Q: "What's brown and sticky??"
A: "A stick!" (Irish Joke - Traditional)
Ha, ha, ha! 72 hours on the road with the 3 outragious loonies from Ireland. Oh, yes, and they had a million of 'em, those three outrageous guys in their ties (I didn't have one - I have a reputation to uphold! right.) and this little fable (all true) is dedicated to YOU! They hail from the jolly town of Shannon in west Ireland, and I, Yours Truly, had the fine opportunity to meet these fellows and escort them around, and well ... drink. Which we did, three days and nights in a row. Starting with the Pearl Jam concert, which was friggin' great, insanely so. Dat boy can sing! And the band was tight as an English granny's bum (sorry mom!) and if anyone in Seattle is reading this you'll have to concur ya know, and our new friendship and an adventure had only yet just begun ... Rrrrock n roll, and whatnot and furthermore, now tune in:
"I'M STILL ALIVE !!!"
Ain't that the truth, and here we go and off we went, me 'n' Aiden (pronounced 'Haiden' in that Italian girls' accent, but more on this later) and also Dangerous Dave, and the man known as COX (say no more) also known as Brave Heart. Cool red beard and the wit of a wicked elf. Try to explain. Pause. Deep breath, carry on typing. How can I describe all that happened in those hours and days and nights? Hard to capture that magic vibe on the tiny limits of this world wide web thing. I wish you guys were my band! No wait, we WERE a band! Yes, we called it GHOST CHEESE. Or Cheese Ghost, I don't remember. Internationale Wicked Fromaggio she called it, the Italian girl from Pisa who joined us, 23 and sweet as pie. Now, I didn't dip into that sweetness, but all of our towers were leaning in her direction (if ya know what I mean). And Aiden is getting married (we wanna play at your wedding!) and all of this took place in, you guessed it, Berlin where yes, we did piss on the Wall (and many other things) and somehow we stumbled onto the idea of transforming ourselves into a Barbershop quartet! So we'd yell out a line and all sing in perfect harmony (screech!) something like:
"Loooook at those two DIKES ON BIKES!" (Uproarious laughter) Or:
"Would you like to come-come-come to the hostelll?"
Yeah, 4 part harmony deluxe and I swear a new style was born!
And then on to the first pub (of many) and then a club where we danced the night away, and did you know that you can turn ANY SONG into Bryan Adams' song 'Summer Of 69'? as long as it starts with a guitar or bass line, da-da-da-da. "I got my first real six-string, bla-bla-da-da-da. We sang that dandy shit to any and all with the loudest Barbershop Quartet howl ever that would make ol' Bryan shimmer with pride! And somewhere in there we danced with a Japanese girl called Yo-Yo. We'll call her Dancing Yo-Yo. She had fun, but I think our ballyhoo sort of blew her mind. This was on day 1. at 3 in the mourn! Then we somehow ended up in the Chunky Kitchen (secret code) at 6 am, where we proceeded to drink 7/9ths of a bottle of Martini. Ouch! Overkill. Then I slept on the boys' floor of their room and got exactly 3 hours of sleep, and woke up all limber and body felt great and hit the reception at noon (as promised) and had a coffee with the afore-mentioned Yo-Yo. Pretty uneventful. Quiet after-noon pizza extra fromaggio with my boys at my favourite snack joint, owned by that guy from Lebanon. (Man, does THAT guy have alot on his mind.) Then it was off to Potsdam ...
Potsdam - ghosts of Stalin, Churchill, cobblestones and too many Russian artifacts to mention, and home of the singer of my favourite euro-band, The Inchtabokatables. They played strings on my new song "I, Energy" so check it out, for any of you who don't know already because you're living in a cave, I suppose ... Yes, the artist who'll we'll call Robert Fucking told us tales of his rock 'n' prowess (the Irish boys ate it up!) such as the time he was playing a festival with the band Placebo, and he was having sex in the shower with a groupie, fucking Robert Fucking, and the singer from Placebo, Brian Milky or whatever-his-name-is tried to come in and then got his big bad bodyguard to try and open the door, and then Robert Fucking sent out a scream that would shock your socks off, opened the door half-naked, and Brian M. said, "Oh ... well, that's a good reason!" and walked away, with bodyguard in tow. We also drank a ton of beer and sambucco. Yum. Then more pizza and more beer, Potsdam style. Somebody made a toast to Fidel (!) I think it was Robert Fucking. And I pitched my idea to do an interview together on Berlin Radio 1 with the ENERGY song. Clap your hands say yeah, and after that had been decided, we drank some more beer and told another (true blue) story of how we went to NIN together and got caught with no ticket (there are different versions as to who may or may not have had a ticket) but we eluded the controlleurs with fancy basketball moves ... then brief hugs and burps and good-byes and a short taxi ride. Then the best part arrived like a sonic boom - we got on the midnight train to go back to Berlin, and um ... something was wrong. We got about half way there, and the train just stopped. Mid-track. In the dark. No sound. And rather then whine about it, the Irish party gnomes and meself did what any fun-lovin' criminals would do - we started to sing! We started rapping and dancing and singing, and there was some tripped out North African guy who joined in, singing and rapping in French (Internationale Cheese Ghost!) which was great. Someone has a video of all this, which went on for about an hour, and just kept getting better! (Please gimme dat video!) And at some point, some really stiffidy ticket takin' man came in and tried to explain in his best nervous apologetic whine why the train was stopped. That nerd really lit a fire under our feet. This is when our creativity REALLY kicked in! And remember that the text you will now read was a blur of beer and sambucca and cocktails and Pisa sauce - delicious! Went like this, in perfect rhythm / unison:
We have ... just ... one ... question ...
Why is the train not movin', movin', movin', movin'?
Why is the TRAIN NOT MOVIN' MOVIN' MOVIN' MOVIN' !!!???
And it got louder and louder and went on and ON, until that funny little man, well, he just had to leave! And we carried on in fine form and took the jam in various directions, as the train continued to just sit there, quietly, and our unity got better and better and fine-tuned and the Ghost Cheese vibe continued to improve (with time). Man, I tell ya that was a spicey jam! Very, very cool. Then we made it back, and somehow awoke on the third day, and went to the Indian buffet (which, by the way, I went to again today and the guy said to me, "Your friends drank alot of beer here!" to which I could've said, "You call that ALOT? You should have seen us in Potsdam!" Or maybe, "You're just lucky you don't have any sambucca, pal!"). And then we went to a sleazey house party and then someone invited us over to dinner and we ate all we could eat and then and then and someone said they wish they had my life, and I laughed and replied that it's all up-hill battles baby, and then another pub and a spontaneous French-bread food fight (which prompted an angry response from the man in leather who'll we'll call Karl who gave us free schnapps but then lectured us on how there's a bread shortage in the world and one shouldn't throw bread out the window and of course he is right, but to which I cool-y replied, 'Hey, didn't you ever see Animal House?') and then someone cried because her friend committed suicide ouch indeed (World Wide Suicide?) but even that didn't get us down 'cuz we was rockin' and rollin' and gettin tha groove on and I encourage everyone reading this to go to Ireland and meet the extraordinary people there, and I'll even meet ya there! Yes, boys, I thank you and had a most amazing time with food/drink/laughter and music. You are the best! I'll miss ya! We turned this ol' fuckin' negative world on it's head! Someone said it was the best weekend of their Life ... and the only thing I really need now, guys is ... MORE COWBELL!!! Peace, -Todd
Posted by calico at September 29, 2006 10:51 AM