Hi all. Just anuddah fun story from the travelling diaries, this time from Frankfurt/Main. Hung out in this cool drum shop called, "Cream" (enter your own joke here) right near the main train station. If you're a drummer, check it out! Even if you're just a plain ol' ordinary musician, I urge you to go and drink some coffee there (fresh brewed!) and chat with the boys. Anything goes, and you will partake of endless folklore and musical chit-chat (with varying degrees of importance) and have a good time. I was there for a few hours yesterday, waiting for my ride, and the discussions got more and more interesting and, er, weird. It started out with the gospel guy named Fitzroy, who was telling tales about playing in Belgium, Switzerland, etc., etc. and the problems he has with his musicians, especially getting them on the bus! "Hear ya," I said, as a thousand random memories flooded my mind, times when we flew to Frankfurt but the bass itself ended up in Paris, or when we couldn't even FIND the bass player! (But geeze, it sure beats workin' for a living, the normal job blues must be a real drag.) And he said he'd just done a tour, and sent one of his musicans home, 'cuz they were always late, and I nodded again, remembering the time I brought this great trumpet player over and he layed in the hotel room for 2 days, just sweating bullets from some kind of withdrawal from some weird designer drug, and I just said to him,"You're flying home, TODAY." Yep. Recalled a tale about the great drummer Buddy Rich, who was arguably an asshole, but certainly a great musician and gave everything for the music, including the time he was yelling at one of his horn guys for flubbing the notes, as sweat drenched the poor lad's shirt, soaking wet. And Buddy took off his own shirt, yelling at the guy as he did it, saying he'd better get his (musical) act together, etc. He was strict and furious, but even so - he would give you the shirt off his back! And then someone said that Prince is so extreme (meaning good) that he charges his band 50 dollars if someone is 5 minutes late to a rehearsal. (I've heard this one before, and I think it's true.) And hey, Prince had that song, "Cream" - perfect - we're sitting in a place called Cream! Sweet. All the ups and downs. It's a tough biz. As Fitzroy said, you gotta kick some ass to get to the point where you can kick some ass! (On stage. Gotta get everyone to the gig to have a gig.) Be strict, mean business, and play tha Wicked Show! Next was a whole family of Cuban guys who played some dangerous congas. And they had a child in a baby-carriage who kept smiling at me, and I pointed at him and said real loud, "The world's youngest percussionist!" And the moms who had him in tow all just laughed. Man, those guys were jammin'! And you should have seen the faces of the guys working there, when these guys all walked in, with their wives and their brothers and their kids! That was some funny shit! Just another day in a drum shop. By this time, I'd had about 20 cups of joe, and I was flyin' good. I was spittin' out music tales, and could keep up a-runnin' with anyone who popped their head in, or sat down to join the Kaffee-klatsch. Then someone told me about an obscure record with Philip Boa (great singer) and Dave Lombardo on drums. (Heavy-metal kids reading this right now reserve the right to scream, "Slayer!" at the top of their lungs.) That was a CD I'd never heard of, and that sounds pretty fuckin' righteous. Gotta get it. Never know what you're gonna learn at the drum shop. And then I got into a really interesting discussion about, "What is Punk?" which included brief mention of the Sex Pistols, The Police, The Clash, even hitch-hiking and threesomes. All to the clink-clink-clink of coffee cups and spoons, and the occasional, "No, no! That's not punk. Punk is ..." and so on. This other cool drummer guy named Jens said that the first 2 Nina Hagen records are punk (for him) and the other guy said that it's not punk, because it's too popular. And then we wondered aloud if something can still be punk if it's popular, too. (Like REM or Green Day.) And we decided that each person has his or her own definition of what punk is, if they even think about it at all, and that people's own personal values are different (really) from their neighbors, and then someone said that in a little town somewhere someone bought a whole castle for a deutschmark, promising that they would fix it up. And then I said, "How many zlotty's is that?" and someone else said, "How many cows is that?" and we realized that exchange rates fluctuate, and that each has his own personal rate of value. Yes, different people value different things. And someone said, "Imagine you could fix your car or fill up your tank for the price of a castle and three cows!" That was pretty hysterical. That's punk! Make your own way. And then, just when I thought I'd had too much coffee, and was going to wander back over to the train station and come down, the weirdest guy walked right in, and said, "HEY! Who wants a turkish sandwich? On me!" And he whips out this huge piping hot meat pie, no one else wanted it, and plops it down in front of me. Whatt?? And he looked like a lumberjack, in a whackey outfit from some nature-hike catalogue, and he was a big bear of a man, and obviously crazy. Everyone just stared at him in wonder. I'll eat the thing, I bellowed. And that was the only time I'd been brought a hot turkish sandwich in a drum shop! And then he mumbled something about wishing that someone would give him some schnapps instead, and made his way out the door, stumbling and grumbling. Strange! And wonderful. The perfect dream-like ending for a perfect adventurous day ... And I just thought, "If it's poisonous or I die here, the headline will read - American Singer Chokes To Death On Meatpie From Large German Lumberjack."
Peace. -Todd