LA FLINGUE – European tour report
April, 9th-20th 2013
(French version in Dig it! Fanzine #59; transation : Miss Marjolaine)

THE GREAT EVIL

There we were, the whole band, in the Burger King, just hanging there. Outside we could hear those marvellous german machines roaring on the autobahn. All of a sudden, I felt sorry for Gégé. I touched his shoulder ; he started sobbing and went back to the van, without even eating the food of the great evil. How did we get to this ? I wondered. Allright, there had been speed in Berlin but no reason to break down like this now. Miguel and Rudy ordered their Long Japalenos burgers and we laughed. Outside, Audis, BMWs and Opels still ripped through the countryside around Bad Hersfeld, between Erfurt and Giessen. The heart of Germany.

Yeah, I know, cocky intro, but what the fuck, this is serious shit. Like I always said, a tour is no vacation, so : no day off, no visiting, and if you have a break down, crawl into a corner and lick your wounds or knock yourself out with a Lexomyl. We even found a pill over-the-counter called Schlaf Stern, the sleeping star. The girl at the pharmacy was hopping about when she sold it, ah yes, this is very strong, very chemical, don't do anything for at least 8 hours after taking it... it almost killed us. Next morning we woke up in a german squat, with a white veil on our eye balls and iron dust in our mouths.
But this happened at the AJZ Erfurt, a punk hang-out in the teuton countryside. The tour began in a very nice way at Lyon, a crappy town though. A Tuesday town. But it was nice playing at the Trockson, a lot of people there. My brain turns a bit shallow when talking about Lyon, as if the city rested in some kind of limbo. I don’t remember much. I think at one point there was some MDMA, but I’m not too sure about it. Fantastic night in a hipster nest, beaux-arts style.

SLEEPING WATER

Miguel slept all the way to Cologne.
Entering the Sonic Ballroom makes you wonder: this troubled world is in its death throes. But it’s gonna take a while.
The Sonic ballroom is always nice. But instead of the usual boss, there’s a craggy cow-boy. John Wayne as a punk.
We have our sound check and wait, then we open for a Swedish band. The singer is pregnant so no smoking in the room. The concert is sold out ; and yet, I never heard of these Swedish guys. Open bar for the group. I decide to stick to vodka.
After that, I’m not sure, I’m in John Wayne’s office yelling in german (my german is quite good). Give the fuckin’ money, man ! Fifty euros ? Are you serious ? Wirklich ? The conversation heats up, I’m yelling and stattering. I’m such a pain that he coughs up another note while saying something about licking his ass. I shout that he should lick my ass. High litterature. Well, I’m not sure we’ll play at the Sonic Ballroom again. I end up in the kitchen wearing my underpants, with a cleaver in my hand ; I suddenly felt the urge to cook an omelet for the band.
Kevin has hooked up with us, he'll be our roadie for the rest of the tour. Hmmm how's it gonna be with that stinky little rat, I wonder, while I put myself to rest in the club's plump duvet. Miguel is asleep, snoring heavily. He went to bed just after the concert.

CARBONIC DISCIPLINE

Less than 24 hours later, on the sidewalks of Bruxelles, Kevin tries to hit me with his tiny fists and the whole band hates me, except for Miguel who's gone to bed. Fortunately, thanks to drugs, the evening is saved and the atmosphere slackens.
We played with Périphérique Est. I'm a fan, but Jack may have drunk a little too much and kept on talking between each song, I don't like that.
Well, I saw this red fire extinguisher. It was very sexy. It kept on calling me with its little voice. I immediatly thought it was a good idea to use it on scene. We end up our set on Homo-pogo and pschit ! Oh my god. The basement is devastated, people are running about screaming and coughing, everything is covered with some sort of grey acrid powder. The DJ party won't happen. And there you go, I find myself alone, pissed, Rudy shouting at me that I'm an asshole. I climb upstairs to the bar. Kevin jumps at me. Fortunately, he's just a skinny little punk. I wouldn't have responded anyway. Well, the important thing is that I wasn't beaten up by the bar owners.
We then head for Jack's appartment. Friends of Gégé gave us small white pills. We take off on the way. Stromboscopic effect, disorganized eyeballs. I can't figure out the van's roof and bottom and I wonder who's driving. The rest of the night is totally wizz, in a nice suburbian bourgeois appartment.
When we played in Paris two weeks ago, a guy had let out his wurst ans pissed on the stage during our set. Thanks to my sunglasses, I didn't notice anything and inadvertently kneeled down in the puddle... I had sworn that if I met this rascal again, I would give him the runabouts. Well, it didn't happen after all. Here he is, he gives us X and I'm quite fond of the guy. Dawn finds me lying down on the sofa, like a sick old dog, far away from the band. I'm scared the roadie will hit me again.

JAZZ, IT'S FOR BOURGEOIS !

Next day, in the van, while the other guys are tapping on their I-phones like chimpanzes, I ponder on the meaning of life. But I can't seem to draw to any satisfying conclusion.The AK 47 is an old punk den, very well organized. The night is a huge success. Let's talk about cash. We get 450 euros from the club entries and 400 euros from selling vinyls and t-shirts. My goodness ! Düsseldorf goes crazy when we end our set with a cover of Der KFC (for Kriminalitätsförderungsclub, Club for Crime Promotion, nothing to do with battery raised chickens), great band, 1978. We meet the elite of the german scene, Dean dirg, the Toyotas, the guy from Ox fanzine, the Briefs' drummer. This is our Cannes festival. Fuck them.We're off to buy speed.
Well it just happens that we're spending the night at the same right place where the dealer lives. Very weird ride, a stranger got in the van with us and he's very physical. He's trying to fondle Rudy while producing strange noises. That's when a police car comes out of a dark alley. It follows us for a time. However, all ends well : the speed is smooth, Miguel sleeps like a baby, we keep it reasonable, a few guys are roaming like zombies all through the huge flat, techno-trance music is leaking from the dealer's appartment but he chooses to remain invisible, providing us through his intermediaries.
I suddenly wake up in the middle of the night. I spot Gégé as he slowly introduces his hand into Kevin's sleeping bag and starts to wank him delicately. He then leans over silently and starts to suck him. Meanwhile, Kevin is finger-fucking him. I spot Rudy watching them, eyes wide open, he’s turned solid in his sleeping bag. I gulp down a Lexomyl and try to get back to my dreams. Miguel is asleep.

ALTZEIT

Saturday in Berlin. We’re gonna have to rock seriously. Arriving at the Cortina Bob, there’s a few young people outside the bar. One of them is wearing a moustache, a cap and one of those ski sweaters with snow-flakes on them. I’m quite sure he likes the Black Lips.
I slowly slip my hand towards this small imaginary rifle I always keep in my pocket. I put up my tiny silencer and scope and I aim conscientiously at this flabby head.
There’s some kind of punk reading before the concert, something about Staline and the punk mouvement, in the german language, I’m not sure I understood all of it... We play with the About Blanks, I like them but they have the weirdest sad faces. All at once, hop, we come out of the club and it’s daytime. The speed in Berlin is OK, but much too damp. What’s happening to Germany ? I’ve often been on tour there, there nearly were’nt any toxics. Times change. I remember, when as a boy I rode my small red bike to the kindergarten, with my little green bag in which mein Oma had put rye bread sandwiches spread with duck’s fat and sprinkled with coarse salt. Sometimes, there were rollmops with cream and dill. This is the Germany I want to remember.At dawn, we head for the Trinkteufel (the Demon drink). Humble provincial readers of Clermont-Ferrand or Saint-Étienne, Brive-la-Gaillarde or Toulouse : this is a zoo like you can’t even imagine. Even in Madrid, I had never seen such a thing. Three hundred drunken punks and skinheads are crammed into a tiny bar, taking drugs, yelling and singing. All of a sudden, I’m in a punk's appartment (dirty, lots of LP records) smoking Black weed, when I hate that. I don’t understand : Miguel is not asleep. I laugh uncontrollably for nearly an hour and then go to bed in a chemical straightjacket. The others go strolling in the city parks finishing off the weed but his doesn’t concern me anymore. Wrapped in the golden feathers of slumber, I forget this decaying world.

FLABBY GUT

I don’t recall anything of our day off, which doesn’t surprise me, I loathe days off.
Monday night, Leipzig. Good show but we’re tired. Bar-concert-cocktails-dorm. I’ve lost my microphone stand but who cares. Miguel is asleep.Next day, Dresden, but our concert is disappointing, there’s very few people. We’re clearly on the low. Miguel is snoring. Kevin and I have patched things up long ago but I don’t trust him, I know he can be treacherous, and often when I see him wearing his Finnish crust bands t-shirts, I feel like becoming violent. Still, he's the only one in the van who's got minimum intelligence, who I can discuss visual art and obscure punk with.
We're a bit worried about Gégé. He's always made poor jokes, but it seems now he's lost faith, he's on automatic humor.
Miguel is asleep. Rudy is either refering to his phone in a compulsive way or reading his Otari MX70 16 tracks' user's manual. Suddenly I'm choking : what the fuck am I doing here ? For God's sake, please, fuck me.

SINGER ASS-FUCKING

I came close to this in Erfurt. The concert takes place in a huge building in a small bar upstairs. I'm reasonably pissed and a big fat guy, at least 120 kilos, is dancing like crazy in front of everybody. He looks like a mountain troll. He's a bit violent and keeps other people from having fun. I tell myself Fuck it, I'm going in. I try to grasp him to knock him down, he falls over me. I hear a crack in my chest and stop breathing. The rest of the band keeps on playing Ton cuir noir de merde.
Black out...
There was another concert in Giessen, it's a small town I didn't know before. I spend the most dreadful night in a squat with gastric pains due to an overly spiced sandwich. On the verge of a nervous beakdown, I drink vodka and find a Xanax in my bag, which allows me to survive. I now know all the subtle variations Miguel is capable of in his long snoring solos. The concert was ok. The guy in the organization tells me it's more hardcore to play ground-level, a way to erase the boundaries between the audience and the band. And anyway, he thinks there won't be a lot of people. Really ? I tell him we'll play on stage, we don't care about the audience.

THE ABOMINATION OF THE DAMNED SQUAT

Let me introduce myself : I’m Kevin. I was invited on the tour because I haven’t been working a lot for some time. I spent a dreadful winter in Germany trying to live my life with no band, no girlfriend, no job, no money. So I went for punk roadie. The Haus Minusch in Mayence is a squat in a building surrounded by a caravan camp, in the middle of the woods. The concert is really good, plenty of great bands, warm welcome. But the atmosphere is strange, a silent threat seems to be hovering over this squat...
I end up with a nice girl who lives in a caravan with no windows. No running water, no electricity, no toilets. Those german alternatives are pretty serious. Looking for a beer, I find an axe under the girl’s bed. I go back to bed... under the mattress. I hear weird noises from the other side of the wall which separates the bedroom from the kitchen. Some kind of faint scratching. The faint light of the moon falls on the wicker table through a hole in the roof, creating dancing shadows among the putrescent waste. Suddenly, a gargling sound in the kitchen... A palmed hand appears, with only three fingers. It beckons me to come over... Nothing else happens, only this greenish finger moving. I stare at this horrible hand, covered in warts, wet and slackened skin. A smell of sea depths overwhelms me. By Innsmouth ! I gotta go.
I turn to the girl sleeping next to me and give her a kiss. We'll stay in touch.

BANNED FROM THE PUBS

Olivier Gasoil speaking now. There's a last date in Schompfheim, south Germany, near Mulhouse. Great night, no drugs, but enough is enough. Our show is mediocre, I lose my sunglasses on stage which irritates me considerably. Rudy, apparently way too drunk, looses himself in bass improvisations. Listen to UFO Dictator by Tampax, it'll give you an idea. Miguel is laughing so much he can't play anymore. Then, it's DJ time. My body is possessed by a dancing fever. Have you ever tried to somersault on Peter & the Test Tube Babies ? I managed it. Short night, hangover and 700 kms later, we're back in Marseille. Next tour should be in South America. Take drugs and kill yourself.

Olivier Gasoil

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