Thursday, June 3, 2010

ok.....


the concept of this vlog is simple
.

we are a touring band , like any other touring band, only we tour all year round, pushing 200 shows a year, mostly in europe.

europe is special, in the sense that bands dont get treated like crap by promoters and most of the time conditions are great, even for unknown underground acts.

after a few years of touring all over germany, france, italy, spain, netherlands, belgium, czech republic, austria and the scandinavians, we more or less played in every possible venue in every possible city.


as more and more time passed from our first european tour, we grew less and less interested in city centers, cathedrals, nature in general and any kind of sight seeing. we kinda felt like they all looked more or less the same.

and since we were on the road all year round, having very little time for ourselves or something steady and normal back home, what happened on tour kind of became our life. when we were on tour we would fantasize about having a normal life, we would look at people shopping for food at a local supermarket, and would become envious of their banality. everywhere in the world we stepped out of our van and into, felt grey and similar to where we were before.

slowly, we found ourselves drawn to the zen like silence of the supermarket, day dreaming while going through an IKEA catalogue, staying away from other people and other bands and falling deeper into a private world of shopping for DVDs and pretending like we are buying stylish chairs for our apatment. instead of killing the few hours we had before a show roaming the old city or visiting record shops, we would stop at a roadside mall and just zone out going through the aweful merchandise.

the dirty underground tour life, in which we were supposed to embody a rough Black Flag-ish group of punks, turned to a domesticated adventure into consumerism. the world was not the hard edged world in which bands like The Minutemen or Minor Threat initially faught their way through. it had become soft, digital, you could never again be lost, tours were organized well, contracts were sent by email, all details were known beforehand.

at a certain point , as a band, we decided to actively embrace this and make it our statement. while other bands around us seemed to lead a "normal" on the road life of lap-topping, sight-seeing and the occassional joke truck-stopping, we would be looking for the next mega-mart thrill.

this vlog is here to capture our life as a band, in a modern world that is much less glamorous than you might think. it will contain reviews of all the hotels in which we spend our nights, our chronicals through super markets and shopping centers of all kinds all over europe, our trips to amusment parks, our visits to fine restaurants, even our opinions of the latest blockbuster movies we've seen on tour.

we hope this information will serve mankind, in some way.




1 comment:

  1. I loved reading this. And I, from time to time, will follow your glamourous adventures in the modern world. This Vlog is obviously a very good idea.

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