20th March – Berlin, Germany

Small delay in getting these updates done. Mostly due to a lack of teh internets. Technology rocks as long as you can access it, huh?

 

Anyway, Berlin. We spent the afternoon doing the usual tourist stuff. Apparently, there were these guys called the Nazis, and they sounded distinctly uncool. On reflection, I'd have to say I'm against them. And the there was thing called Communism and, despite, some very good-looking iconography, turns out those guys were jolly rotten too. Sounds like this Berlin place has had some bad luck over the years. We went to the Jewish Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate and - hey! - it worked! I remembered I was Jewish. Amazing! 

We then saw a poster for what has to be the least appealing gig I've seen. I find it hard to believe that there's still a place on Earth where this combination of music is seen as a surefire winner for that festival vibe. 

Then, of course, David mentioned the likelihood that, somewhere in Berlin, were a bunch of middle-aged women standing looking at one of our posters saying "So who the fuck would pay to see that bunch of miserable twats...?" 

The first thing we noticed at the venue was that people were queuing from really early. Of course, this is because we were the support band. For Hauschka. Aside from being an extremely nice guy, his set was amazing. I hadn’t seen anyone play a prepared piano live before and it was quite spectacular, much more so that I’d expected. His sense of rhythm is impeccable and quite embarrassing to call myself a drummer in the same room as him.

Fortunately, I wasn’t playing tonight. This was because I suddenly became nervous at the sight of the string quartet and piano and thought maybe the full band thing might be a bit out of step. I probably needn’t have bothered in the end – the crowd seemed like quite an arty bunch who would have been open-minded enough, but it was still a good show. Alex played the piano stuff beautifully and the combination with Chris on the acoustic went down well. Got some video which I’ll upload soon.

In the end I took an early night as we’ve got a long drive to Krakow. Not exactly rock and roll….