The week leading up to Oneida’s flight to Rome and Italy and Europe was typically overbooked. We rehearsed on Monday and then I played electronic drums with Jah Division – a band that does instrumental dub versions of Joy Division songs. Our set started at 12:30am at Sine-E and there were probably 7 people there. This included the indefatigable Joly of Better Badges, Punkcast and Pinstore who told me he thought that there’d be plenty of pretty girls in Italy. I was hopeful.

The nights that led up to our day of departure were filled with chaos. Con Ed finally discovered they weren’t getting paid. Turns out I’d been delinquent for a year. Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) I had failed to notice that the Con Ed bills had stopped coming when my roommate moved out a year ago.

I woke up early on Saturday morning and called an exasperated Con Ed rep and took responsibility for an entire year of usage.

"So what can I expect now?" I asked, subtly trying to gauge the size of my debt.

"You can expect to receive a bill."

J.C. (aka Drunk Dog) from our label Jagjaguwar, flew into NYC on Thursday evening. He was joining us to take care of selling merch, tour manage and generally baby sit while we behaved irresponsibly overseas.

We headed to Katz’s for pastrami sandwiches and then took in some rock from Televised Execution and Now We Are Louder. After the show, Jane, J.C. and I decided to head over to the old Brownies, now called Hi-Fi for one last drink. Justin from the Panthers was tending bar and I learned they would be in the UK around the same time as us. In my drunkenness I insisted that we would "party" together in London. This is not something I tend to say to people – perhaps it can be written off as a side effect of the stress I was under at the time. The ten beers of stress made me want to "party" with a stranger in London. Perhaps I was entering tour mode.

In bed by around 4am and up at 8:30 for my last day at work, I suppose I was. I spent my final day in my straight life tying up loose ends and imagining a life without the grind.

Bobby, J.C. and I hung out that evening. Fat Bobby and I ran through our set and then went back to his place to listen to some records. We got ready for the first leg of the trip with a jam from 1980 by an Italian disco band called Tantra – 16 minutes of disco kraut. Nobody in Italy seems to have heard of this band, even though Can, Faust and Neu are tossed around incessantly.

We smoked the last of my weed and went out to Pianos to see my favorite New York band of the moment, The Broke Revue, play some rock. Then we headed over to see Fitz DJ at Lit and got home again at 4am.

I still hadn’t packed by the time I woke up the next morning and went to Tom’s Diner to witness some internal strife amongst the staff. There’s some serious territorial friction between the inside restaurant staff and the "outside" addition.

"Watch your back," warned one waiter to another.

I got an egg cream.

I have to admit that as our departure time approached I had barely thought about the tour. My last trip to Italy had been truly monumental – and when I was describing it to the Italians I would meet on this trip I found myself overcome with emotion. If culture is the unconscious shared assumptions of a community then Italy’s illuminated the paucity of my own. Good food, great architecture, beautiful girls with impeccable posture on scooters. . . you know – CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS.

I threw together the cleans I had and was basically packed.

So our trip began – at about noon on Saturday the die was cast. On the way to the airport I was promised that two Italian women would pick us up and drive us to the hostel – visions of a day at the sea shore with two Italian Fiorellas gave way to a mundane traffic jam on the way to JFK and a couple of hours at the airport. Issues of US Weekly, Rolling Stone, Spin, Mojo and Blender were purchased for the ride and I buried myself into their star charts. I think I need to meet that Kirsten Dunst person. She seems really nice.

The American Airlines flight was full and kind of disorganized – Bobby and Jane had no auxiliary power and had to sit in the dark for the entire flight while Analyze That and Spy Kids 2 held their silent court over our lives. My headphones were appropriately feeding back into my cranium so I managed to get some restless sleep by pulling a blanket over my head.

We arrived in Roma at 8:30am and in the cue-less architecture of airports Bobby and I weren’t ready to believe that we had actually left JFK. Perhaps it was just a hidden terminal.

It was the beginning of a strange and endless day that ended in a 24-hour bar at about 4am. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As we walked through the anti-septic customs hallway we made the split second decision to declare our instruments. I had the immediate sense that we had committed a fatal error in judgment; that declaring anything to the morass of Italian bureaucracy would send us spiraling into a maze from which it would take days to extricate ourselves.

"Do you have papers?" words to die by.

"No," Jane replied.

The plain clothed customs officials huddled amongst themselves as the potentialities of our situation began to parade themselves through my mind. Italian police, searches, misunderstandings – all because we had decided to be "good" and declare our instruments.

The English speaking official waved us on with what seemed to be regret in his eyes, or perhaps it was just mercy. He turned to his partners and slapped his two forefingers to the inside of his elbow – a gesture later translated to mean "boring" and "junkies". As long as the junkies weren’t smuggling American cheese into the country – we’d be OK.

The two Italian "women" who came to pick us up were actually a guy named Simona and a woman named Manuela. They were more tired than we were since it was Sunday and they had basically just gone to bed.

On the drive to our hostel Manuela explained that Roma was "very stress" and expensive. The traffic was terrible and the music was worse.

When asked about a billboard announcing the new album of what seemed to be an Italian superstar she said, "I do not like Italian songwriting."

The approach to Roma was stop and go. Italian driving seemed to be "impressionistic" as Bobby put it. Rules were fluid and open to interpretation – it was up to you to avoid accidents, the onus wasn’t on the aggressive driver to behave responsibly. Manuela had only recently recovered from a terrible car accident and we witnessed one the next day as we sat drinking espresso at an outdoor café. Cars in Italy are mostly miniature – a sensible size for the crowded ancient streets of Roma – the most recent and extreme example being the Smart Car – a vehicle so compact, one doesn’t need a proper license to drive one. Manuela and Simona’s vehicles were both very small but typical for the city.

Parking follows the same pattern as the driving. Cars are piled up on sidewalks, at intersections, and crammed into every possible space. There are the occasional street sign or warning but I never saw one followed. There is also not really a "proper" way to park – it’s not a concern if the backend of your car sticks out into oncoming traffic. This was exhibited when Manuela parked in front of our Salvation Army Hostel near the Roma Central Train Station. She threw the car into a space too small and hopped out the passenger side. An earlier attempted break in had rendered the driver’s door inoperable.

The hostel was impeccably clean and full of bright sunlight. We stowed our bags, got a sense of where we were on a map, said goodbye to Simona and Manuela and then ventured out on our own to find some coffee and see the sights. It was about 10:30am. We weren’t playing a show until Monday evening – so this was our one free day to take in Rome.

Our first stop – the local bar. But in Italy, a bar is more of a café: a place to get light food, coffee and drinks. I needed coffee.

After some awkwardness outside a bar that was full, we wandered to the next place on an empty square near the university. Sundays are quiet in Roma – most places are closed, but Bobby – who had a very small grasp of Italian stepped up to the rakish man behind the counter and asked for "una espresso per fevore" (excuse my transliteration). I quickly followed suit despite my need for a triple but it was fine for the moment – I had successfully navigated the first language task placed in front of me.

J.C. then ordered a cappuccino with success – so Jane, emboldened by our achievements asked for a "latte".

"Just a latte?" came the Italian reply.

"Um, yes."

"Hot or cold?" Bobby translated for Jane.

Jane paused for a split second and asked for it hot. In my dazed state of jet lag I didn’t really take in the exchange with any clarity until Jane was presented with a hot cup of milk.

"Latte" means milk in Italian.

We had our first language casualty.

But Jane took it in stride and with good humor.

Language barrier weathered, we started into the center of Roma to see the Coliseum and some other ruins. Jane had never been to Italy and it had been about 8 years for me, but not a lot had changed. It was still beautiful and overrun with tourists. We waited in line for the Coliseum talking about comedy while Bobby relaxed outside in the sun. Stray cats ran around the Coliseum unmolested and a new partial floor has been built on top of the ruined basement levels.

We walked through the forum and past an imposing nationalistic monument and onto some famous square where we decided to eat our first real meal. It was a tourist trap but the food was good and we started into our first bottles of wine.

My jet lag was punishing – I fluctuated between moments of high alert and narcolepsy.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully and basically consisted of miles of walking.

Manuela met us back at the hostel and was shocked at all the walking. My legs were killing me – but she was ready to take us to some more sights. I wanted to see the Trevi Fountain again. The last time I was there, it was a summer night and a drunken Italian waded out into the fountain and started taking off his clothes until the Police arrived and kind of half-assedly tried to get him to leave the fountain. In the midst of the battle of wills a man yelled, "That’s Italia!"

I was disappointed that the other guys didn’t share my rapture with the place – but I kept the visit short and we moved to a famous gelato place recommended by Manuela. While we navigated the turmoil inside, Bobby spoke slowly and simply to an Italian interviewer on Manuela’s cell phone.

In Roma, people answer the phone with, "Pronto!" which our other host Bernardo translated to mean, "I am ready." I liked that.

We had a good dinner and we were taken to an English-style pub for drinks.

I decided I wanted a ride on a scooter driven by a beautiful Italian woman. Judging from your average street in Rome – this is not such an unreasonable dream.

A few drinks at The Bulldog, combined with my pervasive jet lag muddled me into a rarefied fantasy world that gave me the guts to ask the beautiful Eva ("the first woman" she explained) if she had a scooter.

"Yes," she answered, unaware of door she opened.

"Oh my god, it is here now?"

"No, I did not bring it tonight."

I asked her if she would bring it to the show the next night and she promised she would.

"I will be the girl with the scooter waiting outside the club tomorrow."

There is a photograph I had Bobby take of me with this girl immediately after she made me this promise. I look ecstatic.

In the meantime, Jane was holding court surrounded by about 6 or 7 Italian men and explaining to them that he had been born in Italia and knew the language fluently. This he explained to them in a combination of slang-laden English with the odd French word thrown in for seasoning.

Later he would make a grand gesture of throwing his Italian phrasebook onto the ground and kicking it to the gutter.

One thing I was proud to have introduced to our Roman friends was the two Rome-centric sayings (that I know of) in the English language. No one in their group had ever heard, "When in Rome, do as the Romans." Or "Rome wasn’t built in a day." Just doing my part.

The cultural exchange was sometimes difficult but did yielded gems like, "he shit himself."

We found ourselves in the care of Dario and Marco after the pub closed its doors and Bernardo , Eva and Manuella insisted on going to bed. Things had entered the dream realm at this point – having been up since about 9am on Saturday morning, we were now approaching 3am on Monday morning, with no sane end in sight. Bobby and I had concocted a tattoo idea from a wall-sized graffiti mural of the head of a Centurion growling with his teeth bared – underneath we would write: "When in Rome. . ."

Still being in Rome, Dario took us to a strange 24-hour bar that was dressed in American convenience store clothing. The small storefront was gracelessly lit with fluorescent lights – mediocre (Italian translation: perfectly good) snacks rested quietly underneath a glass counter. Our hosts bought us a half-pint of Italian beer while we talked about wine and I babbled about girls on scooters and having sex in a Smart Car. Is it possible? We were curious.

I apologized for Pringles to our hosts as we stumbled back to our hostel, eating Pringles. They ate them too and I was disappointed. Where was the Italian indignance I expected? Certainly not with any of the wonderful people we met during our Odyssian first day.

Our 21-year-old German driver, Thomas, took all our shamrocks and shenanigans in reserved stride – even though I railed against the fact that he’d never heard of Can, Faust or Neu.

"When we are in Germany – we will go to record store so you can show me." Thomas seems to prefer emo. He played 3 cassettes in the van – one of them was Cursive and the other sounds like Bruce Springsteen crossed with Billy Joel but I know its indie ‘cause the sound is kind of brittle. They are called Chamberlain by the way.

We ended our first evening in drunken assembly outside the hostel – the desk clerk standing in the moonlight with bleary annoyance.

We woke up the next morning to meet Bernardo at the hostel so he could take us to the venue and we could try our gear and make sure everything was working properly. Bernardo is a member of Italy’s only no-wave band – Dada Swing – and is the best English speaker of our hosts. He tirelessly promotes shows and books tours all over Italy. But he seemed weary of it when he came to pick us up. I didn’t take it personally but it was hard to get a sense of whether he liked us as people. I think we are a nice buncha guys – but we don’t know how we compare to the rest of the rock world. Insecurity got the best of me as we drove out to La Palma in the early afternoon. Bernardo was withdrawn, giving directions with monosyllables – I wondered if he was tiring of this whole game.

Turns out he was.

He’s quitting driving bands around - he’s had his fill of that – and we certainly give him much of a break ‘cause when we got to La Palma, we discovered that the 300ft baked clay tile driveway to the club was being repaired so we needed to carry all our heavy gear across the stones. Most of it wasn’t that big a deal except for Jane’s bass cabinet, an 8x10" Ampeg monolith, packed in a flight case which probably weighed 350 pounds. The load in was lengthy and arduous, but La Palma proved to be a remarkable place.

On the outskirts of Rome, it gave me the sense of a hidden abandoned villa ensconced deep in the countryside. The grounds were sprawling and seemed to be a casual work in progress. The club’s layout was reminiscent of many Austin clubs wherein the division between interior and exterior are comfortably blurred. The Mediterranean climate (like Texas) relaxes the boundaries a little. The club area itself was totally enclosed and very large compared to our normal US venues. We were opening for Cat Power – a pretty fucking weird jux but I was more worried about Chan’s legendary lack of stability. I had never seen Cat Power or taken much interest in her records but I was pretty sure that she would either hate Oneida or be driven to dissolution by the chaos. I think I was both giving Oneida too much credit and not giving her enough in this regard. I don’t think we made much of an impression on her either way.

But this was the last thing on my mind as I unpacked my rented Yamaha drum set from the road cases. I’ve used a custom kit for about 4 years now, which is modeled after the great Gretch and Ludwig sets of the 60s so I wanted to get a vintage set for the tour with the precise sizes of my drums at home. Right before we left NY I was told that I needed to choose between a vintage Ludwig kit that was bigger than mine or get a Yamaha set of the same sizes. I guessed that Yamaha made some decent instruments over the years so I told them to get me the Yamaha.

But as soon as I started to pull the pieces out of their cases I realized what a shit mountain I was about to climb. Imagine slapping a dead fish against a sand dune – that sound had more character than these drums. These were teak cylinders masquerading as drums. I set up the kit and began to formulate insane plans on getting a different set shipped out to me. In my temporary insanity I seriously considered canceling the tour.

Where was my drum tech when I needed her?

Turns out he was famished and once he had eaten a couple slices of the amazing fresh mozzarella pizza and had some swallows from some blood orange soda he started tuning up those waste baskets and made them sound alright.

Cat Power’s crew arrived to La Palma – and I was very happy to see that their sound woman was Dana who we met when we played with Black Dice at Oberlin. She’s cool. We’d both forgotten each other’s names thankfully. I also met Margaret, Matt and Will from Cat Power’s band and Kevin, Olivier and Serge from their Paris via NYC band called Women and Children. Everyone we met was great and I found myself confessing my fear that they would all hate our music. On the whole everyone seemed glad that we were fast and loud – they were into the variety – at least on principle.

Chan was conspicuously absent from the proceedings – and I wondered what she would be like. She seems to lead a very sheltered life on the road and its rumored she’s unstable – she’s always shuffling around with her back to the audience apologizing. At least that was my impression – I had never seen her before. As the rest of her band prepped the stage for sound check and Dana did a complete mic check, there was buzzing that Chan was

1. drunk and puking
2. loosing her mind somewhere and wasn’t going to do sound check.

From what we could see from the open area backstage, she was lying on the ground and someone was spraying her with an aerosol.

Someone in her crew walked in and said, "Chan’s not doing sound check. Do it without her."

Dana was like, "C’mon, she has to do one."

"She’s not going to do it."

"Hold on," Dana left the performance space.

She was back in a minute, "She’s not doing sound check."

I guess she had had a bad day.

She played a great show though and seemed very nice – though I didn’t get a chance to really meet her. Funny that. I guess the whole thing intimidated me. People seemed to be very protective of her. There was a constant aura of low-level anxiety coming from everybody. I don’t want to be misleading – it wasn’t like she was Maria Carey out on a hysterical holiday but the façade seemed to have a few cracks.

Our sound check went smoothly and we were treated to an excellent dinner made by Simone – excellent pasta and pizza. The Italian dinners I have had so far all revolve around pasta and pizza but goddamn if the stuff isn’t exemplary. We sat in the covered courtyard area drinking wine.

People – I’ve got to tell you – Oneida has been given a gift. Being in Italy, being surrounded by such beauty and kindness and appreciation – all because we made some records – brings a tear to my eye.

I’ll step away from my rapture for a minute and get back to the play by play. Women and Children were having a hell of a time sound checking. From the courtyard we could see the people gathering at the ticket booth – energy of the place became more and more insistent. People began to recognize us, walk over to where we were sitting and say, "ONAIDA!" and shake our hands. Things were definitely very different here in Italy.

At one point I was walking around and a woman approached me.

"Are you from Seattle?" she asked, obviously an American, "You look like a typical indie rocker from Seattle."

"Is it really that obvious?"

She was in Rome studying Latin, she didn’t know any Italian and she said that it was a dying language and she wanted to keep it alive. I thought it was already dead but perhaps I’ve been out of the loop.

Women and Children finished up their set (which I liked a lot – it was like the Velvet Underground with Nico) and it was time. My anxiety was palpable. I felt as if my life was at stake with this performance – or at least a significant part of my being – and of course I doubted. But at the same time there was a mass of people pushed up against the stage. They seemed to be focused intensely on everything we did. I was underneath a massive distorted spyglass that distorted time. I placed my kit together and tried to meditate on the preparation. In a few minutes we would get our minds blown. People would be screaming for songs; filling every silence in the music with a chorus of voices – it was mayhem from the minute we walked onto the stage until we played the last note. I’m not sure how to recount this shit but umm – the Italians love Oneida. I signed a ton of CDs, posters, had my picture taken with beautiful Italian girls.

"Oneida VERY POWER!" was my favorite quote – that is except the stuff written on my arms.

I had people sign my arms – and got this:

"Hi Kid. Keep on play like only you know but stay away from Cat Power. – David G"

"See you tomorrow . . . Kiss, Roberta from Naples"

"Fiorella hopes to see you again with love Fiorella. [then she drew a picture of a flower]"

"You’re wonderful Ciao sei massiccio – Sofia."

But I think the best moment of the evening was getting kissed on both cheeks by Roberta. Viva Italia.

But mostly I was cornered by excited Italian men – starving for different music.

I tried to explain how humbled I was to be accepted into a culture of which I was in awe. Italians are very aware that their culture is rich and varied but most people we came across really admire American culture – stuff we take for granted – like rock. To an Italian, rock music is something they need to cultivate vigorously – but to me it was an after thought. I just grew into it.

I managed to extricate myself from my conversations and check out some of Cat Power’s set – she was singing a cover – her version of "Farmer John" – you know, "I’m in love with your son." She has a great voice. I was surprised that the Roman audience acted like they were in New York – a lot of talking – a lot of plastic cup smashing – not the enraptured audience I’d heard so much about.

The club closed and I said ciao to a bunch off people – some who promised to see us in Napoli.

But I have to tell you about Eva – "the girl with the scooter" – because there was this moment when I was sitting on the floor with a bunch of people when I looked up and I saw her across the room. I’m not sure why I didn’t jump up and run to her but I didn’t. I just sat there and kind of told myself I’d get to it later. But I never did. It still haunts me people.

Fat Bobby and Jane were playing badminton with Dana and Margarette in the back lot.

We tried to get Women and Children to come back to the hostel with us and get drunker but they opted to go to Cat Power’s hotel.

Napoli has a reputation for chaos, crime, filth and pizza.

Romans to the person told us to hold onto our wallets. Manuela told us a story about taking "a band off French assholes" to Napoli, arriving too late to play because of a "misunderstanding."

"In Napoli, a misunderstanding is not so good."

Arriving in Napoli we entered the exploded hive as soon as we exited the highway and flew by the giant landmark church where our hosts told us to meet them. Our first misunderstanding of the day. Descending into Napoli during late afternoon was a lesson in chaos. Tiny alleys spiraled off the main street which led down and down into the heart of the city. The streets were completely overrun with people, cars, bicycles, scooters, etc. . . We wanted to turn around to just get back to the church but each turn we took made a mockery of our assumptions about the order of cities. After 3 turns we became totally lost, facing down a hill on a street that was only wide enough for a single vehicle. Idling at the top of a hill with no idea where we were opened up all the Neapolitan potentialities in my mind. And none of them were good. Jane and J.C. took the phrase book and walked back the way we came.

We called the promoter Andrea – who recommended that we make our way to the Piazza Dante. He couldn’t come and rescue us from the situation we’d gotten ourselves into but he thought we could find the Piazza. Jane and J.C. had a creative conversation with a Russian woman and they came back to the van with a positive outlook. We would find the Piazza Dante.

You gotta understand that you have NEVER seen a city like Napoli in your entire life. A true city is a labyrinth of dislocation and confusion and Napoli had it in spades.

We crawled along the narrow streets, Jane hollering, "Piazza Dante?" out the window to helpful pedestrians. We found it in spite of ourselves and Marco materialized at our window to tell us that we made it to the Notting Hill.

Piazza Dante was no different from the rest of the city – crawling with people and vendors. Notting Hill was a basement club, two long flights of marble steps down to a tile covered bowling alley-style venue. Like at La Palma in Rome this load in was a total back breaker. The club was dank, dark and cool and was basically a shower stall with the associated acoustics.

We were the only band scheduled for the night so we just started to set up on stage for the worst sound check experience of my life.

A bunch of stuff was going wrong including the fact that the stage was all tile and they didn’t have a carpet for the drums. I found a rubber mat in the back underneath a pile of brown paper so that was solved but then we had to deal with the standard Oneida stage volume issues. But this issue was unique because of the cultural characteristics of the 7 Neapolitans who were clustered around the soundboard discussing all the possible permutations of sound with southern Italian passion.

"Please . . . um . . . your sound [intense exchange in Italian amongst the group] a leetle too loud. If you could. . ."

"Turn down?"

The process took hours and hours and I was getting pissed off by the incompetence. Every few seconds a different person would approach the stage with their own suggestions . . . it took a Herculean effort to remain good natured throughout it all.

We finished our sound check at 10:30pm and emerged into the Napoli evening to get pizza.

A crowd had already gathered at the door of the club and I felt like I was being watched and noticed. I smiled awkwardly and crossed the now empty street with Andrea who took us to a pizzeria on the Piazza Dante.

"Napoli is like no other city in the world."

Entering Napoli was like lifting up a rock to a swarm of ants.

"There are many cultures here in Napoli," Andrea explained as we waited for our pizza and drank the local wine.

We were all trying to break the language barrier talking about the Italian president owning the television and newspapers and talking about Bush’s exploits.

Sometimes you eat a good meal and you’re pleasantly surprised. Sometimes you eat a great meal and you can sense the craft that went into the preparation. Very rarely you eat something that challenges all your expectations. The pizza in Napoli was easily the best I have ever eaten and all the Yanks in the group agreed.

Andrea smiled and said, "I am glad for you."

Every time I said his name he would look into my eyes and say, "Tell me," which was charming as hell. Our hosts in Naples were supremely friendly.

When we walked back across the square to Notting Hill, a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the club. I started to feel self-conscious, tried to smile and make my way inside when a beautiful Italian girl let out a scream and ran up to me and hugged me. It was Roberta from the night before and her friends had driven 3 hours from Rome to come see us play. When I was in Italy in 1995 my impression was that I would never in my life get an Italian woman to speak with me.

I told them they could come see the show "gratis" and went downstairs to get my head ready.

"You are a playboy," Andrea said, "but I think she is with her boyfriend."

Again – the club was full as I made my way backstage – a place with a revolving cast of colorful characters either curious or just trying to find the bathroom.

"Oneida?" a young bearded guy dressed in black came into the backstage area. I gathered he liked Hendrix and that he played guitar. I think he wanted to play with us.

A couple of older guys just hung out backstage and looked at us with bemused expressions while they offered us tobacco laced with hash.

"Ciao ragazzi!" the young kid finally left and we finished our set list and just looked at each other. Italy had a lot of Oneida fans and it kind of felt like cheating.

The set went well and the stage was swarmed when we finished – in Italy people like you to sign things – which is pretty fun. The DJ played great dance music as we packed up our stuff and made the two-story load out to the street. The three promoters were sitting down in conference with the owner of Notting Hill and associated hangers on and were in a heated argument that seemed to involve money. For the entire 40 minutes we were loading our equipment out of the club, those Neapolitans were all talking at once, writing out charts and carrying on loudly and dramatically. Turns out the club owner changed the terms of the agreement at the last minute and had everyone in an uproar. This kind of buncha guys attitude expressed itself again after we were loaded into the van and discovered that we couldn’t open the back sliding door. It was stuck. Bobby crawled in and gave it a hard kick popping the door open but making it impossible to close. Here we were, it was 3:30am in downtown Naples – with a door that wouldn’t close. 15 guys swarmed around the door and started slamming it relentlessly. It wouldn’t close. But they were determined to force the goddamn thing – over and above our protests to the contrary – there was another animated meeting of the minds on the street corner. After about 40 minutes of tinkering that got us nowhere, Oneida thanked the kind gentlemen of Naples and duct taped the sliding door handle to the front door handle. We were off following Marco to the place we would be staying. It was around 4:15am and the ancient narrow streets were deserted. We went to a parking garage that was full. Then we pulled down an incredibly narrow street to see if we could get the van into Andrea’s courtyard. Sturdy metal guards that kept cars off the sidewalk flanked the cobblestone street. They also made it impossible for us to pull the van into Andrea’s lot, even though the much reduced Neapolitan conference of three felt like, "If a you geeve us ten more minutes. . ." We had already smashed the back fender and scraped some paint off the sides of the vehicle.

We smiled and replied with a strong negative. We would quit while we were ahead and drive all night to Maestre (outside of Venice) until Thomas (our tough and stoic driver) needed to sleep.

"We are very sorry about Napoli," Marco said.

But Napoli was amazing – we weren’t mad at all. It actually turned out to be fine that we hit the road when we did and how we did. Following Marco to the highway, the streets were empty but I felt like a rat being led out of my maze experiment – the baroque and intricate way to the highway took us to the top of the city where laid out below were the constellations of city lights and moon hanging low over the bay.

After another half hour of impossible driving through empty serpentine streets – Marco dropped us off at the highway entrance and we drove North to Maestre in awe of the city we left behind.

Although I got concerned about their ubiquity, the Italian roadside convenience store Autogrill is a testament to the higher bar of Italian food. Espresso, OK sandwiches, damn good meats, cheeses and an assortment of radical drinks – the Autogrill was a decent oasis for food and sleep during our marathon all-nighter to Mestre. We came into Mestre with another bad set of directions that left us crawling along in a traffic jam on the bridge out to Venice. Very lost.

So we visited Venice long enough to turn around and tried to find Jam. J.C. was in charge of navigating and spotted the road that the club was on as we flew by it on the highway. The weird thing though was it was a one-lane dirt road that seemed to connect highways through a wheat field. There were a few houses and the numbers seemed to indicate that we were on the right track but how the fuck could a club be on this dirt road? Maybe there were a couple streets with the same name in Mestre. The club’s street address was #34 and we found 32 and 36 without trouble, but 34 was nowhere to be found. But there was a small dirt track leading off to a warehouse we could see from the road.

OK, we’ll fucking look back here for kicks – it had started to pour with a vengeance so it was with much rejoicing that the Jam club materialized out of a haze of overgrown rushes. This tour was definitely not without surprises.

The bartender gave us some sandwiches and we did our soundcheck and had a large family-style meal with a the promoter, the Italian opening band called Jennifer Gentle and the guys who run the Italian label Silly Boy. We’re contributing a song to their Battiato tribute compilation – an eccentric Italian songwriter from the early 70s who is a superstar in their country – he just directed a movie actually. No one had seen it yet.

The lead singer of Jennifer Gentle (Marco) was very strange, "He is like a cartoon man," someone said. He’s about 21 I think and giggled, made strange voices and generally seemed very out of his mind. They came to New York to play at CBGB’s, Luxx and WFMU a couple of weeks after we got home and they stayed at my house. They were great guys – but Marco made a strange first impression.

Their label head was like, "I am very worried about these guys," as he earnestly looked me in the eye, "will you please help them?"

I agreed to take care of them on the spot and I was glad I did. They were gracious guests. At one point Marco tried to show me how to prepare pasta the Italian way and I have to hand it to him, it was like showing a monkey how to read Dante. I had everything wrong. Everything.

First thing wrong was angel hair pasta.

He was like, "That is what we use in soups."

OK. . . next – and I mean even I knew it was fucked but I had a jar of sauce. He was like, "We do not use these things, only fresh."

Right – I figured.

Then he was like, "You do not put salt in your water?"

"Well I don’t usually."

"You must."

Then he heated the sauce and the pasta up in a sauce pan and served it.

"Do you have any cheese?"

"No."

"What is there to drink?"

"Water."

So I’m a compromise.

But anyway – back to Italy. . . As we finished our meal a woman who had driven from Slovenia to see us was led into dinner to request an interview.

We walked back to the club and once again the lot was full of cars. What was going on in this country?

I was getting overwhelmed by the reception we were getting and starting to feel like we didn’t deserve it and that I couldn’t possibly deliver a performance as good as they wanted or expected. Then sometimes I would purposefully down-play the Italian audience and think to myself that we could do whatever the hell we wanted and it would work out fine. I could write a book on the feelings of inadequacy that were coming to the surface on the third show of the tour.

Jennifer Gentle played eccentric psychedelic pop with a jam or two thrown in for good measure. I got to see them in New York a couple of times and really came to love their music. If you can find their album, "Funny Creatures Lane" I recommend it.

I was thrilled to see Rodolfo and his wife at the show – I had met Rodolfo a few times because he is involved with the Twisted Ones back in Brooklyn and lives here during part of the year. He was back in Venice to do a sculpture project – it was great to see a familiar face.

By the way – in case you were wondering about our duct-taped door which we had just driven 10 straight hours with through intermittent rain – a brutal kick was all it needed to lock back in place. We spent the rest of the tour climbing over the front seats to get in or our of the van but at least we weren’t in danger of falling out onto the highway and getting our skulls crushed by a tanker.

The show was good I think, and we had a good reception afterwards. I signed a lot of stuff. Yeah – I know it sounds weird but its true. It happened. A guy in a "stoner" band gave me his demo and people thanked us for the show.

Before we played we were approached by a couple of eccentric looking guys, one of whom Bobby gathered was a kind of guru figure. They wanted to take us back to their warehouse for a "special party" – "You know ‘Each One Teach One’ eh?" one of them said. They were cool guys – really excited and really open to communicating. A lot of people wanted to share – they struggled and struggled to communicate advance concepts and I felt like a jerk not knowing Italian. We all found ourselves starting to speak slowly and using exaggerated hand gestures – even with each other.

"Bobby, could you . . . ah . . PLUG IN [make hand motion] the POWER CONVERTER [make a box shape].

"Could you WRITE [gesture] down a set list for me?"

Anyway I’m not sure how insane that guru guy was – if he was a cult leader or just a mad drug user – he was talking a lot about LSD and one of his friends was saying that our music was like an acid explosion in the sky.

We decided to sleep in the hotel this time but are planning to party there when we return. Which we most definitely will.

Mestre is the city outside of Venice where all the normal people live. When we checked into the hotel we were told to take the #2 bus to Venice in the morning which we did at about 10am. The day was clear and warm and the bus drove us through the city of Mestre. The night before we were told that Mestre was "shit" but it looked beautiful enough to me – though I guess I slept the entire way. It seems as if my jet lag keeps getting worse. I must have been running on pure adrenaline in Rome and Naples.

In case you don’t know, there are no cars allowed on Venice except in this bus station, and the ancient city is a labyrinth of narrow walkways and canals. It is sinking but today the water was kept out of the squares. Our idea was to walk into the city, grab a bite to eat somewhere and then head back into Mestre for the drive to Massa. We needed to get some proper tourism in. Following the signs to the Piazza San Marco we eventually wandered into a fish market which managed to be both hidden and massive. We decided to eat at the next spot we saw and had a momentary lack of decisiveness – would we just eat at any old tourist place in front of the Grand Canal? No? That was too touristy. Then where would we go? We left the market and Bobby saw this restaurant concealed at the end of an alleyway. The owner seated us at the outside table – which was nice – even though we realized we were put there because we were the only tourists at this local eatery. Priests, professionals, older couples started filing in as soon as we ordered – then a waiter left the restaurant and came back with fresh fish from the market down the street!

The food truly blew all our minds – even though I’ve since heard that Venice isn’t known for its food. Whatever. A few bottles of wine, spaghetti with clams and grilled monkfish later we headed back out of Venice feeling like we’d risen to the tourist challenge.

The directions to the venue in Massa were no better than the other stuff had been. Massa was a pretty resort town and the club we were playing was down a narrow road with a large outdoor garden and natural surroundings. The club was pretty standard fare, we discovered that Italians loved their Reggae and also that the neighbors called the cops about noise at this place all the time. Oneida was the only band on the bill for this show and as we set up and started to sound check we were faced with another sound guy who didn’t know what to do with our volume and this exasperated a general irritability I’d started to feel in earnest. This club was in the middle of nowhere and I only saw one poster for the show, covered in shadow in a corner by the DJ booth. I was really having a hard time believing that our luck was going to hold out for these other Italian shows. Could people here really be flipping out about us this much?

Our host took us to the restaurant and basically told us flat out that he didn’t like our music. For reference – playing in this town is like playing in Cape Cod or something. We seemed to annoy the chef at the restaurant by not saying gratzie but I don’t know how it slipped by. It’s the only word I can say consistently. Otherwise we talked with our host about girls on scooters. He was very amused by our Italian phrase book which he brought to the bar to show his friends. In the meantime we had another amazing meal and some great wine. All in a days work.

Back at the venue, the place had totally filled up, but I was crushed to discover that there was only one scooter.

"Too cold," said our host.

But inside people were getting restless, we went backstage and were told we had to play in a few minutes. This was our first show that was nagged with doubts about my ability to perform – exhaustion was the only thing I could feel distinctly. Otherwise it was a kind of blank resignation. I think I had a headache and let Bobby and Jane write the set list.

The improv that we’d been starting the set with at these Italian shows felt a little strained and forced. I was in a rut – but the audience ate it up for some reason. I was glad about that.

In terms of the rest of the show – I made it through and was honestly surprised that there wasn’t much of a request for an encore. Here I was after four shows in Italy and I was expecting an encore. I think we’ve played maybe 10 total in the US over the years. No problem because I was immediately approached by a couple of very intense Italian guys who were working in a sphere far above their English resources. I think they wanted me to talk about serious issues in music. Its mostly the guys who approach us after shows in Italy – instead, of course, if you’re Jane – who doesn’t sit on his ass all show like the rest of us.

We discovered that the promoter – who didn’t speak any English – also owned the restaurant where we ate earlier called . . . TAGO MAGO – the title of a great Can album. Needless to say he’s a huge Kraut rock fan and even though he couldn’t speak a word of English, he expressed his appreciation for the show. Once it all made sense I realized I’d be happy to come back to Massa, just for his sake. Here was a serious head, with a restaurant called Tago Mago who loved Oneida.

"Next time you play in my restaurant!"

No problem.

In the meantime the DJ started to play some gypsy music and the women started in on the traditional dances. We were really in Italy.

I started to get seriously drunk, really fast and by the time the bar closed I was desperate for more booze.

"If we were in Germany I could take you to the corner store," Thomas said.

Jane grabbed a phrase book and went into the club to see if he could convince the bar to break Italian law and sell us some booze to go. First he got the bartender on his side, who then convinced the owner’s girlfriend to talk to him. Everything was looking good until she went to the back office to speak with him.

This was followed by yelling and screaming. Then the woman emerged from the back office while she turned to the bartender and flipped her hands through her hair towards him.

The bartender looked at Jane, "She says no."

We returned to the hotel without more booze – which was maybe good for all of us.

It was a modest place – the showerhead in the middle of the tile-covered bathroom. I took some photos of Bobby underneath the running shower with all his clothes on.

For the last few days Bobby had been trying to ignore a pain that had been growing in the muscles of his jaw. At first he thought he had strained his face singing (seriously) – but as the pain grew and it became harder and harder for him to move his mouth he started to think it was some kind of bacterial infection.

He woke up on this particular morning insisting that we take him to a hospital, which was totally cool – we had all planned to hit the beach but Bobby’s health took precedence.

After getting some directions to the hospital by the matronly hotel manager ("You are sick?" she asked in Italian with much concern) we ventured off to another bizarre morass of ancient streets.

The hospital was an immense multi-story building on the top of a hill. I volunteered to join Bobby at the hospital while the other guys went to the beach and came back around 1:30 to check in.

Our first few minutes proved to be very discouraging when the guy at the information window couldn’t speak English and wouldn’t try to help us find an English speaker. We jumped into another line and the woman behind the glass pointed us towards the emergency area that we had passed on our way into the building.

The doors were frosted, had no handles and weren’t automatic so I pressed what looked like a call button which had a large announcement in Italian underneath it. Damage done, Bobby managed a translation:

"Warning, this call button only for ambulance drivers."

Too late, the doors swung open and a woman (doctor or nurse – I’m not sure) looked at us bemusedly.

"I have a pain in my face and I need to see a doctor," Bobby enunciated slowly.

"Englasi?"

"Yes."

She called a doctor to the emergency room staging area we had obviously walked in on – there were some totally damaged patients on beds crying desperately in front of us.

A young doctor with short, close cropped hair and a white smock came over to meet us.

"Good morning, what can I do for you?" he asked pleasantly.

Bobby explained the problem and he efficiently dispatched a nurse to write up a description of his complaint and the location in the hospital where we should go to get treated.

"The ear, nose and throat doctor is on the 4th floor, but you will never find it," he insisted, "go to the 4^th floor, turn left, go past the church, turn left again and then ask someone to show you. Its very hard to explain."

I ran down to the van and told the guys to go ahead, that we’d made some progress and that we’d see them when they got back at 1:30.

Jane said they would go and get some food and maybe bring some back – fine – I didn’t want Bobby to be waiting too long at the hospital so I explained to Jane that this place was a labyrinth and that no one spoke English.

Boom, back to the hospital. The elevators were tiny and decrepit and Bobby and I waited in front of them for about 10 minutes until one arrived that was full. Bobby climbed on and left me in the lobby – I’d meet him up there when I could.

After another five minutes of waiting I decided to take the stairs – and found Bobby waiting. Apparently they don’t let people out of elevators in Italy because Bobby had to ride to the top of the hospital first and exit on the way down.

Anyway the doctor was correct – the ear/nose/throat part of the hospital was tough to find – it wasn’t really on the 4^th floor at all – but on a little extension on the 5^th floor. We found it OK because there were signs – but it did take a lot of backtracking. When we finally reached the ear/nose/throat doctor’s door we were met with a sign that basically said, "The doctor is away for the rest of the week. If this is an emergency, please return to the emergency room."

With a kind of stubbornness born from occasions like this – Bobby pushed on the door.

A gray haired, bearded doctor was revealed behind the door. Bobby walked inside and even though he spoke no English, he emerged after a few minutes with a prescription for antibiotics.

Even though we got lost on the way out and somehow exited from the back of the building and into the old city, we remarked at the simplicity of the Italian medical system. Granted – we probably cut every line the system threw our way and perhaps dumb luck was on our side – but fuck it – we were sitting in a pizzeria about half an hour later laughing.

After a leisurely lunch, Bobby and I arrived at our chose meeting place to find Thomas, J.C., the van but no Jane.

Turns out Jane had been gone from the van for about a half an hour.

Shit – I thought he might have been waiting in the lobby so I figured I’d just go grab him and we could get out of this nightmare. But when I got the main lobby of the hospital Jane wasn’t there.

So I waited – getting a bit concerned about Jane’s whereabouts. His Italiano was as bad as all of ours plus the place that we were sent was impossible to find. I waited about 10 more minutes then went up to the 4^th floor to check that waiting area.

Where the fuck was he? What bureaucratic nightmare had he gotten himself into?

I jogged back down the hill to the van in case we had missed each other but he wasn’t back yet.

So I hiked back up the hill and back into the lobby and made myself comfortable. I had a feeling this was going to be a long wait.

Within five minutes Jane emerged from the elevator with two Italian nurses and a white-coated doctor. He was holding a greasy bag of food and was deep in a convoluted conversation with the group.

"Jane!" he turned and saw me and I was like, "Let’s get the fuck out of here."

Jane turned to the mob and was like, "He’s here, everything is OK, we leave now."

When no one speaks English you make do. But for some reason this group of people did not want us to leave the hospital and were gesturing into the emergency room.

FUCK NO.

Somehow Bobby and I had navigated the multi-tiered medical system, gotten a prescription and had lunch all within an hour – now were about to spend infinity in the depths of bureaucracy. I had just miraculously avoided this fate – why was I being led back into it?

"Jane – let’s go NOW."

The doctor was gesturing for us to follow him into the emergency room.

"Let me just get us out of here," Jane said.

I stood outside looking at Italian posters and fuming while Jane followed the guy past closed doors.

"Americano!"

The doctor was back and he wanted me too. So I followed him into a back room where about 20 nurses and doctors were sitting around seemingly waiting for us.

Nobody spoke English but they were all quite concerned with the situation.

But it turned out we were cool – it was almost over.

"We are OK . . . he left . . . outro, outro," Jane tried to explain slowly.

We were out at the van in 10 minutes and on our way to Milano, no beach, no break, just hassles.

What we had learned in Massa – which I forgot until now – was the proper way to eat spaghetti. I may have offended our host somehow – because now I’m realizing maybe I eat like a pig. Anyway – here it is:

"Clear a small portion of the plate. Take 5 strands of spaghetti and roll them up on the fork in the clear area of your plate, and then place in your mouth."

Five strands people.

Anyway – once again our directions to the club in Mezzago were a bit sketchy so it took us a while to get there – but we found it. We were the only band on the bill again at this large rock club and the sound guy was playing the Deftones and was wearing a T-shirt of an Ipecac band – so I felt like there was a 50% chance we were in good hands. Turns out I didn’t need to worry. He knew how to make it loud.

I went with having a drum riser which ended up amplifying the boom of the bass drum about 200%. In retrospect I was kind of ego-tripping – yeah I wanted the riser! Next time I’ll know better.

It was a beautiful day and when we finished sound checking I walked outside for a little bit of sun. Most of the clubs we played in Italy were located outside the cities and had huge expanses of open space surrounding them. It was alien and welcome.

I went into the bar area and met Silvia – an employee of Bloom who’s job seemed to be flirting with the American bands. It was fun – her English was excellent and she was pretty funny.

"May we join you for dinner?" she asked.

"Please, yeah – that would be great."

"You don’t want us to hide in the kitchen and be scared?"

We talked about Italy – "I love Italian contradictions" - about the fact that a lot of Italian young people live with their parents, Italian horror movies, comedies, having her picture taken.

"Please. . . I do not like having my picture take – I look at the photo and think, who is that ugly girl?"

Her false modesty wasn’t exactly charmless.

So we all had another great Italian dinner with delicious local wine and I was feeling good. We met our Italian distributor, Rosanna who said, "I am very proud to work with Oneida." She was cool and hung out playing foosball after our show.

The night was another total blow out – I just don’t understand it but I’m not going to argue with it. We somehow played the longest Oneida show ever at Bloom – at 96 minutes it included a couple of extended improves, a Hüsker Dü cover and all of our songs.

After the show Silvia had spent most of her energy on Thomas, our stoic driver, who refused her insistent pleas that he "drink a leetle more wine." We had high hopes for Thomas but then again – she was supposed to be nice to us.

After the show finished Oneida and the club staff did much excessive drinking and also Jane challenged the resident dancer to a break off – I think he got dirtier overall.

The more we drank the more I screamed the Italian word for drunk, "umbriaco" followed by whatever Italian phrases came to mind. We made battle with the staff in an 8 person foosball game and emerged victorious. Luckily it was officiated by Jane who grabbed me at one point imploring me not to let him drink anymore.

" I should be throwing up soon."

I was not to be stopped consuming birras, whisky, grappa, vino and whatever else was lying around.

We loaded out and drove to our fancy hotel following Silvia’s car. For some reason I slept naked and J.C. got a taste of my bare ass.

Italy is for lovers.

Our last show in Italia was a strange one – after a last minute cancellation of our slot in Bologne because Kruder and Dorfmeister were playing at the same club – we were tacked onto a bill at a cultural center in the middle of a vineyard in the small town of Carpi. Also on the bill were the Brooklyn spazz band Big Numbers – people who we’d met before. They were touring with a British grunge band who sang a song about fighting Nazis at one point. Nice guys all around.

I’m not sure I’m going to do this justice with my description but imagine playing into the setting sun on an outdoor stage at the site of an abandoned schoolhouse in the middle of the northern Italian countryside and you’ll scratch the surface.

It was cool to chat with Alex and Ryan of Big #’s about working at Union Pool – after 6 days our English skills had gotten rusty. I was feeling incredibly irritable for some reason – I was never quite able to play drums right all show and my bass drum sounded like shit. I threw a pillow inside with much exasperation – during our sound check – Jane asked me why I was pissed off. It basically was all related to sound checks plus the fact that I was exhausted and my playing was starting to feel off. I’m not sure why it gets that way for me – but lately the longer I’m on the road, the worse I feel like I play. Drumming gets stranger and stranger and my standard fills and accents get harder and harder to execute. I’m wondering if this has something to do with being 30?

Anyway, I stewed by the dinner table watching a swarm of ants mob a stump disappointed in myself for being so hung up in a place of such incredible natural beauty. I was in Italy but I couldn’t transcend my pettiness about sound issues. I explained myself to Bobby and he sympathized but he was obviously just enjoying the hell out of himself.

Dinner was server with a plentiful ration of the local sparkling red wine. We’d been told earlier that the local wine was not so good but this stuff was very enjoyable. My head mellowed out a bit as I chatted with the guys in Big Numbers and planned to hang out when I got home.

One of the many cool things about being popular in Italy arrived a few minutes after dinner. Three representatives from a website dedicated to discussing music and wine were on hand to present us with a bottle of their "house wine" and T-shirts celebrating the fact that they chose, "Each One Teach One" as the best album of 2002. Later that night we smoked some shit and popped open that bottle.

Anyway – the set was kind of shitty – I was totally dead. The guys in Big Numbers sounded good to me but they told us that the set was a disaster for them.

The outdoor party atmosphere was accented by a couple of freestanding tents that were described as "make-out tents" by our host.

I never did get to use them. The reaction we received from the crowd in the vineyard was the most subdued of all but it was OK to end Italy on a slightly lower note. Germany was our next stop that we were told was much like the US in terms off mass indifference. We could accept that I guess – we’d been through shit before. We could slog it again.

The night ended with our decision to crash at the abandoned school instead of driving an hour to the promoter’s house. Thomas was fine with sleeping in the van (he thought) and I was drunk beyond caring.

The night was clear and cold so I put on all my clothes and passed out in the back seat. I would be trapped there basically until Thomas woke up the next morning because remember the back door was broken.

The implications became apparent only when I woke up freezing in the middle of the night and had to take a piss. One of these empty water bottles would have to do I suppose. I hoped that Thomas wouldn’t wonder wake up from the sound of water flowing. That method kept me in good stead all night and I covered my legs with a bath towel. The luxury of Italy ended with some old-school suffering.

Jane took it the worst I think, deciding to sleep in the cargo area of the van on top of our amps. That decision kept him in the sick haus for the next few days in Germany.

We woke up with the sun and drove for 12 hours to Frankfurt – the Alps of Austria shook me out of Italian dream with their imposing grandeur.

A fucking drive of nightmare proportions – arriving in a country that served weaker coffee and spoke all German was a shock to the system. We eased into it by eating some Italian sausage we’d bought the day before when we took a side trip to Mantova during our drive to Carpi. Montova was another ancient and beautiful town that just happened to be having a sausage festival as we arrived (yes – we made the requisite jokes).

Anyway – we all split up and agreed to meet in an hour. I walked down a side street in a desperate search for a bathroom, or an alley substitute. I made my way to a large, peaceful park with a graffiti covered statue of Virgil. I took a seat at a bench and imagined my life here as women walked their dogs and ignored me. A life of leisure seemed to be the order of business in Berlin I would later learn. Italians were actually much less cynical than certain Germans I met – but that’ll come later.

So after this break from the band and the van – I went back to the square and bought a Sicilian canola. Let me tell you something people – I’ve never been a huge fan of canolis but I thought "When in Rome . . ." and I tried one. It was the only thing I ate in Italy that tasted pretty much the same at Joe’s Busy Corner in Williamsburg – which is to say – my mind wasn’t blown.

So anyway – the drive to Frankfurt was long and arduous. But Thomas was finally in his stomping grounds and was subjected to much inquisitive banter from the Oneida peanut gallery. To be quite honest – I was trying to figure out a way to say, "Please take me home," but it wasn’t proving to be the easiest language.

We stopped off at a roadside restaurant and were served by a beautiful waitress. I tried to get Thomas to get her number for me. The food at roadsides in Europe is SO much better that the US. Bobby and J.C. got asparagus (it was in season) and I got the schnitzel. Time for 3 days of crazy German food.

Thomas told us outright, "I hate German food," but we were going to make him get us the good stuff. Anyway – the drive to Frankfurt came to a hilarious conclusion when we entered the city in the rain, drove through a puddle and totally took out the muffler of the van. We drove the last remaining kilometer to the Dragonskeller like a convoy of Harleys. The van was handpicked for Oneida I guess.

The Dragonskeller was a tiny basement venue that could hold about 80 people wall to wall – more to Oneida’s typical standards. We were the only band playing and it was a Sunday night – so I wondered if anyone would show up. Reiner, the kind promoter, greeted us at the door and led us backstage to a nice spread of snacks – an enlightened way to treat a traveling band.

We set up, checked levels and then took off with one of J.C.’s friends, Stephan of Normal Records, to see the central square. When we arrived in the city, the local soccer team was in the middle of winning a league championship game in the final seconds. It caused a riotous impromptu celebration in the square and Stephan was eager to take us there to experience, "some German culture."

For some reason I went totally eccentric – wearing a couple of button-down shirts and rolling up a pant leg . . . the idea was to get to the square in time for the crazy chanting, beer swilling and bottle smashing.

On the way there we passed many absurdly drunk revelers all carrying beers and singing stuff like, "2^nd division no more!" Frankfurt’s main business is banking and is often called "Bank-furt" by the locals. Like a lot of Germany, it was bombed heavily during the war and was either restored or modern buildings were raised in their place. It has the only skyscrapers in Germany (so I was told – not sure of the accuracy). As we entered the square, and the cobbled space opened up, a couple of things became apparent – first off that an insane party had just ended judging from the amount of litter and broken glass all over the ground. The second thing I noticed were the Bavarian framing and wood strip patterning which covered the façades of the buildings. We didn’t have much time and our host wasn’t particularly talkative so I wasn’t able to determine if all the buildings were replicas but Stephan did say that most of the city had been destroyed during WW2. The square was mostly deserted except for a few handfuls of revelers and one little girl who was picking up any unbroken bottle and smashing them onto the cobblestones to her parents’ amusement. We crossed the square, were shown the building where German democracy began in the 1800s and then headed back to the club to get ready for the show.

Surprisingly it was completely packed – we were told that the place was the only alternative music venue in Frankfurt – so people come out no matter who is playing. We were all pleasantly surprised at the turnout and went backstage to write out the set list and get our heads together.

In Germany – it seems as if people favor carbonated mineral water. Our driver Thomas, who really required very little, would demand it wherever we went – so now that we were in Germany any water I was given for the stage was carbonated. I mean the stuff worked but it was kind of fucked up to do something athletic and hydrate with soda water during it.

Anyway, by the time Reiner told us to start the set the club was totally sold out and I had to press myself through the mass of people to get to the stage. This was definitely different.

The club was a total furnace and my energy was pretty low all things considered but I tried my hardest to make it a good show but it was becoming impossible to perform at the peak level for an entire show. Certain things kind of feel off – my body does not readily slip into the groove – its like there’s too much brain in my playing.

We did an encore of "New Day Rising" and the DJ followed it with the original Hüsker version right after we finished. We played it faster.

Even though it was a Sunday the people stayed out very late at the Dragonskeller. At one point a beautiful woman came up to me and told me she enjoyed the show.

"Can I say . . . it was very . . . orgiastic?"

"Sure, you can say that. Yeah."

"It was very powerful – I could hear the sound of your muscles."

Damn.

Someone also wanted me to rub our double LP jacket over my chest. These Germans are crazy.

Later, after many drinks, I was drawn into a conversation with a younger German woman who was absolutely insane over Elvis, 50s music and Cadillacs.

Jane also struck up a conversation with someone by saying, "Du Hast Mich" –German for "You hate me" the title of the immortal Rammstein cut. Jane had a bunch of Germans around him as he pulled out lines from his phrase book.

After a ludicrous amount of drinking Reiner drove us back to his apartment and then went to sleep at his girlfriend’s.

I crashed out pretty soon after this but Bobby and Jane had to endure a phone that would ring until the answering machine picked up, and then the caller would hang up and call again. After about 10 of these cycles Bobby got up, the woman on the other end spoke some French and then hung up. Then the phone started ringing again. Bobby answered it.

"Hello?"

"Hello?"

"Are you looking for Reiner?"

"Yes, Reiner, yes."

"Reiner IS NOT HERE."

"Oh . . . Reiner is not there and you want to go sleep."

"Yes."

"OK."

The calling stopped.

The next morning Reiner said it was his ex-girlfriend and they had gotten into a long discussion when he drove her home after he took us to his apartment.

Thomas had gotten up early to take our van to the shop – it wasn’t a complicated repair but the rental agency, which was located in Holland were being total assholes – not wanting to pay the tax on the repair. It looked like we were going to have to wait until the afternoon for the no tax authorization to be confirmed and no work would happen on the van until that time. This was not going to work because we were looking at a 10 hour day because we had to drive Thomas back to his home in Margdeberg, picking up the new driver Holger and then driving to Berlin for our show with Joan of Arc.

This was not going to work. I couldn’t fucking believe that here we were in Europe, with a rented van and we were about to miss a show because of the van. This just wasn’t gonna happen – we told Thomas to get the shop working on the repair and worst case we would pay the fucking 60 Euro tax so we could at least get to our next show. Fact of the matter was that we weren’t in some bum fuck backwater in the US – we were in Germany – wonderful efficient Germany.

The shop started in on the repair as soon as we put in the call and our van was ready within an hour.

In the mean time we all did some station Ids for Reiner’s show. He asked us to name our favorite song and our least favorite song.

My fave of the moment was "Autumn" by Love and least fave was "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" – only now do I realize that might be uncool in a unified Germany where Floyd played the Berlin Wall. But I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly a week into this shit. . .

And so we loaded up the van and started on the epic drive to

Berlin has been getting an awful amount of hype lately – a friend of mine from my days at the Knitting Factory moved over there a year ago and lives a life of total leisure. He DJs two nights a week with his laptop and makes his rent and spending money during those sets.

The cheap rents and many abandoned buildings in East Berlin attracted a huge influx of artists and musicians over the past decade. Things are getting more expensive apparently but its not totally destroyed. Our friend Fitz from the Twisted Ones has just moved there in fact with his girlfriend Nancy to open a club and a fashion storefront respectively. There’s a ton of paperwork associated with opening a place but the cost is very, very low.

After driving our Thomas to the brink of insanity, we dropped him off at his house and picked up our new, fresh-faced driver Holger. He had never driven a band around Europe before so he seemed pretty excited. We headed into Berlin without incident – showing up at Bastard around 9:30.

We were playing with Joan of Arc – a Chicago four piece with a touch of emo in their blood – really nice guys, and great musicians – they kindly allowed us to use their gear, which for me turned into a minor nightmare but that’s another story.

My friend Alan was there to greet us – he had to DJ for free at the show – which was cool of him. He calls himself Der Klein DJ and just brings his laptop and plays MP3s over the sound sytem. After toting my records around the city for the last 2 years – I totally admire his method. Throw your 10 gig laptop over your shoulder and walk to the show. I mean shit – let’s get modern here.

We went to the large German restaurant next to the club and had some tremendous traditional food and some pilsners while we hung out with Andreas – the booker of our entire tour – and then walked over to Bastard while Joan of Arc was finishing their set. This was a little fucked up – I do not like following a meal with a show – but during this tour its become pretty typical. We usually never do sound checks in the states – so we’re usually eating during the early evening. Instead – on this tour we’re setting up all our gear, going through an arduous sound check all before dinner. Then we eat and soon afterwards hit the stage.

Fuck – David Lee Roth didn’t eat after 3pm on the night of a show. He know what the fuck he was doing. Especially for me – since I’m basically in an athletic event for a solid hour when we play. You don’t see Michael Jordan eating at his steak house before he gets on the court.

So Joan of Arc finished up their set with the "Shadow Song" which lodged itself in my head for a couple of days – "Shadow government" mentions of George Clooney and CNN rounded it all out. To be honest I thought it was pretty crappy but I liked the rest of their set.

We had driven all fucking day with the stress level on a fairly high notch so we all decided to use Joan of Arc’s gear which they generously offered to us. There was a time when sharing drums was a good thing – my old set being the piece of crap it was, anything was better. But now that I’m used to my current set, sizes of drums and locations etc., stepping in on another set can turn ugly quickly. Tonight was that nightmare. It seemed like a good idea at the time, you know, use the kit that was already set up, save some time for the change over etc., but it turned out to be one of the many factors which made this performance the worst of the tour. The other guys were using JOA’s amps and were having a tough time getting them to sound good – so we got through the set but didn’t really blow any Berliner minds.

My friend Alan, from No More Records, was DJing a set of 70s and 80s metal and hard rock – and his East German singer girlfriend asked me how my throat felt after, "all that screaming."

For some reason I had started "Sheets of Easter" at a glacial pace and then kept it going interminably, probably the longest we’ve ever played the song live – afterwards I was very disappointed with the whole show – it was a difficult set and we didn’t talk about it. This was the start of feelings of profound irritation – at the other members of the band, at the situations we were being placed in, at the state of my life in general. I had become addicted to the unconditional love we received from the Italian audiences (and actually the Frankfurt audience). It was so unusual it made me question the context – like why did people like us so much in these countries and give no shit about us back in the US? I wanted to be loved no matter the context, no matter the performance, no matter how I felt. I guess I wanted to replace my critical negativity with all the love I was receiving from the audience, but at the same time I was feeling the limitations of my body, my inability to execute the ideas I had and the kind of creative rut I had allowed myself to crawl into.

So then – there was much discussion about what we were doing, where we were going – I wanted to hang out with Alan – who was going to take me to a few nightspots. In Berlin there were places you could go even on a Monday night at 4am. I felt defeated by our performance but had the presence of mind of want to see the city.

Bobby and I bickered about the next day – we had to meet with our booking agent Andreas to talk about the tour and take care of reams of business associated with it. It all revolved getting somewhere at noon. We sorted the shit out but I was glad to get away.

Alan wanted to show me something of Berlin – which was a city that didn’t sleep – more so than New York because in New York people need jobs to live here. In Berlin, I think there’s 20% unemployment so all these young people stay up all night in bars, even on a Monday night.

Berlin was an alien culture. In New York its all about, "What do you do?" even though we all know this conversation starter is a dead end. In Berlin – this question is beyond ridiculous – a lot of people don’t seem to do anything. A few guys in Joan came with us and two of Alan’s friends from the bar where he worked and walked us to . . . well, the bar they worked. At 3:30am we could expect to drink for free until it closed. I am writing this long after the fact so I can’t remember any names – so we’ll say Julie and Heidi were two attractive and bored girls in their mid-20s. They confounded me but I took it as a personal shortcoming that their total lack of ambition and total indifference to their surroundings alienated me. Alan described living here as an extended childhood.

"Kid, I mean, this is amazing, it’s a perfect life. I know it all has to end at some point but I’m going to try to stay here as long as I can."

We sat in a room of this bar made out like a combination living room and storefront talking about ghosts and welfare as the sun rose and the birds started singing.

Berlin was like a nightmare dressed in riches – that’s how it felt to me. Heidi talked about staying in school until you were 30 and about how we never had the chance to be children in the US. I thought about moving to New York when I was 23, finally living on my own and wondering around in what seemed to be its infinity. If the US is obsessed with youth, then Berlin is the city where it gets its expression. Is youth a dependant child or unfettered creativity?

Sometimes I can’t stand students.

I started shivering – the German beer was plain and the light outside seemed oppressive. The bar closed its doors and Alan took me to his place while explaining how he learned the German work "ganar" (not sure of the spelling). He went home with a girl and they started having sex. She was screaming "ganar!"

It means "exactly."

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