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Tour Diary: 2002 (Eugene) > Page 3 |
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Isn't it good? NORWEGIAN WOOD!!!!
So we hit the death ferry to Scandinavia. I'm not at all prone to seasickness so I search the ship for signs of imminent collapse while Greg starts identifying receptacles capable of holding his vomit (ashtrays, fire extinguisher crannies, my suitcase).
We get there and drive through the totally fucked and Nazi complicit country of Sweden that saw fit to deny OXBOW any sort of shows at all. So all hail the Norwegians!! Lille-Salen - Chateau Neuf, Oslo, Norway The first show. Our hotel is across from an aggressive pack of completely unregenerate fucking junkies. Twelve of them shooting up on the steps of the bank. We guess that they are bank employees because come morning they're all gone. Us: We'd like to transfer some cash. The Tellers: Ummm... yeah. Us: Now. Perhaps. The Tellers: I'm sorry. What was the question again? |
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Niko in the Green Room And so it goes. The hotel is either a military barracks or some kind of demented Village People thang. Dudes in military colors wandering around. Bombs bombs bombs. This is the first place to go. Shit. I need a drink. Or some heroin. We hit the club and everyone is noticeably polite. So polite we fucking think we're in Canada. The club is an old theater. An old-large theater. The sound guy is trying to barter a t-shirt off of me. Him: Gimme a free shirt. Me: I'll fight you for one. Him: You want to kick my ass? Me: I'm GOING to kick your ass anyway. You might as well take the shirt. Him: But I make you sound good. Me: NOBODY could make us sound GOOD. But stick around. I may give you a shirt yet. So we play. It's the first show thang. I'm not saying it sucks. It's like fucking someone for the first time. It may not suck but you're probably trying waaaayyy too hard. Which means we hit the stage and fucking explode. The audience inches back and back. And back.
I make them come up so I can give them website cards. And to get a look in their fucking Norwegian eyes. They extend their hands. Slowly. I want to fuck them all. We have no idea if they think what we do is of value but afterward they buy tons of shit and then this: everybody is on cellphones. They're calling their friends in Bergen, telling them come to see OXBOW play. Or at least that's what they tell us. We will see. In the same building we find hordes, especially if by hordes you mean a few drunken dudes, in full blown Mariachi gear inviting us to Tequila party. I tell them, one of the stage hands in fact, that we will attend knowing full well that I need to stay away from Tequila or as we like to call it at my house "Fight Sauce." But leaving we run into the same Mariachi'd stage fella and he is in fact stealing our cab which he graciously extends to us while jabbering to the cabbie in a language that we're guessing could be Norwegian. Or could be just DrunkDude-ian. Him: My girlfriend's... Me: Did she come to tonight? Him: Wha? No. She's gonna be pissed... she... Me: What's she look like? Him: Oh. Beeeeg fucking titties, you know fucking NORWEGIAN!!! Me: Actually I DON'T know. You have a picture. Him: Nahhhh. But she hates music so I leave her alone. Me: She ain't alone. Him: Wha? Me: She's probably anally rimming a sailor now but we're thankful you like rock and roll enough to abandon her to the ministrations of your plundering Viking maritime forces. Oh. Here's the hotel. Toodles. |
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Garage, Bergen, Norway
We drive through the semi-arctic wasteland of Norway and hear tales of Snog Boiggen, The Norwegian Nanook and have snowball fights and I see a fucking wolf. We hit another death ship and we're there.
Bergen is Berkeley to Oslo's San Francisco. And that's alright with us. Let's just cut to the fucking chase here. The club is packed that night. Death metal dudes. Gloom des. Black metal dudes. And yeah, even their distaff corollaries (Translation: bitches in da hiz-ous). And a smoke machine. Our contract stipulates SMOKE AND LOTS OF IT. We're going for that Vietnam affect. Or that animal brain fuck and kill affect that strikes when your sense fields start shutting down and there's nothing but noise noise noise. Apparently the cell phone calls work and people are there. There was even a rock and roll steel fence in front of the stage. The promoter quoted to the OXBOW Documentarian: "He [Eugene] looked at me with murder in his eyes." Oxbow puts it out for the Dark Metal crowd And we meet Liv. And the next day she takes Greg and Niko on a tour of Bergen while I sleep until I wake to find myself in the midst of a Norwegian wedding. Well it was at the one unburned church across the street but given that I was stroking myself in the window in full view of the wedding party it was almost like I was part of it. Part of it but not enough part of it to see not so much the tour of Bergen but the lovely lovely Liv pointing out points of interest in Bergen. Which would have served me poorly anyway as my interests are, um, very, very, very proscribed. Yeah that's right. Yahtzee. I'm a BIG Yahtzee fan. Especially if by Yahtzee you mean anal sex. But we make the next Death Ferry to England in just the nick of time. |
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