2010-07-20

Berlin: Koma F and beyond

Berlin Saturday July 17th Koma F.

After sleeping until 1pm, we grabbed our backline and driver Gzeg (pronounced "gajedge". More on him later!) today before heading to the show.



We were playing the storied squat/DIY space Koma F just across the river from the Berlin Wall. Apparently this venue has somewhere between 25 and 40 years of history depending on who you ask. It, like many of the pre-WWII buildings was partially bombed out, and never quite found its way back to “normal.” Imagine a well-lit courtyard with big dogs, lots of empty bottles and a series of apartments with two venues and a bar all tucked in. One side had a Planet of the Apesesque statue portion that looked like a replica of the statue of liberty. Either way, it was tight, and after a quick walk around the neighborhood, we set in to use our hosts’ hospitality.


We grabbed a quick practice before the show and were fed some amazing seitan strips with Tzatziki and white cabbage. The food was as they say in our country, fucking delicious. We didn’t clean our plates well enough and received a bit of a reprimand. Now we know...

As for the show, we played with Your Fucking Nightmare from the Czech Republic, and they were really good. We’ll play again with them at Fluff Fest in one week, so if you’re reading this from Europe, please check them out.

For our set, we were tighter than we thought we’d be at the first show and were able to pull out a few more songs than we had intended. I think the total set was still 25 minutes with three extra songs…tops. Kids seemed into it and showed some love, especially for our cover of Crucified (Iron Cross). There was a nine-year-old from CZ there, and we traded him a shirt for a punk rock bracelet. Hess swears he’ll wear it at Fluff Fest. He won’t even take it off to shower as it is.

We debuted the tour 7” and shirts with mixed reviews, and met some cool people including Sebastian from High Score, Pavel from YFN, Mario from Dresden (an 18 year veteran of the European scene!), MeanXMike (who was sporting a crucial Vision 1989 tour shirt!), Hannah, from Berkeley USA and Sammy. All-in-all it was a great first show and introduction to the European scene. We decided that we love bubbly water to boot.

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