Testing...testing...is this thing on?
Hello readers, welcome to the first installment of my tales from the road. I am 1 week into a 4 week tour with the band SS and thought I should maybe document what's going on. Backstory: I am a DJ and open for SS whenever they go on tour. Mind you, everything here is filtered solely through my goggles and therefore should only be taken as my humble impression and not viewed as anyone else's opinions. Having said that, "let's get celebrity-ed up!"
So our first stop was Zurich which I as I have stated before seems like they left off a couple Z's when they spelled the name of this town. Kind of a snooze-fest audience-wise. Quite frustrating really since my job is to warm the crowd up, take them from 0 to 50 so that the band can then yank them to 100 when they hit the stage. I could barely get them to 20, even trying every sad trick in the book. Luckily the next night we headed to MILAN which was fab. The Italians were certainly up for it. The venue was on the edge of town so I didn't have time to explore. The merch bootlegging there is absolutely insane. During the day, merchants set up rows of tables literally right outside the venue (about 40 yards long) displaying all variations of SS t-shirts for sale. Some with the most current tour designs. It's absolutely shameless and completely overlooked by local police. Apparently it's somehow tied to the mafia so the police just ignore it. We were gagging. And honestly, some of the stuff was really well done with color combinations that had some of the band a little green with envy. The only low point of the evening was that there was an opening act which was a woman playing acoustic guitar singing in Italian which brought new shades to the term brown. But nevertheless, things turned around quickly after and the crowd were whipped into a frenzy. At one point it sounded like people in the audience were being killed the screams were so blood-curdling.
Next stop: VIENNA. Due to an unfortunate sore throat contracted probably on the plane ride over, I have had to keep the partying to nil which. The upside of this meant that I was awake and full of pep and ready to explore beautiful Vienna. I spent the afternoon just walking around the city on my own, doing a little shopping, and watching street performers fend off non-tipping picture-taking tourists. In the evening me and some of the guys from the band decided to do a round of some of gay Vienna. First the Eagle. Yes there is seemingly one of these in every city in the world and they all apparently hire the same decorator thus diluting the kink factor of chain link fence. Fisting videos aside, it was all pretty tame with just a few old men lurking in the corners. They did have a back room which meant none of us dared sample the popcorn in bowls on the bar. From ther it was on to several other places that are nothing really to write home about, and this was a Friday night. Oh well. More later...
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