The taste of the Pacific

This should be a long post, I have so many images, memories, people and things happening stored in my brain, but it’s such a blur that I don’t know what’s gonna come out and what’s gonna get lost in the maze of my travel worn brain. We’ll see where we end up. Dr. John will be my companion as I write.

This post will cover my whole Californian experience up ‘til now. Shows in San Francisco, Hollywood and Ramona, and the following two days we’ve stayed in A. I could write a major essay on these days, and let me get this out of the way already: I love California.

We start our adventure travelling from Portland to San Francisco. You’ve seen these landscapes on TV many times, and I have travelled through Spain several times, with it’s similar but less impressive hills and fields. The view switched between large fields of corn, sunflowers and oranges, and more desert like hills. As we cruised through the mountains the temperature reached 99 F, which in Celsius would be around 37 degrees. Getting down towards San Francisco the temperature dropped rapidly and all of a sudden it was 66 F, a cool 20 C.

We drove past the Bay Area, where our teenage heroes in Metallica, Slayer, and the rest of the thrash scene originate from. We crossed the bridge and entered the city. The first impression was that it was cleaner and tidier than any other major US city we had visited up to that point. The air felt fresh and clean, but the temperature might have tricked us there. We arrived at the venue, a pub/club, one of the smallest of the tour. A late load-in (19:00, as opposed to the normal 15:00) meant that we had some time to kill, and after first considering following one of the touring party to Cliff Burton’s childhood home, we instead decided to go check out the Anchor Brewery, located 300 meters away. I used to drink several of their nice dark beers at De Beugel when I lived in Arnhem, and it’s proximity meant a chance to get some merchandise. Unfortunately there was no brewery store attached to the main area, only the brewery itself, but we soon forgot about that, as we started climbing up the steep Frisco streets, up Hope Avenue. Every block of climbing the view got more impressive, and as we reached the top we could see most of the San Francisco area just by turning our heads.

Some of these hills are so steep that the first floor of one house is level with the basement of the next. We saw a guy biking uphill. He must be have lost his mind from the lack of oxygen up there. The architecture was very cool, much less homogenic than what we’ve seen in the rest of the country. The vegetation was maybe even more impressive, with a large collection of different palm trees, strangely flowered trees and bushes in all different shapes, colours and sizes. I loved it up there, and I fell in love with California and San Francisco at this point.

The venue, as already mentioned, was small and not really equipped for the show we were bringing. But it turned into a very energetic and intense show, as it tends to be in these smaller venues. Little space means people are packed together, and our punk attitude comes out stronger when things aren’t absolutely ideal. Great fun and great response from the attendees. We talked to a lot of people afterwards, some of which didn’t know about us but had been told by friends attending our earlier shows that they had to check us out. There was even a Norwegian guy there, a Halling (from Geilo) who had lived in the city since 1995. As we say to the extent that it becomes a cliché, the world is small.

Onwards to Los Angeles, the home of the famous, the beautiful, the rich and everything that is wrong with rock n’ roll. Passing by the Hollywood Bowl (I grew up watching Monty Python’s show there many, many times), the Chinese Theatre and the Walk Of Fame, our bus made it’s way to the venue. Our show was at Whisky A-Go-Go, and for those who do not know this venue, it can justifiably be called one of the most legendary and important music venues in the world. This is where Metallica saw Cliff Burton for the first time. It’s where The Doors, the Sunday night house band at the time, wrote the epic The End. A venue that gave valuable stage time to young up and coming bands like WASP, Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses and many more. It’s easier to mention the legendary bands who never played there than the opposite. But however legendary the venue, it doesn’t matter if you can’t show up, pull in the people, and give them one hell of a show.

We’ll get to that soon. But first we had an afternoon to kill. I started the day with a Dogfish Head beer, and then Heleen and I went looking around a bit, but Sunset Boulevard is not as cool as they want you to believe. So we stopped by a liquor store and bought some good bourbon (Woodford Reserve) and some Kahlua B-52 and White Russian pre-mixes. The bourbon is brilliant and the pre-mixes surprisingly awesome, these served us well later on. Straight on to the Rainbow, most famous as where people come to have their picture taken with Lemmy, and as we were in pretend rock star mode, we had breakfast there. Jack and Coke for both, and Heleen ate a (massive) salad while I had their breakfast burrito. Their portions are huge, there were many a plate standing around with leftovers. Our TM Chris (from now on only known by his actual name, Milkshake) and the Necronomicon guys came to join us, as did our driver Jim. A nice start to the day.

The rumours of the Whisky being a venue with a large name but a shitty interior were vastly exaggerated. Everything was good there, possibly the best venue of the tour. The head of production for the day, Geoff (to some known from Christ Versus Warhol), was a true professional with a great attitude, the local staff and security were all focused, the backstage was good, the sound on stage and in the room was brilliant and as doors opened and waited through 5 (!) local support acts the room filled up, reaching a crowd bigger than on any other night of the tour. The room was quite packed once we walked on, and this turned out to be one of the best shows we have ever played. It’s easy to be on fire when the atmosphere is right, but that wasn’t the reason. We have played great shows every night, even in shitty Regina where only 60 people showed up, or in Kelowna where the stage sound was so poor that it would have better to be deaf and mime the whole thing. I am lucky to play with one of the best front men in extreme music, and with two solid string benders who walk on stage with the utmost confidence every night. Myself I have never played consistently as good as I have through this whole tour, and therefore we reached a peak once we got to LA, we are in the shape of our career as a band. To do a show like that in front of such a hungry crowd is awesome, it is something you can feed off of in the difficult and static periods of time when you don’t play live.

I went to Subway next door for some food at some point and the guy behind the counter was so stressed because there were so many people at the show and they didn’t have time to do anything but make subs all night. The weekend before there had been two shows with some pretty big bands and he had just been sitting there on his hands, with very little to do, such was the attendance. So it feels good to have had such an impact in such an area.

So the show is over, you’ve loaded out and packed the bus, you’re in the party street in the party area of Hollywood. Let’s go get a drink! No? They close at 2:00? Two?! Here?! ?

Just like in the movies, it’s all phony.

Last day, the show was moved from San Diego to the nearby small town of Ramona. I walk out of the bus and there’s a hearse and an RV parked outside. Next door is a garage with a massive treasure (more on that later), and soon a white limo comes to pick up the bartender as he is getting married. They like their cars here, as proven by the several Mustangs on display later on.

The venue is also here in a pub with a stage, a strange venue but spacious enough. A pre-sale of 70 tickets is promising, and the door sales turn out good too. The day is spent discussing finances, we discover that we have been charged for six days of nothing, and the driver discovers that the company he has been hired by for the tour, has scammed him as much as they have us. Our deal is for the tour until the drop-off at the airport but the driver had been told to leave us at the venue. Until 4 in the morning we don’t even know if we will get to the airport, but the driver decides to help us out, good guy as he is, and we all get to where we are supposed to be.

It’s yet another day on the tour being spent focusing on unnecessary bullshit that should never have been an issue, and Celebrity Coaches do not come out of the picture looking good, that’s for sure. But in the middle of some serious discussing both Chris and I stop mid-sentence. A DeLorean drives past us and parks in the garage next door. Upon closer inspection it is the DeLorean, the one from Back To The Future I, and as the driver explains, a clone of the actual car used in the movie, this one being used at movie conventions across the country. It lights up in all the right places and he even has the metal glasses to go with it. Many of the guys are taking driver up on the offer of checking out the driver’s seat, and many a photo is snapped. Awesome!

The show is so-so, the energy has been drained out of many of us, but we still end with our heads high. The mood isn’t really there for the end-of-tour jokes that tend to appear, but we do play Blame Canada over the PA during Necronomicon’s set and they try (and fail) to ruin one of our songs by doing Chewbacca impressions during Altergang. For Vreid’s show I donate my playing shirt as stage decoration and I make sure that Jørn has nothing to drink behind the kit but six cans of Squirt. He drinks a litre in total, ruining his digestive system for some time. My work has been done.

The aftermath of the show is a circus of it’s own, the before mentioned aforementioned bartender and his new wife have their afterparty in the bar, and their friends are there to amuse us, flash us, hand out hugs and impress us with their Norwegian skills (“Velkommen”, that’s about it). We take our tour photo, say our goodbyes and pass out hugs left and right before the three bands head in three different directions.

This tour has been a massive success for us. I already have new offers on the table and the feedback has been fantastic from day one. We are used to good feedback, or else we couldn’t be doing this, but what we have received on this tour is a new high. I have met so many good people, like the kid in Toronto who had made me personalized drumsticks, the staff in Regina who gave us so much fresh fruit that I nearly overdosed on vitamins, the production chief at the Whisky, the couple who travelled from El Salvador to see us, the guys in Cleveland who drove 16 hours to see us once the New York show got cancelled, the boys from Silver Skull (taking talent and promise to a new plateau), Milkshake’s wife Cristina, and many more. I have seen so many interesting places, so much beauty, so much ugliness, so many contrasts, I have seen human beings at their best and their worst and everything in between. And still we’re only halfway through our journey.

So we arrive at the airport, I haven’t slept, Heleen’s slept two hours. We hang out for a few hours, the Kampfar guys are just waiting for their flight anyway. I manage an hour of shut-eye, and after enough time has passed we can finally go to downtown to check in. We’re staying at the Stay Hotel, which is actually more like a hostel, but a nice place it is. We had to go by bus and two metro lines to get here, and then lug the luggage through the streets, miss the hotel and then walk back, but once we were in place everything was good. We headed straight out again, or else we would collapse, so we got some drinks, some dinner, ate, showered and crashed. Didn’t really sleep before late but we got a good night’s sleep, finally. I have slept pretty well on the tour but Heleen has struggled. Long work nights, a bad pillow, an at times inhumanly hot bus (three ACs, not one second did all three work at the same time) made it hard for her but she sported her trademark wide smile most days.

Monday, and we get up after breakfast, but we barely feel hungry most of the time, so no problem. We take some time getting going, I google the town and find out the Grand Central Market is close by. We have seen this on Globetrekker and it is well worth a visit. It’s a massive food court that serves both prepared food and drinks, as well as ingredients for whatever your heart may desire. We get coffees, and a 200 ml bottle of Old Crow Bourbon, and I have to try the $2,50 shrimp taco. Brilliant! Next on we stop by Macy’s for some bikini shopping (no luck, it’s after season… It’s always season here, no?) and come across a juice place that makes one of the best smoothies I’ve had, a pineapple, banana and coconut one. Heleen gets a strawberry bomb, sweet but nice.

We get on the metro, going back the same route as we came in with the day before. Blue line first, change at Rosa Parks Station, take the green line to the beach. Or so I thought. First of all, we get off the train and I miscalculate west and north. I have done this once before on the tour, something I almost never do, and it feels shitty again. We end up doing a large half lap before I realize and we need to find our way back. More walking, but we’re back to status quo. At least we had three seconds of fun with the Bump sign. We then head towards the beach, thinking it’s just over that top ahead. 50 minutes of walking and three tops later we finally see the Pacific ocean. I have dreamt of this for so many years, I love the ocean and this is one of the two big ones, but I have never touched it. Finally I am in it and we spend a good half hour swimming into waves and floating around, forgetting about anything negative we have felt for the last three weeks. This cleans the mind, it reminds me of how much I miss living by the ocean and why I have to get back there.

I see something looking like a dog’s head about ten meters away, but dogs aren’t allowed on the beach or in the water, so I wonder if something is wrong. A few seconds later I see the back of a dark body and then the flippers of what turns out to be a seal ducking under.

We sit around for a while, making room in the Old Crow bottle so we can bring sand back home, then ask the lifeguard for bus routes so we don’t have to walk all the way back to the metro station. The lifeguard is a quarter Norwegian (everybody has a cousin in Gjøvik, they always say), and has visited Arnhem a while back. He does not wear a red bikini, he does not have massive boobs, and to my massive disappointment is not in any way David Hasselhoff. But he tells us there is a bus and we soon get on it, get on the metro and head back to Downtown.

We walk through a film set (or TV production) on the sidewalk, as matter-of-factly set up as you would only find here, get ourselves some dinner to take back to the hotel room, and then I sit down and write this.

Tomorrow is laundry day, shopping day, scouting day and maybe, if time allows, swimming day. All of it together with the best travelling partner I could have. This travelling business is getting addictive.