The first show...

Upon our arrival in Bourges for the first show of the tour I had a bit of a WTF moment. It was a residence and not a club and we opened a gate and walked down a narrow alley and basically in to a backyard. We opened some doors and went down a short steep stairway which prompted me to make a vow not to crack my head over the course of the night as everyone had a story about doing so at some point (I did keep that vow. We flipped on the lights to reveal a small dark and dank basement. The entire thing was equally divided in to Four square rooms. At the bottom of the stairs was a little entry room. Strait on from there was a storage room mostly full of stuff. We turned left to the room in which we would play and my first thought was that there is no way that we will fit. The last square room contained a small makeshift bar. We set up so that I was crammed in to corner of the room as close as I could possibly get to the crumbling wall. As I set my stuff up water rushed loudly through the water pipe right by my head freaking me out.
I should note that I am totally paranoid about power over here in Europe. The one time I toured here was opening for the band cake about 8 years or so ago in the drums and tuba days. The first show of the tour there was a power surge that blew out a couple of my pedal power adaptors including the one to my whammy which is almost impossible to find. To this day I always carry an extra whammy adaptor with my equipment. Why they make those damn things so proprietary is a damn mystery but that's another rant entirely.
Almost predictably I'm setting up for the first show and one of my electrix repeaters starts to lose it. A bunch of the function buttons stop working. Including the record button an the undo button. It's possible that I could have dealt with this by setting up the foot switch to trigger record and by unplugging the machine after every song in order to erase the loops (there's no on off switch by the way which drives me nuts. Why build a complex machine which you have to unplug constantly?). We have a rehearsal as the full band which doesn't go very well (fortunately I don't need that repeater when I play with them. In fact I don't need most of my stuff. I just use a few simple fx). After the rehearsal while everybody else goes to work I try to fix the repeater. The record and undo buttons are in a separate chassis that I have never before been able to get open (another pet peeve of mine with equipment designed to never again be opened for repair). I discover a few tiny screws and next thing you know the innards of my repeater a strewn about all over the place. I did have an initial thought that I will be amazed if I put the thing back together and it works. What I discovered is that every button relies on a small strange looking rubber gasket and that some of them have mysterious expanded like they suddenly had thyroid problems. Maybe the pressure of the flight (although I've flown many times) or it got to hot at some point or the machines are just getting old and rubber is just not that reliable. The whole thing reminded me a bit of when Richard Feinman discovered the problem with the space shuttle explosion came down to some rubber o-rings which had frozen and broken in the cold. Even the most expensive and technological machines are only as reliable as their most cheap and simple parts.
So what the fuck was I gonna do? I figured out which buttons were absolutely essential and I swapped those out with the broken essential buttons. It was a serious balancing act getting the thing back together as each button just lightly sits in a small groove so that the slightest bump putting the face back on and the buttons spill out all over the place. Finally I got the repeater back together in one piece and miraculously it worked. I duck taped all the missing buttons so now it looks pretty ghetto. It was all a bit humpty dumpty. I had just enough time to eat some arigot and sausages prepared for us by our hosts. Arigot is a traditional French dish which is more or less super cheesy mashed potatoes. Deliscious. Unfortunately all the insanity of pre first show equipment failure had stolen my appetite because I wish I'd been able to eat more. After the meal Kamil comes up to me and says that they're thinking of not doing any openers and just having us all play together in his band. That wasn't gonna fly with me. I didn't shell out a ton of money and get my ass over here to play in his band. I was pretty desperate at this point to play my own songs and get my rocks off which I made clear and to which Kamil consented. I kicked a short good set and the place was packed and people were dancing and I felt much better! After that the whole band played and it was more or less a big sloppy mess. Kamil played a bunch of songs I had never heard before and i barely remembered the songs we practiced. Once again I got really frustrated that I did not receive recordings to learn prior to my arrival. The set seemed to go over well with crowd which just confirms by opinion that they're desperate for music here. Afterwards I was hanging out with some great folks (ah the French Wazoo's) and dancing to songs on the stereo when it occurred to me that I could probably play more if I wanted to. Chantel Morte concurred with this idea and he wanted to play and I wanted to hear him so I let him go first. He's a quiet guy and I have since found him to be the sanest person on the tour and probably the one with whom I have most in common. After he played I kicked another set and by the end I was feeling pretty well fulfilled. Let's just say it ended up being a lucky and wonderful night.
We were supposed to leave in the early afternoon but timing seems rather similar to a third world train. One pm departure is more like 5pm. Consequently after getting horribly lost due to gps craziness (we ended up in some serious backwoods parts of france. Red neck country franco style) we got to saint Ettiene too late to practice. We ate some sketchy kabobs (there are not many late night options in saint Ettiene) and crashed. The next day I woke up early and walked around. Its an old cool looking city. Noon rehearsal/ recording became more like 3:30ish. Once again trying to learn some songs I should know already. Too much time spent with music that's not mine as far as I'm concerned. Some of the stuff is gonna sound all right but it could sound a whole lot better. We took a break while kamilsky and I worked on fixing a short in the starter of the van and then hit a second session of practice. By this point steve mackay was pretty wasted on codeine and rum and hashish and was talking a non stop looping stream of intensity about every subject under the sun. The last song we played was one of his and he gave Kamil a hard time about not getting the lyrics right. By this point I was staring at my tuba wondering what the fuck I was doing with myself when I looked across the room and saw the same exact expression on mika's face. Mika offered to grab a drink afterwards on his way home (he lives here) and I gladly seized the opportunity to get away from steve's chatter for a minute. Mika bonded as we both have the same reservatiions and concerns. When I got back to Ives place (a super sweet man who let us stay and play at his place and even recorded us) steve was lying on the floor where my matters lay. Apparently he lost the keys to the apartment he was staying in and they couldn't locate the gentleman who lived there. He was still talking a mile a minute. Fortunately just as I was contemplating sleeping in the bathroom steve's host materialized and I was able to skype some calls and get some business done in quiet solitude. Thank goodness I got the new iPhone because the power adaptor of my computer burned out. That little thing is badass. I use it for everything now. It's truly amazing to call someone at their home while you are only operating on wifi. Tomorrow's gonna be a huge drive to as close to Rome as we can so I better call it...