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by ?
Fred does Europe does Hazel
It's practically conspiritorial how different Europe is from America. Information crossing the Atlantic is kept to a strict minimum in both directions, and what scanty data is available to our respective populations comes only - with the exception of a few gems of realist cinema - via the completely plastic and narcissistic and U.S.-dominated modes of commercial mass-media.
In Holland, virtually everyone speaks English as a second language - it's required in elementary school. In the rest of Europe, English is the second language of choice - easily half of all advertising, most song lyrics, what Bulgarians speak to Iranians in France, what shopkeepers speak to all nationalities. The only language barrier is getting over the shame of being a monolingual freak.
Toilets are completely different. Well, not completely.
Street-signs are never free-standing, always on the sides of a corner building or wall.
All countries are obsessed with using names and pronunciations for each others' countries and geographical features other than those used by natives. After a while, this practice begins to cloy, at first for the inconvenience, then more for the odor of willful ignorance. Cro-osh-ya may sound quite wrong to American ears, but Cro-ai-sha sounds ridiculous to Croatians.
30 years ago, elements of the European counterculture - 'hippies', but the word's a fucking slur - moved into abandoned and unused buildings in a big way, and enough cases ended in negotiations with the absentee owners and the authorities that today all countries in Europe have squats: communally run, politically active, and often subsisting in large part by putting on rock shows. In Ljubljana, a squat occupies the former headquarters of the Yugoslavian Army; in Rome, a 10-acre 19th Century fortress; in Berlin a six-story block-long galleria; in Bern an old schoolboys' academy; in Amsterdam a monumental grain mill and harbor silo-complex. A development as earthshaking as zines or all-ages clubs or personal computers, seems to me. Probably more so than computers, actually.
In spectacular contrast to the U.S.A., practically every inch of Europe attests to a public consensus that old and deteriorating architectural artifacts are of intrinsic value, that deterioration itself is not devoid of aesthetic power. You can almost die of beauty a dozen times a day, no matter where you are on the entire continent.
When I was little, before freeways, ubiquitous franchises, slick mass-market advertising, and that last huge round of wholesale clearcuts, urban America was something like that, and rural America was just like that. It's absolutely heart-stopping to find it again here as it was - multiplied.
I'd expected to see some very big, very old trees on this tour, but Europeans are every bit as compulsive and rapacious about not leaving a single ancestor standing as we are. In 6000 miles, I saw one big tree - already cut up.
The seven of us rode in a white window-van driven by Carmelo, our Dante, our Virgil, our Beatrice, which is to say, his efforts were epic.
We played 25 shows, May 30th through July 5th, 1997, starting and ending in Amsterdam. Hazel alternated in the headline spot with Ovarian Trolley from San Francisco: Jennifer (drums & vocal), Laurie (bass & vocal), and Buck (guitar). Hazel is from Portland: Jody (drums & vocal), Pete (guitar & vocal), Brady (bass), and me. Both bands are ferocious and woman-dominated.
I brought along a handsome used $125 folding (to fit easily in the van and to spite the airlines' obtuse fees and deterrents) Royce-Union bicycle. At every destination, it was the first thing unloaded and the last thing loaded back in.
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by ?
buck, fred, jenny, carmelo, pete, brady, laurie, jody
Itinerary
* = great show B = no Brady F = no Fred
date city country club code
May 30th Amsterdam Holland August B
- 3 days off -
June 3rd Siegen Germany Uni Cafe B *
4th Nuremberg Desi B
5th Berlin Tacheles B
6th Bremen Grunenstrasse B *
7th Hannover Korn B
- day off -
9th Bern Switzerland Reisschule B F
- day off -
11th Basel Irshneker B F
- day off -
13th Enger Germany Forum *
14th Linz Austria Kapu
15th Vienna Flex *
- day off -
17th Pecs Hungary Hard Rak
18th Ljubljana Slovenia Gala Hala *
- day off -
20th Giulianova Italy Indhastria *
21st Rome Forte Prenestino
- 3 days off -
25th Marseilles France La Cote *
26th Onati Basque Gazteleku *
27th Gorliz Xurrut
28th Donostia Mogambo F
29th Elorrio Gaztetxea F
30th Perigeaux France Radio 103
July 1st Lyon Pez Ner *
- day off -
3rd Groningen Holland Vera *
4th Leuven Belgium Sojo
5th Amsterdam Holland Silo
Additional opening acts:
Berlin - Kepone, U.S. Midwest ugly hardcore, plus one extraordinary hillbilly plaint
Bremen & Enger - Assassins, brilliant kickass women's punk rock
Hannover - Sparkmarker, sweet & tender hardcore boys, old friends from Vancouver
Giulianova - Student Zombies, virtuoso rock divas of Rome
Rome - Kundry's Love, raucus local boy-band
Elorrio - Antolatzailea, cute raucus local boy-band
Leuven - Rapunzel, Little Fury Things, and Hypno 69, very loud and young boy punk trios