Tour Diary: 1995 (Niko) > Page 2

The Bloodcaster

After two days off, the next show is in Nijmegen, Holland. Blood all over my white Stratocaster again from the same little finger as Tuebingen, again from playing too hard. The next show in Rennes while playing the Strat I hit my face on Eugene's flailing head and squash my nose, my vision gets hazy but not black - I didn't fully pass out. Blood all over the white Stratocaster and my white shirt and face from the deluge out the right side of my nose. I have a scar on the bridge of my nose for the rest of the tour. The last two shows I catch my wrist on the strings of the Strat and open a wound. Blood all over the Stratocaster, both shows. Generally, every performance there's some blood from cuts on my right hand or fingers, from hitting the Stratocaster strings too hard. Dan cleverly dubs it The Bloodocaster. The fingernails on each of the five fingers of my right hand are cracked sideways all the way across, in at least two places each, as far as half way to the cuticle on the index and middle fingers. This from playing hard. Finally, during sound check in Hamburg at the end of our first concentrated group of eight shows, I fall down backwards and land on my right arm. It scares the shit out of me: I can't straighten my arm or bring it to me without lots of pain. Playing that night, and for the rest of tour is not excruciating, but not far from it. Thank god for a day off the next day. Now at home two weeks after the last show and three weeks after Hamburg, it still wakes me up with the ache.

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� M. Liebeskind

The tour was tough physically, but pretty easy mentally, with just a few exceptions. Exactly the opposite of what I expected. I credit this to our tour company Splatter, and especially Manuel Liebeskind from Splatter (now in Berlin) who traveled with us, did sound and was de facto tour manager. A hell of a kind, talented guy and easy to get along with too.



  Flee the Penis

Last night in Nijmegen, Holland a woman named Caroline approached me after we played. She had done the monitor mix on the undersize and near useless system and the seriousness of her tone made me expect the usual complaint about Eugene's giving the mic setup more of a bashing than it could handle. Instead she began to tell me in quick, clear English that she was very upset he had showed her his penis.

The typical Dutch hard corners in her speech got sharper, her back straightened, her shoulders squared and she moved in to me until her nose would have touched mine like two cats before a fight. She said that he had brandished his flaccid penis at her only, that this made her sick, sick and that she would have left but that she was working and she couldn't leave even though she was an unpaid volunteer and that it was very unusual to find a woman doing what she was doing and maybe this was why, and that she didn't want to hear that it was "just rock and roll." She was a tall and a little imposing, black clothes, long curly black hair, and big brown-black eyes in a wide palewhite, honest face.

After a while she realized that I would listen to her but that I would not agree with her. Finally I sensed one of her major concerns, and said that she could tell her fellow employees at their meeting the next day, that someone in the band had said he was glad that she had talked to us, and not kept it inside. She then changed her demeanor completely, a smile came over her face, she reached out and tried to kiss me on the lips. I wasn't sure about this, dodged it, and then we did a little dance and finally the outcome was the Swiss three little kisses on the cheeks. A kind of resolution...

Before this, Dan had heard her say she wanted to "flee" Eugene's penis (for his sake, I hope a first). The tour was now dubbed the Flee the Penis Tour. This turned out to be prescient...



  The problems with our tour poster, of a naked muscular striding-Neanderthal man, cause comment wherever we go. People take the posters down because they don't like them. They take them down to bring home for their own walls. They deface them by tearing them in half. They carefully cut the penis out, leaving the rest. We see the disembodied penis on other walls, outside and in clubs. Often the promoters hang the posters with the penis covered by a flyer or another poster. Everyone has something to say about the cartoon of a naked man. I have many conversations, maybe two or three in every one of the seventeen clubs we play, about the poster, the man, the penis. The "Flee the Penis Tour" indeed. I wonder if a drawing of a walking naked woman would have caused as much fuss. Maybe it should. Maybe neither should be a cause of much excitement. I tend towards the latter.

In Nijmegan we see Fred Maessen, one of the coolest humans on planet earth. Fred runs Brinkman records in Holland - our (savior and) main record company. Along with his girlfriend Dorethy, they are an oasis of friendliness and laissez faire fun. The next night we completely screw up and drive around Paris without seeing any of it, and spend the night in the suburbs with Eugene's college buddy Scott, his wife Ignes (both nice), and their wonderfully named one year old son, Bruno Max. Scott continues on with us to Rennes.



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