back in the ktown

Shalom
Well the last two days of our euro venture were a bit of brain stress. Our flight to zurich was excellent and i cant say anything but good things about swiss air. It was raining when we landed but when we finally got all our bags etc we went and met marc (our swiss promoter) and headed to the hotel to freshen up.
Once fully freshened we went to the venue and sat about for a bit. We'd only had two hours sleep the night before so we soundchecked half asleep and then did quite a bizzare interview with a nice lady called christine. She got us to compile a playlist and do introductions for each song for the radio show, should have a copy of it soon so will stream on site asap, if that's allowed.
Eamon and alex went for a walk in the rain and alex fell down a hill, he's ok though, just a bit muddy. Support band the strivers were very kind and friendly and let us use they're equipment. I was somewhat deranged form lack of sleep by the time we took the stage, the feeling soon passed though and we had good gig. The crowd wasn't particuarly large but all there seemed to have a good time including the strange old small grinning dancing lady at the front. She reminded me of the mysterious midget in the red anorak in nichols roeg's Dont Look Now. This gave me the fear slightly. We got quite pissed afterwards, something of a habit these days, and stumbled into a taxi back to the hotel.
Next day we took the shuttle bus and got in line to check in at the airport. After another highly pleasant flight with swiss air we arrived in brussells. No-one had come to pick us up from the airport so we jumped in another cab and made our way to the sheraton hotel.
Now.. no-one was directly to blame for the completely major balls up that transpired at the sheraton but getting into our rooms was like milking a fish. I wont bore everyone with the minor details but someone had fucked up along the way and because of the inhuman way these hotels are run it took a lot longer than it should have to sort out. We managed to get beds that night but our keycards suddenly stopped working at 12 the next day. On enquiring as to why this was a whole new can of worms was opened and we realised we still didn't have authorisation to stay there even though they'd let us stay there one night already. Go ask GOD. Phone calls were made and faxes were received and it looked like everything was sorted out. Was it fuck! I'll come back to that later..
The gig itself was nice. A good room with good sounding loud speakers. Saw a bit of jenny lewis and the watson twins.. very nice. Saw a bit of emiliana torrini... also very nice although she talks quite a lot and even if her accent is very endearing, when you realise you've only seen 3 songs in 20 minutes it drags a little. We had quite a healthy crowd to start but they slowly depleted towards the end. I guess there were a lot of female solo artist fans there and given that we were the last band of the night it gave everyone an excuse to leave. Belgians do things in a very elementary way, with lots of rules. So we got chucked out of the venue after a while and went back to the hotel.
We still had to pick up keycards for our rooms as the other ones had stopped working earlier in the day. But now there were different people on reception and they had no clue what was going on and still reckoned our room hadn't been paid for. He was right and i suddenly knew what had happened. Luckily the veils tour manager let us use his card for a guarantee and we managed to get to sleep.
That, however wasn't the end of our corporate hotel nightmare.. On checking out this morning we were accused of damaging a lift and destroying and possibly eating some decorative easter eggs that had been handcrafted by some master choclatier. This was bullshit. All we'd done is go to bed. A very frightened looking woman told us that we had to pay €150 and that they had cctv footage of us vandalising an elevator... oh but we weren't allowed to see the footage. My tongue lodged itslef very firmly into the space between my lower lip and my chin as i stared at her. Eventually a man showed up and looked at us and said "This is not them". Id seen various members of the veils falling around the lobby before making their way to the bar the night before. "Were they wearing hats?" I said. Affirmative. It seemed we had our culprits but i didn't let on. "So we dont owe you 150 bucks and we can go?" I said. "Yes" they said without even an apology. We flew home- end of story.
Slightly long for 3 days but i had to get that out of my system.
DO NOT GO TO THE BRUSSELLS SHERATON IF YOU LIKE TO BE TREATED EQUALLY.

bologna, 8th april

Bonjourno!
Italy is bellissimo! The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the beer flows like wine! This is our fourth and final show of our mini italian tour. It was raining in Milan and the gig was sparingly attended. Those who were there seemed to have a good time though. On to Roma next and it was a long old drive. We got to experience a bit of italian radio as our van annoyingly has no cd player. Choice artists of the moment seem to be dickie ashcroft and the androgynous, unnecessary sylable adding indie of placebo. There is one dj here who has the annoying habit of putting a song on only to fade it out a minute later and do his own rendition with accoustic guitar and bongos. How he has avoided a sacking is beyond me. The venue in rome was lush, we were playing the second date of a two day festival called 'strange days' supporting berlin kitcsh two piece Stereo Total. You may recognise one of their songs in a sony dv cam advert. We had a splendid dinner round the corner and then played a goodun. The friendliness of the romans after the show was astounding, they were giving us pot! Whilst readying ourselves to leave, an obviosly drunk lady from Stereo Total told me our songs are too short. "Is it because of your parents?" she said. Fuck knows what the hell she was on about. Another long drive faced us the next day towards turin but once again the scenery alone was enough to keep us entertained. We were all a bit grouchy when we got to the venue but the show was very enjoyable none the less. We aired versions of a couple of new songs which was fun and again we were given pot by those present which definately eased the pain. The hotel in Turin had been erected purely to accomodate winter sports fans for the olympics just gone, and the rooms did have a locker room vibe to them. No smoking, no TV.. now whats that all about? Had a good drive to bologna and dropped off part time tour manager Andrea on the way. He was one fresh dude.
Looking forward to tonight, and to travelling to switzerland tomorrow. Ta-ra for now