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combichrist's Journal
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cologne germany, day after show (day off)
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August 25, 2008, 07:26:pm
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woke up today in a beautiful and comfy bed. very awesome change of scenery. most beds in europe are like little kid single beds that my feet hang off of. as a matter of fact, lemme talk about this for a second. I've never quite had a grasp on this whole "tucking in" business. It never seemed to work out for me as I'm to tall and for some reason it hurts my feet to have the bottom of the blanket tucked into the mattress. I usually wind up untucking all of the 5 or 6 layers that the hotels leave on the bed, and getting rid of the top 2, as I've learned these are the ones that are never washed and if you held a black light upto them you'd see massive amounts of semen and maybe even anal juice on them. Yum! Anywho, what always winds up happening is that after tossing and turning for a few hours in the heat (since theres never any air conditioning in most hotels in Europe), that i wake up with a few sheets tied around my body and the bottom sheet covering the bed, completely off, and with my naked body laying on the uncovered mattress. GROSS! Its the worst feeling and I always wake up and get all pissed offf and try to fix it and then have a hard time going back to bed. So, YEA! The beds in this hotel are huge and im not having this problem, so i was pretty relaxed and well rested all day.
Anyway, woke up and Gabe and I headed over to Sylvain and Zmar's room, where Zmar was recovering from apparently getting smashed in the head by a gang of little magical purple elves who jumped out from the bushes in their mysterious and foggy mushroom house kingdom (like the smurfs) last night. And YES!, we were all in the same room but i think due to the insane amounts of heroin, cocaine and acid we were on, we somehow avoided any run ins with these little fuckers. Z-mar however, wasn't so lucky. For that reason, Z-mar didn't join us for coffee at the starbucks down the street, and I later learned that he didn't leave his bed all day. I guess he needed the rest (refer to his injury pic at the end of yesterday's entry. So Gabe and Sylvain and I headed over to the starbucks and ran into Eskil and Jokke on the way, who were of course entertaining some beautiful ladies in their white sunday suits. exquisite! Unfortunately I missed the Covenant show the day before as we arrived to late. Last time I saw those guys was the last show on the last Euro tour, which was in Moscow, were i joined them on stage and played on of the songs on Daniel's drums. Daniel Meyer, who plays drums for Covenant now, also has a project called Haujobb, which i learned had played their "official last show" the day before as well as the Covenant show. Bummer that i didn't catch the show, however we did have a little pow wow in the lobby of our fifteen star hotel when we got back with our coffee. It was a magical meeting, filled with kisses on cheeks (both face and butt), and dressing up and roll playing. Daniel's character for this meeting was "dirty sanchez", and mine was "little boy", and Gabe of course was the camera man. Sorry folks, don't expect to see the footage anytime soon. The sex tape market is so flooded with hollywoood socialites like Paris Hilton and Tommy Lee and David Hasslehoff right now that I'm afraid that our little gem would go unoticed. I mean, how could Daniel Meyer and I possibly compete. And YES Daniel, I spelled your last name wrong on PURPOSE! (to try and keep some anonymity about this whole situation). XOXOXOXOXO
Sylvain, Gabe and I then went to check my favorite place to visit while im in Colgone, the church. This church is just the hugest church you may ever see in your life. I wonder if its one of the biggest ones in the world. It seemes like its 4 football fields big. Its so beautiful and huge and everytime im near it im just dumfounded at how much work went into building this thing. Every inch of it is so detailed and its just so beautiful. Again, as always when i come through, i missed the departure time for the english tour, and won't be able to learn so much like i want to about it. This didn't stop us from walkin around inside and takin some pics. One of my favorite areas in the church is in the back behind the altar where they have all these little sectioned off rooms. each one has a raised burial tomb of the priest througout that time period in the church. Also you can see what the church looked like in that time period cause they put all this different art work and some of the benches and stuff in the room. Very interesting and pretty. There was also what seemed to be the "Lost Ark" from the Indiana Jones movie and it seemed like everyone was looking at in and no one was dying, so yea, that movie was one big fat lie! Steven Spielberg must be a republican.
*church red room
After that we walked around the city center and tried to find some food to agree on and for some reason we wound up at McDonalds (I think it may have been my fault actually). It sucked AND i had to pay for ketchup. I love ketchup so I hate that. Dickheads...... We also saw some really random things around the center, like this stand that was set up demonstrating some sort of shitty situation in China (i think) where people are stealing peoples organs and putting women in cages. The first part of that freaks me out, the second part, not so much. ;-)
Then it was back to our rooms where we waited for Gregor to come pick us up and take us over to the festival. Today we wanted to catch Project Pitchfork, And One, Die Krupps, and Daniel's DJ set. We arrived in the middle of Project Pitchfork's set and watched it from the merch booth. Daniel was there. I think he winked at me. Project Pitchfork were awesome, and at the end of their set, they did an And One song, which i thought was a little weird cause And One were coming on next. After PP it started raining so we spent the time before And One ducking into random tents to not get. I feel like every single tent is the same crap but under a different tent. Same cd's, same clothes, same socks, and its all black WTF! so depressing.
We wound up getting seperated from Gabe at one point so Gregor and I wound up catching the And One show by ourselves. They had this huge black curtain that didn't drop until after the music started, and then it revealed their elaborate set. I've never seen them do much production besides good lighting and 2 keyboard stands, so this was pretty special for me. At one point in their set, all the dudes from Project Pitchfork came out and sang the song that they did earlier, but with And One, so at that point it made sense to me and everyone on stage seemed to be having a blast.
After And One we wanted to head over to the hangar stage where we performed yesterday to check out Daniel's DJ set and then hang around for Die Krupps, but the line was just too fuckin long. Gregor and i ran into our friend Cecelia, who was also frustrated about the line to get in and we all decided to go back to my hotel room to relax for a bit. While in my room we listened to some great music (Erasure) and enjoyed some awesome German delicacy (gummi bears). Cecelia finally popped and after not saying much explained her extreme discontent with my "lack of rock star behaviour". I explained to her that the old days of rock and roll behavior have been greatly overshadowed by a newer generation of rockers who think its really cool to listen to ultra gay music and eat candy, rather than fuck girls and do drugs. She didn't seem to agree so I decided to step things up by attacking Gregor with my disgusting stage pants. HAPPPY BIRTHDAY BUDDY!
We finally headed back over to the festival after dropped Cecelia off at her hotel, and began our search for drugs and hookers ( wink, wink ). Unfortunately we missed all but the last 2 songs of Die Krupps. They were really good though. All i really know of them is some tribute to Metallica they did, that I stole from Tower Records when i was a kid. Andy kept telling me that i looked like the guitar player, and he also hit on this girl who turned out to be the daughter of the singer. i think she was like 4 or 5, so that was a little disturbing ;-).
Didn't hang very long at the aftershow, and finally headed back to the hotel to get some rest for the next day. Early wake up call and flight to Portugal where we will have almost a week off. yay! I hope its not too hot there.
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cologne, germany,
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July 28, 2008, 08:54:pm
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another late flight today which caused some stress about making our show on time. its a festival performance tonight, so in reality, there isnt much time for us to prepare as it is, but its always nice to be there a few hours in advance just to locate everything and formulate a plan for crunch time. unfortunately, the stress didin't seem to let up until after the show was over.
first off, we get to the airport in poland and fuck, this is the shittiest airport i have ever been to. i can completely understand why such a large percentage of terrorist attacks that have to do with airplanes begin at this airport, WHAT A CLUSTERFUCK! after waiting on a line for like an hour to check in, our luggage is weighed and jan is sent over to another line like 200 feet away to wait on and pay for overage. meanwhile gabe and i are stuck there with all our bags and every other goddamn person has to squeeze by us with their bags cause for some reason they make everyone drop off their own baggage after checking in. it was a very annoying and uncomfortable 2 hours. then of course when it was time to board the plane, every single person gets in a big crowd with absolutely no order, as they do not board in any particular fashion and its just first come first serve. it seems to be like this in most airports in europe for some reason. annoying. our flight wound up leaving a little late which was keeping us on edge since we were set to take the stage only an hour after we arrived at the festival.
we finally got there and our driver wizzed us to the festival grounds. we find the second stage, which we are headlining, and locate our dressing room. there are some photographers set up in there waiting to shoot us, for what i do not know, but we had to get ready and take some pics. i was going back and forth between stretching and running upstairs to help gabe organize and figure out the gear situation. we are being joined by our good little buddy mr. peterson tonight on stage, so there is a bit of an extra headache for gabe being that he isnt the least bit familiar with his set up. my drum ryder was a little fucked but somehow the stage manager ran and got all the right shit really quick. i guess it was easy enough since there was a ton of gear there for the other bands that already played.
went downstairs to finish preparing for the show and then we are rushed upstairs to check our monitor levels, and in true festival fashion, just when you think you may have an extra 10 or 15 minutes to get ready, the stage manager sees everyone there and he signals for your intro to start. GREAT! just in time for us to notice that the stage hands flipped zmar and peterson's risers so that they are facing front instead of sideways, but there wasnt much we could do about that at this point.. gabe later explained that he had turned my drum kit sideways a few times only to turn around and have someone face it forwards. these dudes couldn't get a grasp on the fact that we play sideways for some reason.
walking out on stage was a nice surprise. i hadn't seen the crowd area earlier than that, and it was packed. i think it held 3500 and we found out later that the room was so far above occupancy that people weren't let back in after leaving for the bathroom, so there was a bunch of pissed off people who were forced to miss the rest of our show.
the show seemed really stressful to me cause i didin't really have a chance to fine tune my set up and shit kept moving around and falling down. as is normal at festivals, theres a shit ton of people watching our set from the side of the stage, which is fine, except for the fact that they tend to get hit with shit that i throw. i learned to not care. people should know what they are getting themselves into if they wanna watch our show from side stage. im often throwing sticks at full speed at gabe to get his attention, and im sure that i hit a few of the others that were hanging out over there. i hope it hurt. i guess mr peterson was in the middle of the cross fire as he told me i nailed him in the head a few times. i remember one show in canada (i think) where i nailed Sean F. in the side of the head during electrohead and he just hit the floor and stayed there for the rest of the song. ouch.
at one point for one of the encores i went to exit the stage and as a stepped off my riser gabe was crawling underneath where i was stepping to pick up some of my sticks and i completely busted ass and wound up landing underneath andy's legs, who continued to shove me down on the floor. of course i got a good shot at his balls in there for good measures. i came across this picture online from someone who captured that moment. thanks alot!
after the show we ate some good food supplied to use from the festival and i headed outside to find my little german buddy gregor (electrogreg). we met gregor on our last european tour where he played keyboards for REAPER. i think he was like 17 a the time and completely innocent. we gave him a mohawk, made him drink whiskey till he puked nightly and made girls fuck him. he's great fun and we've since invited him along on a couple of tours just to hang and be part of our "entourage". on the last american tour he wound up hooking up with MODULATE and now plays keyboards for them too. upon seeing gregor he asked me if it was me who threw a water bottle at his head right before we went on. its funny cause i was standing behind a little wall during our intro and i couldnt see the crowd, and the crowd couldnt see me, so i was just throwing open water bottles over it and one of the victims happened to be him. amazing.
we were rushed out of the backstage shortly after so we went to bring the bags and to check into the hotel. it was called rennasaince hotel and i think it was 5 stars, it was awesome and finally we have some real fuckin beds. i grabbed an assload of free gummy bears from the concierge desk and headed back to the festival grounds for the aftershow with andy and peterson.
the aftershow was pretty much just a dj in the same room we just played and an assload of people who were really fucked up. i spent my time nailing people with packages of gummy bears and taking some pictures.
headed back to the hotel around 4 in the morning and luckily found an open SUBWAY so i had dinner and hung out with peter from PROJECT PITCHFORK and his wife with andy and peterson for a bit before i went to bed. tommorow ill try and catch PROJECT PITCHFORK , AND ONE and DIE KRUPPS.
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warsaw, poland,
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July 28, 2008, 08:36:pm
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woke up pretty early today for what turned out to be an 8 hour drive to warsaw, poland. wasn't looking forward to this at all, but it turned out to be a much needed nice change from the tediousness of airports and planes. the van was much more comfortable, and we all caught some extra sleep. there was a tv inside so we watched "dead alive", which is a rediculously awesome horror movie. gabe kept finding all these little tiny bugs on himself throughout the drive. someone mentioned they might be bed bugs and i started freakin out cause those things are bad news. eventually he realized that the outside of the van was covered with them. so basically they were just in the air and id figured that if they were in the air, and all over gabe, that they were probably all over the rest of us too. so i just decided to not think about it cause if i started finding little bugs crawling all over me id have a fuckin freakout.
we finally got the venue a little bit later than we hoped and so we pushed doors back an hour so we didn't have to rush soundcheck. this is the same place we played last year. i think it is called progressia or something. the room that we played in is like any other club, but the backstage and the rest of the building made it seem like it was an old abandonded school or something. it was pretty run down, and the bathroom in the dressing room, although present, was pretty gross. also, the toilet paper in poland is like sandpaper. sucked, but it still beats india where i hear they dont use toilet paper at all. COUNT ME OUT!
zmar seemed pretty freaked out about his rental gear tongiht. they wound up giving him one of the most expensive keyboards you can buy, a motif8 (i think). in reality, all he needs is a hundred dollar shitty midi controller cause he gets all the sounds from a virus rack thingie ( i think). so basically they put a 6000 dollar (things like this are way more expensive over there) keyboard onstage with us and expected us not to fuck it up. this must be a different crew from last time we played there who havent seen us perform. zmar made it very clear that if anything happend to the keyboard that he wouldn't be responsible. they all agreed but didint seem to understand very well. my gear was pretty good today so i was happy.
at one point right before the soundcheck, i ran into a friend named agnes who i invited inside to watch soundcheck, and afterwards she gave me a lesson on polish language. of course all i really needed to learn were things like: i am cooler than you, you suck, dick, fuck, yea right, and nice stick ;-) of all the languages i hear all over the world i think i like the way polish sounds the best. ill try to learn more of this for next time i come here.
we changed up our warm up music a little bit tongiht, and listened to LARD and MINISTRY. the others decided it would be a vodka redbull night. BABYSITTING! boy how the tables have turned. i guess this is karma. ha.
the show was one of the better ones so far, possibly the best smaller show yet. there were a decent amount of people, and they all went nuts. the sound and sound system were very proper and had us all feeling very comfortable and confident on stage. at one point gabe came over in between songs and told me that the owner of the club was very upset about me tossing the drums around the stage (which happened to be his) and threatened to shut the show down if i did it once more. id normally throw it right in his face with a middle finger, but i decided not to. although there was a bit of a language barrier today, they crew all seemed to be very nice and helpful and excited to have us, so i figured to leave it as is and just have a good show. when we came out for our second encore, the monitor guy handed me a wireless mic for some reason. YAY! so i sang some of THIS SHIT WILL FUCK YOU UP with andy before sitting back down at the drums.
video:
the aftershow party was at the venue, but wasn't to exciting. we met some nice people and i took a couple of my news friends down to our dressing room to chat for a bit. i learned that not many bands come through poland and kids have to save up alot of money to fly other places in europe to see their favorite bands, so it made me feel good that we aren't one of those bands. i traded a few pins with them before we left to go back to the hotel with a very drunk andy in tow. SOMEONE had fun tonight!
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berlin
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July 27, 2008, 06:03:pm
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today was a rough one at the airport. we figured out that we made the mistake of allowing the girl who looks like she never gets laid to check us in. we imagine thats why she was very exact with every single pound of overage (which we seem to have been able to avoid every other flight so far), and even weighed our carry on baggage. we were only allowed one carry on at 10 pounds each and we each had 2 that weighed 20 pounds each. jan sweet talked her and somehow got her to block out all the seats next to us so that we had whole rows to ourselves and our bags. of course we just put the bags in the overheads anyway. i dont fucking get airports. shouldn't there be a universal baggage policy? its different in every airport. ive even seen people who were allowed to have 2 carry ons on their first flight, only to arrive in heathrow (london) to be put back through security and to be told to get rid of one. HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE! rediculous.
we were greeted in berlin by a guy named gordon. gordon was to be our driver for the next couple of days, as he was scheduled to drive us from berlin to warsaw, poland, a 7 hour drive. LAME!
gordon took us to the hotel where we checked in. apparently its in a trendy part of berlin, and its right across from a good chunk of the berlin wall that is still standing. berlin seems like a really cool city with alot of history, and unfortunately everytime i am there, i dont even get to see much and it always turns out to be a very quick and hectic day. this day being no different, although i did come here with the intentions of seeing more stuff for once.
we drove our gear over a really cool bridge to the venue, and were finally greeted with a proper hospitality and gear situation. germany always seems to take pride in their hospitality, much like the cleanliness and privacy of their bathrooms!
a very good friend of mine named Mia showed up a few minutes later. i met mia years earlier in this exact venue when i was playing here with AMEN and we've been close ever since. she used to live in hamburg but since relocated to berlin, so i was hoping for a poper tour, but had no time. instead we took a walk over the bridge and saw some off the berlin wall, and some other cool random art instalations here and there. Mia pointed them out to me and explained that you can find random art instalations all around the city if you look hard enough. very cool.
**** joe berlin wall vid:
we came back from our walk to find that the light in our dressing room had blown out and eventhough we were told it would be fixed, it wasnt before we left at the end of the night. gabe took advatage of the darkness by falling asleep in a corner, and we decided to take a stab at his eyebrows. the first time i leaned onto a fuse box and woke him up, but half an hour we had success. i didin't have the heart to shave off his whole eyebrow, so i just gave him a vanilla ice stripe in the middle of one of them. i think it makes him look pretty bad ass though so its cool.
****gabe eyebrow video:
at some point andy aquired a stick on mustache that has since been making its rounds to each of us and our friends and fans for some fun pictures. for some reason we havent had much merch on this tour, until tongiht. our record company showed up to do merch, with some merch, and andy decided to showcase the new girlie shirt with the mustach on. he looked like a gay sailor. hes also been complaining about his dread mohawk lately and it looks pretty gross. he puts more and more elmers glue in it every day and i guess its itching him very badly. go figure. i dont expect it to last much longer.
the show tonight was pretty lame. the crowd was lacking energy and numbers. the sound also seemed to be really shitty, both on stage and off. at one point somewhere in the middle of the show my bass drum and cymbal stand had been pushed off my riser and gabe and i had to figgure out how to drage the carpet backwards with all the crap on it in between songs. i was kinda pissed and i trashed the kit at the end of the set. the promoter and stage hands freaked the fuck out and inspected the shit out of it, but everything seemed to survive well enough. they rushed us out of the backstage very shortly after the show, and without any lights, so it was hard to gather all our stuff. its was shitty, they were probably pissed at me i guess. whatever.
back to the hotel we went to sleep, have to wake up very early for the long drive to poland.
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austria show day
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July 27, 2008, 03:36:am
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woke up at about 2 today after a long night of catching up on these friggin blogs. it is tough to write these things and send them off in a timeley manner due to our transoprt situation and busy schedule. hopefully they will be easier to handle one we get the bus in the UK.
anyway, ran to starbucks and came back and got our gear together and headed over to the venue. this place is called "the viper room". its a pretty cool place. its smmall, only holds probably 300 or 400, but ive learned that usually the smaller shows, the ones u wanna bitch about upon arriving, usually turn out to be alot of fun, and this was definitly no exception.
our stage clothes are all starting to get pretty fucking rancid. we are packing up within an hour of the end of our set every night and the clothes we just sweated our asses off in just get thrown in with our gear everynight, only to be aired out for a couple of hours before we put them on the next night. we usually try to find ways to dry em out real quick or absorb the moisture. as a matter of fact i remember on the KMFDM tour we put a loaf of french bread in the closet with them for a couple of weeks in hope that it would absord the moisture, then, upon cleaning my bunk out on the last day of the tour i found the french bread in my pillow case. high five guys! i still owe sylvain for that one i think. anyway, during soundcheck, andy took out his gross wet stage shirt and chased a few of us around with it before he finally just threw it one top of gabes head. gabe jsut froze for like 3 minutes and looks like the kid from gummo, if he was getting an enema.
after soundcheck some off us went over to eat at a nice resturaunt, but it was too close to show time for me so i ordered hungarian goulash to eat after the show and went back to get ready. although everyonee involved with the show seemed to mean very well, the hospitality at the venue was very shitty. we got 3 beers and 2 bottles of water. they also didn't get me the proper fan from the backline company, which proved to be a problem during tthe set as i got fucking DRENCHED and had to walk off stage in between songs a few times cause it was like a sauna.
******andy zmar bobble heads:
we spent our time getting ready trying to kill all these flies that were in the room. part of me thinks that our stage clothes are acting as transport for these flies. we'll have to see if they are there tomorow again. oh, and there is no bathroom near the dressing room. in order to use the bathroom we will have to walk through the crowd, so promoters, if you book us in a club like this, you can very well expect to be picking up cups of piss at the end off the night. it is NOT vodka red bull!
****andy torch vid:::
the show was awesome, but like i mentioned it was hot as fuck. i had 2 fans ffrom the bar, pretty much office table fans. they didint do shit and i had to pull my in ears out in between every song and try and dry them off so they wouldnt break. the crowd was off the hook tonight and it was very packed. there was a walk way behind me and i was pretty close to the end of the stage. with all these people standing behind me, but it seemed they ahd nowhere else to go, so i had to worry about nailing someone with a stick all night, but i didint.
we came back for one of our encores and andy got the crod to sing along to an accapella version of DUST IN BONES, which ruled. then, when we playing THIS SHIT WILL FUCK YOU UP, a bunch of people came on stage and partied. it got too crowded and some peoople fell oveer my drums and onto me while i was playing. yay! (NOT!). was alot of fun though.
the after show party was in the venue, so we got cleaned up and went back downstairs to hang with everyone. some interesting characters around tonight, and of course some beautiful austrian girls. a bunch of girls got dragged back to the hotel and bounced in between our rooms for a while. we were finally trying to get to bed and people were still knocking on our door trying to use our bathroom so i finally just fucked everyone off to try and get some sleep.
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france
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July 27, 2008, 03:03:am
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we had a late check out in madrid today. got to the airport, got some food and had a production meeting regaurding alot of exciting things that COMBICHRIST has coming up well into 2009. expect to see a full NORTH AMERICAN tour announced soon, as well as some SOUTH AMERICAN dates (and not just MEXICO this time!). we're also working on getting to a few really cool places after visiting AUSTRALIA again, including JAPAN, SOUTH AFRICA, ISRAEL, and CHINA to name a few. cant say much past all that until stuff is confirmed, but hopefully some people will have something to look forward to very soon, INCLUDING US!
we all got hassled today right before getting on the plane about having too many carry ons. we finally got the guy to give us a break, but not before Z-marr got into with him since he was carrying on some very expensive gear and the dude wanted to take it and throw it in with the rest of the luggage. either way, im pretty good at getting crap in and onto planes that are way over the baggage restrictions and for free. maybe one day ill teach a class about it and charge people money so i can save up to go to disneyland.
the flight was pretty eventful as i bought a SIM card for my phone that has a UK number, and that i can receive free incoming calls on all throughout europe. i think everyone except gabe and fubar got them since they were sleeping. fortunately we took well advantage of that too and got some key photos of them and what they were probably dreaming about.
get to the airport around 7 and go to get our bags and i grabbed 4 carts and lined em up. i was talking to andy and all 4 carts got jacked from us right from under our noses and we didnt realise till andy saw the last one leaving with some old lady. all of a sudden andy stops talking and goes "hey, that old lady stole our cart.... hey, where are the other ones." pretty funny, but i guess you had to be there.
we then waited for a while while the driver tried to find us. that took about 45 minutes and then when he finally found us he had to take a bus back to get the van to pick us up. it was pretty rediculous, and we were already a little stressed over the fact that we were basically scheduled to just pull up, put our shit together and play.
we finally get to the venue about half an hour before we are supposed to play, only to find out that everything is pushed back and that we have about an hour and 45 minutes. the venue today is awesome. we pull up to these steel gates and see this giant castle/mansion with a huge lawn with all the goth kids sprawled out on. we are first taken to our backstage, which is like the size of 4 houses. its basically like a little ballroom a few hundred meters from the main building. there was decent catering inside, as is usually the case in france, but unfortunately the chicken that they gave us was bloody and raw. a couple of the guys, including gabe who we have beeen calling "tick boy" ate most of it anyway. i saw a sign up at the airport about eating raw chicken and dying. hopefully no one dies (especially tick boy).
it was around that time that we met the promoter and the stage manager and we tried explaining to them that we needed to put our gear together and get ready, but they didint seem to think that we would be able to do anything but walk onstage and put together our stuff and just begin to play it like we are 15 years old or something. basically there was a bit of a miscommunication due to a language barrier and we headed over to the venue to construct a plan.
the "venue" in this case was actually the last origional part of the property, which used to be a proper castle! we were set to headline what turned out to be a small festival, INSIDE A DUNGEON! fuckin rad... it was really hot in there and the set up was a little awckward, but it isnt every day that you get to play inside a dungeon so i just went with it.
our backstage inside the venue part of the gig was a little circular room just made out of brick and with a straw ceiling. very simple and... dungeon like. andy and i spent our time getting ready for the show being entertained by people walking past our room and trying to peak in and catch a glimpse of us, cause there was aparently a little step right outside the room that most people didint see and 9 out of 10 people would look in, and trip and fall. HILLARIOUS! this was pretty much constant until we went on, and it was good at keeping andy's mind off of his clausterphobia of the room, which felt like it could collapse on us at any second. also, there wasn't really a door or a curtain so some guy had been assigned as our security to stand in the doorway. i named him "jim the human curtain". he did not speak any english at all.
again, there was an issue with there being a fan for me to use tonight, and it was DEFINITLEY imperative being that it was SO HOT on the stage. i beleive the promoter drove to our hotel and asked them to borrrow a fan for the performance, so that panned out. unfortunately z-marr wasn't very happy wiith the show. it definitly wasn't the best show, but like i said earlier, we played in a dungeon so it was cool. aside from that it was way too hot, it was so steamy that i coudlnt see 2 people into the 700+ crowd, which probably meant that not many of those people could see much on stage either. to top it off they were all packed in there sweating their asses off for like 10 hours, so it smelt pretty amazing, and everyone seemed really exhausted. also, they gave me a yellow drum set to use instead of the black one we ask for in our ryder, and all the moving lights were set up withhin inches of my drums, so there was no drum violence on stage at all.
after the show we went back to the bigger dressing room building and andy took a shower while sitting on a toilet. thats always fun. i took off my pants and tried to dry myself off for a bit and some dude came in and was like, I HAVE THE SAME UNDERWEAR AS YOU! and pulled down his pants, so andy took a picture of us having matching underwear. WEIRD! this dude would not stop talking about cocaine and seemed pretty jacked up. he kept offering us cocaine and when andy tried to politely and diplomatically explain to him that it isnt an option for him to do cocaine since it may fuck up his throat and he sings, the guy responded with "yea i had to give up sucking cock for a little while cause it was fucking up my throat". HIGH FIVE! ......... NOT!
we then headed over to the aftershow party which was back in the dungeon, where i took some pictures of some extreme characters that were in attendance at the gig and some chickens, including TILA TEQUILA! CAN YOU BELEIVE THAT TILA TEQUILA CAME ALL THE WAY TO FRANCE TO SEE US PERFORM IN A DUNGEON!
love joe
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Combichrist Video Shoot in California - need extras
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July 18, 2008, 07:53:pm
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Combichrist is shooting a video for the new single "Sent To Destroy" and we need extras!
The shoot is taking place on Monday night, August 18th, in Agua Dulce California (about 35 miles outside Los Angeles, near Lancaster).
We need 24 people who are willing to dress in paintball combat gear (we'll supply the uniforms) and spend the night shooting eachother with paintball guns.
Basically, it's going to be one long overnight game of paintball. You need to have stamina, a good attitude and look fierce in your combat gear.
There is no pay and you'll have to sign an appearance waiver but we'll feed you and you get to brag to all of your friends that you got shot at with Combichrist in a music video.
Think you have what it takes? If you're interested send an email to manager@combichrist.com.
BE SURE TO INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:
1 Your name
2 Your gender
3 Your age
4 Your phone number
5 A photograph of yourself looking as bad ass as possible
If you are selected - we will be counting on you to show up!! The shoot is from the early evening until the wee hours of the morning.
You MUST be able to transport yourself there and be on site until we break (possibly as late as 4am)
If this sounds like your kind of fun, we'll see you there!
COMBICHRIST
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Joe Letz Combichrist Tour Diary - Barcelona
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July 18, 2008, 07:51:pm
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finally got some decent sleep after the barcelona gig. had some breakfast at the hotel and then it was off to the train station! we were all a little apprehensive about taking a train to madrid, but it proved to be pretty rad for a few reasons: we didn't have to worry about extra baggage or any serious security like at the airport. also, the train was way more comfy than a plane, and i got some more sleep on it which ruled.
arrived at a train station in madrid about 3 hours later, and albert the love-able turtle explained to me that it was the same station that was the target of a terrorist attack a few years earlier, that i vaguely remember. we had to walk up a giant ramp outside and for some reason i was stuck pushing up an overstocked luggage cart the whole trip. it blew donkey nuts.
the hotel was the same hotel we stayed in last time we were in madrid, and it was only like 2 blocks from the train station. luckily we had internet in our rooms and about an hour to catch up with our emails before we had to head over for soundcheck. soundcheck was pretty smooth, and after about 2 hours it was back to the hotel for 2 hours for some more much needed internet time.
we arrived back at the club an hour before our stage time, and the place was packed. we played the same place last time and had maybe 2 times as many people this time. the crowd was totally awesome and mental for the show. i thanked them by handing out yogurt and spanish double cheek kisses to them during one of our encores.
i began doing backup vocals tongiht, which is something new to me. my good buddy sean (miss ya ma friend ma friend!) used to handle that back in the day and now i decided that id like to try taking it over, and it was fun. again, good thing im not drinking anymore as im sure i would have used the mic too much in between songs and pissed the guys off.
our last encore tonight was "this shit will fuck you up", and andy decided to sit down at my drums, so i started off the song with my back up vocal mic. i got her goin, and then when i went to pull the mic off the stand so that i could move around the stage, i did so while i was singing into it and it came off the cord and bashed me in the teeth, chipping 2 teeth. HIGH FIVE! so i threw the thing and used andy's wireless for a half a minute till we swtiched and i went back to my drum kit.
all and all it was a very good show, and i spent the rest of the night licking and poking at my newly chipped teeth. UGH!
we spent a good amount off time after the show packing up some of our gear that we will be shipping to one of the bigger festivals (amphi festival) we have coming up, so that we dont have to worry about paying for that much extra luggage with all our upcoming flights. unfortunately the main thing that we shipped was z-marr's keyboard stand, which is awesome and its spring loaded and shit. so we wont have that for the next few shows. =(
it was then off to the aftershow. this place was packed and a little bit too much for me to be honest. we were swarmed with people the whole time we were there. i might have been able to deal with it better when i was drinking, but i had drank about 5 red bulls before the show and i was bouncing off the walls and drunk people were bumping into me every two seconds. i spent my time there taking random pictures of some people and pissing off a few boyfriends, but oh well. kudos to albert the loveable turtle for nailing a kick ass dj set during the party.
i just left the aftershow around 4 am with sylvain and gabe to go to bed. for some reason we have a very late flight tomorow, and although we have a late checkout, we will be arriving in france so late that we will not have a chance to soundcheck. should be an interesting day. i hear its a festival inside a castle. MID-EVIL!
as of right now everyone still has their eyebrows. time to step it up.
love, jerry the race car driver.
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Joe Letz Combichrist Tour Diary - Barcelona
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July 18, 2008, 06:37:pm
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so we wound up going to bed at like 1 in the morning last night. i dont think i fell asleep before 2 and then we got woken up at 3 to head over to the airport. this was the beginning to a very rough day.
the airport was tiny and brand new. i think there were like 4 gates inside and there was a nice resturaunt right in the middle that we had a bite to eat at and waited in for boarding. got no sleep on the 3 hour flight, and then arrived in barcelona and wound up waiting for about a half an hour for the spanish promoter, albert, to arrive. albert is a very nice guy, but we remember him as being really slow about things from the last time we were there. hes kinda like a turtle. but a loveable turtle. so we make a sign to wait for him that says "LATE ASSHOLE PROMOTER" and continued to tease him about his slowness for the rest of the day.
it turned out in this case that there was a problem with the van that he had rented having had an accident right before he picked it up, so he got stuck with a minivan, and being late for our pickup. unfortunately the minivan wasnt enough for both us and our gear, so after loading it we called the rental company and had to wait another half hour or so for them to bring a proper van. LAME!
we finally get shit figured out and get to the hotel, where we decided to stick some baggage stickers on jan's back, that wound up staying there for the better part of the rest of the day. i enjoyed taking photos of jan walking with other groups of people with the stickers on his back. at times we let him get pretty far ahead just so we can spot him in the crowd, like where's waldo, "WHERE'S JAN!"
after putting our crap in our rooms we went into the city to eat and find some proper hairclippers for the eyebrow war that i started (and for the now standard COMBICHRIST mohawks as well). it was also used to shave of a patch of gabes hair during soundcheck. poor gabe.
at the hotel, i was planning a nice long nap until i learned what time it was and that we had about half an hour at the hotel until we had to go to soundcheck. gabe and i went to our rooms and slept for the half hour and then zombied on back to the lobby and into the van and to the venue for soundcheck. that wound up being all the rest of the sleep i got until after the aftershow party at the end of the night. i was fucking brain dead by then.
soundcheck hit a bump when i realised that they gave me a bass drum that was unusable, and we had to wait about 2 hours for a new one, as well as for a fan. for some reason people seem to overlook certain things on a ryder. i really dont understand this. we do not have a rediculous ryder, in fact its very stripped down compared to other bands' ryders who ive played for. and in this case, as in many other cases, someone decided to overlook a fan. last year when i toured europe i did it without a fan. by the end of the tour i had broken 2 seperate pairs of 500 dollar in ears due to sweat damage. in fact on 3 seperate occasions on the tour they broke midway through the show and i had to leave the stage and the band had to finish the gigs without me,, which of course is a real fuckin bummer. so needless to say its very important that i have a fan to blow away some of the moisture, that i give off, away from me.
we finally wound up getting everything figured out just before doors opened and then it was time to start warming up for the show. our dressing room, as are many others, was heavily grafitti'ed, and we decided to manipulate a few of the murals on the wall into COMBICHRIST drawings. i also like to leave little notes sometimes for friends who i know are coming through on tour soon and playing that same venue im in. heres a couple of the pics we fucked with.
the show was one of the hardest ive ever played. i was going on a total of maybe 2 hours of sleep in 48 hours. a few times my brain short circuited and i made some silly ass mistakes on the drums, but oh well. we will be flying from show to show until our UK dates. only a few dates in and everyone is eagerly looking forward to the tour bus. a typical day right now goes like this: wake up too early, drive anywhere between 1 to 3 hours to airport, check in and wait (another 3 hours), fly (between 2 and 5 hours), arrive, get bags, find pickup, get dropped off at club and soundcheck and get ready for show...... not much time for sleep.
after the show we went to the aftershow party, which was dead for about a half hour, but then got packed. we met some of our amazing spanish fans for about an hour before it was time to go back to the hotel and sleep.
upon returning to the van we find out that the tire is almost all the way flat, but we are so tired that we force the driver to drive anyway and just prayed that it didint blow up. gabe slept in the back of the van on top of all the luggage. i was very jealous, but soon took a shower and passed the hell out.
yawn.
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Joe Letz Combichrist Tour Diary - Norway
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July 18, 2008, 06:25:pm
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july 6-10, 5 days off, andy's family's summer house. norway
the past few days have been spent at andy's family's summer house, which is about a half an hour drive from their usual home in Fredrikstad. as i mentioned in the last entry, this chick from the festival in sweden drove us the 2 hours drive, but it wound up being like 3 hours since she got lost. we continued to joke about her all week wondering if she ever found her way back.
i've toured europe many times now, but its a very special that andy is from norway and his family lives here, as we always figure in some quality family time with them. this time was actually like a real vacation. for 5 days we just sat around and ate awesome food, explored, listened to some music and rested. not to mention the fact that we were pretty much completely cut off from the rest of the world being that there probably isn't a wireless signal within 5 miles from here. on 2 seperate occasions we made a quick trip back to civilization to catch up with our emails and stuff. the first time andy forgot the keys to get inside, so gabe an i opted to sit out on the front porch and use a very weak signal while the others went into town and ran some errands.
the summer home is on an island, and happens to be at what seems to be the end of the island. everyday we walked down a couple of hundred meters to a tiny dock that housed maybe 5 small boats and overlooked a bunch of tiny little islands. unfortunately we didint get a chance to venture over to them as the family's boat had not been put into the water yet. we did however take some long walks into the rocky wilderness out to the edges of the bay.
at one point, the day after one off our walks, i woke up early to gabe pacing around the guest house that we were staying in. upon asking him what was wrong i learned that he had a tick embedded into his upper back. he was freaking out cause andy's parents had warned us that its been in the news lately that there is some sort of tick epedemic sweeping norway and that all these farmers are complaining that their sheep are dying because of it. now i dont know alot about ticks, but what i do know is that its bad news and u gotta be careful about how u get em out. andy and his family were still sleeping at the time and we didint wanna bug em, so we tried our luck at some home remedies that we had thought we remembered, but to no avail. first i put an assload of neosporin on top of it in hopes that it would suffocate and seperate itself. after a half hour we got impatient and burned the little fucker. i lit up the end of a safety pin and sizzled that little blood thirsty beast, and a little bit of gabe's back as well. nothing got the thing to let go, , and finally we decided to wake up andy. andy told me that i killed the thing and that we were supposed to do the things we did while trying to pull him out as they usually let go when they are burned or suffocated, but now the thing was just there, and dead, and that was that. andy then proceeded to tear it out, and of course, could not get the head out. andy and his family said there was nothing to worry about unless a blue ring appeared around it a day or so later, but in true laplegua family fashion, that did not stop everyone from teasing the shit out of him about it for the next few days. in retrospect it probably wasn't that nice of a thing to do as i think we made him so paranoid that he got himself sick like he had the flu and spent a whole day in bed worrying about it. non the less i figured out how to make silly photos right on my digital camera and i made this picture of gabe, as a sheep, with a giant evil tick and a blue ring around the bite. i also made one of everyone else.
the food in alot of europe is a much higher quality than food in america, and often even takes our stomachs a few days to get used to such quality. norway seems to have some of the better quality compared to most other parts of europe. its been explained to me that there are very strict quality control rules on all produce and meats. no animals are fed hormones to make them produce more milk, or more meat, and they are all kept free range and healthy, and therefore the quality of all meats and dairy are unsurpassed to anything that you can get in the US, and you can tell it in the taste. we BBQ'ed every single day. besides the BBQ standards we had whale steak, and prawns (shrimps). the prawn dinner was interesting as they were all still completely intact with the eyes and legs and everything, and you gotta peel em like little bananas. of course all the americans had a rough time with this, but it was worth the trouble. the shrimp tastes so different there and i learned upon asking that the fisher men catch them and boil them within seconds of catching them, and then you buy it and pretty much eat it the same day. FRESH!
after dinner every day, we played a game they call "sticks", which is kinda like batchy ball, but only with sticks.
we also celebrated gabe's birthday the other day with some waffles and ice cream and jam. we got him a DVD of some porno that sylvester stalone was in, in the 70's. HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY GABE! ;-)
i also began loosley talking about shaving off our eyebrows, kind of as a joke, and it escalated pretty quickly into a terror threat. everyone is now trying to shave off each others eyebrows, so its only a matter of time before everyone ends up eyebrowless on this tour. i decided to take a bunch of before photos of everyones eyebrows.
i guess ill post the "after" photos as it happens! eyebrows.. WHO NEEDS EM ANYWAY! first attempt was made on sylvain by me. heres a pic of him after falling alseep and some video of the attempt and a picture of him chasing me down afterwards and trying to rape me:
tomorow we wake up at 3 am and fly to barcelona. luckily there is a new airport about 30 minutes away that we will be using this time rather than making the usual 2 hour treck to Oslo to the main airport.
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