Americans often get the piss taken out
of them for their geographical ineptitude, for that they don't know
things like Sweden and Switzerland aren't the same place, or what the
name of the capital city of Belarus is, as an example... But in
truth, such piss taking is a little unfair. A little.. Obviously not
all Americans are this inept, at the same time it's not like all
Europeans know what the state capital of Kentucky is, or where
Rochester, New York is on the map, as an example.. One thing I've
learnt to appreciate more and more each day on this tour is that the
USA is a big fucking country! Indeed, it is almost the same size as
the entire continent of Europe so maybe it's not so weird that a lot
of it's inhabitants horizons don't expand past their own borders.
To be fair, a lot of people I went to school with probably couldn't
tell you what the capital of Belarus is either...
Anyway, I'd never fucking of heard of
Rochester, New York before. And that's shameful in itself since
apparently after New York City and Buffalo, it's the third largest
city in the state...
Of course, when we pulled up to the
venue in the van, we could have been anywhere. It was mid afternoon,
it was grey and it was cold. We were on the shore of the lake, it's
water so still and dark it looked like it was in the throes of
depression. The city must have been far from wherever we were right
now. All there was here was the lake and a few lonely streets lined
with houses in varying degrees of regress.
We were a little early so we decided to
go down to the lake and check out the views from a closer vantage
point. We didn't last much longer than five minutes though, such was
the cold. We headed back inside the venue and “hung out”, by
which I mean we sat around and did the sum of nothing for about an
hour. All this free time on tour and all you do is sit around and
wait for the fun of loading in the gear. The venue was basically a
large bar with a high stage up against the back wall. It was a good
size place. If experience was anything to go by then it should make
for a good show tonight.
Nile and the other bands turned up in
dribs and drabs over the course of the late afternoon and by the time
we were loaded in and set up there was still another couple of hours
to kill before doors. There was no food on offer at the venue so we
decided to go to a local bar for some grub, check in with the locals.
There happened to be a place only a couple of hundred meters down
the road, so most of us headed there.
It was an old wooden building and the
door creaked as we walked in. It was like a scene from many a film,
where the out-of-towner's walk into the room and meet the glaring
eyes of the three locals sat at the bar as the music abruptly grinds
to a halt. Well, it was almost like that. At least, that's how it
felt under the weight of the hangover we were all carrying on our
backs. We shuffled to the bar and were taken a little by surprise at
the friendly tone of the old guy I assume was the landlord. We
ordered some beer and some food, all of us taking burger and chips.
To the delight of Lasse and Kev, they actually had a veggie burger on
the menu. As we paid the man and took our beer to a table against
the opposing wall, the gaze of a haggard, middle aged looking woman
who was sat at the bar, followed us all the way to our destination,
and stayed with us for quite some time afterwards. The two bikers
playing pool couldn't give much of a shit about us, thankfully...
We sat there drinking the standard
American lager and chatted over the hushed tones of the standard hard
rock on the jukebox, the lady at the bar looking over and smiling
every once in a while. When the friendly old landlord came with the
grub, the woman followed him and sat down at our table, cosying up to
Kev. She was fucking boats. We all grinned as Kev got a
chatter-full of bad teeth in his ear. She was cackling whilst
babbling something barely comprehensible, the whole while her hand
flirting with Kev's thigh. Kev's laughter barely disguised how
nervous he was, ours barely disguised how chuffed we were.
Eventually the landlord came to Kev's rescue and ushered the old
drunk back to the bar, where he duly poured her another drink. Weird
scene.
The food was good anyway, just what the
hangover needed. Everyone seemed to be in better spirits by the time
the plates were taken from the table, except Lasse, who's hangover
seemed to have a tighter grip on him than the rest of us. He was
complaining of having a pain in his guts, that he was desperate for a
turd but dared not go to the toilet in this place. By the time the
second and third beer had been drunk he could no longer hold out and
so he slurked off to the bog. He was gone a while, maybe ten minutes
or so. I imagined how he must be suffering in there and needing a
piss myself, I decided to go see how he was getting on.
I walked past the bikers at the pool
table to the door with “Gents” scribbled on it. I almost pissed
my jeans with laughter when I walked in to find Lasse sat on the
toilet in the middle of the room, kecks around his ankles, a woefully
sad expression on his coupon. After a quick glance, I realised that
it was one of those classic American set ups. The toilet was in the
middle of the room, completely in the open, no door or even cubicle
around it. On the wall beside it was a single urinal and there was
of course no lock on the one and only door, the door I was presently
holding open as I pissed myself laughing at his sad, little face. I
scurried back to the lads and assured them they had to go check Lasse
out.
By the time Lasse was back with us, the
lady had rejoined the group, and she was now working her way on to
Daz. It soon came to the fore that we were a band, playing down the
road. She obviously wanted to come along. Daz told her he'd put her
on the list as we were fucking off out of there. She never turned
up. Well, maybe she did but she didn't make it past the beef head
security guards on the door at any rate.
The place was pretty packed by the time
we played, maybe three hundred people in the place. It was certainly
more people than I ever imagined I'd be playing to in Rochester, New
York. It's amazing really, because I never thought we'd end up here
with this band. We never thought this far ahead in the beginning. I
certainly never thought we'd ever play outside of the UK. So to be
stood there on stage to three hundred people in a city in the States
I'd never heard of before was really quite mind blowing. Shame that
almost everyone in there hated us.
It was a bastard as well because it was
one of those high stages which made the crowd feel all the more
comfortable in giving us shit. We played as hard as we could, which
with our short hair and non-death metal clothing really seemed to
piss the crowd off all the more. One great thing happened on stage
tonight though. Actually two great things happened, although they
spawned from the same incident. Brian from Soilent Green/Eyehategod
got up on stage and played EHG's 30$ Bag with
us. The same song we would later do a cover of on the tribute record
Chris was releasing. I've rarely been so buzzed. I felt like a
fucking kid up on that stage, a kid getting to play with one of his
heroes.
The
other great thing that happened is that what I was thinking John said
aloud as he introduced Brian on stage, namely that we'd stick it to
the crowd, who obviously were into Soilent Green but hated us. With
great pride John announced that we had a “very good friend”
coming up on stage with us and then he grandly gestures the arrival
of Brian from Soilent Green. If we were expecting this to win us
over a few punters, we were sadly mistaken. “Yeah, you're still
shit though!” comes an immediate reply from some wise ass. Most of
the band cracked up laughing, partly due to the cheek of the bastard
in the crowd and the genuine appreciation of the quick wit with which
he delivered his response and partly because we usually found it
funny when one of us was made to look a cunt.
Still,
it was amazing playing 30$ Bag with
Brian... After the show we actually found one guy who was a massive
fan of the band and he insisted on buying us all a drink. We happily
accepted his offer, of course. He went on to apologise for the gig
and explained that it's the wrong scene for us tonight. We explained
that we'd gotten used to it by now and that it was usually a good
crack anyway. The funny thing was, this guy was really into the
latest record, which at the time was How The Great Have
Fallen, a record that we weren't
that pleased with. By the time we released the following album we
were no longer playing any songs from HTGHF, such
was our disdain for it. Still, it was nice to meet a genuine fan for
a change. “Man, the song Slay The Coward, it's a fucking
masterpiece!” Ok buddy, I don't know if I'd go that far but mine's
a IPA if you're buying...
The
next day we were in Poughkeepsie, which is a place I'd heard of,
although all I knew of the place is that it had a funny sounding
name. I'd always had the impression that upstate New York was a rich
area, I don't know why exactly, I guess I'd assumed it was like the
“countryside” in England, where the “elite” had their summer
homes. I was in for somewhat of a surprise when we jumped out of the
van in Poughkeepsie. We literally fell right into a scene from that
horrible tv show, Cops. A young, “African American” in
ludicrously baggy tracksuit pants and a basketball top as long as a
frock was bent over a cop car with his hands cuffed, shouting at some
mean looking “European American” cop who was roughing him up
across the car's bonnet. Everyone stood around staring at the scene
in shock for a minute or so before Dutch ushered us inside the venue.
“Yeah, upstate New York isn't a great place to hang out...”
I
don't remember much of the show, it was probably shit. The only
thing I remember is the lot of us going for a walk after soundcheck,
before the sun went down, and only getting as far as the back of the
block that the club belonged to. We got to a big roundabout, which
was a peculiar site in the USA, looked at that for a minute and then
walked back. I also remember watching Nile from the closed off
balcony in the venue, the lot of us taking the piss out of Ghost
Tramp's hair... And that's about it.
The
next day we were in Worcester, Massachusetts. We were there early
and the venue was huge, probably the biggest of the entire tour.
Aside from the venue, the part of town we were in seemed to offer
nothing but a typically long, faceless street that's main point of
interest seemed to be a kebab shop. Fuck that! With the whole day
to kill, Lasse, Kev and I decided we'd take the train into Boston,
which was about a half hour ride away. I was literally stunned when
everyone else decided they couldn't be arsed...
So the
three of us took off for the day. The journey was actually closer to
an hour than the thirty minutes advertised but it was pretty cool
riding the train all the same. It really was just like you see on
tv, with the old guy in the hat and the ticket machine hung over his
shoulder, shouting the stations out as we approached them. It was a
gorgeously sunny day when we arrived in Boston. One day you're
walking around in a thick jacket, shoulders hunched over in an
attempt to keep out the cold air of Lake Ontario, a couple of days
later you're walking beside the Charles River in a t-shirt...
We had
a great day walking around the beautiful city of Boston, the three of
us doing our best impression of the European tourist. We checked out
the harbour and then went to the Cheers bar, both a tourist theme
version of it and the original façade they used for the show's title
credits. We had some amazing vegetarian food in China town and we
took a coffee at some cosy place by City Square Park. The only thing
I didn't get to check off the list was a visit to Newbury Comics, the
famous record shop, but there's a limit to what you can fit into four
hours. All the same, it turned out to be a relief just to break away
from the rest of the pack.
We
returned to Worcester around five pm, it was already getting dark by
the time we made it back to the huge venue we were playing. There
was a large communal dressing room where we found our boys sitting
about looking bored. I asked Gords what they'd done with the day,
not wanting to go full on about our pleasant excursion to Boston.
“We went to that kebab shop,” was Gords' sullen reply. I left
the conversation there...
The
venue was a weird one. It was this gigantic town hall looking
building, all tired white concrete on the outside. Inside it was
basically just a large, brightly lit, elongated room that must have
held about three thousand people. There was a massive stage at the
far end and a bar area at the back and that was about the only
features I remember.
The
venue was no more than half full all night though, and even then it
was another one of those occasions where the punters left in droves
after Hypocrisy finished. Our show was just another nothing affair,
neither good nor particularly bad, it just seemed to melt in with the
rest of them. There were probably a good six hundred people watching
as we played as hard as we could up on that big, high stage, but
there was plenty of space for each one of those six hundred to swing
the proverbial cat. Playing big, half empty venues is always a weird
experience. I'd rather play a basement show to sixty people any day
of the week. It doesn't help things when the huge venue you're
playing seemingly refuses to turn the fucking house lights off. What
can I say? We got up on stage, got the odd head nodding, the odd
face sneering, kicked the fuck out of the set list for twenty minutes
and fucked off again.
I
remember later on in the night, being stuck in a stairwell side stage
with Ghost Tramp and one of Nile's techs before they went on to play.
Ghost Tramp was sucking on a cig and looked at me and grinned,
“Fucking Worcester, tough crowd!” I just nodded in agreement.
You don't know the half of it mate, I thought to myself. He went on
stage shortly afterwards, I went over to that kebab shop to see if
they had any falafel...
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