TIM'S TOUR DIARY: KOLN, SEPTEMBER,24 1999

 Koln is a long ways from Stuttgart. This was one of the
longest drives of the whole tour, and I was pretty shaky.
Rod had driving duty and was doing pretty good. little did
he know that he'd be driving a huge FedEx truck every day
a month after we got back. Stan was absolutely horrified
when I pissed in a big empty water jug mid-route.... hey,
we couldn't afford the time to stop and I really hadda go.
Deke Dickerson is famous for jug-peein', so I had a good
precedent. We found the club without any problems.

The Underground is a neat club. It's got an outside beer garden
and there's a tiny car, maybe even smaller than my Crosley,
perched over the entry way. Bands get to stay in a room
over the club that comes with bunk beds... very Partridge
Family. Ritchie Screaming Apple and Mitch useless Earlyripes
are both affiliated with the club, so it really felt like
home base.




Outside the Underground the next day. We
never did figure out what kind of car that was.
 I was really excited about this gig. This was our only
show with The Satelliters. Steve helped set up our whole
tour, and convinced the other Satelliters to loan us a
pile of gear, and sheperded us around, PLUS The Satelliters
BLEW ME AWAY when I saw them in sacramento in '98. They
were the best band I saw the whole year, including all the
bands I saw at the Fuzzfest. There was no way in hell that
I was gonna sit in a goddamned hospital and miss a gig with
The Satelliters!



Steve and The Satelliters rock the house!
 They rocked. I was surprised to see them without the masks.
This was one of their first bare-faced shows, but when they
played their newer material I could see why they decided to
dump the masks. The masks were all about being "weird" and the
new songs are just about being GOOD (check out their latest
record "What's Up With Timothy Dee?" on Screaming Apple... it's
GREAT) This was one of Diego's first shows as guitarist, too.
His rickenbacker sounded great... Rod was so jealous I thought
SURE he'd buy one the minute he got home. Steve honked on the
harmonica and organ and sang like a fury and danced all over
the place. After a set like that, we REALLY wanted to play
well.


Thanks to George Ceaucescu/Jürgen Riedel
for the photos of us.
 It's pretty amazing what adrenalin can do. You hear about
people picking up cars and knocking through walls and all
that. All I know is that I can feel SHIT-TAY the minute
before I step on stage and feel great as soon as we're
playing. It's amazing. I was in a dirty old black
turtleneck sweater 'cause all my white shirts were filthy,
so I was sweating like a soda cup on top of shaking all
over. Still, we started off great. That lasted about
one song.



"Son of a Bitch!!"
 Rod broke a string right off the bat, and for some reason,
we could not get it together after that. We couldn't
get in tune and rod's yelling at Stan and Stan's refusing
to play and we're working on a bass-less "Have Love, will
Travel" and oh is it stinko. Finally Rod realizes that he's
somehow tuned into the wrong key and gets back into tune
with the rest of us and we kinda pick up the slack. I'm
running around like a man on fire-- a lot like a man on fire
'cause I'm wobbling and falling offa stuff-- but it's ok 'cause
I just crawl on the floor some more and I'm singing to Lutz
Rauber and Janine and Ritchie and standing on the monitors
and falling off and just more of the same ole same ole.
Mitch comes up and says we have to stop 'cause it's too
loud and there's some people outside for some dance party
thingie and so I run outside and dance on the tables to the
tune of "Jack The Ripper" while hipster dance kiddies
wonder what the fuck?...........


"A funny thing happened on the way to the show tonight..."

 Somehow we actually get enough applause that we realise that
we actually have to do an encore and Diego loans Rod the
beautiful Rickenbacker and Rod swears he won't bust it.
There's not a string left on the Tele, natch, and Brian
has to reassemble the drum kit. Stan has to straighten
his tie. We play a couple more, but now it's really true
that it's too loud too long and we gotta quit.

 

I feel like dogshit quite immediately and am in my top
bunk pretty early knocking down vikodins like M&Ms. I
was super sorry not to be able to hang out with all the
guys, but I just needed that sleep. First night outta
the hospital and what a night.

 

The next day we get up and have a big breakfast except I have
a tiny breakfast 'cause I can barely eat and Mitch records
an interview for Useless Earlyripes. It's amazing that anybody
could eat with so much horseshit flying, but we got through
it. If you ever read that interview you'd think Rodney invented
the internet and I fought in the Spanish Civil War. That Mitch
knows how to draw out an interesting interview... plausible
or not! Ritchie set us up with a bunch more LPs 'cause we had
been selling more than we thought, and we load them and a
bunch of fruit and water into the van for the long trip to
Augsburg.