We spent most of December playing in China. We flew into Hong Kong and spent a couple days off wandering around tropical parks and street markets thinking we were pretty adventurous travellers. But we hadn’t seen anything yet! Once in mainland China, we were taken, with police escorts, to luxurious banquets where people found our constant flow of cultural faux-pas hilarious. Later, I would discover that I had inadvertently challenged a high-up politician to chug several glasses of wine in a row. I thought “ganbei” translated to a polite “cheers”, but in fact it means “drain your glass”.
On the other hand, we also ate in the filthiest of alleys. Some locals in Guangzhou took us to a late-night hot pot restaurant where we ate among drunk, shouting gamblers and eventually became ourselves drunk, shouting gamblers. The bathrooms in this particular establishment – like most places in China – had no toilets, just holes in the ground. They were so dirty that I literally peed on a rat as it scurried across the urinal trough to nibble on something I think was vomit.
Our shows were fantastic. Some of the places we played, cities of 10 million people, had never had a live band playing original music before. These virgin audiences were very excited and lined up for an hour afterward to have photos taken with us. Somewhere out there are thousands of pictures of us looking oddly tall and doing the peace sign.
(Some very creative English over there… dairy section = Daintily Tasted)
After three weeks of amazing food, people and sights, we were sad to leave. But we stuffed our suitcases as full as we possibly could with our haggled-over market goods and some mouth-numbing Sichuan peppers and vowed to return as soon as possible.
We have just finished a quick 10-day tour of Europe, which was fun. We drove so much that we left imprint in the van seats. In a very short time we played everywhere from Italy to France to Czech Republic. We met some great people and played a few interesting venues. Of course every day included ogling some kind of ancient building or other. We Canadians find it hard to fathom how anything can be older than a hundred years.
In Hamburg, someone in the audience told us after our show that she had previously lived in the apartment the Beatles lived in the 60s. Because she sensed our enthusiasm, she urged us to go check it out and gave us the address. She told us to ask for Karl, who she may or may not have known. The next morning we rang a very very confused Karl’s doorbell. I told him very slowly in English and broken German that we were Canadian tourists and he eventually let us in. We went into the apartment and he said, did you know the Beatles used to live here? I said, yes that is why we came. He said, you may now feel the vibrations. Apparently it’s not really advertised anywhere so you need some real inside information, which is why this doesn’t happen to Karl more often. The last person to ask to come in was the guitarist for Iron Maiden!
Our German has improved to about a 3-year old level, which makes it easy to ask for bathrooms and food at least. Slowly but surely, we are determined to massacre every language we possibly can. It was awesome to get to Paris, where we could actually communicate! And with a day off too. We are so full of baguette and wine, you don’t even know.
Now we are in the UK, and looking forward to a half dozen shows here as well as one of our close friends’ marriage to a Scottish guy. Proper traditional Scottish wedding, so if you ever wanted to see Immaculate Machine in kilts, just stay tuned for photos. Please pass along the facebook events to anyone in the UK who might be interested – thanks!!!
New video for Only Love You For Your Car. Directed by Tippi Tomlin-Hood, produced by Kimberli Persley and camera work by Kyle Surovy.
Our “world tour” starts in a few weeks! We’ll be in Western Canada for the first half of September, starting with an absolutely free show for CFUV’s 25th anniversary and taking us to Winnipeg and back. Good ol’ Exclaim! Magazine is sponsoring the tour. We go to Europe for October, then fly back to New York for the CMJ Music Marathon and a Central/Eastern Canada tour. The “world” part is really only justified by our probable tour of China in December. Keep up to date here with our show calendar, or sign up for our newsletter.
Our friend Morgan made a little video about us while we were in Toronto:
We have also just finished filming a hilarious “post-apocalyptic bicycle gang battle video” for Only Love You For Your Car. Keep your eyes peeled for that and more tour dates in Europe, Eastern Canada and China.
We are giving ourselves a summer of calm before our fall touring storm. It’s all night time bike rides and frisbee in the park for now… but just wait until September, when the onerous work of travelling to cool places and and partying with friends starts. We are planning a tour of Western Canada Sept. 2-12, followed immediately by a 5-week tour of Europe. We will be back in N. America for CMJ Music Marathon in New York City Oct. 20-24 and some shows around the area. The latest news for after that is a possible tour of China!
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