Southerly Versus Morrissey (Bremen, Germany)-- Local Cut

Southerly Versus Morrissey (Bremen, Germany)

July 1st, 2009 [12:24PM] Posted by: Southerly | 0 COMMENTS

PDX am, sleep-eyed on two hours sleep and unprepared for 16 hours without a nicotine fix even after the pack and a half smoked through the early morning; the taste of Widmer Hefeweizen still on my tongue. Dry mouth, dry ideas, dehydrated and hoping for no issues at the gate about our guitars.

US Airways is not in the least the most inviting nor comfortable airline at our globetrotter disposal. We have typically flown Delta who must have been founded by a group of concerned Midwestern mothers given the amount of in-flight-food they offer you; and thanks to the recent AFM lawsuit against the airline we haven’t had any issues with bringing gear as a carry-on item.

A short layover in Philadelphia to connect with our trans-Atlantic breath-circulating meat oven and after inhaling 50 other people’s gestating exhalations we land in Amsterdam with about seven hours to kill. We make our way to the city center via train to meet up with some friends who work at a café and spend some time before we take our final forty five minute puddle jump to Hamburg.

Emails answered, phone calls home, a snack of vegetarische sandwiches, cookies and coffee and we’re making our way back to the port of air. Security is fairly lax and there are no lines to speak of so we hit
the bar near our gate for a couple of beers/biers.

It was around this time that I finally came to the realization that Casey Montgomery is my hero. Not just my hero, but the single brilliant light that guides me through the long, dark and utterly
frightening corridors of this unforgiving world in which we live. He also is hung like a fruit bat.

Low and behold a group of four kind folks from Wisconsin, also heading to Hamburg, are at the bar as well as a Scottish man on his way to meet up with a wealthy oil tycoon from Texas. We joke with the Wisco folks about whether they know how to make a proper old-fashioned in Hamburg and I tell them the Lewis Black joke about the Wisconsin man at a bar in New York. The Scottish man fills us in about his adventures with the cowboy in Russia which is a country we’re trying to get to, quite curious.

There’s an old jazz musician from Los Angeles who can’t walk very well and has a saxophone case with him. As we’re boarding I carry it to the plane for him and put it in the overhead compartment near his
seat. He’s over to perform at a festival in Germany and regales me with performances of his past including numerous residencies in Portland selling out old jazz clubs years ago.

It’s a KLM flight and what’s this, sandwiches, snacks, beer, all complimentary? Oh yeah, KLM is partnered with Delta. We’ve already been given more food and beverages on a forty-five minute flight than we did on the rest of our stint with US Airways. Yes, they have food on their flights but you have to pay seven dollars for it. Fucking American airlines (not Airlines), fucking US Airways, douche bags.

Hamburg! It’s now 6:30 on Saturday, June the 12th in the year of our lord two thousand and nine auto dominae. Car rental, car rental, it’s all about the car rental now; and then to the club to count in merchandise with the label rep, sound check and play the first show. Shit, so jet-lagged right now, tired, can’t sleep in moving vehicles, oh well, car rental.

To be continued…