, where we fell straight into the tattooed arms of Seb Blanchais (a Breton label dude, local promoter and all round great guy, who in spite of having had a baby only days earlier, was incredibly helpful and good to us) and a couple of good shows in the rainy northwest. We crossed paths with the newly arrived James MCann and the Dirty Skirts band (old friends from Melbourne), just starting their own idiotic musical pilgrimage through France and Spain; we sympathised deeply over many beers, banged out some tunes on the local radio station (courtesy of Orville and Marie, merci) and limped out of town.

We then spent 2 nights in the vicinity of a little hilltop village called Dolmayrac - this has got to be, hands down, one of the most beautiful places you can imagine, and exceptionally good people there to boot. We played in a tiny place tucked in the midst of this 12th century village (the venue is called Le Rad) to a chilled crowd of local yokels from the surrounding area. We were then treated to 2 nights in the hospitable cottages of Pif, Jack and Mumu at their beautiful country spot, elementally perched between rolling ploughed hills, cow paddocks and prune orchards (the local agriculture centres around le pruneau, we were treated to Pif's prune tart, it helped in good ways…), it was exceptionally beautiful and relaxing to be able to roll out our swags there, so to speak, and eat, drink and sleep. In return the erstwhile Frenchman of the band (see above) took it upon himself to reciprocate our hosts' generosity with some cordon bleu cooking that, to be frank (and based on some past, somewhat dubious experiences of Alex's cooking) left us all (French hosts include) a bit gobsmacked as to his kitchen karate. Hours of preparing the stuffing of nuts, apples, peaches, herbs and all sorts of other gourmet shit to stuff 3 weird-looking French chooks (kinda yellowish with their heads still attached), a couscous laden with gourmet goodness, it was like Iron Chef Camembert in there for a while. The judges concurred that all former cooking sins had now been erased and we proceeded to celebrate this great discovery, spending a wonderful red-wine (and local grapa L'eau de Vie… and whiskey…and beer) - fuelled night poring through Jack's well-stocked vinyl collection. C'etait fantastique….

The other event of note in this time is our discovery that another band member, Joines as he is known, has developed St Francis of Assisi-like powers to revive dead animals. I shall explain. While shopping in a nearby village, Joines, in his benevolent way, rescued a near-dead pigeon from the side of the road (i call it a pigeon, but it was a butt-ugly mutant of a thing, part sparrow, part vulture), both its legs either deformed or broken, and, grounded, it was completely unable to move or fly. Tempted to just smash its head in and put it out of its misery the saintly Joines chose to instead give it a chance, make it a little cosy nest in a box and hope that it pulled through. Nothing much more was seen of the vermin-bird until the next morning when (a very hungover) Joines was discovered asleep in the Ape Module Coma Booth, with this ugly little bird-bastard-thing, mutant legs splayed in all directions, happily perched atop his sleeping girth. Somehow it had made its way from the shitted up box it'd been cooped up in, and flown, yes flown, no other means were possible, to perch itself upon our newfound saint. Eventually we of course, had to leave, and no-one being too keen on this genetic throwback of the avian world becoming our new band mascot, we were contemplating what to do with it, when the bird, sitting on Joinesy's open divine mitts, just suddenly spread its wings and flew off into the blue yonder. A miracle had been performed, the Bird Surgeon Saint is born, and Steve has sleep with his first French bird.

Being keen conspiracy theorists, we made our way into Spain via a place near the French/Andorra/Spain border, called Rennes le Chateau. This is an abbey steeped in controversy in the Catholic chirch, the details of this, along with its significance, can be found by reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail, an heretical exploration of the fact that Jesus shagged Mary Magdalene, had a kid (a girl, who ended up in this place) etc etc Da Vinci Code blah blah blah - those of you less bookish could always Wikipedia it, there may be pictures. Either way, an absolutely stunning medieval village perched up in the mid-Pyrenees, where we quietly watched the sunset to the accompaniment of some local hippy doing his stringed-harp practice for the day, quite a treat.

So, now we move ever onwards, through the sun-bleached plains of Aragon, towards Madrid, where we will base ourselves tonight before starting 8 consecutive shows here. Gonna be a hoot. Our poor little Australian brains ache at the prospect of having to grapple with another foreign tongue (Steve's Spanish is so good, he was assumed by a shopkeeper to be a German, whilst speaking English…), but we, as cultural ambassadors of our own fair brown land, will do our utmost to protect the somewhat dubious reputation of Australians abroad. Hasta pronto.T

We're Living on Dog Food … So what?

So, we've spent the last 4 or 5 days indulging ourselves in a 'French Experience', in quite a variety of ways. It's the country, when all's tallied up, that we will spend the most time in - some 2 weeks - hence worthy of our serious investigation, intrepid explorers we….

First came Paris. A seething beautiful mess of a city, we were all struck by its very visible and chaotic  charms. Our initial concerns as to the impossibility of parking the Mobile Ape Tank were soon allayed by some local help (after James and Alex had spent 3 or so hours trawling carparks that it wouldn't fit into) and we scored a semi-legal perch a minute from our hotel digs.

The show at La Feline - a funky little street-level grotto of a bar, evidently decorated by someone with a major foot fetish, no complaints here - was the scene of probably our favourite show to date. The small but packed house took kindly to our sonic indulgences and we later conjoined to spill out onto the street outside for an animated, and somewhat difficult to retrieve, night of jibberjabber and some excellent swamp rock DJing courtesy of Dimi Dero.

Mention must be made of a certain barmaid - tall, slender, exotic,with incredibly alluring eyes - she was the vision splendid of some collective idea of what a Parisienne femme fatale could be like. As we also gleaned that she was probably the girlfriend of the lovely and gangster-like owner of the establishment, Pat, we bashfully accepted our drinks from her, numbed by her barside allure, and put that one in the bank.

We stayed at a cool little hotel in an area called Menilmontmartre; lots of Algerians, Islamic garb, pigeon shit, boulevards, the cemetery housing the Lizard King (oh, yes, the loyal legions of stoned anarchist poets were there, along with aged American tourists), grubby and fascinating at every turn. We quickly got lost only to discover the first half-decent Asian food we'd seen in aeons, and promptly wolfed down noodle soup delights, dosed up with beaucoup amounts of chilli goodness. Pure satisfaction. Heads up to the local Algerian cuisine, our random stabs at the menu proving strange but delicious.

Alex and James, au contraire, are much more sophisticated and rarefied apes, and for reasons the rest of us found hard to grasp, being in Paris, decide to eat French food (!!!) only to then feel compelled to lord their superior grasp of gastronomy over us. We have far to go, evidently.

So, we left Paris for a few days in the tranquil French countryside. One of Alex's oldest friends, Jim, and his wife, Genevieve, have generously had the mob of us as guests in their quaint little 300-year old, ramshackle, but supercool, cottage, nestled by a river some 300kms from Paris. The exchange was that we chop down a 12 metre tree smack bang in the middle of their tiny courtyard. Operation Koala, as it was soon named, saw soundguy Ren doing ninja moves around the upper reaches with hand saws (oh no, no chainsaws for us…) for most of the day as the rest of us noble engineers directed from below (read: yelled contradictory commands to the poor guy) We got it down after many hours of labour and our passage here was paid.

This small window of solid R&R before our soon-to-kick-in-mental-schedule has been proving to be a godsend. Relaxing to home cooking, playing guitar, listening to Jacques Brel cassettes, swimming in the frigid river, riding bikes along the riverside trails, sampling the superb local Anjou variety of plonk rouge, followed by the evening rabble of 7 Australian guys (and one rather loud and passionate Frenchwoman) getting stuck into the raucous art of 'cultural exchange'. Alex has been fondly returning to his native habitat of soft cheese, fresh-baked French loaves, and a variety of delicious locally-made pate-like substances that resemble large slices of Chum/Spam/offal-loaf. Invariably failing to bother with the correct name of this meaty gear, it has been labelled 'dog food' and we can't get enough of it.

James saw fit to entertain some of the locals last night, playing an ambient show in the small square outside the village's sole restaurant. In the gorgeous warm evening we collectively felt most blessed to have this wonderful opportunity to enjoy this beautiful place and time. Then we proceeded to get smashed (aided and abetted by the local restauranteur's supply of chocolate-like hashish) and keep the entire village awake with our loud heathen banter. C'est la vie.

I've discovered a supply of French graphic novels here in the cottage - surrealist cosmic sci-fi brilliance by Jodorowsky and Moebius (these guys invented the modern graphic novel, hands down) and have been working up my high-school French spending hours deciphering these excellent pieces of pop literature. I hope that these lessons prove useful with chatting up French women at some future point.

I sit here writing this missive in the cottage's courtyard, surrounded by approximately 15 loads of was he male clothes, trying desperately to dry in the cool sun before it is stuffed into the stinkbag for god know how many more weeks. This is no laughing matter, we will all breathe easier, literally, from these efforts; the small washing machine here has not stopped grinding the crap from our undies etc for the last 48 hours. If one could feel sorry for a non-sentient machine-box, this particular machine should be it.

A bientot.