10/11/2006 Show Review – KaLiber, Kamp – Lintfort

Friday the 10^th of November was the date of our latest show which took place in a town called Kamp Lintfort and ended up being a night of two halves. Good stuff and bad, stupid and extremely frustrating stuff. Kamp Lintfort is about 30 mins drive away from base camp, so a nice distance for a show. We arranged to meet up at 1530 at the rehearsal room to load up the equipment into the van. It was just me Peeth, David and Lars to start with, Horti arriving just late enough for us to pack everything ourselves. Sweet timekeeping on his part. No Hannes, which soon became obvious after realising how quiet it was. Lars was driving the van and I was driving my car there but we decided beforehand to just leave the vehicles there and get them the next day so that everyone could enjoy a few drinks. So at around 1630 we hit the road. Probably our best journey so far. 2 changes on the freeway and the venue was about 3 minutes drive away after coming off of the freeway exit. Finding the place was easy as piss as it was right off of a huge roundabout in the city centre. The venue (Kaliber) looked like a huge concert hall from the outside but was actually pretty tiny on the inside. The room where we were set to play was fairly big but that was mainly because the stage was very small. We looked at it and started to think how we were supposed to get 5 of us on there, then realised that Dawson’s Crack (the only other support band tonight) had far bigger problems. I set up straight away and was finished in no time at all, god almighty I love this new drum kit. Then we had about 45 minutes ‘down-time’ where the organizer kindly ordered a family pizza (best tuna and onion ever…) for us and Lars, Horti and David proceeded with a few hands of cards. This bored me and I made sure they knew it. I’ve never been a fan of card games and it angers me when other people get enjoyment out of it. Not fair. Anyway, soon Dave arrived with a couple of friends (one of them Arne, a guy who has helped us record some tracks in Koln a couple of times) and they had some sort of a compressor that they wanted to try out that night. Bloody hell, don’t even ask what they wanted to compress or what a compressor is but they just did, ok? So we started the sound check. This is where the bad, stupid and extremely frustrating stuff came in to play. We started with a song and half way through, some big, angry, mid-life-crisis type guy, who was obviously a member of the staff, stormed through the doors, waving his arms around like a bint and screaming that all he could hear was guitars, the guitars were to loud and to turn the guitars down. At first I was pretty made up as I’m ALWAYS too loud, but of course turning the guitars down meant that I’d be too loud for everyone else, so my joy was short-lived. Peeth and Dave had a bit of a rant at this guy who was just being way over the top and rude, which I thought was spot on, although you’d have thought that if he was part of planning a concert where the flyers and posters that they had advertised read: ’skate and ska punk’, you’d expect that loud guitars would be a given. Aaannnnyyway, the guy then apparently had to be taken outside for 10 minutes to ‘calm down’ ( Jesus, you’d think his man-parts were touched by a loud guitar as a small boy) and we just decided that we’d just turn everything up again when we started playing. All of this pissed a few people off, I didn’t really worry too much, I just wanted a drink. And a drink I got. We were then shown by the otherwise very friendly and welcoming staff to the backstage room. A load of chairs, a couch and a table. All you need for drinking. We spent most of the time making fun of each other, especially peeths hair. I made myself laugh by saying that he looked like he had fallen asleep in a garden and someone had run over his head with a lawnmower. I laughed the most at this. Mainly just me. The highlight of the entire night was probably that waitresses kept coming in to the backstage area and asking if we wanted more beer. I ended up just saying yes every time someone opened the door and soon enough ended up with 4 open bottles of becks gold in front of me. It was lucky we were soon told we had to start playing otherwise I might have gone down in history in that backstage room. So we took to the stage and began our set. The crowd were quite reserved apart from about 3 or 4 guys who deserved a medal for the way the were dancing around the entire room, otherwise most in the crowd seemed fairly young and there were a lot of females present. But they still showed their appreciation in between songs. I think I definitely played my best out of the recent shows and finished the set fuckupless. In fact we all played well but it was just a shame that we couldn’t crank the volume up that little bit more. At one point during a bridge, Peeth had to walk over to me and hum the notes he was playing as I couldn’t hear his bass. Marius didn’t play with us tonight as he arrived just as we were ¾ through the set. Oh well, worse things have certainly happened. I watched all of DC tonight and thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially, after Jakob entertained a few of us with a quick run through of Sexyback. Unfortunately, they had the same crowd problems as us and during the last 2 songs or so, the room was suddenly deserted. I don’t know if the last bus or train had just arrived nearby or something. So everyone packed up to leave Kamp Lintfort. Some off home, some to Halle Lujah and me and Lars to MG to meet up with some friends. I had a nap in the van to make the trip go faster and we soon arrived. Me and Lars first decided to pay a visit to David. For some reason I was sure I had arranged with David that I’d go over once we arrived in MG because of something important, however, by the time I got up the stairs, I’d forgotten, so we just sat down and had a beer. Johannes managed to wake up all on his own with none of our rowdy assistance and also had a chat. They started to look tired so we parted ways, left the building, wedged a 5 cent piece in their doorbell so it wouldn’t stop ringing, and made for the pubs. We met up with a few friends from Waldniel and after about 2 hours I made my way home to bed. My bed was the couch and I foolishly put an episode of South Park on and immediately fell asleep. All night I kept waking up hearing high pitched south park voices but couldn’t turn the TV off as the remote was on the other couch. I put up with it until 11am, then moved over to the bed area and that was officially the end of the night. Thanks to David, Dave (and friends) for your help and company, everyone at Kaliber except that big fuckwit, DC and myself and Lars for driving your sorry arses to the show. Next gig in 2 weeks in Kevelaer, not far from the weirdest town in Germany, Kleve. Should be mental. Byebye.

Drew