TheOXBOW.com: OXBOW - Trouble That Will Trouble The World

Tour Diary: 1995 > Page 2

France

The old children's nursery rhyme from Brooklyn where I grew up had quite a bit to say about the girls in France and how they spent their time doing the hula-hula dance and didn't wear any underpants. I found these all to be falsehoods. We're playing in a place named Rennes and though the French have gotten a bad international reputation I found them to be great people and the food (since I'm a big 255 pound/124 kilo kind of guy this matters to me) is REALLY fucking good. The guitar player from the band opening for us, The Naval Cut Cord, comes up to me prior to our show and says that he thinks his band should headline because they've got an extensive stage setup. I tell him to talk to Manuel Ivan who we now call Mr. Brompton. I understand his shorthand and it is:we're great, you suck, let us headline. I want to tell him that in a couple of hours he'll have a different opinion but screw it. Mr. Brompton tells him no and that's that.

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We play a great show: Niko bloodies his nose, I almost break my leg (and will have to tape it for the rest of the tour), Tom breaks all of his sticks and Dan stays as smooth as ever. Scott, one of my best friends, came along with us from Paris where he lives and sells a shitload of our t-shirts and speaks the language like a native. After the show the opening band comes up and apologizes. That's cool. They're cool. We get interviewed by this guy from Sonic magazine and we all fall deeply and soulfully in love with his girlfriend who brings us dinner.

Thiers

Great place, great show. Most noteworthy: the French guy who to show his appreciation at our show vomited up a stomach full of red wine at will three times to show his great appreciation.

Switzerland

We pull into Switzerland after making the border crossing and I m starting to feel like Morrisey as it rains pretty constantly. Tom has been working on a new Morrisey tune which I'm sure the man himself would like called 'I Fell Off My Bicycle and Lay on the Ground for a Very, Very Long Time.' We're playing in a place call Luzern at a club call Sedel. Some of the Oxbow posters have the dicks cut out of them. I don't know whether this means people were taking the dicks home or that people were throwing them out... it all seems to point to a deeply disturbed national pysche. The guys putting on the show are very cool and we hang out at their house listening to the Young Gods and napping, talking, eating. I miss almost every single girl that's ever loved me and tonight's show will probably be a weird reflection of that. Love and rage and longing...I don't feel like I'll ever be a member of the human race again.

We play and I smash bottles all over the stage and there's broken glass everywhere and water and juice and beer and I start to lose it a few times...no wonder the Swiss suicide rate is so high...a little fucking sunshine would help this country immeasurably. We finish and stay in an old farmhouse with about three guys named Thomas (one with the incredibly fortunate last name, Kiss, which has got to be good for seducing someone).

St. Gallen

We stay in this old apartment building with this very groovy lady and her apartment was gayly festooned with love beads and tie-dyed stuff and pagan symbols and talismans and she was very quiet and a little spooky. When we leave her place the next day she gives us all beads, which we all do actually carry with us for the rest of the tour for good luck (despite my wise ass remark that they'd come in real handy when I got back to earth). The show is okay but we've taken notice of the fact that since we've been in Europe the only people to talk to us have been like people connected to the shows. We start to wonder 'why' people seem to be afraid of us. Some European guy says it's because the Swiss are so reserved that things like nudity make them uncomfortable...a nation of people that fuck in the dark.