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.
No comments:
Post a Comment