Truro and St. Agnes

We start our tour of Cornwall in Truro at the Wig and Pen. I can’t tell what kind of town it is, but it sure seems sleepy.

After showcasing the band’s rock moves, we’re off to find our accommodation in the milky darkness. The plan- we’re following the guy that booked our gig out into the unknown, where we’ll met some dude at a shuttered gas station, at which point we’ll start following him back to his place to crash for the night. And so we sit in the car, under a sky clear of light pollution, listening to our friends’ band Charles on the stereo. I need to re-listen to the Charles demos, cause I think they unfairly became the soundtrack to my brain imagining creepy and psychologically disturbing things about to happen.

Of course, everything turns out to be perfectly legit and uneventful. Our host’s place turns out to be a quaint retreat tucked between the hills of Truro, which is also known as the middle of absolutely nowhere. He’s a producer extraordinaire, and his recording studio is a converted chicken coop. In the morning, the neighbors ride by on horses. I lace up my boots and tromp of down the gravel road into the hills. The faint echoes of lilac and honeydew fill my nose, and I enjoy the fresh, cool sweetness of the air as I meander along. It seems like Cornwall is a good place to get some thinking done.

We jump in the car and make it all the way to St. Agnes, which is almost the farthest West and South you can travel in the UK. It’s the type of place where cell phone signals fear to tread, or at least decide that they’re on holiday just as much as everyone else in this vacation town, and they’ll work when they damn well feel like it.

The show is being held at the Driftwood Spars, a full service vacation destination. The inside of the inn is done up in all sorts of knick-knacks, from ropes and taxidermied birds to old globes and tchotchke steel drums.

A sign about the door alerts us that our proprietress means business. The wood beams lining the ceiling make me feel we’re in a ship. The way things stand, we’re nearly close enough to the ocean that you could cast a long line and catch a meal.

We let the hotel feed us instead and take advantage of our free time to explore all the parts of the beach the signs tell us not to. I imagine there’s some pretty good creature stories tell their kids around here to keep them off the cliffs.

Cardiff

Cardiff is a pretty intriguing town, if only because all the signs are in two languages and the place still retains quite a bit of medieval flavor.



The last time we were here, we tried jumping the fence into the castle and were subsequently kicked out. This time, we’re not even interested. I go exploring for something new instead. And so of course I find Obama’s shoulder choking out a terrorist Flavor Flav.



As I keep exploring, I find this:



I’m not quite sure who okay’d this piece of public art. A mom and a dad that can’t even look at each other, a man’s touch that screams keeping-up-appearances , while no one even attempts to look like they’re having a good time. I started crying.


I also find a load of kids doing their best Flaming Lips impressions in a pool. I really want to get each member of BBE into his/her own water ball, but everyone’s over the weight limit and the dude says “No Dice”. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.



Tonight’s venue is a converted wine bar. In an attempt to be indie chic, the walls are covered with those nubby green Lego foundation, and you can add to them with pieces acquired from the bar. It’s randomly decorated with Beatlejuice-esque models where they couldn’t glue Legos.



Our lodging is pretty strange. I probably just think that because it’s manned by a guy from Minnesota. He’s even playing Atmosphere on the bar stereo when we come in late night. He went to Saint Johns, so we’re not really cut from the same cloth. To put things in perspective, we have enough in common to get a free sample of every brew on tap, but not an actual entire free drink. The place has really cool wallpaper though.

Inggrish

Well, first things first-English Breakfast. No more oil-slicked hams and sweaty cheeses greeting us in the morning, well at least not for a couple weeks. The diner we find ourselves in offers a choice your own style English Breakie, and I wonder if it’s where Waffle House got the idea of how to offer their hash browns. One offering is Bubbles and Squeak, which I just have to give a go. The version I get turns out to be roughly mashed potatoes mixed with peas. Ah, the childish wonder of English slang.


After six weeks in the EU, today is our first speaking English to strangers and having them understand every word. And we can understand their every word. Well, almost. But I can understand 89% of the words coming out of people's mouths. Okay fine, 74%, with no wind or background noises. It's interesting to be able to understand what people are murmuring in public places again.

In the off time between shows, we’re staying with our friend Fran. She is rad and is subletting a room at an artists’ commune for the summer. The place is a large warehouse thoughtfully split up into small bedrooms and large working quarters. It’s inhabited by inquisitive cats.

Since the building is in the middle of the city, some of the residents got crafty and manipulated landscaping tubes into produce planters. I want to make one.

I spend an afternoon at the Tate Modern. Somehow I get a bit lost on the way there, and my miscalculation is exacerbated the slight sprinkle hanging in the dreary English sky. I have to keep asking people with crooked teeth for directions. I get pointed in the right direction for the fifth time and wander past a pirate ship and the Globe theatre before finding the museum.

The first floor is overtaken by a dance troupe’s rehearsal.

The Tate’s Surrealist exhibit is quite nice, as it’s not just a one-sided excuse to display the Miros and Dalis the museum owns, which is what I feel most surrealism exhibits turn out to be. It’s actually extremely varied and displays a lot of different takes on Breton’s brain child. I’m bummed that I don’t get much time to stay in the galleries and reflect on it, but a rock show calls with issues to be dealt with.

I know it’s going to be an interesting show when I keep getting emails that there is no back line sorted yet. But like most things, everything get’s sorted and the kids are lined up to party. And so we party.

I hope I never have to stay anywhere near Kings Cross again. What a CF.

Space Train to the UK

It’s on. We have the third leg of our triple-crossing of the EU. There’s a big difference running around in everyone’s brains as we take on this leg of the journey- English tongues live at our finishing point. And so we put our minds on hibernate, store all out dankes, dakojems, and mercis in our luggage, and plow forward. Well, right after we go find Charlie wandering around the corn labyrinth under the creepy eye of a clown bouncy-bouncy.

There is a Volkswagon family reunion at one of our petrol pull offs.

None of us have ever traveled across the channel on the vehicle transport, so we follow the suggestions printed on our ticket and get there a couple hours before hand, just in case there’s some hold up. We arrive and the place is jam-packed. Every train before us and after us is sold out thanks to one of the transports having been canceled. So we dutifully wait for our number to be called in the terminal and decide that for our last moments in France, we should try France’s version of McDonalds- Quick. BBE has been avoiding Quick for the sole reason that, due to stiff competition from Quick, there is no BK in the whole of France. I get an Intense Milk Shake and Quick’s version of the Big Mac. I can’t say I’ll be indulging in Quick again. I won’t say it’s terrible, but it’s definitely not good. It’s no BK.

Of course, we are detained at Customs, and for far, far too long. The time for our train departure comes and goes, and we wonder when, if ever we’re going to get to England. The only thing distracting us is the other car held at Customs. The driver decided enough was enough and got out of his car (despite signs that tell you to absolutely do no such thing) and started screaming at the Customs workers. As they scream back, he says “FINE. ARREST ME” over and over. His kids and wife/girlfriend are in the car. Classy dude.

Loading onto the train is absolutely sci-fi. The cover of darkness removes all the peripheral scenery from sight, so all we can see is flocks of lights burning in different tones of white and yellow. We are ushered slowly into our train car, and I wonder if I’m actually getting onto a space freighter to another world. Come to think of it, the UK is kind of like a screwy parallel universe to my American reality.

Dornstadt Mud Party

Yesterday was a drive day. Last week we did almost the exact same drive from the other direction, so we're starting to zone out a bit and not pay attention to the land scape. Modest Mouse keeps ending up on the stereo. And of course after making it from point B to C on this leg, we get to do it all over and have a monster drive from point C to D is tomorrow. YAY.

Of course, as soon as we hit Germany, the rain starts. It gets down right apocalyptic out.

This of course means that the festival is a total mess. It's well organized, but it's all standing on a pile of mud now. It's deep and slippery enough that I don't even trust taking my camera out.

So we retreat to the hotel for a bit in hopes that the ground will firm up. The place is a hilarious exercises in German minimalist taste. If you can call it that. Maybe industrial chic before industry was chic.

We go for a swim in the pool and then head back to the festival fields. Things have vastly improved and images of people chucking handfuls of mud on stage have stopped coursing through my mind.

We arrive at our tent, but we can't find our name or when we're supposed to perform ANYWHERE. It takes us a while to figure out the Germans are playing a joke on us:

And for the second time on this tour, we share a stage with Monotonix. The girl in front does not seem impressed. By the end of the set, she continues to not look impressed. I'm wondering what her angle here is- are band dudes into bitchy chicks?

Having played with and seen Monotonix before, this poor "D" balloon catches my eye. There is no way it is going to still be in the owner's hand by the end of the set.

And, yep, here we go:

So sad, used and flung aside like so many before it:

I think my favorite part of the set is when T'Nealle ends up riding the drummer. That's right, she is constantly making sure men know that they're below HER.