blakejonesmusic
local music, local arts, The Underground Garden

 

Tonight was to be our first show in Germany. For all the times I’ve visited friends and family here, I’ve never done a gig in my mother’s homeland. Lauri was sleeping ’round the clock. She had developed a little bit of a cold. There was a lot of coughing, colds, and sinus infections going around our gang throughout this trip. The memory of our last tour in the UK where I arrived almost completely unable to sing for the first two shows was a memory that cut deep; I lived in paranoia. Thankfully, I was ok so far. Just two shows to go. I let Lauri sleep. We were just going to hang around the hotel this morning. Maybe get lunch before going to an early soundcheck at “The Tube” in Dusseldorf’s altstadt.

The rest of the band went to a classic car museum/auction and hung out with Stephen for the afternoon.



Lauri and I had lunch in the altstadt then walked on over to The Tube. It was starting to rain just a little. Very much like everyone of my trips to Europe, it always looked like it had *just*rained, or that it was *going to* rain, or maybe it was raining *just a little*, but thankfully, the rain never stopped or slowed any of our fun.
It looked like people were just starting to arrive. We got the equipment going, said our ‘hellos’, met the soundperson, the club owner, the other bands…

Then it was that chunk of time between arriving and actually playing. This time it was mostly filled with meeting folks who’d come esp. to meet us: Barbara’s family had had a foreign exchange student stay with them years ago, and now Sabina, her husband, and her two daughters were there to meet Barbara. Then came Thorston, an exchange student who went to high school with Lauri, and coincidentally was a friend of my own and some of my friends (though Lauri and I wouldn’t meet for another year.)

Interesting to us Yanks, most music clubs in Germany allow minors up to a certain hour as long as they are with parents.
Opening the show was Bo & the Headhunters. Think of a mid-60′s garage band with a very cool ‘Nuggets’-style record collection, and strange Italian guitars–plus a Fender Musicmaster to boot. Great guys.

The show went well. Except for a short scare where I was trying to get the theremin adapted to the new voltage/different shaped plugs that Germany had compared to the UK, all was easy.

The band played solid, and folks were interested. At the end of the set there was a call of “Zugabe! Zugabe!” that warmed my heart as I recalled the German version of our “Encore!” Pretty sweet for this half-German boy to hear that at our first show ever in Germany. Actually, I didn’t know what to play. Good thing Neptune, who seemed to be keeping some careful track of what we were playing and not playing from our list-o’-songs called out “Bad Bad Ronald”, which I think was the only time we played that strange old Trike Shop chestnut on the tour. Afterwards, we were treated to our first hearing of Hack Mack Johnson—a very solid band in the Beat Farmer (what I said)/ Social Distortion (what Doc said) vein.


Good stuff indeed. All in all, this was a perfect, compatible bill. Thanks to all who set it up!—-after the show, it was the walk up the lane to the bus stop, the bus ride to the “Hilden Huessen” stop, the short walk up to the Ibis Hotel. So different than at home, where everyone loads into their own car.