day 3 - Hamburg and the Astra Stubbe
At 4am in the swanky Penta Hotel in Gera
I woke up
I guess I’m set to 4am now
I lay there contemplating time and space
And everything in between
Also the Jules Vern book 35,000 miles over the sea
Several times I thought of taking the laptop into
The ultra modern German bathroom
And working on my blog there
As to not disturb my peacefully slumbering family
Nope
I decided to tough it out
Count sheep
Count black Mercedes’ on the autobahn
Count just about anything I could think of
think peaceful thoughts
Nothing worked
suddenly I’d be trying to remember song lyrics
Or thinking about how much money I needed to make at
The next gig to cover the hotel room
Or some other random bullshit “adult” concern
I guess around 8am I finally dropped off
At 10:30 I was jolted from my drooling state by the shrill sound
Of the telephone
It was Daniel
Last night’s promoter
Calling to see if we wanted to meet up
I quickly got ready and we met him in the lobby 15 minutes later
He took us to a quaint restaurant called Downtown
Which was underground in a sort of winecellaresque situation
We ordered some drinks and talked
Then ordered some food
About half an hour later Daniel bid us goodbye
We waited for our food
And waited some more
Was this France or Germany I wondered?
Finally
About an hour an 15 minutes after we ordered
The food came
Or shall I say
Our two bowls of cheese
I just couldn’t bring myself to eat more than 4 or 5 bites of it
It was good but I felt like someone may as well inject a syringe of grease
straight into my heart
We split town 30 euros lighter
On the way back to Hamburg I swerved in front of an 18 wheeler
To take an exit which led to an amazing field of yellow flowers
We’d seen them everywhere but none accessible by road
Until this one
So we stopped the car
And went to have a look
I wanted to take some pictures in the middle of the field
But it looked kinda swampy
I went in anyway
With Gavin jumping up and down
“I wanna go too Mama, can I go, can I go too? Can I go?”
"No Gavin, you'll get too dirty...hold on!"
she quickly snapped a few photos from up on an embankment
And then I noticed I now had yellow flower schmutz and dirt
All over me – nice…
We got back to Hamburg around 6
My plan was to drop J and G off at Casa Buskies
Charge the video camera and cell phone
Then go to Tapete to pick up Gunther for the gig
The video camera was dead
The light would come on then die 3 seconds later
Since my camera broke on the last tour and I specifically bought a new one for this tour
To guaranfuckingtee this would not happen
I was a bit upset
I left in a a bad mood
cursing Sanyo and all of it's employees
and also vowing to go home and spread crappy rumours about their suckee corporation
It didn’t last long though
At the office I told Matthias all about Dolly and Kenny and the Gera show
Then we all headed off to Astra Stubbe
The Stubbe is a small but cool club
With really good sound and a nice owner
We had a quick sound check where I performed the Nourallah Brothers classic
“Public School” for the very first time ever
then we went through a huge boxes of slides to pick out the backdrop
for my performance
i went with a giant question mark
it seemed somehow appropriate and amusing
then Matthias, Gunther and I walked up the street to get dinner
we settled on a Greek/Italian place with loads of soccer fans staring unflinchingly
At TV sets
I had the Hamburger fish with potatoes (no beef in there, so don’t worry…)
Matthias had the pizza
Which looked amazing but considering the amounts of cheese I had already consumed
In the Rhineland
I just couldn’t go there
The Astra Stubbe show
Ended up being my favorite Hamburg gig to date
It was a very small but very enthusiastic crowd
Gunther manned the merch
Basti lead a group of handclappers in the back on “She’d Walk a Mile” and “Pictures Collected”
Lars helped out on “Montreal” with a 1-2-3-4 beat
The whole audience sang the backing vocals with me on “Don’t Be Afraid”
It was as good a show as I’d ever done
It was as much fun as I’ve ever had playing music
I wish there had been maybe 15 more people there but still
it was great
i got back to Casa Buskies with Gunther around 1am
and fell asleep almost the very second my head hit the pillow
I woke up
I guess I’m set to 4am now
I lay there contemplating time and space
And everything in between
Also the Jules Vern book 35,000 miles over the sea
Several times I thought of taking the laptop into
The ultra modern German bathroom
And working on my blog there
As to not disturb my peacefully slumbering family
Nope
I decided to tough it out
Count sheep
Count black Mercedes’ on the autobahn
Count just about anything I could think of
think peaceful thoughts
Nothing worked
suddenly I’d be trying to remember song lyrics
Or thinking about how much money I needed to make at
The next gig to cover the hotel room
Or some other random bullshit “adult” concern
I guess around 8am I finally dropped off
At 10:30 I was jolted from my drooling state by the shrill sound
Of the telephone
It was Daniel
Last night’s promoter
Calling to see if we wanted to meet up
I quickly got ready and we met him in the lobby 15 minutes later
He took us to a quaint restaurant called Downtown
Which was underground in a sort of winecellaresque situation
We ordered some drinks and talked
Then ordered some food
About half an hour later Daniel bid us goodbye
We waited for our food
And waited some more
Was this France or Germany I wondered?
Finally
About an hour an 15 minutes after we ordered
The food came
Or shall I say
Our two bowls of cheese
I just couldn’t bring myself to eat more than 4 or 5 bites of it
It was good but I felt like someone may as well inject a syringe of grease
straight into my heart
We split town 30 euros lighter
On the way back to Hamburg I swerved in front of an 18 wheeler
To take an exit which led to an amazing field of yellow flowers
We’d seen them everywhere but none accessible by road
Until this one
So we stopped the car
And went to have a look
I wanted to take some pictures in the middle of the field
But it looked kinda swampy
I went in anyway
With Gavin jumping up and down
“I wanna go too Mama, can I go, can I go too? Can I go?”
"No Gavin, you'll get too dirty...hold on!"
she quickly snapped a few photos from up on an embankment
And then I noticed I now had yellow flower schmutz and dirt
All over me – nice…
We got back to Hamburg around 6
My plan was to drop J and G off at Casa Buskies
Charge the video camera and cell phone
Then go to Tapete to pick up Gunther for the gig
The video camera was dead
The light would come on then die 3 seconds later
Since my camera broke on the last tour and I specifically bought a new one for this tour
To guaranfuckingtee this would not happen
I was a bit upset
I left in a a bad mood
cursing Sanyo and all of it's employees
and also vowing to go home and spread crappy rumours about their suckee corporation
It didn’t last long though
At the office I told Matthias all about Dolly and Kenny and the Gera show
Then we all headed off to Astra Stubbe
The Stubbe is a small but cool club
With really good sound and a nice owner
We had a quick sound check where I performed the Nourallah Brothers classic
“Public School” for the very first time ever
then we went through a huge boxes of slides to pick out the backdrop
for my performance
i went with a giant question mark
it seemed somehow appropriate and amusing
then Matthias, Gunther and I walked up the street to get dinner
we settled on a Greek/Italian place with loads of soccer fans staring unflinchingly
At TV sets
I had the Hamburger fish with potatoes (no beef in there, so don’t worry…)
Matthias had the pizza
Which looked amazing but considering the amounts of cheese I had already consumed
In the Rhineland
I just couldn’t go there
The Astra Stubbe show
Ended up being my favorite Hamburg gig to date
It was a very small but very enthusiastic crowd
Gunther manned the merch
Basti lead a group of handclappers in the back on “She’d Walk a Mile” and “Pictures Collected”
Lars helped out on “Montreal” with a 1-2-3-4 beat
The whole audience sang the backing vocals with me on “Don’t Be Afraid”
It was as good a show as I’d ever done
It was as much fun as I’ve ever had playing music
I wish there had been maybe 15 more people there but still
it was great
i got back to Casa Buskies with Gunther around 1am
and fell asleep almost the very second my head hit the pillow
posted by salim nourallah at 6:57 PM
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