Post by Dan the G-Man on Dec 4, 2003 19:28:54 GMT -5
Road Report Seven For '99
Tallin, Estonia
Garbage has just canceled their first concert ever. Drove fourteen hours through the tundra with a frozen toilet from St. Petersburg, stopping every few miles to hand over some cash to the local police blackmailers, and still we got here and realized all of our sound, lights, instruments, and crew weren't with us. They were still being held by the Russian border oafs, who seemingly hadn't been paid off enough by the people we had hired to pay them off. Or something. Any case, we feel like creeps for letting down the fans who wanted to see us tonight, and we're going to make it up to them somehow. We hope they understand that there was nothing we could do to change things.This time.
Cincinatti, Ohio
Snapshots from the last few weeks. Running on stage through rows of helmeted riot police with truncheons, then getting one of the warmest welcomes we've ever had from the Russian fans, who must be very brave to have so much fun in the face of so many police. It was kind of like the Dope Show video without the humor. Camouflaged eighteen year old soldier on our bus with an AK47, souvenir shopping. We gave him a Paranoid shirt and he let us go. Didn't, however, have all of our gear thrown out because it said "Garbage" on it, like it was reported in the U.S. Unreal cold. Saw the Winter Palace, something our parents would have not been allowed to do. Even if it was only from the outside, which is the only side that we get to see these days. Flew into Helsinki during their air-traffic strike, we had no idea. Oops, still pretty much alive though. Bought a case of the best Russian vodka for $10.00. Got the whole thing stolen off our truck in Barcelona.
Did When I Grow Up on Top Of The Pops at perhaps our most tired point ever -- traveling Europe by bus, playing every night and never sleeping at all, can start to take its toll. The night before was rather good though -- if any of us had said a few years ago that we would be selling out Wembly Arena, and Chrissie Hynde would be joining us to sing one of our songs, we would have been locked up. But it happened. I thought Shirley's dad was going to burst the buttons on his vest he was so proud. The rest of the UK went almost as well -- thanks you guys. Got a bit loose in Manchester, but isn't that what you're supposed to do in Manchester (Steve played drums!)? First ever Garbage Beatles cover, although none of us are quite sure which one of their songs it was. Sort of Taxman played at the same time as Helter Skelter I fear. And we met Blondie too! This has been a great year so far.
Glasgow SECC is a giant dour tin box during the daytime, but at night it turned into a giant Barrowlands (i.e. a vibed up roomfull of the most up-for- it people ever). Best ever homecoming for a certain singing member of the band. A lot of these arenas are fairly grim places, but you guys that have been coming out to see us are totally amazing. We never thought we'd get to go to what for us are exotic places like Belgium, Holland, and France (France!) and have anybody, let alone so many, know who we are. Humble thanks from your Garbage friends. Same across Denmark, Sweden, and Finland too -- you have no idea. Some of us (all three boys come to think of it) have roots in Scandinavia, and it's wild to think we're going back and making big noise in the places our ancestors left generations ago. It might also explain why we've chosen to live in such a cold and gloomy part of the States.
Paris -- regular readers of this column will know by now of our out-of- proportion adoration for this city. This time it lived up to it's reputation once again -- did an MTV concert taping, the crowd was louder than the band (not an easy feat), and Laurent Garnier (only one of the world's most famous and best DJ) opened up. Tried a bit of the French red wine, which we decided is pretty good. Several members of the Garbage entourage appeared to be somewhat disoriented the next day, which is hard to understand -- perhaps Harald our tour manager needs to be more strict regarding our "everybody right to bed immediately after the show" rule.
Garbage by this point had started joking that by the end of the tour we would collectively possess the brain power of a single worm due to our frantic 'here's ten free minutes in the schedule let's do a TV show and mix a b-side lifestyle. Evidence to support this theory lies in the fact that we were becoming unable to go on stage without first listening to The Frogs' "I'm Sad The Goat Just Died Today", followed by Duke's interpretive dance based on "The Rockefeller Skank". Ask him to show it to you sometime, it's really something.
It finally felt like we're making inroads in Germany -- Cologne was great, and Lyon and Spain -- it goes without saying. Each one was crazier than the last, culminating in Madrid where we couldn't even hear what we were playing, the audience was singing along so emphatically. Shirley, freed from the obligation to vocalize constantly, seemed to enjoy the freedom to pursue other avenues of expression, whilst the rest of us tried not to fall on the sweat-soaked floor and enjoyed the view. Scotch in Spain made perfect sense at the time.
Crew people -- we've been unbelievably lucky to have such a high standard of people working for us. On the plane home, Tom our sound engineer pointed out to me that we had been allowed two days off over the five weeks we were in Europe. In most countries, this would be grounds for putting the employers (us) in jail, but for some reason we all seem to put up with living this bizarre existence. Our guys have endured crappy plane rides, delays, crappy ferry rides, no rest, no sex (?), being held for twenty hours in a bus by armed border guards, loading semi trucks at seven in the morning on an ice rink, sixteen hour ferry rides across the Baltic sea, and worse. Just so we could play these shows. Even though they'll never be able to read this because Garbage never gives them enough time off to do anything else, we thank them, and sincerely hope they don't get driven so far that they mutiny and kill us all with axes.
Up soon on the website: reports on the Alanis tour, the Grammys (oh my, what to wear?), a full official discography (as official as we can make it although there might still might be mistakes that we'll try and fix as soon as we figure out they're mistakes and not in fact facts) and maybe a "Garbage explains their equipment to you" section. Also, we're still on tour (maybe forever), and we're trying to decide where we're going to be playing this summer. Busy busy busy. Talk to you again soon, your Garbage friends Steve, Butch, Shirley and Duke.
Tallin, Estonia
Garbage has just canceled their first concert ever. Drove fourteen hours through the tundra with a frozen toilet from St. Petersburg, stopping every few miles to hand over some cash to the local police blackmailers, and still we got here and realized all of our sound, lights, instruments, and crew weren't with us. They were still being held by the Russian border oafs, who seemingly hadn't been paid off enough by the people we had hired to pay them off. Or something. Any case, we feel like creeps for letting down the fans who wanted to see us tonight, and we're going to make it up to them somehow. We hope they understand that there was nothing we could do to change things.This time.
Cincinatti, Ohio
Snapshots from the last few weeks. Running on stage through rows of helmeted riot police with truncheons, then getting one of the warmest welcomes we've ever had from the Russian fans, who must be very brave to have so much fun in the face of so many police. It was kind of like the Dope Show video without the humor. Camouflaged eighteen year old soldier on our bus with an AK47, souvenir shopping. We gave him a Paranoid shirt and he let us go. Didn't, however, have all of our gear thrown out because it said "Garbage" on it, like it was reported in the U.S. Unreal cold. Saw the Winter Palace, something our parents would have not been allowed to do. Even if it was only from the outside, which is the only side that we get to see these days. Flew into Helsinki during their air-traffic strike, we had no idea. Oops, still pretty much alive though. Bought a case of the best Russian vodka for $10.00. Got the whole thing stolen off our truck in Barcelona.
Did When I Grow Up on Top Of The Pops at perhaps our most tired point ever -- traveling Europe by bus, playing every night and never sleeping at all, can start to take its toll. The night before was rather good though -- if any of us had said a few years ago that we would be selling out Wembly Arena, and Chrissie Hynde would be joining us to sing one of our songs, we would have been locked up. But it happened. I thought Shirley's dad was going to burst the buttons on his vest he was so proud. The rest of the UK went almost as well -- thanks you guys. Got a bit loose in Manchester, but isn't that what you're supposed to do in Manchester (Steve played drums!)? First ever Garbage Beatles cover, although none of us are quite sure which one of their songs it was. Sort of Taxman played at the same time as Helter Skelter I fear. And we met Blondie too! This has been a great year so far.
Glasgow SECC is a giant dour tin box during the daytime, but at night it turned into a giant Barrowlands (i.e. a vibed up roomfull of the most up-for- it people ever). Best ever homecoming for a certain singing member of the band. A lot of these arenas are fairly grim places, but you guys that have been coming out to see us are totally amazing. We never thought we'd get to go to what for us are exotic places like Belgium, Holland, and France (France!) and have anybody, let alone so many, know who we are. Humble thanks from your Garbage friends. Same across Denmark, Sweden, and Finland too -- you have no idea. Some of us (all three boys come to think of it) have roots in Scandinavia, and it's wild to think we're going back and making big noise in the places our ancestors left generations ago. It might also explain why we've chosen to live in such a cold and gloomy part of the States.
Paris -- regular readers of this column will know by now of our out-of- proportion adoration for this city. This time it lived up to it's reputation once again -- did an MTV concert taping, the crowd was louder than the band (not an easy feat), and Laurent Garnier (only one of the world's most famous and best DJ) opened up. Tried a bit of the French red wine, which we decided is pretty good. Several members of the Garbage entourage appeared to be somewhat disoriented the next day, which is hard to understand -- perhaps Harald our tour manager needs to be more strict regarding our "everybody right to bed immediately after the show" rule.
Garbage by this point had started joking that by the end of the tour we would collectively possess the brain power of a single worm due to our frantic 'here's ten free minutes in the schedule let's do a TV show and mix a b-side lifestyle. Evidence to support this theory lies in the fact that we were becoming unable to go on stage without first listening to The Frogs' "I'm Sad The Goat Just Died Today", followed by Duke's interpretive dance based on "The Rockefeller Skank". Ask him to show it to you sometime, it's really something.
It finally felt like we're making inroads in Germany -- Cologne was great, and Lyon and Spain -- it goes without saying. Each one was crazier than the last, culminating in Madrid where we couldn't even hear what we were playing, the audience was singing along so emphatically. Shirley, freed from the obligation to vocalize constantly, seemed to enjoy the freedom to pursue other avenues of expression, whilst the rest of us tried not to fall on the sweat-soaked floor and enjoyed the view. Scotch in Spain made perfect sense at the time.
Crew people -- we've been unbelievably lucky to have such a high standard of people working for us. On the plane home, Tom our sound engineer pointed out to me that we had been allowed two days off over the five weeks we were in Europe. In most countries, this would be grounds for putting the employers (us) in jail, but for some reason we all seem to put up with living this bizarre existence. Our guys have endured crappy plane rides, delays, crappy ferry rides, no rest, no sex (?), being held for twenty hours in a bus by armed border guards, loading semi trucks at seven in the morning on an ice rink, sixteen hour ferry rides across the Baltic sea, and worse. Just so we could play these shows. Even though they'll never be able to read this because Garbage never gives them enough time off to do anything else, we thank them, and sincerely hope they don't get driven so far that they mutiny and kill us all with axes.
Up soon on the website: reports on the Alanis tour, the Grammys (oh my, what to wear?), a full official discography (as official as we can make it although there might still might be mistakes that we'll try and fix as soon as we figure out they're mistakes and not in fact facts) and maybe a "Garbage explains their equipment to you" section. Also, we're still on tour (maybe forever), and we're trying to decide where we're going to be playing this summer. Busy busy busy. Talk to you again soon, your Garbage friends Steve, Butch, Shirley and Duke.