2/5/08: I woke up at Matt Kadi's house at about 5:00am to go to San Francisco International Airport. We spent the majority of the previous night watching stupid You Tube videos and making a Dude Crew My Space page. I think I finally went to bed about 3:30am or so and got little to no sleep. I drove the van to the airport and was barley conscious for the entire drive. I honestly don’t remember driving until we got to the Bay Bridge toll plaza, pretty responsible of me considering I had the lives of 10 individuals in my hands. We got our tickets and through security with almost no problems and finally boarded the plain for Philadelphia and then for Brussels Belgium. Insert long boring plane ride here.
2/6/08: After two stupid movies, a dead I Pod Battery and 100 pages down on my new book, Into the Wild, we arrived in Brussels around 11am. We proceeded to wait for Benni to pick us up from the airport for about 4 hours. I passed the time by drinking at the Stella Artois bar with Jay and Phil. Finally, Benni came to pick us up and we drove through The Netherlands into Duisburg, Germany. We went to Shnoodles house from SS Kaliert and his dad made us Cheese Fondue and we drank wine and bullshitted until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. His Aunt was out of town and her house was right across the street, so we had mattresses set up and finally got some much needed sleep.
2/7/08: We woke up around 11 am and ate some breakfast. If you have ever been to Europe before, you already know that they have a strict diet of bread and cheese in the morning hours. This morning was no different, which was fine with me because I will eat anything that is free..and I do mean anything. Later we went to AMP studio and practiced our set. We had not practiced in about 4 weeks, so Nils thought it would be a good idea to record our practice. Let me just say that I hope that recording never sees the light of day. Later that night, we went to Mika’s bar in Duisburg. It was Benni’s 23rd Birthday so we had a huge party at the bar until about 3am. Our driver Bob met up with us and we left for Calais, France to take the Ferry over to England.
2/8/08: We got to the Ferry around 6:00am, we were all pretty drunk still so it made going through customs pretty interesting. I accidentally called a customs agent a Frog, but since I am a big bad American they let me through anyway. The ride across the English Channel was beautiful! The sun was starting to rise over the channel as we were getting on the ship. We took some touristy pictures and drank a couple ciders. All in all it took about 1 ½ hours to arrive at The White Cliffs of Dover in England. Once we got onto solid ground again, Bob drove us to Birmingham, England where Benni’s Grandmother lives. It turns out Benni’s Grandma is Ms. Doubtfire, we drank tea with her and ate Sheppard’s Pie like regular ‘ol chaps. I tried to catch a few Z’s on the floor in the living room but no such luck. Birmingham was our first show of the tour, and needless to say we were all very excited about playing in the UK. The show was above this cool bar in some weird industrial part of Birmingham. The promoter Paul, brought us some veggie sandwiches and a case of Carlsburg, pretty fucking awesome considering I had no pounds and there were no ATM’s around. The turn out was pretty good, maybe 50 people. Not too bad considering we have never played in the UK. We hung out for a little while then went back to Benni’s Grandma’s house to get sleep.
2/9/08: I woke up on a hard wood floor in between Phil and Matt, which is always a great start to your morning. We had some more tea and jam and all that other British stuff that they eat over there and got in the van to head for Scotland. I had never been to Scotland before so I was very excited about seeing some Kilts. It was cold and foggy the entire drive, very stereo-typical for the UK. To our surprise, most of the girls in Edinburgh were dressed like they were walking down Hollywood Blvd. It was really disappointing to see that the Paris Hilton look had made its way to Scotland. We finally arrived in the City Center and some how found the club, thank god for GPS. Lucky for us, the venue was right next to a rugby bar with a bunch of drunk Scotts hanging around outside. Benni was nervous about them but they seemed alright. I talked to a couple dudes and pretended like I knew a shit ton about rugby but I am sure they saw right through my lies. We walked up to the Edinburgh Castle and got an awesome look at the city. Edinburgh has to be one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. It is so old that it seems to have a certain aura to it. We walked around for a little while more, Jay bought some expensive Scottish Scotch which was delicious. There was a real good turn out for the show, people didn’t really move around but that seems to be typical of a lot of places across the pond. After the show we went to this Haunted Bar next door, it was supposedly the most haunted bar in Scotland or Europe or in the universe. The bartender explained to us why it was so haunted, but I can’t remember to save my life. After drinking with a few ghosts, we went to another show down the street for free. We drank and carried on for a few hours in this overly packed bar and acted like loud, obnoxious Americans, gotta rep the stereotype right? This was the night that I learned Scottish girls dig American accents, who knew? Finally around god knows what time we went to two separate houses to go to sleep. The guy we stayed with blasted his own bands record and sang the songs to us, super ridiculous. Finally, went to sleep later that week.
2/10/08: Matt, Benni, Bob and my self woke up pretty early and tried to find our way back to the van. Good thing they didn’t listen to me because it turns out I had no clue where we were. Once we found the van, we drove a little ways out of Edinburgh to this dude’s (can’t remember his name) Tattoo shop. Benni and Bob both got Euro Dude Crew Tattoos and Phil tattooed the shop owners face, hella hard. After spending too much time at the shop, we left for Sheffield, England. I don’t remember much of the drive because I was trying to sleep, but what I do remember is spending like 5 GBP on a fucking Burger King Value meal. That’s like 10 US Dollars, what a scam, the UK is way too expensive and our dollar is dropping at a stupid rate. Sheffield seemed very Americanized which is always a bummer. It’s a University town somewhere in the middle of England, we played not too far away from the city center and there was some huge Carnival/Chick slut off going on. All these girls were walking around in short skirts and this stupid white T-Shirt that gets you into all the clubs. It wasn’t warm outside either, it was freezing cold. The show in Sheffield had to have been the best show of the UK dates. Kids actually moved around for all the bands which was a nice change of pace. After the show, we stayed with this dude named Mattey. He was a nice guy but was completely out of his mind, in a fun way. He said he hadn’t been to bed in a few days but was down to take us out anyway. He bought us all cabs and took us to some University party in Sheffield. The vibe there was kind of odd, we were “asked to leave” after some events took place that I am not sure If I am at liberty to talk about over the internet. We ended up walking back to Mattey’s house which took about 8 ½ hours and got some shut eye.
2/11/08: We were all very excited on this day because we were supposed to be playing in the Camden area of London. There was a great big fire there a few days before so we weren’t really sure what to except. When we got to the show, the promoter Aisha was out side and told us that someone died and all the other bands cancelled at the last minute, but there was another show that threw us on at the last minute. Fuck, I hate it when that happens. I thought about it for a minute then decided that I was in London, playing a show and hanging out with some of my best friends in the world, so what did I have to complain about? Right? It’s this whole positive outlook crap I have been trying to do lately. The show was in a coffee house/bar with terrible sound and a mean bartender. Aisha took us down the street and bought us fish n’ chips which was awesome. Some of the dudes though the fish was gross, I however thought it was awesome and FREE!! The turn out was alright considering it was a Monday night in a huge city that we have never played before, at a show that we got thrown on last minute. You can’t expect too much in those situations, you just have to make the best of it. Looking back the show was still a lot of fun, more people showed up than I expected and some guys were getting wild. Tim from Distorted magazine stopped by to hang out with us and Kieran from The Restarts showed up and ended up hanging out with us until the wee hours of the morning. After the show, we crammed 15 people into a van that was made to hold 9 and went to the City Center to check out Big Ben and all that touristy stuff. We fit 5 or 6 naked dudes in a Red Phone booth, this was Bob’s initiation into the Dude Crew. We walked around for ever trying to find an open bar but we had no such luck. We ended up getting some ciders and going to Aisha’s flat to sleep. We stayed up way too late and talked about complete non-sense. She made us watch some stupid late night show and I incoherently argued that Conan O’Brien owned this dudes stupid face. Needless to say, winner of the Drunkest/Most Obnoxious American of the night goes to yours truly.
2/12/08: On this day we woke up super early to head back to mainland Europe. Our ferry left around 9:00am so we left London around 7:00am or some ungodly time like that. Everyone tried to get some sleep on the boat, while I was trying to sleep some guy won like 500 GBP on a slot machine, that dude was stoked. On this day Ultimate Justin asked me whether or not Continents are floating or if they go all the way to the bottom of the Ocean…Woooooow. We arrived back in France and had to drive to drive all the way to Belgium. This originally supposed to be a day off, so making an 8 hour trip to a Tuesday night show in a Country we have never played seemed like a terrible idea. The venue was a smokey bar with a small stage. The people at the venue cooked us delicious soup and some vegan pesto pasta. SOOOO good. The show ended up being insane. The entire bar was packed from the front to the back and people were going wild. We played with this awesome Crusty/Tragedy style band from Spain called Holocaust in Your Head and they killed it! They were awesome dudes as well, I tried to speak Spanish with them but turns out they only wanted to speak English. While we were all trying to take a picture together, some dudes came tumbling out of the front door. One guy got punched and fell right on top of his beer glass cutting his hand up something fierce, hella blood. We kicked it at the bar for a little while then went back to our sleeping place down the street. I talked with the Promoter Phil for a while about American Politics and then called it a night.
2/13/08: Woke up this morning with more sleep than I had got the entire tour. The drive to Dunkerque was only like 3 hours so we got to sleep in which was awesome. We wondered around Liege for a little while. I had some really good French fries, excuse me..I mean Freedom Fries. We drove to Dunkerque which is in France right on the Belgian/French boarder along the English Channel. Our GPS lead us into this shopping mall with a Virgin Mega Store, for a minute we though we were playing at the store which non of us were stoked on. Finally, a couple dudes come running across the parking lot and point to this barge/boat thing parked in the harbor next to the mall. The venue was on a boat!! We went down stairs and they instantly started pouring us beers and giving us shots of whiskey. It was freezing cold so the whiskey was much appreciated. I guess we were the first American band to play at this club so they rolled out the red carpet for us. The people at the venue cooked so much food for us I didn’t think I was going to be able to play later. The show was a packed house on the barge. While the first band was playing I was sitting at the merch table, I glanced up at the door and who do I see?? Scott Barrett!! I knew he was going to be traveling around Europe but I had no idea he was going to roll to this show. It was awesome to see a familiar face. The show was radical except for the fact my guitar strap that I have owned since I was 15 snapped mid set. We played 2 encores which is always good for the ego. The last song we played was Dirt (I think), but while we were playing some chick got on Matt’s lap and stayed there for the whole song. What a guy, he played an entire (fast) song with a hot babe on his lap. I truly look up to Matthew Andrew Kadi now. After the show we hung around on the boat and chopped it up with the locals. I think I invited every girl in the place to come back to the party spot to hang out and not one of them came haha. The promoter, Swan, took us to his buddies house and we partied until real late. This girl gave me a free hat that made me look like Mickey from Snatch. The guys let Scott stay with us too, good for me because I got to hang out with him and even better for Scott because he got a free place to stay. Something that is always good while you are traveling solo. I finally went to bed in a garage with a huge mattress.
2/14/08: Woke up and Swan took us back to the venue for breakfast. The people in Dunkerque were way too nice, you can say what you want about the French, but my experiences in France have always been positive. The people there are extremely welcoming and extremely hospitable. We reluctantly left Dunkerque and drove a few hours to Paris for our next show. The first time I was in Paris I didn’t really like it that much, but when we got there this time I was actually glad to be back. The venue was this small squat (I guess) with no heat. France is fucking cold in the winter. We hung out for a while at the venue, I went next door and called my Mom for the first time. After the call shop, I tried to fix my guitar strap. It took a lot longer than it should have because the only tool I had was a set of needle nose pliers and some duck tape. The first two bands of the show were awesome. Scott took the train and met us at this show as well, what a rad dude Scott is. By the time we went on stage this small room was PACKED wall to wall. The show in Paris had to be one of the craziest Monster Squad shows I have ever played. My experience in Europe is that the kids don’t move around like they do in the States, but Paris proved me wrong. The show was wild with kids singing along and people getting hella hyphy. After the show we hung around and talked with some local peeps. I met two different girls from San Francisco, pretty crazy. One girl, Rachel and I talked about Mission St. Burritos for a while and by the end of that conversation I was willing to kill everyone in the room for some Mexican food. I got into it with some drunk asshole who kept saying, “Fuck America.” I don’t care when people talk shit about the US or about Bush because he is a fucking idiot. However, this guy kept saying, “Fuck Americans and Fuck You.” That sent me over the edge a little bit and his friends pulled him away before he got an American sized ass whoopin. I guess he didn't get the memo that it's my job as an American to be the drunk obnoxious dick. We finally left the venue and went to the Eiffel Tower at like 3 am. We took some funny pictures and walked around for a bit. After being stupid tourists, we went to our Hotel that the promoter bought for us. I finally took a shower after like 6 days or something like that and went to sleep on a top bunk.
2/15/08: We left pretty early because we had a long drive to Düsseldorf. This was our first show of our tour with Antidote and Gewapend Beton. We were all super excited to finally meet these Dutch dudes. We had been listening to the Gewapend Beton CD all tour and I couldn’t wait to finally see them. On our way out of France we got pulled over by two customs/border agents on Motorcycles. It was pretty funny because Phil was sleeping in the back of the Van with the gear, so we pretended that he wasn’t there. The dick head cops or whatever they were, started to go through my back pack for no reason. I started to get pissed off until the Germans in the van told me to chill. I guess that’s how they do things over there. One of the agents opened the back of the van and found Phil trying to hide. To his credit, the Frog Cop was pretty cool about that, they just wanted to make sure Phil was ok. I guess if that happened when we got to Germany Bob would have lost his driver’s license. Little did we know that was the 1st of many times that we were going to get pulled over on our voyage across Europe. After hours of driving we arrived in Duisburg where Benni and Bob live. Some of the guys did some laundry and ran other errands that needed to be done. I ate a delicious Donner Kebab which I tried to order in German from a Hot Frauline. We got to the venue and to our surprise we were the first band there, anyone who is familiar with us knows what a rarity that was. We loaded our merch and gear in which was difficult because the place was already packed. The venue reminded me a lot of Gilman St because the way the venue was set up and the DIY vibe going on. Finally the Antidote and Gewapend Beton guys arrived and the show started. Gewapend Beton was fucking awesome! They are young guys, 19 or 20 years old and they all shred at their instruments. We had all heard that they played tight and they did not let any of us down. They even played “Sailin’ On” by the Bad Brains for good messure. By the time we took the stage the show was sold out. I’m not sure how many people there actually were but my guess would be around 400? We played alright but we had a lot of technical problems. The screw that holds my strap lock in fell out, luckily Benni was there with some duct tape to make a quick fix. I can’t remember exactly what else went down but I know something else crapped out on us. The sound on stage sucked but everyone else said it sounded good from the floor. Nils and his brother filmed our entire set which I can’t wait to see. Antidote played after us and also killed it, the crowed went nuts for them. After the show we hung around the venue and acted like little kids. I chipped my front tooth again and I think I swallowed glass after someone slammed their beer bottle onto mine. It was a good night. We went to Benni’s friends house in Ruhpurt ( I think) and tried to go to sleep. Matt, Phil and I slept on the floor which was made out of tack board, not comfortable at all. In my sleepy/hungry daze, I could have sworn that Sarah walked in with the room a tray of sandwiches, big let down when I found out that there was no tray and definitely no sandwiches.
2/16/08: After getting no sleep on a hard ass floor, we woke up and drank some tea and headed out for Zurich. I was very excited about going to Zurich again, when we played there last year it was probably our best show. The Dynamo is an awesome club. There is always a dance party after the show, the sound is great and Matt from T.S.O.R always takes real good care of us. When we arrived Matt took all the bands out to Millennium Burger and we ate way too much food. The show was even better than last year. There were tons of people at the show and just an all around good vibe. It was only our 2nd show with Gewapend Beton, but by this point I already hated playing after them. They are an amazing live band and sound so full for a 4 piece. We played 3rd on this night and it was great. Kids went nuts for us and the place was packed. Schappie, who I met last year when he was driving for The Obtrusive was there. My friend Noemie showed up later in the night which was radical, she missed us play our set but made it in time for us to have a wicked dance party. We danced and partied until about 4 or 5 am, I think at one point Matt and myself had like 9 girls dancing all around us. Oh yea. We finally went to sleep in a room across the street which had all 18 people in it. I slept for maybe an hour, I think.
2/17/08: Woke up earlier than I wanted because there were 10 guys speaking DUTCH to each other and not using their 10 inch voices. We left all our merch and gear in the venue so we had to load it in the morning. It always seems like a good idea at night, but I always regret making such a stupid decision. We went back to Millennium Burger for breakfast and I had a healthy meal of Hamburgers. The show on this night was in Karlsurhe, so once again we got into the van and drove. We got to Maze’s house early where he cooked us some delicious pork roast and salad. We played foosball for a while and then went to the show. The venue was in this crazy industrial area, it looked like a place in Mobster movies where they take the bodies to be hacked up and disposed of. Turns out I wasn’t that far off because the name of the Bar was called “Alte Hackerei” which translates into the Hackery or something. Anyway, the logo on the bar was a bloody cleaver, pretty rad if you ask me. The show was alright, probably my least favorite show of the tour. The place was real small and no one really seemed to be into the music. My good buddy Stepke from The Obtrusive came to hang out. It was really great to see him because he is a genuinely awesome guy. I wasn’t feeling all that well this night so I took it easy on the partying. We went back to Maze’s place and I went to sleep while the other two bands partied and carried on. I figured one night of not hanging out would not kill me.
2/18/08: I woke up still feeling shitty. I got everyone to get to the van early so we could go to Dachau Concentration Camp about 30 kms out side of Munich. We drove right past it last year and I swore to myself I wouldn’t miss it again. Now, Monster Squad has this stupid system for calling seats in the van. I don’t like it but I was born into this system so I am forced to play by its rules. I wasn’t feeling good and yet some how I had to ride in the front middle which is the most uncomfortable seat on the planet. Needless to say for the 1st half of the day I was a Class 1 Grade A Bad Mood Dude, so I put my head phones on and ignored everyone for a couple of hours. Once we got to the town of Dachau, I got butterflies in my stomach. I am pretty sure we all had them, there was an eerie feeling in the air driving through a town that allowed these atrocities to go on during the 2nd World War. But being the HUGE WW2 History dork that I am, I needed to see it for myself. As luck would have it, the camp is closed on Monday’s. I was pretty bummed but it was still chilling just to see an actually concentration camp with my own eyes, maybe it was for the best that we didn’t go inside. After revisiting the war, we drove into Munich, or Munchen as the Germans call it. Last time we played Munich, we played at the same place. It is an area set up with 3 or 4 different venues. Last time we played the big one, this time we played the smaller venue. Last year, they had a skate ramp set up but for some reason it was torn down. Munich marked the 1st day of our Chili campaign; we seriously ate chili every night for the next 5 nights. Not that we were ungrateful, all the chili was delicious and I love free food. It was just funny eating chili that many nights in a row. Our friend Brille was the promoter for this show, he is an awesome dude and owns his own beer company called Pogoraushe. The beer rules and we get to drink as much of it as we want. This year Brille had Absinthe added to the Pogoraushe line up. He was walking around just handing out samples to us, it actually helped my flem and my cough that I had going on. The venue was a lot smaller than last time, but the place was packed. The final head count was over 100 people which was amazing considering that Anti Flag was playing on the same night somewhere in Munich. My buddy Mark was doing sound and it was great to get to hang out with him for a little while. He was even playing Modern Life Is War over the PA when we got there. Gewapend Beton played 1st and shredded like always. We played 2nd because the 3rd band (Angry Youth) was local and it was their record release show. I had a rough night with gear again. I was using Bart from Antidote’s head but it kept shorting out, so I switched to another head which was also shorting out. The place was tiny and drunk people kept flying into me and knocking over my microphone stand. The combination of all of this and being sick almost caused me to throw my guitar across the room. Benni, my savior, came with the head I had been using and saved my guitar from total inhalation. Looking back, the show was great fun even if there were a few very minor set backs. After we played, I was feeling even worst than before, so I climbed in the back of the van and tried to sleep. I missed Antidote and Angry Youth play but I am sure they were awesome as usual. We loaded up and some of us went to go sleep while some stayed to party. I went to go get some rest and hopefully I would feel better in the morning. I slept on a leather sofa in my radical sleeping bag I bought before tour. I am 100% happy with that purchase.
2/19/08: When I woke up, I felt about 100% better than the previous two days. The only problem was that now Justin was deathly sick. No good. We had some breakfast and drove back to the Venue to get Matt, Bob and Phil who had stayed with Brille. We all got into the van and headed for Ljubljana in Slovenia. Now, I was super excited about going to Slovenia. I love going to new countries and never in my life did I think I would visit an Ex-Yugoslavian country. It took us for ever to get from Munich to Ljubljana. We had to travel through the Alps which took a lot longer than we anticipated. Once we finally got to Ljubljana, it was dark so we really couldn’t see too much of the city. I did notice that it was very ex communist looking; IE: lots of tall block apartment buildings. We got to the venue and it was in some kind of weird art/music complex (that’s the best I can describe it). The club was pretty cool. It had big stage which was actually a nice change. After playing on tiny stages for a few days it was nice to play on a stage that I wouldn’t have to duck flying microphones. The promoter cooked us Chili, the second night of Chili fest 2008. She then told us that the show was going to start at 11:00pm. At first I was surprised, but then I remembered that we were in the east, home of the LATE shows. I was finally feeling better so I decided to have some Slovenian beer, which was delicious. To my surprise, almost everyone in Slovenia spoke perfect English. France should take a lesson. This was another great show with a lot of people who showed up. There were actually 4 or 5 guys who traveled all the way from Croatia to come to the show. I am pretty sure the club had just bought new sound equipment that day, because the sound guy checked the kick drum for literally 15 minutes, then the snare for 15 minutes. Then, you guessed it, the floor tom for 15 minutes, pretty amusing. There were only 3 bands tonight which I love especially when the show starts at 11. We had a pretty good set, the only shitty thing is Justin was feeling like crap. Poor dude stood in the back of the stage trying not to vomit everywhere. When the show was over he went right back to sleep in the upstairs sleeping spot. The rest of us hung around and kicked it with the good people of Slovenia. Everyone was really nice and overall I would say all the Americans had a good time. Girls in the Eastern bloc are hot, there is no way getting around that. I talked to a few girls, then decided it was time to go to bed. Matthew and I shared a twin bed on the top bunk, I woke in the night to get some water and smashed my head on the ceiling. Justin woke us up all in the night and started vomiting violently. I was actually glad to see he was only vomiting because I was certain he was going head first down the stairs.
2/20/08: Woke up at the venue from the previous night and we were locked in the club. We helped our selves to some tea and coffee that were sitting out and waited for the promoter to come back to let us out and bring us food. I ate the shit out of some bread and cheese and then we headed for Vienna. The drive wasn’t very far but it took us for ever to get to Austria. We had to drive over the mountains again on a very windy, one lane highway. Slovenia is really a beautiful country, I was glad I got to see some of it during the day time. On this trip we got “randomly” pulled over not once, but twice in Austria. Probably had something to do with the giant “Dude Crew” on the hood of our van. We also had to stop and pull over because Justin had to puke, which made all of us feel bad. We arrived to the Arena late, as usual, thanks to the great border patrol guards of Austria. Marious was the promoter for this show which was awesome because that dude rules. It is always great to see friends from our first tour. We ate chili and drank some beers while Justin slept in the van. The Arena is another place with 4 different venues. Last year when we were there, I tried to sneak into a sold out show to watch Another Breath from New York play but got booted two or three times. This time we watched some crazy Japanese girl band play in the bar. Interesting music, I couldn’t stand to be in there for more than 5 minutes. Later in the evening, Matthew came and grabbed Phil and Me to show us something very important. Turns out, the important “thing” that he needed to show us was the biggest crap I have ever seen that came out of a human. It was honestly, the size of my forearm, from my wrist to my elbow and the same circumference, in one piece. Absolutely amazing! This night will forever go down in Monster Squad history. 5 minutes before we were supposed to play, Benni comes in and says there is no way Justin is going to be able to play. He was too sick and was shaking outside when he woke him up. Fuck. I grabbed the bass and headed on stage to practice a few songs before we were supposed to play. The place was packed, and I suuuuuucked so bad that I feel I owe every bass player in the world a free punch in my face for making a mockery of their instrument. We explained to the crowed what was going on and they seemed to be enjoying it anyway. The kids were going nuts which was great for me because I was fucking up left and right. I will never call the bass a “Stupid Man’s Guitar” ever again. Mid way through the set Jay and I switched and he played bass on a few songs. Definitely a good move because he wrote a lot of the bass lines and did a way better job than I did. We only played like 10 songs and the crowd kept asking us to play more but we just couldn’t do it with out the Ultimate one. After the show I was pretty bummed with my performance so I decided to get hammered drunk and forget it ever happened. Everyone was real nice and said I did a good job for such a short notice and that the band did the best they good in a bummer situation, but I am sure they were just being nice. Once Antidote finished their set, most people went to Fritsi’s house to get some sleep, but Phil, Matt, Bob and I stayed and partied with the Gewapend Beton and Antidote dudes who were staying at the Arena. Matt and I stayed up way to late and crashed up stairs with the tall Netherlanders. All in all Vienna ruled, again.
2/21/08:
Woke up really early to Bob waking Matt and myself up to take us back to Fritsi’s flat where everyone else was sleeping. We kicked it around there for a little while then went into the city to get some Schnitzel. I didn’t get any schnitzel, but I did buy some socks from a store because I was out of clean ones. Justin was feeling a lot better which made me happy. After we spent too much time fucking around in Vienna, we got on the road and headed to Brno, Czech Republic. We were all very excited about seeing our good friend Martino. Martino put us up last year in the Czech Republic for like 3 days because we had a show get cancelled. He is with out a doubt, one of the coolest/nicest people I have ever met. It was also his birthday so we were going to rage!! We got to the club and started the load in process. We played a different club last year, and this time the club was HUGE! I thought there was no way we were ever going to fill that space, but some how enough people showed up and the venue was packed. The Mad Pigs guys made us Schnitzel and gave us tons of free beer, god I love Schnitzel. Mad Pigs opened up the show and were bad ass! Gewapend Beton played 2nd and like always, they were amazing. We played 3rd and had a great crowd response. Everyone’s voice was gone except for Phil and Me, so Benni the tour manager from heaven sang back ups with me. We played a long/hot set and did a couple encores. The Faval Club had great sound especially for the size of the place. Even the sound on stage was great, which is really hard to find on big stages. Antidote headlined and killed it like always. They had a great crowd reaction in Brno. After the show we hung around the venue bar and proceeded to get annihilated. We got to hang out with a lot of people that were at our Czech shows last year, and they ALL bought us drinks. I think I pissed off Bob at the end of the night because he wanted to leave and some of us were having too much fun and did not want to leave. Finally, we left. Phil tried to throw a glass out of the window and smashed it all over the inside of the van. We stayed in a Hotel because Martino couldn’t fit 18 people in his house, understandable. I had a very interesting experience at the Hotel that I once again, can not explain over the internet. So, let’s just say I took a shower and went to sleep.
2/22/08: We woke up pretty early and tried to find this Dr. that Martino was going to hook us up with. By now, there were about 4 or 5 people who were relatively sick in the van and they wanted to get some medicine. We finally found it and she was very helpful to the sick Americans and Germans. She even took us to a pharmacy and got the correct medicine. After a while, we finally got back on the road to head into Germany. We were all bummed to be leaving the Czech Republic and we were all bummed that we were going to miss The Obtrusive play at the 1st day of Punk and Disorderly. On our way to Erlangen, we got pulled over….again. This time was a little different. The cops made us follow them all the way to this small town, then drive through the town to an empty garage/warehouse. I will be honest it was kind of creepy and none of the cops spoke English. Benni said they were going to search our entire van for drugs and other contraband. He said that this usually takes two hours and we might miss the show. In classic MS fashion, we started fucking around and telling jokes, doing push ups and jumping jacks. The cops could obviously tell that we weren’t nervous about them searching our van. We didn’t have anything in there anyway, but Benni said if they found anything at all that resembled drug paraphernalia, we would have gotten cavity searches. Now, I have made it almost 24 years with out having a cop’s finger up my butt, and I really didn’t want to break the streak in Bavaria. Luckily, they let us go with out too much head ache. However, it did make me re-evaluate my stance on Germany as a whole. We got to the show late, but Brille was there and had all kinds of Absinthe and beer whiskey for us to drink. The club ended our Chili campaign and cooked us some awesome vegetarian Thai Curry that rocked hard. This was our 17th show in 17 days and it was also our last show with the Antidotes and The Gewapend Betons. We were all really bummed because all of us were all having a real good time together and I really enjoyed watching both bands every night. The guys in Antidote wanted a break from playing last so we head lined at this show. The show was packed, again. It was another small bar/venue and all the bands had a good crowd reaction. After the show we took a bunch of group pictures and said good bye to our Dutch friends until Sunday at Punk and Disorderly. We stayed in separate houses again, I can’t remember the guy’s name we stayed with but he was super nice and had a rad apartment. I felt kind of bad because it seemed like he wanted to stay up and party, but I feel asleep before my head could hit the pillow.
2/23/08: We left early so we could get to Berlin early. We were one of the 1st bands to play at Punk and Disorderly so we had to get there earlier than most of the shows. On the way to Berlin, Brille called and said he couldn’t make it to the festival because he got arrested the night before for fighting with Nazi’s at a train station. Fucking Nazi’s, I wish all of them would just kill them selves already. Shortly after the bummer Brille call, we pulled over to pee at a rest stop. When we got back into the van it wouldn’t start. The stupid van had been giving us nothing but problems since we had gotten it. We all tried to jump start the van by doing the classic “pop the clutch” technique, it didn’t work. We all started to panic and thought we were stuck there and we would miss the festival. Jay tried to start the van again and for some reason it started up. We jumped back in the van and we were not going to stop until we got to the festival. We got to Berlin like an hour later and drove through the city. I have been to Berlin twice before but this drive made me realize how big it really is. We got to the venue, got our passes and drink tickets and all that stuff. The festival was catered for the bands, I had some pork with potatoes and bacon and it was delicious. About 5pm the doors opened and people started to trickle in. We were playing 4th in the night, 2nd on the small stage. We were worried that there weren’t going to be many people by the time we played but Benni assured us that it would be packed. We hung out with a bunch of our friends that came out to see us, and I finally got to see Igel. I love this man and would consider moving to Germany to be hetero life mates with him. We went on about 6:30 or 7, I think. There were two stages set up, a Main Stage and a Small stage. The blood played an acoustic set on the main stage before us and it was awesome. We started our set right as they finished and people worked their way over to the small stage. The place was full of people, probably about 1000 people I would guess. The sound on stage sucked so fucking bad I wanted to punch the sound guy in the face for being retarded. They had equipment for all the bands to use, and I got to use a JCM 800 which I would normally have been stoked on. My guitar kept feeding back and the head was barely on, it must have had something to do with the way they had it mic’d up because it happened to the band after us too. Anyway, this was possibly our last show as a band which made me kind of nervous before we played. I think we played pretty well, the sound was huge out front and Phil was the only singer of the whole festival to jump down into the barrier and in the crowd. OHL was playing after us and they couldn’t find their singer, so we got to play an extra two songs. I think we were the only band on the Festival who was allowed to play longer than 30 minutes. After our set we all decided it was time to party. I was kind of sad that it was possibly the last Monster Squad show ever but we had a great time on this tour and we couldn’t have asked for it to be better. We drank and hung out with friends all night. My friend Rachel who I met in Paris ended up being at the show and we kicked it all night. SS Kaliert played later in the night and they tore it up. Other bands that played that were sick goes as follows: The Threats, 4 Skins, The Varukers and the Partisans. I took full advantage of my back stage pass and watched every band from the side stage. Another awesome event that took place is when Matt and I taught Martino to say, “Yo Dog, I am gettin hella hyphy in this piece.” After the festival, we went to a Hostel that MAD Booking bought for the bands. We got there at 3:00 am and we were not quiet by any means. I work in a Hostel and if we came at 3:00am I would have had the worst night of my life. I went up to the room I was staying in and it instantly got destroyed. Somehow the locker got smashed with 30 seconds of us being there. We were jumping on the beds and we got two noise complaints in 10 minutes. We got a final warning that if someone had to come up again we would get kicked out. At my work we would have for sure gotten tossed on our asses. I put my mattress on the floor because the top bunk was going to break and fall on me in my sleep. Finally, we went to sleep after probably waking up every guest in the Hostel.
2/24/08: For some reason I woke up early on this day and went down and ate some free breakfast at the Hostel. Immediately following I went up stairs and went back to sleep until about 2:00pm. Apparently, everyone else went to try and go get some Mexican food. So Phil and I kicked it around the Hostel. The girl at the front desk tried to tell us how to get to some part of Berlin that had cool shops or something. Phil and I got lost and decided to buy beer at a gas station insted. We drank beer and watched a football match in the lobby until everyone else showed up. Turns out they all wanted to go to sleep except for Benni and Bob. So we met up with them and Matt who stayed the night somewhere else and went to go meet up with some Germans. We took the subway down to some part of Berlin to meet up with Alex and some other people. We went to some bar and had a couple of drinks. I really wanted to go to the 3rd night of Punk and Disorderly early to watch Gewapend Beton play one more time, but of coarse we missed them play. Oh well, hopefully they will come to the US real soon and blow up. We got there as The Forgotten was playing, I saw my friend Rachel again and kicked it with her the majority of the night. We hung out with our Euro friends again for a lot of the night and got most of our drinks for free. Antidote played on the small stage and played fucking amazing! Finally, the last band of the night was about to play but none of us had heard of the name before. They came out and started playing and they sounded unbelievable. It took us a couple songs to figure out that it was THE FUCKING SPECIALS playing under a different name. They were by far the best sounding band of the entire festival and it was an amazing way to end our European tour. After the show ended we said goodbye to all of our friends that were still around and we took a couple taxis back to the Hostel. I hung around outside for a while and talked to some funny English students and went to sleep for a couple of hours. I tried to stay awake all night so I could sleep better on the airplane but I had to call it a night around 3 or 4am.
2/25/08: I don’t remember what time I woke up but all I know is that it was early and abruptly. We grabbed our bags and headed out for Tegel Airport in Berlin. It was funny that this was the only day we had actual rain on the entire tour. It took us forever to get across town in rush hour traffic but we made it. I really wasn’t 100% which airport we were flying out of but I ended up guessing right. We said farewell to Bob and Benni, got our tickets, and headed for our terminal. Little did we know that this day would be the longest day of air travel since the invention of the Airplane. We first flew to Munich, our plane from Munich to Philadelphia was delayed by about an hour causing us to miss our flight back home to San Francisco. We went through customs in Philly and Phil got randomly searched. Phil was the only one who had the bag with all the booze that we were trying to sneak back in the US. I think all together, there was 4 bottles of Absinthe that he had to pour out in front of the customs officials. Once we realized that we missed our flight we had to wait about 3 hours until we could fly to Las Vegas. To pass the time I ate a Philly Cheese Steak the size of Metropolitan Philadelphia and it was delicious. We flew from Philly to Las Vegas and I slept the majority of the time. 5 hours later we arrived in Vegas to find our flight to SF was delayed by 3 hours. We went to customer service and got our flights transferred to Oakland and finally arrived in Oakland around 2:00 am. My brother and my roommate were nice enough to pick me up and I finally went home and slept about 5am. A shitty end to an unbelievable tour.
