berlin is hot

...30 degrees hot. so hot. summer arrived with us hot. i stayed up for a full 24 hr cycle travelling here and played a show the night i arrived. ausland is a tiny sub-basement concrete spot in the uber-hip hood of prenzlauer berg. we played there last summer with the DC crew. this year, however, i didn't count on having the berlin no-1 debut coincide with the mammoth opening of the World Cup. driving around the sweltering town with ben, i began to see just how mad the town already is with fussball fever. every and any available locale with beer in a fridge and electricity to connect a tv was filled to capacity with football watchers...and interestingly there are signs of resurgent german nationalism as kids run rampant with painted deutschland-flagged faces and flags hang out of windows everywhere...needless to say, with germany participating in the opening match, the turnout for our gig was somewhat...shall we say...understated...

it was kind of funny that, given our happenstance hook-up with vancouverite band Inhabitants, and the near simultaneous arrival of the extended canadian commercial drive contigent comprised of rup & alison + tarran & nayana...the cancon percentage at the gig was high. our friends ben & (a beautifully plump 4+ months pregnant) lia gathered their troops to support too, so it was an enthusiastic, if smallish, crowd/crew...and mostly it was just cool to see everyone in the same city and to connect with these berlin kids again.

i was on my last legs by the time inhabitants finished their set, but the no-1 must go on...and i braved my fast fading energy and travel fatigue to rock it out with mr rup at my side. my voice was almost gone by mid-set - a combination of tiredness & overextended enthusiasm - but we made it through creaking & cracking our way to a 3:30am finish.

slept a full night's rest, even as the sun roasted my bed through saturday morning. woke to midday rays and radiating heat. and felt rested. zero jet lag. i've been looking over my shoulder since - expecting it sneak up and steal my daylight hours away - but so far i've escaped its clutches.

saturday morning ben was off with ohrbooten to rock an out of town show, but lia & i headed off to a big busking/street theatre festival going on in kreuzberg over the weekend. saturday was mellow mix of waiting around for people to arrive (or wake up at 6pm...ahem...r&a, t&n) and gradually taking in all of the random and variously talented acts performing at the fest. saturday night finished out with a bizarre and elaborate fire show that was massively attended: 2000+ folks outdoors, standing in a huge semi-circle...but the show itself lacked much of anything other than length and size. note: vancouver fire performers de la nukleus collektif found little to amaze them...if that helps explain thangs.


sunday most of the kids were ready and rested and we all converged at the busking fest for day 2 of input/output. ben got back from his gig and brought most of his band and their portable amplifiers and instruments down to the park. we set up our gear underneath a towering cottonwood tree and assembled an assortment of percussionists, musicians and mcs and hit the rhythmic ground running. people drew round in a big group...and our group included guitars, banjos, drums, raps, didg, melodica, beatboxing, and a whole lotta handclaps. some good freestyle sessions ensued and that's pretty much the way the day played out. we rocked a solid hour that felt like a minute. took a break and retreated to shade. ate, chilled, and set-up in another part of the park to repeat the proceedings as the sun went down. a full day of sun and music on sunday, not to mention a full moon. that's pretty well fine by me.

monday was a true holiday in spirit and essence. phone calls and quick shopping trips arranged vehicles, people, and food for a lake-side daytime picnic. a short stretch of autobahn brought us to the shlachtansee (loosely translated as Slaughter Lake)...a quiet lake barely 20 mins from berlin - and conveniently accesible by yer good ol' local s-bahn train for a paltry 2 euros. with picnic feast in hands, plus the requisite acoustic guitars and slightly torn blankets from that trip to india five summers ago, we staked our claim on a good size patch of sunshine, whereupon tarran (the tailor) set to hand stitching his shorts, while wearing them, and assorted other cancons and berliners slid down the sunshiney slopes for a hot afternoon dip in the aqua. i haven't gone swimming in a lake in years...and it was blissful. almost lost a contact lens in the water though, so slightly less blissful as a result.

what else to do post-picnic, then to climb the high mound of post-ww II rubble that is the Kreuzberg (loosely transl. as the king's mountain...haha), and take in a 3 hour sunset overlooking the entire city. the sounds of the evening's world cup match (Italia vs. Ghana) howled up the mountainside to us from the italian resto down on the bergmannstrasse...and we were becks gold serenaded by two guitar players matze (of the infamous ohrbooten) & a fast fingered kid in a black hat who called himself a guitar pluckin' "pope of speed" on the geetar...funny. he was like that informecial guitar-selling Zorro guy on late night...who's that guy? oh yeah....THIS guy. totally like him!

anyway, post-sunset we descended to the italian joint but if was way much loud + toojampackcrowded to make it in so elsewhere we ended up. as it was inhabitants kids last night in berlin, we met up with an absinthe glowing p.schmitt to bid him farewell...and by then it was late late night. sleep called again. it asked me to find it.

soundtrack of the moment: 1 part Blackalicious ("My Pen & Pad") + 2 parts Mos Def/High & Mighty ("B-Boy Document '99") + 1 late night headphone session part Jose Gonzalez ("Heartbeats"...which of all good things, was on the satellite radio on my British Airways flight to London. i had his whole album Veneer playing on repeat across the atlantic, interrupted only by a viewing of Michael Haneke's amazing film "Caché". )

which brings us to

n o w

it be Dienstag in Deutschland. le deuxieme no-1 show is tonight at the 'tiniest venue in berlin' (ha!)...yes...we will rock le petit gallerie d'art contemporain - Foto Shop - tonight at 20:00h for a little group exhibit vernissage. should be fun. rup & i will be the guys in white.

" V.I.P."

foto shop gruppenausstellung
vernissage die. 13.6.2006, 20h

live: - no-1 / montreal /CA ... an outdoor-backstage event!
dj peter grummich + friends

more again soon. je promise.

love johnny