Sticky Fingers Tour Diary: Part One

First, the cast of characters:

Dizza singer - the middle finger.  

Paddy bass player - the ring finger, in his way he holds the shebang together unless no-one else is pushing it apart in which case he'll step in and push.

Hollywood - a flying red mange of handily placed 80s rock. Hollywood.

Beaker - the drummer.

Crabz - the keys player masquerading as regular dude. He's not.

Jim TM and guest gorilla guitar player - the 6th finger.

After 28 hours of travel we stepped off the plane in Amsterdam, spent two hours trying to find the contact that had been organised to pick us up, finally found him, picked up our gear and took off to our first gig. 

On our first night we played a joint called Ketelhius in Eindhoven. With a name like that we imagined a semi acoustic setup in the corner of a bar. Instead we played an outdoor guerrilla style stage to hundreds of people in a bustling market square. And the setup was smack bang in the middle of two famous buildings.  In one the CD-ROM was invented, and the other colour television.These two things are virtually the crux of our existence so we were stoked to play a show there. And to top it off Crabs hooked up with a Dutch chick who had a striking resemblance to Buddy Holly.

Dizza wearing a bucket hat.

Nobody cranks gas quite like our tour manager Jimmy. He's a Fartist really. When you're living in a van with 5 other dudes you get sick of each other's smell pretty quickly. But when you hear the triumphant sounds of Jimmy's butt trumpet you can only be impressed. It's also hard to be mad with the guy at the moment. While the first week of the trip has been a fucking blast, and action packed with hot shows, French wine, and new friends, it's been a rough road for Jimmy.

On the night of our second show we played an underground bunker bar in Lille, France called Le Biplan. We were looked after amazing well, and there was a decent sweaty crowd who surprisingly knew the words to our songs. Unfortunately our van got smashed and broken into out the front while we were on stage. And weirdly enough whoever did the job was only interested in Jimmy's gear; stealing his backpack, passport, wallet, phone, and shoes. And to make matters worse for old mate, our airline managed to loose his check-in luggage before we'd even left the country. Hopefully Jimmy's taken all the bad luck for the team and it's smooth sailing from here. We're heading to Amsterdam today to grab his bag and celebrate his 30th birthday. It's looking to be a good day.

The shows we've played so far, (7 shows in the first 8 days - I'm writing this on the 8th day), have seriously exceeded our expectations. And we've been treated like kings everywhere we go. Touring as a band is definitely a superior way of travelling. We've already sold out of CDs and we're getting another box mailed over as we speak. Hopefully that doesn't get lost, stolen, or farted on too.

Our first night in France we ended up at Walkabout Aussie bar and got totally loaded. I copped a backhand from our French booker Gerald, who was not impressed with our monkey business. A little later Beaker disappeared. I went for a little wander and found him in the town square struggling to mount one of those renta-cycles.

He was pretty drunk so I managed to turf him off and embark on a magical bike ride. Riding along, singing a song, I was stopped by some French chaps whose clothes were 90 percent-a-nylon. They started staunching me, and I may have been intimated if I wasn't so pissed. I had no idea what they were saying as they were yelling in French so all I could do was laugh. That is until one of the pair ripped the bike out of my hands. You gotta pay a fair bit if you lose one of those things so I started making my way up the hill to let the lads know the situation. And the French thugs decided to follow me. Here we all were outside this Aussie bar looking like things were shaping up for a fight. Next thing Beaker appeared and fills us in that he had actually payed these dudes 20 Euro to go for a bike ride, and they were pissed with me because they thought I had stolen it off them.

Cheers to more monkey business!

And that's the end of that one.

Written by Paddy bass player.