The Unknown 2004 Euro Tour. Week Three.
Written by Ken.

Day Fifteen: Thursday May 27, 2004:
St. Saulve, France at the Backstage Cafe.
"Don't Leave Me Now ..."

   More French driving. It was just as boring today as it was yesterday. But hey, that's what you get sometimes. So yeah nothing really happened. We rolled into St. Saulve at around 2 and killed a few hours in town and in the near town of Valenciennes. It was a very small area and there wasn't much to see but a few old churches and some don'ts.
   Around 5 or so the Backstage Cafe opened up. We got a decent cup of coffee for the first time in two weeks. I got to play Megatouch for like and hour. They were playing Ozzy Osbourne live videos and all kinds of bad metal all night, it was great. How nice to feel like home for a bit.
   Backstage Cafe was a small place in a residential area. There was no where for bands so the four that were playing just played in the middle of the floor. It was way cramped. In fact, most of the night you had to hang out outside to get air.

Backstage Cafe with Rod

   Just before the show Rod, who ran the bar, took us to a burger place for a meal. It was great and simple. He also hooked us up with hotel rooms for the night. We were set.
   The first three bands all rocked out well. I think they changed the bands, so I'm not sure who was who. But they were all really great. It was nice to play on a full bill. It was a total punk night. All through the night it was fun to sit and try to talk to French people. It's weird how you can come up with some French without knowing it. We didn't end up going on til almost midnight, which is way weird for europe. Nonetheless, we still got to play a full set. Rod wanted it that way.
   The set was: Never Be The Same - Postcard - Radio Lied To Me - Whether - Do You Know That Girl - Tongue Tied - Puzzles - Stare - Merry Go Round - She's Sorry - Femme Fatale - Cyclone - Seven - Give Me A Reason - Say Goodbye - (Encores: Pretty Identical - Leave Me Now).
   I recovered today, somehow. By about Tongue Tied my voice was back, and we were having a ridiculously fun time. It was like playing a party. everyone in the bar was standing and rocking out right nest to us. It sounded pretty good too. Hell there were even some people at the bar that actually got the joke that we put into the song Whether. We changed the breakdown in the third verse from the normal notey part to a Van Halen riff, and some dudes at the bar heard it and got it. Paolo told us so. They wouldn't let us stop playing so we had to do a few more songs to end out the night.
   After the show it was autograph city. Wayne was signing drumsticks, and we signed a ton of tour posters. It turned out to be a great night in merch, and we were all sweaty and smiling.
   Rod took us to a hotel for the night and we stayed up with some Jupiler watching the Stanley Cup finals, in French.

Day Sixteen: Friday, May 28, 2004.
Nancy, France.
"Shall we just get drunk?"

   Well sometimes touring doesn't always work out every night. Today's drive down to Nancy was the most exciting part of the day. Long story short there was no show this evening. After driving most of the day we rolled into Nancy and proceeded to drive all around town trying to find out where the club was we were playing. We figured out where it was, but because there was a big market in the middle of the area where the bar was, we couldn't figure out how to get to it, or where to park. Eventually I hopped out of the van and walked through the market to the place where the show was supposed to happen. They told us in broken English that we'd have to wait til 6 before we could get any van anywhere near the venue. No big deal, it was like 5:30. But the first indication that there was something amiss about tonight was the fact that there was no poster or anything advertising the show. We all split up and stayed near the market to meet up at 6ish to see what was going on. By chance Pete and Rita found an internet cafe and were checking mail when I ran into them. They didn't see it, but on the wall was a poster for the show, but it was advertising it at a different place than we were waiting to get into. Hmm. So, we asked the clerks at the cafe, and wouldn't you know it, they knew the promoter for our show, Simon. So they were kind enough to let us use their phone to try and reach him. I ran back to get Martine and tell her the problem. She went and got the number for Simon and we found out that the show was originally at one place, then moved to the second place, but then we were cancelled completely because there were already like 5 bands playing or something. He said he emailed us, but we did not get the email. The original bar/club apparently was being harassed into not doing bands by none other than Clear Channel. So basically the smaller shows about town were getting cancelled because of corporate pressure. Fucking assholes. Fuck Clear Channel. They are a parasite that needs to be destroyed. They are everywhere over just like at home. So Simon came down and met us at the cafe and felt bad enough to take us for dinner at a pizza place and put us up in a hotel for the night. But, Friday night was wasted. We could have stayed at De Nartist and then went to Germany on Saturday without worrying about coming all the way south to Nancy. We have had great luck on the tour with zero cancellations til now, so we still had a good ratio going. So we got three rooms at some hotel that had no bathrooms in the rooms, and we sat around all night. At least we could sleep.

Day Seventeen: Saturday, May 29, 2004:
Welmerskirchen, Germany, AJZ Bandamme
"Do you remember when two weeks felt like two years?"

   Day seventeen. The last day of tour. It was a long yet short ride this time around. Long and short? Well, we were frazzled and ready to go home, but we were surprised it was already the last day. It's a weird feeling to finally be on the last day of a long tour. There's a lot of feelings going on. We aren't the touring machine that a lot of bands are. We don't go out for months at a time. So tours to us are very special in their own way. It takes a lot effort for us to make trips and get the time to go out on the road. So when we actually are out there it's a pretty intense ride, whether good or bad.
   Welmerskirchen was a typical European town. The club we were playing at was set off in this little suburb neighborhood. It has been there for like 15 years or so. They have done just about every underground punk band you can think of.
   When we got into the club it was again nice to see a familiar face. Toto from Skin of Tears, a band we played with on the UK tour in 2000, was there waiting with open arms. Skin of Tears is from this town, and they were more than happy to put on the show this evening. And after getting in and seeing the place, this was by far the coolest club we had been to this tour. It was gonna be a good last night.
   They set us up with some amazing food for the night. We were playing with a band from Hamburg called Schrottgrenze and a band from Sweden called the Plastics. We had a great time sitting around and taking in the club and its history and talking with all the guys form the other bands. The Plastics had just been on tour with The Epoxies and NOFX in other parts of Europe. Everyone was having a great time, and it translated into the show as well. There was a great draw for the gig. Schrottgrenze was pretty popular in Germany, and a lot of kids came out to see them. They played second after the Plastics did a set of rock n' roll Kinksesque punk. The place was rocking. Sasha drove in from Belgium to take in more show as well.

Germany

   We got up third, and of course a lot of people left after Schrottgrenze, but, we soon got a lot of them back in as we played. Granted no one knew us at this club, so it was hard to make an impression like we did in the UK or in Belgium, but we played our hearts out knowing it was the last show. The set was long, and this is the only set I don't have. I can remember most of it. It was something like: Never Be The Same - Postcard - Radio Lied To Me - Annie Mae - Do You Know That Girl - Tongue Tied - Disappear - Pretty Identical - Merry Go Round - She's Sorry - Seven - Two Weeks - Whether - Teenage Dream - Whiskey Romance - Stare - Give Me A Reason - Femme Fatale - Leave Me Now. Encores:Listen To Me - Say Goodbye. we played a ton of songs. We even almost went out for a second encore but the music came, on and we were done. It was the longest set we played all tour, like an hour and 10 minutes or so. During the set some Germans were yelling some Swedish phrases at us thinking we were the Swedish band that played first. I cleared that up later. It was a fun night.
   We wanted to hangout and enjoy the last night, hell, we could have stayed the night there. They had rooms and beds for like 20 people. But, as it always is on the the last night. We had to motor back to Belgium. Some of us went with Sasha for the drive.
   We left and got to Martine's house at around 4 AM. We got cleaned up and headed to the airport around 8. The flight back home was at 11. This last part is all a blur. We hadn't slept since Friday night, and now we were on our way home. There was sporadic sleeping here and there, but nothing that really meant anything. Like, I fell asleep the minute I got on the plane, and then an hour and a half later, I woke up and asked Pete how long we had been flying only to hear him tell me we hadn't gotten off the runway cause of some delay. Figures. Long story short, two flights and about 44 hours awake. We landed in Cleveland at 7 pm (2 am Belgium time).