LUNA European Tour 1999 September 4 - October 7

Sheffield Glasgow Manchester Leicester London

What can I tell you about touring in England? We flew overnight from New York JFK to London Heathrow and drove on up to Sheffield, the first date. We all took a short nap and Sean and Lee were 15 minutes late for the lobby call. It was hot and humid at the Travelodge. I had sandwiches from a gas station for dinner.

In Glasgow we played at Kind Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, and I saw my friends Stephen and Katrina. Monday morning I walked around Glasgow, bought a couple of Patricia Highsmith novels, and some new socks at Marks and Spencer.

It was raining in Manchester. Some kids backstage offered us some “blow”, by which they meant weed. Strange. Back at the hotel Justin and I watched “Goodbye Columbus” on TV, with Richard Benjamin and Ali McGraw. I recommend it.

The less said about Leicester the better.

In London I bought a new toiletry bag at Boots, along with some nail clippers, and woollen cap at Paul Smith’s in Covent Garden. But it wasn’t hat weather. It was stinking hot at the Embassy Rooms where we performed -- a sold out club and no air conditioning. Sean and I performed a couple of accoustic tracks that afternoon at GLR, and Glen Campbell had been in there a few hours earlier. He has a new 2 CD set of his Capitol recordings which I recommend. After the show we went back to the Columbia Hotel and got drunk at the bar with our guitar tech Steven Joyce and Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine. Does it sound glamorous? It wasn’t.

The next morning we had to wake our crew members up, and came very close to missing our ferry to Holland, having departed late, hit traffic, and also because our rented minibus wouldn’t start. The ferry ride was kind of fun. They had a little movie theatre and I snuck in to “Entrapment” with Sean
Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I don’t recommend it. We arrived at the Hook of Holland and drove another 8 hours or so to Hamburg, where they didn’t have enough hotel rooms for us. I slept on the floor.September 11 - 20 Malmo Oslo Stockholm Copenhagen Hamburg Berlin Cologne Marburg Munich Bologna

10 shows in row, from the top of Europe to the bottom, without a day off.

Scandinavia was kind of fun. In Malmo I watched “Throw Momma From the Train” which I always enjoy. We played the KB club. One young fan (a boy) offered to have sex with me and Sean. Later he was thrown out of the club. Oslo is beautiful, reminds me of my hometown Wellington. A late night in Stockholm meant a long day travelling to Copenhagen, where we played the Loppen club in
the hippy hash smoking section of town.

Did you know that the German Autobahns are probably the slowest highways in Europe? Too many cars and trucks on the road now that Germany is smack in the middle of Europe (I know it always was, but now the traffic runs through Germany to the east). In Hamburg we did our laundry, in Berlin I went to the KaDeWe and bought a teddy bear, in Cologne I got a pair of Levi’s corduroys. Marburg is a little university town high on the hill, very quaint. In Munich I went out with my friend Armin from the Bartlebees, who are now defunct. By this time we are getting a little worn down. Justin and Lee and I decided to get out of the van and take a nice train trip down to Bologna. It was a good decision, as the other guys got stuck in traffic for four hours due to an accident. In Bologna we were playing the final night of a two week festival sponsored by the ex-communist party. The communists are of course very powerful in Bologna. We opened for the Selecter, yes the Selecter, as the rain poured down on the tent. Politely waited for the Selecter to take the stage before heading back to the hotel on the outskirts of town. Saw prostitutes along the side of the road, waiting with their car doors open -- it reminded me of Fellini’s “Nights of Cabiria”.

Lausanne Zurich

Finally a “day off” spent travelling to Switzerland. A spectacular drive through the Italian alps turned sour when we arrived at the Montblanc tunnel only to be told that it was closed due to the tragic fire that occurred there some months ago. We took “doubleback alley” (a detour) around the mountain
where we were detained about an hour at the border by Italian police who inspected our bags thoroughly and wanted to know all about my vitamins. After making it through, we descended into Switzerland but had to take a break when smoke started pouring off the van’s brakes.

Spent part of the next day getting the van fixed, and walking around Lausanne, which is a very pretty town. The gig itself was a little place in the basement of a cafe but I had a swell time.

Zurich was the new low point of the tour. The illegal “club” was the top floor of some guys’ house. They cooked us a big piece of roast pork for dinner. We got about 40 people there, went to our “hotel” at 2 a.m., the kind of place that prostitutes live, the kind of place where they don’t wash
the sheets and don’t give you towels. With the aid of a sleeping pill I was able to get to sleep.

Lyons Paris Nantes Bordeaux

The easy stretch of the tour is beginning, the food is improving and so are the crowds. In Lyons we played with Salaryman (formerly the Poster Children) who were excellent. I went shopping at the FNAC and bought a Michel Polnareff box set among other things (for those who don’t know Luna covered a Polnareff song on a compilation called Pop Romantique).

A day off in Paris spent walking, had lunch at the Cafe Deux Magots and dinner at the Cafe de l’Industrie in the Bastille. Sold out show at a new club in Paris called La Maroquinerie. In Bordeaux our tiny hotel rooms were decked out like little ship’s cabins, and we played in a tiny punk rock club
(punk like the toilets don’t work) but we had a good crowd and I enjoyed this show.

Bilbao Zaragoza Valencia Mallorca Barcelona Madrid

As we crossed the border between France and Spain soldiers opened our minibus and pointed automatic rifles at us. It seems that the ETA (Basque separatists) had recently stolen some dynamite.

We arrived in Bilbao in time to walk down to the magnificent new Guggenheim museum and peruse the Serra sculptures and a huge piece by Jenny Holzer, strips of poetry running floor to ceiling in moving lights. Bilbao itself was a pretty city, the opposite of what our guitar tech Stephen said, but he’s from Newcastle. We played in a great room called Cafe Antzokia and had our biggest crowd since London. After the show we went out drinking till about 4 a.m.

We are one of the few bands that goes to Mallorca. People in Spain always ask why -- it’s because they invite us there. The show was great, though the club was not, and our hotel was about 10 miles outside of Palma on the beach, a hotel catering to middle-aged German couples. They even had German beer gardens on the beach where you could sing German songs and drink German beer. Sean and Lee and I went out after the show -- Palma is thronged with people even at 6 in the morning of a Saturday night.

In Barcelona and Madrid we did shows with Stereolab. In Barcelona I bought a new can-opener, and we taped a special show for Barcelona TV with our friend Ignacio Julia. On the way to Madrid our minibus developed another problem -- the alternator was busted and we had to push the bus in order to start it. We ended up paying the Scott 4 to take our equipment back to London and left the bus in a Mercedes dealership. Sean and I went out with Jorge and others from our record company (Caroline Spain). A guy with a mod haircut a la Paul Weller kept insisting that I reminded him of Paul Weller, and Jorge kept bringing me bourbon and cokes, his favorite drink.