a dEUS tour diary

I still have to write a report of the Copenhagen gig (which was really good, with a very enthusiastic crowd, and they played Put The Freaks, which was supercool, and I met about a gazillion fans), but I´m still on holiday in Barcelona, so quite frankly, I have other things on my mind than extensive blogging. Saw Vive La Fête here last Sunday and that was quite memorable too.

In the meantime, here´s a nice report of this week´s three Italian gigs that Mala kindly sent to me.

November 27th - 2:40 a.m. - Rimini’s train station

So this is where step one ends, or at least where it is supposed to end. Actually it won’t be finished until I’m safe in my bed back in Rome. This is just the beginning of my 3 days dEUS bender: Rimini tonight, Rome tomorrow and Milan on Monday. Basically something like going to hell and back.

So Rimini: got to the venue extra early and there they were, having dinner. Wow… I don’t know about the rest of you out there, but I haven’t seen these guys this close in 6 years so that’s quite moving. I’ll cut the bullshit short and go straight to the juicy bits: it was a great gig. Great set, splendidly played. But… I don’t know, it didn’t give me goosebumps, it didn’t make my eyes tear (though they even played Via, which is one of my favourites ever) as shocking as that may sound. Something was missing but it might have been just me. I’ve been counting off the days since bloody July, I know the setlists by heart, I heard some of this year’s livesets…. that might have spoiled the fun.

But the same show, another town, is waiting for me, 17 hours away… and let’s see what that is going to be like.

November 28 – 2 p.m. - a train to Milan

Picking this up again at the beginning of step number 3: we hit Milan today. Last night in Rome, the city I live in, and the best part of it was at the Alpheus. It was announced as a sold out but it actually wasn’t, though it was packed as hell.

Mauro put my esteemed colleague Mr. Giuseppe Siciliano and myself on the guest list, and we got aftershow passes too! dEUS hit the stage at 22:15 (a thing that never happened in Rome before: gigs don’t usually start before 23!!), Pocket Revolution and violet lights. I manage to sneak through a side door and get closer to the stage, also succeeding in the impossible task of finding my friend The Masked Rat among THOUSANDS. From here on it’s pure delirium. The boys on stage are in a better shape that yesterday, they laugh, they’re having fun and hell, I am too, annoying the fuck out every single person around me by singing at the top of my lungs and jumping around (and please, note that I haven’t jumped approximately since 1995) and while I’m doing this I also ask myself why would someone go through all the effort of making it to the first rows just to stand there, still as a freaking rock. I never understood that. The setlist is pretty much the same as yesterday, but goosebumps came this time. Must have been their mood, or Tom’s kind of angry way of singing. They looked happier, they played better. Theme from Turnpike’s outro was great and the same goes for Suds and Soda’s (the S the U the P the E the R, the S the H the A R and P). Tom and Mauro also did the Pharrell/Gwen Stefani impersonation (Tom: can I have it like that?; Mauro: you got it like that). Another wonderful set. Funny when the crowd started clapping along to Roses with Tom stopping singing to say “It’s not a clapping song”… never cross mr. Barman.

And now on me merry way to Milan….

November 29 – some time in the morning - Eurostar # 9444 to Rome

Froze my ass in Milan last night. Rumours had it that Millionaire joined the bill too but that didn’t happen. Not a club this time but more of a sports hall. What can I say that I haven’t said over the last two days? It was another great gig. Some technical problems pissed off Tom over the first few songs and Mauro seemed to be having some problem too. Everything solved, the gig carries on, the crowd goes mental and I’m run over by a human landslide, which pushed me about 8 paces away from where I was standing. Suds and Soda louder and freakier than ever.

Towards the end of the concert I saw Tim Vanhamel standing at the back of the stage and doing his special dance moves.

AFTERSHOW PARTY!! Tom was supposed to be djing in a club called Goganga (a very stupid name, if you ask me) so we moved on there. Rome aftershow was basically just sitting around having a few drinks, no music, non chills, no frills. This is a lot cooler: Millionaire are pretty wasted and they spend most of the time falling around. Tim is dancing all over the place, upturning tables in the process and nearly managing to get himself kicked out at least twice. The esteemed colleague and I got to interview Mauro, so nice of him freezing is ass outside the club for us, and I saw a look of terror in Tom’s eyes as I was going to greet him, probably scared to death that I was going to interview him too. I spared him, he was having too much fun.

The place closed around 2 a.m. with dEUS looking for another place to hit. Lost them along the way. Me, I just want to sleep. It’s been a very long weekend, lost some intelligence along the way, but hell, it was bloody well worth it.

I’m finally taking my first extended break from work since February! I’ll be on a two-week trip, first to Copenhagen (my Danish needs some practicing), then straight to Barcelona, where the plan is just to party with friends for one week. Talk about having a rest. Expect reports from the dEUS gigs in those two cities

http://www.deus.be/community/viewtopic.php?t=2308&start=14
http://www.deus.be/community/viewtopic.php?t=2338

We Irish and Scots feel cheated upon.

dEUS - Little Arithmetics - QMU, Glasgow, 05.11.2005

The fun about writing this, and the whole point behind the idea of starting it, actually, is when I get to write stuff that’s related to the whole experience of going through this «following the band around» thing. Driving, flying, taking trains, jumping in and out of taxis, meeting people, discovering new places and venues, partying, and all the glitches that make travelling an exhilarating activity. I don’t know, and never will, how it is to be touring with a band. But this thing is fun. It breaks (and disrupts, my colleagues could argue) the daily working routine.

Enough rambling eh. Glasgow. Home of one of my all-time favourite bands Mogwai, and of the (to me) legendary Chemikal Underground label, who can boast Aereogramme, The (now defunct) Delgados, Magoo and Arab Strap among others. I’d heard it was an ugly town, but having grown up close to a very pretty, but otherwise totally boring town, I couldn’t care less. And truth be told, I found Glasgow’s architectural mix of industrial buildings and ocre Victorian houses absolutely compelling. And that town is really bustling with shops, the streets were so crowded it took me ages to walk from the bus station to Clyde Street, where the hostel we stayed at was located. There I was met by Fred from the forum, his little brother Martin and his friend Neil, all fresh from the 3-hour-delayed Newcastle train. We unpacked in our room, and headed for, well, the closest Burger King. Sorry guys, I’m a junk food lover. Then onto a pub. Guinness. Two pints. Then another one, called Fat Boab’s. I loved that name. Guinness. Erh…. one or two pints. We grabbed a cab and were dropped right in front of the QMU, which is actually called Qudos and is a venue run by the QMU, the students union of Glasgow University.

It has to be said that the QMU is a really great venue. It’s small, I’d say about 250 people were in there, has a really nice bar with seats and a big curved, metal grille that runs along it behind the seats, so that the bar is somewhat separated from the concert room, but you can see between the bars of the grille, so it’s not really separated. Erh, I’m not good at describing that sort of stuff. Anyway, intimate venue, with a great atmosphere and a good sound, much better than the Ambassador on the day before. The Newcastle boys and I stood in the middle, but still close to the bar, and for the rest of the night, Martin would regularly keep us hydrated with Guinness. So that was my first drunk dEUS gig. So, there’s a problem: how do you review a gig that you had so much fun with, while knowing that it would have been a totally different experience had you been sober? Ah, you don’t. You just admit to Glaswegian visitors that yes, the 3 annoyingly noisy Brits + 1 guy with a French accent at the back of the venue were, indeed, you, yes, you committed the Sin that is talking, singing, dancing awkwardly, laughing loud and telling jokes during a concert by your very idols, and you even go as far as saying that it was a superb experience. Tell you what, I even found Red Organ Serpent Sound to be wildly entertaining (but not half as entertaining as later that night - read on).

One thing I can say about the gig, though: I was damn glad they skipped Magdalena, as I’m a notorious hater of that song, and the setlist worked a hundred times better with more rock right from the start (if I ever share my bootleg, which is very, very unlikely, you’ll hear my live comments about that). And I found it a bit of a pity that they dropped Assault on Magnus from the main set, because, yeah, it’s a Magnus song, so the audience don’t know it, but it’s such a killer song that it’s a shame they don’t get to hear that. The London ICA crowd were served with it, and they loved it. As for the rest, they played very, very well, the audience was nice -a bit quieter than the Dublin one though- I loved it when they started requesting Little Arithmetics during the encore break, and LA did indeed came (okay, that’s what the setlist had planned anyway, but still).

Then, after the gig, I took a picture of the setlist, commented on the songs they dropped, then a short, dark-haired girl asked if I’d seen them before, and then she asked my name, I told her, to which she said she was Erin and I hadn’t even bothered answering her e-mails. Ahem. Such delicious moments. I was very happy to meet her, though, because she’s a very cool girl. So the five of us headed to the after party, which was at the bar on the first floor, normally you needed a pass, but I didn’t see anyone checking and we all got in. There we got more drunk, Erin as well, she desperately wanted to talk to Tom, as she’d seen him in Vancouver last year for the AWTWB premiere at the film festival there (she’s Canadian and studying in Great Britain), I talked to people, I think I might have been a bit unsensitive with Alan, I got Mauro to get me a whisky and coke because he’d spilled beer into my walled at the last AB afterparty, I annoyed Klaas for a while, we also had fun with Rory, the singer from Red Organ Serpent Sound (ROSS for short), who was pretty wasted himself, and looked quite gay to me (and to Fred and Jenna as well), but apparently wanted to keep up appearances and snogged a local groupie, I got said groupie to take a group photo (see below), she first accidentally attempted to take a picture of herself, then nearly dropped my cam into her glass, Erin was invited to sit at Tom’s big, very social table (it’s always a funny sight to see Tom on a chair, his arms and legs are everywhere all the time), at some point Stéphane fetched Mauro cause they were moving on to another party, we followed suit and left as well. Tom, Steph & Mauro jumped into a cab with Erin, Tom told us they were going to Riverside Club and he’d ordered two more cabs, and indeed the Newcastle gang and I got into another one, I spotted Rory and his ROSS groupie making out against the dEUS tour coach, so I grabbed them and told them to tag along, the journey back to the centre of Glasgow seemed to take aaages.

We finally got there, incredibly enough the place was 50m from our hostel. The guys at the club’s entrance wouldn’t let Rory & his girl in, as they were far too drunk (Rory’d fallen flat on his knees on getting out of the taxi), so the boys and I walked in, then bumped onto a guy at the top of the stairs who just said “TEN QUIDS”, I paid reluctantly, then we got into that erh… not very good club, just one big room, hardly lit with a blueish tint, with bare walls and a big Riverside Club sign, indie charts music, I asked Tom if he could get Rory in, as I felt very bad about taking the guy away from his bandmates and quite a long way from the QMU, to which Tom got (understandably) a bit pissed at me, then things got a bit out of hand for me:

Some dude: «…………» (something which I didn’t get, because of the accent I’m not used to)
Me: «Excuse me, I’m a French speaker, I didn’t get that, can you speak a bit slower please?»
Dude: «Fuck off ya cunt!!!»
Me: «That’s rude, I’m trying to speak your language, I’m making an effort, really that’s no way to talk to me just because I’m not a native - *makes gulping sound*»
Dude (holding me very tightly by the throat and looking demented): «I’m gonna fookin’ kill you, you cunt, I swear I’m gonna kill you!»

First time anyone ever assaulted me. Neil grabbed me away and tried to get me a drink but I was too shocked, then I cooled down a bit and, drunk as I was, went back to the thug and asked if we could talk without him going for my throat, to which he said again that he’d kill me, went to see another thuggish-looking guy and talked to him while pointing at me, at which point the intelligent being in me woke up and took me outside, where I complained about it to the guy at the entrance, who said he’d just throw those guys away. That’s when I found out that my «new friend» was actually part of the club staff as well, so this was starting to stink a bit. Mauro came and was very soothing about it, then Stéphane told me I’d best leave it there and just go, Tom came out as well and grinned while telling me not to get into trouble, I dunno if they saw the guy attack me, or if my English mates went and told them, but I felt veeeery bad about them being involved with my little problem. Anyway, we all left, I thought about asking my ten pounds back but fortunately knew better, the band left to another party with Erin in tow, and Newcastle and I went back to the hostel, where, thanks to all the alcohol, I had absolutely no problem falling asleep. Let me recommend Eurohostel Glasgow, by the way. It’s cheap, super conveniently located, comfortable, way better than the shabby, overpriced hostel I’d stayed at in Dublin (Kinlay House - best avoided).

What an adventure.

Setlist:
01 Pocket Revolution
02 Cold Sun Of Circumstance
03 Instant Street
04 Fell Off The Floor, Man
05 Stop-Start Nature
06 The Real Sugar
07 W.C.S.
08 If You Don’t Get What You Want
09 Theme From Turnpike
10 Sun Ra
11 Nothing Really Ends
12 Roses
13 Serpentine
14 Bad Timing
—
15 Little Arithmetics (mp3)
16 What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)
17 Suds & Soda

Brussels-Dublin (CRL-DUB): 880km
Dublin-Glasgow (DUB-PIK): 315km
Glasgow-Brussels (PIK-CRL): 888km
Total distance: 2083km (5.14% the circumference of planet Earth)

A nice little trip, all in all.

dEUS - The Real Sugar - The Ambassador, Dublin, 04.11.2005

Started pretty badly actually. On Thursday, I realised, loooong after working hours, that I’d forgotten my keys at the office. As I couldn’t get into the building after 22.00, that meant I had to sleep away from my place and couldn’t get packed. So on Friday, I had to go to work very early, so that I could grab my keys on the desk, rush to my place at lunchtime to charge my MD, iPod, mobile phone and camera, drop socks, undies, t-shirts and a Discworld novel into my travel bag, drive back to work, pretend I wasn’t somewhere else entirely, then drive to Charleroi Airport, swear at the traffic congestion, find out I was way too early for the plane anyway, land in Dublin, rush to get the airport coach to the city centre, swear at the heavy roadworks, be delighted at the driver’s helpfulness, get slightly mad at it when he was showing it to other people at stops before mine, finally get dropped a few metres from the hostel, check in, greet the two Hungarian guys in the 6-bed dorm (they couldn’t speak a single word of English and listened to very crappy dance music), unpack, lock my valuables, call Jenna to tell her I was on my way, walk to the Ambassador, leave my jacket at the cloakroom (apparently everybody on the guestlist was Belgian) - we’re getting started.

The Ambassador’s like an old, round theatre. Oddly enough for a theatre, the ground there is flat, and there are no fixed chairs, so it was a standing concert. Found out I couldn’t take any photo, as I’d left the charged battery pack in my jacket, and there was half a kilometer of queue for the cloakroom already. Jenna was expecting me at the bottom of the erh, 3 stairsteps down into the concert room. Got introduced to her whole little gang, we were standing just a few metres from the stage, to the left. A few minutes waiting, and then Red Organ Serpent Sound came on stage.

Red. Organ. Serpent. Sound. Some name. Mark or Phil (Fred & Funkyphil from the dEUS forum, respectively) had sent me their single over msn, called In Search of Orgasmuz, and really, that’s one hell of a poppy punky funky bomb. Starts with silly synths, then onto a giant scream of «We looooove each other, that’s why we’re here» and it’s so cool I’d been playing it all day at work before leaving to Dub. So, well, perhaps I was expecting too much. Five guys in ridiculous outfits invaded the stage, the singer wearing a red hood that completely covered his face, a red tank top, tiiiight trousers, one huge boxing glove, a Slash-like hat and sunglasses. I found them funny, but wondered who the hell had taken those guys out of the fridge they’d been frozen in for eternity back in 1976.

Then came the guys. The band played pretty well, but you could definitely notice that Tom wasn’t completely at ease with his voice, he had a worried look at times. Talking of his look - I absolutely love how angry he can look when singing Roses.

Now, the trouble with seeing the same band over and over is that you lose sight of the general impression, and you can get quite picky. Everybody there said that the gig was massive. To me, it was erh, great, cause that’s my favourite band playing and those songs do «something» to me, but I kept being annoyed by the sound balance, cause I was hearing too much of Stéphane’s toms, too much of Tom’s voice, too much of Klaas’s violins, and not much of the rest. People ask me how I don’t get bored by seeing them over and over, but it’s a different experience than “just” going to a concert. You just watch the concert from other points of view. At times, I find myself finding that the band are in a really good mood and technically near perfect, but I see that the audience’s response isn’t great, and I start being afraid that the band are going to sense it and play shorter. I’m turning into an anxious mother.

Mmh, I suspect the above paragraph is just gibberish to say that I don’t remember much of the Dublin gig. Glasgow erased it all. After the gig, I met Funkyphil (n°1 poster on the dEUS forum, if you’re a casual visitor and not part of the obsessed dEUSSIANS), who’s a really, really nice guy. Along with his friends and Jenna’s gang, we were taken into erh… quite a dull pub actually, some way off the Temple Bar district, where I learnt to hate the smoking ban, because I might be a non smoker, but I chew gum quite a lot, and there was no ashtray for me to throw my old gums. Then we moved to a club called The Village, which wasn’t really my thing, a bit too posh to me, and the DJ really didn’t deserve to be called as such. Plus, I was tired and wanted to have a chance of getting up early enough to see a little bit of Dublin. Which I did: I spent 3/4h at the local Habitat store. Sometimes I might act a bit too gay.

Ooooh, almost forgot: when Jenna introduced me to her friends, she said «This is Jaaaan Eeeeves, he’s following the band around», to which her friend Stephen said «Oh, that’s funny, cause this afternoon I was checking some guy’s blog, and apparently he’s here tonight as well», to which Jenna said «Yeah, that’s JY’s blog», and then Stephen looked at me unbelievingly, like I was some alien, shook my hand, and said «Really?? Is that your site? I’m so proud of meeting you man, that’s great», and then I felt very, very embarrassed. Although some might see this as an ego trip on my part, it’s not. I’m no one, just a lucky fan, probably a bit more obsessed than most of you, which is why I started those websites about dEUS and Magnus, being able to get somehow close to the band is an honour, but I’m just messing around with some HTML and Photoshop and if you’re a fan of me then it’s all a bit disproportionate, no?

Setlist:
01 Pocket Revolution
02 Magdalena
03 Cold Sun Of Circumstance
04 Instant Street
05 Fell Off The Floor, Man
06 Stop-Start Nature
07 The Real Sugar (mp3)
08 W.C.S.
09 If You Don’t Get What You Want
10 Theme From Turnpike
11 Sun Ra
12 Nothing Really Ends
13 Roses
14 Serpentine
15 Bad Timing
—
16 Little Arithmetics
17 What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)
18 Suds & Soda

Those are my next stops. Bit of a silly trip actually, as I’ll hardly get to see those cities. But I’m excited as a puppy cause I’m going to Mogwai’s hometown. Bit silly, as I said. More about this on Sunday then!

(And I still haven’t posted about Lille. Mmmh…. That’ll be one for the dog.)