The Race is on Again

Berlin-Oldenburg June 18

After our north-north-east swing from Frankfurt to Leipzig to Berlin, it’s time to head west to Oldenburg. The day started with gear load in at the History of Colour TV’s rehearsal space.


Then it was onto the Autobahn for the 4+ hour drive. After three days of staying put in Berlin, the city-hopping now begins…mostly one night in each city until Copenhagen.

Loading up the History of Colour TV's van.

Again, a mostly uneventful drive westward. Construction and accident delays ate into our slack time, so we were a bit late getting to the radio station for Geoff and Jules to do the interview and a couple of songs on acoustic guitar. Polyester is located in the center of town, across from the museums, near to the pedestrian shopping area. The club doesn’t host that many live bands, about 1 or 2 per month we were told.

.......At a halt on the autobahn

Alex, the promoter for the show, is a very gracious guy. Made the show flyers, helped us with promo to get Geoff and Jules on local radio to play a couple of songs and talk up the show. He even put us up at his live-work space.

The work part of live-work was made plain when the people who work in the office where me and the 2 HoCT guys slept (me on a couch, with the best night of sleep I’ve had so far) came into their space at 10am to work. Clearly Alex had hosted many bands before, so they were used to seeing strange people on their couch and floor. They tolerated us being here for a couple of hours…even made us coffee.

We played to about 20-25 people. Mostly they appreciated what we did. We tried a variation on the set; less of the full-on drones - no Illuminate, Black & White or Duck and Cover. We ended with Little King, which provided a nice dreamy counterpoint to the power of Slowboat right before. Little King starts quiet and builds in dynamic...not so much a tempo change as a volume and intensity change. If we play it well, there's a moment..a surge...that takes over. I felt it in Oldenburg...I dug in deeper on the notes on the repeating outro pattern while Scott's tom-heavy part built up to a nice crescendo.

Anon, which went over well at the Hemlock in SF and Leipzig, fell flat tonight. I couldn't tell if the crowd wasn't into the drawn out mid-tempo parts of it or if we didn't play it as well as we could have. Sometimes you know if you messed up or if the crowd just isn't into what you're doing. Not sure where on that continuum Anon was tonight.

Oldenburg set list:
Mountain
Wired
Day 4 Night
Anon (I, II & IV)
Slowboat
Little King

We didn’t get to see Oldenburg at all…only a brief pre-soundcheck walk through the centrum, just the pedestrian mall parts of it. It took a bit of time to sort out where we’d be storing the gear so sleep didn’t come until after 3am. On a day that started at 10am. No surprise that we didn’t get on the road the next day until around 2pm.