European Tour ´92

Cast of Characters:
Tom, T.Q.: Vocals
Kevin, Mal „Man": Guitar
Scott, Yuwen: Bass
Matt, Lyin': Drums
John: Roadie Sharon: Photos, Entourage
Andrea: Photos, Video, Entourage
Rachel: Craziness, Entourage
Andrew: Big German Tour
Manager Guy

9./10.11.
Here I am on a plane heading to Hamburg, drunk. Tom and I had a couple of beers at my house, then flew to New York, where we had three hours to kill, so we went to the first bar we found and proceeded to down multiple 24 ounce beers and double glasses of wine. This went on for three hours. Then we found out the drinks on the flight were totally free! At present Tom is imitating trumpets very loudly, and snapping his hot towel at other people on the plane. He had to get up to go to the bathroom and forgot he still had his headphones on, and totally destroyed them in the process. After five hours of drinking on the plane they shut us off, so we just kept stealing cans of Coke (we're in the back of the plane where they keep them) and dumping this rum we bought duty-free in them. Almost everyone else that had been sitting in the back with us had moved up front.

When we got to Hamburg, our tour manager Andrew met us and we had to wait for Uwe, one of the tour Company guys. It was 8:00 a.m. German time and so people in the Airport were definitely giving us weird looks as we were sitting there, tanking down beers. Tom got really loud and kept accidentally smashing bottles. He spilled his beer into Andrew's coffee and then drooled on himself. Andrew was not looking too thrilled about the prospect of spending a month with us.

Anyway, Uwe finally showed up and we found another bar. We had many more beers and Tom smashed another bottle on the table accidentally. After much more babbling in the van during the 4-5 hour drive to Berlin, Tom finally fell asleep for about 45 minutes, saying later that it was the cold pill he got from Scott that made him pas out. I guess it wouldn't have had anything to do with the by now 60 or 65 beers and drinks he's put down!

11.11. Berlin
Bought more beer and went to a loft called „die Mahnstein", played Fußball and smoked a bunch of hash too. Tom finally passed out after we'd been awake and partying for 38 straight hours! P.S: We saw HULLABALOO posters all over the streets, which was pretty cool.

(Later) l'm pretty wasted, so this will be short. Walked around Berlin, had a Kebab and we went to yet another bar. This one was full of bar flies and other more extreme weirdos - but they had Fußball and pool. We stayed there for hours, and then came back to the hotel and sucked down a bunch of beers. Real late we went to back out to have another Kebab and some Jägermeister. Then back to the hotel for more hash and beer, and now it's real late and l'm real out of it.

12.11. Berlin
Andrew drove us around Berlin for a while, and then to S.O.36, the club. We did about an hour and ten set with not many problems. Crowd liked us o.k., and got us to do two encores. All in all, a pretty decent first show of the tour. Hung out at the hotel afterwards and got to see Sharon, who turned up with Andrea during our set, so that was nice. Partied heavily.

13./14.11. Enger/Cologne
Long ride to Enger, because of really bad traffic. We picked up a hitch hiker named Ralf who was having his birthday - someone gave him a ball of hash with a ribbon tied around it. Played at a place called the Forum. Unlike the club last night, you could hear great on stage, so we played way better. People were nice here and gave us a huge dinner plus tons of beer. We did every song we knew but three, and people dug us. Afterwards we hung out and had more beers and hash, then did three more pipes of hash when we got back to the hotel, and more beer that the club had given us. We're now on our way to Cologne - Saturday night!

15.11. Cologne
Great show last night at the Underground in Cologne. Drove through Düsseldorf, where Andrew is from, and he took us to the top of this tall Observation tower after we had a few pipes of hash. It was cool, especially being stoned. Stopped at Andrew's pad to pick up some clean „untertrunken". Played with BAILTER SPACE from New Zealand - nice guys. The club was filled and we played pretty well- they liked us. We were really really drunk when we first walked on stage. John's dad was in town on business and came to the show - a very nice guy. He asked me about my SG, and said he used to have a '61 original Les Paul/ SG and somewhere along the line traded it for a Jazzmaster! What a drag! After the show, we tanked down more beers and the club gave us a cold case to go! We stayed at some rooms that were like little prison cells, but we got really stoned before going to sleep, so it didn't matter much. Tough getting up this morning. We're on our way to Lübeck now, which is 500 km away. Stopped for supplies" a few times (gas, beer, cigs, St. Pauli Girl Illustrated Gazette, etc.) at these intense gas stations they have here in Germany, which are loaded with booze and all kinds of junk food, etc. in addition to gas. They re good place to blow lots of one's tour money.

16.11. Lübeck
Waking up in Bremen after a long-ass day yesterday. After an all-day, rainy drive we got to Rider's Cafe, which was in the middle of an industrial section outside of Lübeck. Right when we walked in we knew it was going to suck, and it did. Enough said. Drove back to Bremen afterward and did plenty of booze and hash, but we were so tired when we got here that Andrew said he „had no good dreams" from it - just 9 hours of coma.

17.11. Bremen
Played at Romer last night. Partied upstairs in the band room until 10:30 when we went on. Monday night, and still the place was packed, which was great. The crowd liked us a lot, and we didn't screw up much. After the show we did a few interviews backstage, and then Uwe took all of us out for kebab. Then we went out to a bar and we ran up a 300 DM tab. Scott decided to take a photo of Andrew and Tom sitting at the bar, but when the flash went off, it freaked out this really huge smacked out guy (we saw him shooting up earlier) who ran over and hit Scott in the head with a bottle and tried to grap the camera, but Andrea held on to it tight. The rest of us were up and ready right after that, and the guy finally backed off and left when Tom screamed in his face:"DO YOU WANNA DIE?"

18.11. Krefeld
On our way to Essen as I write. The club last night was called Kulturfabrik - a really cool place in Krefeld. Nice backstage room with tons of food and drink, including the first bottle of wine we've yet gotten! Played a decent show and the crowd liked it. Only three encores tonight (!) then we hung out in the bar for hours after the club closed and got really baked, courtesy of this guy Stefan. Scott and Andrea had a butt-kicking contest. John was designated driver, so Andrew got totally trashed.

10.11. Essen
Arrived at Club Nord in Essen. Nice people. It was some Christian holiday, so when we got there, the guy asked us not to play loud. Then he asked me what kind of music we played, and I said: „Loud". Pretty horrendous at soundcheck almost impossible to hear. Good chow at the place, though. They also had weird cherry and banana juice - too sweet. More red wine. The police had a number of complaints about the noise, but the crowd liked it. More partying and interviews afterwards, down in the backstage room. One funny thing I should say about last night was, that Andrew and Matt didn't know that they should never touch Tom's french fries, and Tom really lost it for a minute when they kept doing it. „DONT TOUCH MY FUCKIN’ FRIES! I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE TOUCH MY FUCKIN'FRIES!" he yelled as loudly as only Tom can. He scared Matt half to death, who hadn't ever seen Tom really ticked off before. The other thing was that people were asking us to autograph posters for them!

20. 11. Karlsruhe
Great show last night at the Katakombe. The club owner was really cool and put us up in a nice hotel - Sharon and I got our own huge room. He also took us all out to dinner after all the other food and booze in the dressing room - including English newspapers and the new issue of Guitar World! Cool! The place was pretty small but filled the kids went crazier here than anywhere we've played yet. We did a good one and a half hours - including FIVE encores! Afterwards our dressing room was packed with people. Did some more interviews and signed some more autographs. Finally left after much partying with locals and slept great.

21.11. Trossingen
Last night was pretty bad. The place was Canape, a club in a small suburban town called Trossingen. Quite a big crowd on hand, but only a few in front seemed familiar with us. Most of the others just sort of watched. Beer.

22.11. Ravensburg
Last night we were elected into the „Crazy Guy Movement of Germany", whose mascot is Buddy Hackett. They're a group of guys who followed us from Karlsruhe who have this club called the „Crazy Guy Movement of Germany", but l'm not sure what the point of the club is - I guess being crazy. They had their own newsletter, which had a bunch of stories about guys doing crazy things, like this one called „The Chocolate Champ". It was about some guy who was in a contest or something to see who could sell the most chocolate, and I think he steals chocolate from the other guys in the contest, and ends up winning, or something like that. Pretty fuckin’ crazy, huh? The club was the Jugendhaus Ravensburg which was cool. The room was totally crowded and really hot. Played OK: Tom did a lot of slamming, so he was entertaining. We decided to walk to the hotel rather than drive, because everyone was so plowed, but we got really lost. Tom and Scott got in a big argument during the „death march" and ended up actually fighting. Tom bounced the little ragdoll Scott off of a parked car and jostled him onto the pavement; later apologizing.

23.11. Blauberen
Today is our 11th straight show day. We thought the show last night was at the Jungenhaus Blauberen, which is a suburb of Ulm. Found the place, but it looked pretty deserted. So, we walked around the town for a while, and found a bar that had Fußball and got smashed. At 6:30 or so, we went back to see if anyone was there yet - but it was still totally dark. Then we noticed on the bottom of the poster hung on the door that it said „Cat Club, Ulm". Apparently no one had told us that they moved the gig. The next couple of hours were spent trying to find the stupid Cat Club back to Ulm. It turned out to be this old Castle at the University of Ulm, surrounded by all these dark woods - pretty weird place.

The crowd was plentiful but weird - all students who were kind of obnoxious. Some guy was interfering with me as I played, so I gave him a foot in the chest and kicked him off the stage. Then he left. Scott had some crippled guy who was on drugs all over him - finally someone dragged him off the stage. We blew through about 15 songs and then left.

Up pretty early today at 10:30, 'cause the hotel people fuckin’ woke us up again, and now we’re head into Nürnberg - hey! It's our day off! Tomorrow night's show is supposed to be taped for a live album, so hopefully it will go well.

(Later) In Nürnberg we went for „Der Whopper Orgie" at Burger King, where you can also swill down Burger King Beer with your meal, which was fun. Matt was in the mood to party and had tanked down a bunch of Jägermeisters before we had even finished dinner. Then we went barhopping, and I wound up going to the hotel a couple hours later and crashing. Next thing I knew, Sharon woke me up and told me, that Matt had been arrested and was in jail for stomping on a bunch of fancy cars, like Porsches - around 20 of them. He went to his room and passed out, and later the cops dragged him out of bed and down to the police Station. The rest of us just hung out and smoked hash and waited while Andrew bailed Matt out. P.S.: Andrew gets one punk point himself for slapping a Muff Driver (his band) sticker on the police desk while filling out release forms for Matt.

24.11. Nürnberg
Went to a restaurant and had „Original Nürnberg Bratwurst mit Kartoffelsalat" that was a killer. I went for 8 of them. Tom went for 10. They kicked ass. We also had a double bock that rated a solid 3 and a half stars on our four-star beer rating system - possibly more. Then we went to the club called KOMM. Small place with bad acoustics. Met Florian and Joe from Musical Tragedies. Soundcheck blew. Two monitors didn't work, and I didn't get one at all - perfect for a live recording! Pretty decent crowd for a Tuesday night, and they dug the show o.k. Unfortunately we couldn't hear shit, so for a live recording it was a wash, but for a show it was pretty successful. Scott was really pissed off about it, though, and I guess I wasn't as sympathetic as he would have liked called him a „baby".

26.11. Zürich
Thanksgiving-day, not that anyone here in Europe cares about it. Last night we played at the Rote Fabrik in Zürich, where my parents live, and it was totally great. We had a big crowd that really liked us. Matt trashed his drums on „Unkindness", „ the last song, but we put everything back together and did three encores. The crowd yelled for more for quite a while: A great high. Sharon and I went back to sleep at my parents apartement, and my mom did all our laundry, which was great, and she also bought me a new pair of black suede Adidas to replace my leaky Reeboks. Yeah!

27.11. Stuttgart
Another great show last night, but this time it was the loud, messy and fun variety. The venue was called Blumenwiese. It was weird because the club was right in the middle of a really fancy pedestrian Shopping district in Stuttgart. We had the place packed by the time we went on at around 10:30. Those guys from the „Crazy Guy Movement of Germany" made the trek to see us for the third time, as did the quiet, blond guy who was at Club Nord in Essen. He and his girlfriend travelled 500 km by train to see us, and then they had to turn around and go back home that night! Unbelievable! Played a good set, did one encore, and then we couldn't think of what else to play, so Matt started playing Scotts bass, I drummed on Matt's drums, Tom strapped on my SG (which looked fucking ridiculous on him since he dwarfed the little thing), and Scott just kept singing „You gotta have soul, baby" over and over. It was fucking hysterical. Later the owner kept making us „band shots": Grappa, Baileys, and ground coffee on top. They definitely fuck you up!

28.11. Bern
Everything was fun last night except the show, weirdly. Played at the Reithalle in Bern, which was a pretty strange place - huge wooden building with a big stage. Some guy gave Sharon a free bag of government-produced prescription weed, and later gave us two more bags! I personally rolled up 10 - 12 „fatties", and others rolled a few too. As I told John, we can't carry it across the border, and we´re only in Switzerland one more day - so we must keep a joint burning at all times! The show itself wasn't bad, but it was a pretty flat reaction. However, due to the massive amounts of weed we smoked, we improvised a couple of cool space jams. Played one perfunctory encore and then retired to the band apartement to „skin up", as they say here. Extremely stoned as we were, John and I tried just one last joint together to see if we could get any higher, and goddamn if it didn't break us through to a new plateau! Totally baked when we went to bed. Plus, they gave us cases of this beer called Boxer that was 8.0% and it was so good that John was actually moved to awarding a swiss beer the full four-star rating!

29. 11. Basel
Last night we played at Kulturwerkstatt, Basel. The people there were quite nice to us and after soundcheck we got good chow. John asked for an Irish coffee and the woman brought out coffee plus a huge bottle of Irish whiskey. Also, we still have some (but not much) of the Bern weed left, so we had a nice after-dinner joint. The show was almost the same as it had been in Bern - almost no interest or response. So, „Search & Destroy" turned into a 20 minute noise fest, which featured much instrument-abuse from both, me and Scott. Matt came around front and mooned the audience. The irony of it all is, that this was their favourite song all night. Anyway, we left as soon as possible, killed the whole bottle of whiskey, and finally me and Sharon toddled off to bed. She laughed at me for being so drunk. Didn't get even close-to enough sleep since we have a 700 km ride to Prague today and we had to get up early. Now it's 4:00 p.m. and we just stopped for a kebab. Yum!

30.11. Praha, Czechoslovakia
Pretty weird scene so far. When we got to the Czech border, it was dark with heavy fog and it looked kind of scary. No problems getting through, but we slowed almost to a stop for the next hour because of the fog. Stopped and bought some Budvar beer. In Prague we met up with the promoter in some bar that had our posters hung up. Had dark beer and goulash and dumplings. Then we came back to this guy Ivo's flat, who was putting us up and smoked some weed and hash and crashed - all 8 of us in one room. Sharon and I had to sleep on one little mat on the floor, so we didn't sleep very well.

1.12. Prague
Club was called 007. A guy from the first band, who were totally amateurish but cool, asked me to tune his guitar for him, since he didn't know how. He had a horrible Les Paul copy, and I noticed he was missing a string. I realized that he probably just couldn't afford to buy a new one (they had to borrow our whole backline) so I just gave the guy a whole new set. The guy was grateful, but accepted them with some embarrassment. Later he brought me back two huge buds of killer weed, as kind of a return favour. Cool guys - and international goodwill! Only about 60 people there, but we played really well and they enjoyed it a lot. Uwe thought we were „brilliant". As has become the custom, he kept buying the whole band shots afterwards, this time of this intense stuff called „Becherowska" - kind of like Schnapps, but even more killer. I had three of them and was really drunk by the time we left. Later, we partied at Ivo's for a while - pretty serious bedspins last night! P.S.: Tom, John and Andrew went out to a bar and got even more drunk after we went back to the hotel last night, and Tom actually barfed on Ivo right at the bar! This noon we met them here back at Ivo's, they were still asleep and the room smelled fucking horrible! RANDOM NOTE: A few nights ago Matt and Andrew were drunk and insulting each other, and Andrew told Matt: „I give a shit on you, I fart in your mouth and light it, and if the fire doesn't come out of your ears, you lose". Matt was unable to answer that one.

2.12. Prague
Five of us went back to Ivo's bar and ate more meat and stuff, and had more beers. Then we decided we were still hungry so we ordered second dinners for everyone. The Czechs who were sharing our table with us thought we were pigs. We ate all that and kept drinking beers and shots of the Christmas drink (Sharon had two!!!), and to the disbelief of all the locals we ran up a bill of 700 crowns for 10 meals, 30 beers and 15 shots for only five people - which is a pile of cash for them.

3.12. Bratislava
Yesterday we got on the road to Bratislava. Ivo had given John a map and directions to tonight's club, which was called the Rock Fabrik. Everyone thought that John was getting us totally lost, because we wound up driving through dark alleys bordering a train yard, but it turned out that the club was really there. Again played a good set to minimal response. Matt pulled his pants down again and this time gave them the spread-cheek
„brown star" treatment. A couple of Czech chicks were pleading with Tom to play another song and finally told him „fuck you". Tom proceeded to yell at them „You stupid assfuckin' ex-commie Czech fuckin that can fuckin lick my dick!" Scored a free giganto-joint from some kids outside the club. We stayed at some girl's apartement - all in one room („spartan", as John called it) on the damn floor again. We all got as fucked up as possible to deal with it. The best part was that Tom, who was given three thin foam rubber mats to sleep on, was kind of bumming about it and right as we were talking about it, the girl walks in, comes right over and takes two of the mats back into the other room. You had to see the look on his face. As good, sympathetic friends we were of course laughing at him. Slept pretty bad, especially since some guy who lived there came into our room at 5:30 a.m. and flicked on this bright light for about ten minutes while searching for a cigarette, and then this morning the same guy woke us up at 9:00 a.m. by playing a horrible version of a DOORS-song on his folk guitar in the next room. Next day we had to goblow the rest of the Czech play money before leaving the country - gas, a big meal of what I later suspected was „rat" schnitzel, and 26 beers. Heading to Vienna now.

1 2 .Vienna
Excellent show last night at WUK. The stage sounded great and it was good and loud, too. The promoter, a nice guy originally from London, got us stoned and traded in our cases of regulär Budvar beer for Christmas Bock, which kicked butt. They were worried we were going to be too drunk to play, but hey! We're HULLABALOO, AND THAT'S OUR JOB! The place was completely jam-pakked by the time we went on at around 12:30, and before we played a note, a big crowd of drunken maniacs greeted us with wild abandon. We were fucking plastered when we went on, and we gave them a goddamn SHOW ' did an hour and 45 minutes, and the place was nuts the whole time. For some reason, people kept rolling bottles onto the stage, and Tom kept breaking all of them. Then Scott ended up lying on the ground, and Tom dragged him around on his back until he got a big cut - Tom forgot there was glass all over the place. When we went off, they were all screaming so loud, you couldn't hear anything, and about 30 guys in the front row started pounding bottles on the front of the stage. We came back out and started playing an off the cuff-mosh in time with their pounding bottles. We did three or four encores, getting through about six more songs over and above the initial 17-song set. Sharon was going menatl in the pit, knocking guys around all over the place. She was crazed! All 5'3" of her! Afterwards, we had to finish all the rest of the beer backstage, plus the two 2-liter bottles of wine, which pretty much sent everyone over the top. Me and John were running around with the wine bottles like idiots, getting everyone to drink it with us. Rachel was crazed and bit John on the nipple really hard. Then Matt head-butted me and actually knocked me out for about 10 seconds! Tom, John and Scott had to pick me up! I think that's why my head hurts up! I think that's why my head hurts today. The rest of the night is pretty fuzzy - must have been fun.

5.12. Vöcklabruck
I can't believe it's the final show of the tour already. The venue was called Graben 17. We got some more weed and they fed us Chinese food (take-away which was a bit strange, but o.k. Between dinner and the show, I was feeling pretty draggy, and so were Tom and John. Earlier, John had bought a can of this stuff called Red Bull, which is supposed to be an energy-drink. It turns out that the stuff is illegal everywhere except Austria, and they are some sick mothers, cause this stuff is made of extract of bull testicle - a shot of testosterone! So, the three of us decided to try some of the bull jiz, just because it was illegal. It actually does give you an energy boost, but it leaves a sticky coating in your throat. It tasted just like someone dissolved candy in water, and then presumably mixed it with bull cum. Nasty. We had to chase it with beer, because it started grossing us out. Anyway, there were about 100 kids who turned up for the show and we were sounding quite good. They had a fog machine for us, which we put John in Charge of. When we went on, you couldn't see a goddamn thing for a few songs! It was good fun since we were stoned. The crowd called us back very loudly for three encores, and the last song we played on the tour was „Back in Black", with an extended jam at the end. We partied for a couple hours with the promoter and got nice and stoned. Andrew got out a huge bottle of the Christmas drink and proceeded to get fucking plowed, fall down his chair, and drop a bag of beers accidentally.

7.12. Bremen
Drove all day to Bremen, and my guess is that we went to a bar and got really drunk, but I cant seem to remember (How was your tour? don't know.) Oh yeah! Now I remember! We went to a bar around the corner from the hotel, which was really small and run by this drunk old lady who was sporting a serious shiner. I had a weizenbier and some pils after that. Weizenbier is pretty good, and it comes in a big-ass glass. The weird thing about it is that if you drop one grain of dry rice in it, it causes a chemical reaction and the whole thing foams up out of control. Good fun for all. Anyway, we got well trashed. During the night Sharon got up because you could hear John snoring all the way down the hall of the hotel! This was because John had done 6 or 8 shots of this shit called „menthe blanca", which goes well beyond Jägermeister in that it actually alters your brainwaves and causes temporary psychosis. That night Kurtis and Uwe were doing a GANG STARR show at this big club in Bremen called Aladin. So, the HULLABALOO-posse were special guests there, and we were definitely in the mood to party! Pretty amusing scene at Aladin: Lots of Raiders hats and jackets, and yet only three actual black people were there besides the band. Drank beers and Jägers as fast as we could suck them down. When GANG STARR came on, we rammed through the crowd down to the front, which apparently ticked off this group of Turkish guys. Quickly things turned into a big scuffle, and bouncers dragged us to the back of the room again. Tom decided to go right back down front, so John and I got right in behind him. As soon as we got back there about 10 guys started pounding Tom in the head. One huge guy got a killer shot on him right in the eye, but Tom didn't go down. John did end up going down and got repeatedly kicked in the head. I only took two shots since I was behind them, but we didn't get in to many shots ourselves since we were outnumbered at the end by about 15 to 3. Bouncers dragged us away again. Later, we hung out with the GANG STARR guys backstage for a while, and then we said goodbyes to Uwe and Kurtis. We decided to go chow one last kebab. I figured it might sober me up to eat something, but I was sadly mistaken about that. We still managed to find the hotel after a few tries. This morning we were late so Tom Stood down in the lobby just screaming „LET'S FUCKING GO! WE'RE GONNA MISS THE GODDAMN PLANE! WHERE THE FUCK IS SCOTT???" On the road Andrew got a bit lost trying to get out of Bremen and find the highway, ended up going the wrong way down a one-way street and met some little car head on, so Andrew, instead of backing up, intimidated the guy into reversing out of our way by sticking his head out the window and just screaming at him. It worked. Back on the plane again. Tom´s not drinking quite as much as on the way here so far, because he's having to use one arm to hold an ice pack on his eye that the stewardess gave him. John's already very drunk indeed. Yesterday's triple dose of kebab wreaked havoc on my stomach all morning. WCs: Use them early and often in these cases...

8.12 . Boston
Here I am, back home in Boston, finishing up the tour diary.Tom's eye swelling went down after a few ice packs on the plane, so he started drinking in earnest after my last entry. By the time we got to New York, Tom and John were of course deeply drunk, and Tom just looked and smelled unbelievably bad. I figured we'd get totally bagged at customs, so we let Tom go up first and we kind of hung back and waited to see what would happen. The customs guy took one look at Tom and said „Feel better, pal", and waved us all right through! Cool! No sphincter search, as anticipated! We had three hours to kill in New York before flying back to Boston, and I really don't have to tell you at this point what we did. The last hour-long flight to Boston was pretty quiet. Today, after inspecting the month's worth of beer and slime coating my SG, l'd have to say it looks like it was a successful tour! Now it's time to start delving into all the tapes to put to get her the live-album HULLABALOO's rock monument to itself! See you next year, Europe!