Scarab hunting in Morroco

I've heard legend of the incredible cuisine of Europe, but if it is here, I haven't seen it or tasted it. Someone is hiding it from me. We've been fed mostly like peasants; rices and salads and soups and the like; nibblins, with an occasional good meal. The language barrier does make it difficult to enjoy the restaurants. Sometimes all you can do is gaze longingly through the restaurant windows like some sooty orphan, knowing you can't understand the menu or order reliably, crippled by a funny ignorance. Today, I ate a rabbit. It was distinctly chickenesque.

We didn't go scarab hunting or even to Morroco. But I thought I might hook some people with that title.

KONSTANZ

Konstanz was where we really discovered MDMA. I didn't eat any, but everyone else did. Sometimes I like to let other people try things so I can see what happens. The first dose of MDMA appeared in Amsterdam, our first night. But that was mild in comparison. Also, in Konstanz, we had a supply of 30 or more tablets.

The bar was a retro styled place. Curvaceous old furniture, bold colors, dark wood. They let us drink anything we want. The promoter, Daniel, prepared for us a luxuriant barbecue of food in the alley behind the club. It was one of the best meals of tour; an endless array of sauced meats.

With the MDMA, Shannon was dancing like never before, Ian was babbling at me about the sensations of MDMA, about seeing the faces of his ancestors lining the walls, smiling down at him approvingly; a warm, familial feeling. And about the writings of Kurt ... something, and his concept of oscillating waves representing states of humanity, genius at the top and subhumans at the bottom. Something like that. And he asserted that we must learn Spanish. It was imperative. He had a crazed insect look in his eye, an unblinking and super/subhuman focus on the face of whoever he was talking to.Luckily, Shannon stopped Ian from idle entering the staff kitchen because she knew that there was some discrete fucking going on within. Koki combined dose after dose of MDMA with something like 30 beers, and by 1am he could barely manipulate the muscles in his eyelids sufficiently to expose his pupils; he was blinded! His eyelids dropping shut and his enfeebled muscles straining to keep them open. The muscles of his jaw were void of all tension and his slack, open mouth would certainly not close again until morning.

Koki and I fell asleep around 2am on the longest couch I've ever seen while the screaming backstage cigarette party raged on for hours. At some point I was roused and guided groggily upstairs to our sleeping quarters. But before that happened, we had to wake Koki. The room was enshrouded in a bluish haze of smoke. When he didn't wake immediately, we slapped him many times and screamed in his face. We jostled and sat him upright, but received no feedback. Some of us were convinced that he was actually dead. It wasn't until we lifted him and forced him to stand that his body showed any sign of life. It shuffled like some ancient golom, summoned from the soil, and it began to walk on it's own, the eyes open. We slept. Shannon slept in a child's room with a crib and toddler toys, an eyeless old plastic baby doll, and the walls decorated strangely with large sexy lady posters and swimsuit models cut out of magazines in picture frames.

The morning was fine. Koki awoke shockingly chipper and he and I walked through town, bought some morning snack and belittled passersby in our own language. The town was very pleasant; a little cobblestone row of boutiques and college student. We saw a German man shaking his infant child in play, but maybe a little too roughly. We feared for it's brittle neck bones. I heard a rumor later that Koki had eaten more MDMA in the morning to feel good. But most everyone reported feeling fine in the morning. We thought maybe it had to do with the pharmaceutical grade of the MDMA, formulated to not deplete your brain juices in the night.

STRASBOURG

I don't even want to say anything about Strasbourg. It was the ultimate bummer. I was very sick. Shannon was sick. About 6 people showed up to watch us play. The bar was neat. The stage was in a day glo blue lit basement cave down some spiral stairs. The DJ booth was an odd geometric multi-gon made of triangles. They did give us a very nice apartment above the venue with two sets of bunk beds and a washing machine. I didn't know that the machine didn't work until after I loaded it full of my clothes. It was full of water and it really sincerely wanted to start, but it could not. I carried around a sack of wet socks for a few days, hanging them up whenever I could. Also, the wifi was nice.

The morning streets were nice; cobblestone squares and little alleys. A college was nearby and there was an America themed cheeseburger shop with the walls painted with big imitation Lichtensteins.

ST GALLEN

I was still sick in St Gallen, but almost well. My singing was still terrible. It would be terrible for another week. In a week I would discover hot tea.

The venue was a small hotel in a narrow alley with a little cul de sac of bars and Japanese restaurants at the end. The snug little street was so winding and narrow and hidden between petite looking buildings that were just tall enough to obscure the rest of the town in every direction, that it appeared there was no city beyond those walls, just a snaking antique maze, a Seussian circuit of odd sized businesses packed narrowly together. The dramatic lighting of street lamps made it seem we were all on a weird stage or dolls inside of a miniature of a real town, all of the buildings just theatrical facades with nothing inside. It was like Universal Studios Orlando. Or Hollywood, a diorama.

Here I first noticed the trend of European hotel rooms and apartments that are made only for sleeping, crowded end to end with simple beds. And I began to notice the ubiquity of Ikea furnishings in the hip boutique hotels. After a few days of these, I actually felt a strange yearning for the oppressive regularity and the sterile tans and particle board of the Motel 6 aesthetic of old America.

The people here were shocked to see us in their small town and they showed a wild appreciation and a crazed enthusiasm during our songs. I spoke to some striking looking women who had seen us in San Francisco. White-blue European eye color and full unamerican eyebrows. It's painful to see someone who wants so badly to have a conversation and who manages to overcome their shyness but can't quite grasp the new language enough to ask or say anything very deep to the foreigner. It's painful like watching a fallen ring roll down a gutter or a dollar bill carried off in a gust or watching a handsome stranger you've been eyeing get up and exit the library.

VENICE

Sadly, though it was marked on our calendar as Venice, we were actually in Venizia, the new part of Venice. It is not the old city with it's labyrinth of canals and sinking stinking buildings, but more of an abandoned former city of industry (as far as I could tell). I was full of excitement as I read the freeway signs for Venice and watched the streets eagerly only to see a few scattered and dingy pizzerias as we circled a soot stained industrial zone looking for the "Popcorn Club", a warehouse bar beyond an unlikely gate in a neighborhood where one might legitimately fear being raped by some deranged and forgotten Robocop, one twisted and malfunctioning with age and internal corrosion, wandering lonely and yearning in the wastes. Twice we rudely intruded with our lurid headlights on a positively sprawling camp of Italian hobos who had settled in for the night, squinting and blinking in the sudden brightness, half-roused from a sporty-colored melange of sleeping bags, far far from the field & stream for which they were manufactured.

Evidently, there was some costumed holiday bar crawl happening in old Venice which stole most of our audience that night. The promoters expected quite an event and the flier boasted an festival of international entertainment, but the turnout was disappointing and stiff. It was a nice place and the food was some of the best we had so far. I had a salty salad of speck, rocket, walnut, brie, orange and potatoes. The others had a pizza each, exotic toppings on all.

I've noticed the price of pizza here is much lower than in the US. 6-10 Euros for a whole pie. Also the price of yogurt and cheese is less than half what it is in the US.

In the morning, Ian snuck off into the dawn on a bus to explore the old city before we had to leave at noon. I preferred to sleep, like some kind of jerk.

The drive through the Swiss alps from St Gallen to Venice was one of the most incredible drives I have ever been on. Seemingly endless vistas of green fairy tale mountains unfolded along the highway, little castles here and there. I must recommend it. Although, once you arrive in Italy, the drive becomes quite urban and hideous and the traffic is unparalleled.

ROME

I feel embarrassed admitting that I found it to be true what they say about the fashions and style of Italy. Italy was the first place I was really struck by the beauty of the natives. Or, maybe they weren't so beautiful, but had all very strong distinctive features and put care and effort into their dress. It wasn't so different from San Francisco or Brooklyn I guess. I heard later that there were a lot of Americans there. Indeed, on the streets the next day, I heard hardly a peep of Italian and more American English than anything else.

The bar was on a pedestrian cobblestone street full of nothing but late night clubs. Until after 4am the whole street swarmed and writhed with people. Party people. At one bar, called the 5 Star American Bar, I could see in the upstairs balcony that there was a projection of "Girls Gone Wild" on the wall. It wasn't possible to unload our things from the place for all the shuffling crowds of people so we left overnight and returned in the morning to get it. We had two hotels on opposite ends of the city, which required that we drive through town several times, which turned out to be a blessing. We saw the Vatican and a lot of other ancient stuff. From atop a hill, Rome looks like a city but with huge and ancient stone things protruding here and there out of the canopy of buildings.

At the end of the night, some of our party stayed behind to rage into the morning and there was some uncertainty about when and where everyone would end up. I went to sleep not worrying about it. In the morning, we were all split up without international cellphones. We agreed to meet near the Coliseum at a certain time. We saw the Coliseum and that huge white ornamental building that was built by Mussolini with all the golden statues of people. The vastness and ancientness of the Coliseum inspires nearly instantaneous fantasy visions of centaurs and mammoths and slaves and beggars and warriors. It was good.

The promoter of the show had agreed to meet us in the morning to open the bar so we could take our things out of there. He had apparently been out doing things until 11am, so he was in bed when we called him. And then he was in bed when we called him again a while later. The boulevard that was so bustling eight hours earlier was grey and mute now with the ghosts of celebration, trash blowing around in the corners. My nose started bleeding here. And here I noticed for the first time how large and how numerous are the flies of old Italy. I still can't figure why, but all throughout the country we were menaced by jumbo black flies.

LUCCA

What began as a bummer day of hassling and hustling around rainy Rome ended in the dark and the rain at a joyful place known "The Tube", that lit up the empty neighborhood. It was a bright avenue in a sleepy shopping center and as soon as we arrived we were greeted by friendly dudes and the Tube was bopping with rockfolk. The DJ was already at his station and the fans were tattooed and excited. Big, companion-seeking dogs were here, with their masters. And there were weirdos too, ones from off the street. Little guys watching the football game on TV. So many friendly pals and they had some cool foods for us. The vibes in this place were premium. It was one of the jolliest eves, no doubt. It was so good that I don't know what else to say about it. I didn't see much of the city.

We stayed with a fine lady named Linda who lived in her parents' old apartment above a lamp store, across from a cafe. In the morning we had "Italian Breakfast" which is a croissant, an espresso and a cigarette. I yearned for bacon and eggs. It wasn't the last we would see of Linda or of the others from the Tube. They would show up again at several of the Italian shows.