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Archive Sunday #15

Added 2023-09-10 16:00:06 +0000 UTC

BRUSSELS / LONDON / PARIS

SD: We drove west from Hamburg to get to Brussels, Belgium to play at this cool cultural center called the Botanique. The building was almost like an ornate greenhouse complete with a glass dome and a massive garden complex out front. It seemed a little to good to be true when we were pulling up to load in, but when they guided us underground to the cellar it started to make more sense. The downstairs venue was all brick with these massive arches supporting the the rooms above, which kinda made it hard to see each other as we were playing on stage.

For some reason I remember I was joking with Andrew in the greenroom about how avocados are an aphrodisiac as I was cutting one open, and he pulled out his phone to make a funny video. I also vaguely recall hearing that a couple members of The National were playing in the larger venue upstairs and trying to catch some of their soundcheck but no dice.

From there we took the Chunnel for the first time, and were kinda surprised that they loaded all the cars onto train cars to shuttle them across the channel. For some reason we thought it'd be possible to just drive through the tunnel haha.

We got to London pretty late and crashed at the familiar Beggar's flat thankful that we could enjoy the bunk beds without a fresh case of jet-lag this time. The next day we hit up a laundromat then headed to a venue called the Dalston Victoria which looked like your typical British pub, but a hidden door in the bookcase on the wall revealed a backroom venue that could fit a hundred or so people.

This was a memorable show because in the middle of playing America all the stage power cut out. We all looked at each other and nodded to continue playing through with pretty much just the drums audible. Thankfully in about a minute they figured out what went wrong, and we all came back in through the PA for the last chorus. We figured out afterwards that someone in the audience accidentally hit an inconveniently-located light switch that was connected to the stage power haha.

The next day we went back south the way we came to reach La Mécanique Ondulatoire in Paris. This place was a super neat grimy venue with a long cylindrical room with a brick covered arched ceiling. This was one of our favorite shows of the run simply due to the cramped packed room of excited fans and the surprisingly great sound on stage. But I remember thinking if there was a fire or something we'd definitely be going down with the ship because the only exit was a narrow staircase on the other side of the crowded room.

Andrew and I woke up a little early the next day to check out Paris. So we took the train during rush hour into the city because Andrew wanted to see the Eiffel Tower before we left. It was a short visit because we were already cutting it pretty close with time. Maybe my few years of french in high school didn't stick, because on our way back on the train we noticed our hotel pass by through the window and our train wasn't stopping! In fact it seemed to be speeding up.

It must have been an express train or something because it finally dropped us of three quarters of a mile further down the track. We both knew we wouldn't be making van-call at this point, and with no service to warn the other guys we just took off running down the streets of Paris in the general direction of our hotel. Turns out we must have been pretty fast because we were only a few minutes late and the other guys probably wouldn't have noticed if we weren't sweaty and out of breath.

WT: This was in the days of "Tepes", or Teppey as we called it, a portable hotspot we used in lieu of paying roaming charges on our cell phones. It definitely made getting separated a bit dicier. The Eiffel Tower was one of Andrew's few tourist visits; maybe the sprint back to the hotel was one of the reasons why we gave up seeking out the famous spots.