Karlsruhe, Germany
AS SOON as the show ended, Caruthers, the tossle-haired teenage giant soundman
I had recently acquired, bolted for the bar adjoining the hall in the
improbably named Irish House, and afixed himself to a Monroe-esque female
dressed in jet black, replete with
inpenetrable sunglasses. The band and I soon joined him, downing Guinness and
hovering nearby in order to eavesdrop on Caruthers's chat-up technique. He was
about to reach his zenith of romance and begin laying on the lewd finale when
Fortesque, my tour manager, could no longer resist leaning
in to ask the well built blonde what her eyes looked like behind those obsidian
shades.
Well, the wind certainly left Caruthers's sails after she lifted the face
furniture and revealed her eyeballs which were totally pink! Soon the cane
appeared for our inspection and Dieter, her Alsation seeing-eye dog was
produced from the back alley for a sip of Guinness and the evening ended with a
rousing
chorus of A Pair Of Brown Eyes.
Muhle Hunziken, near Bern, Switzerland. Club Rubigen Crossing the border into
Switzerland we noted the pleasant change from severe German flatlands to hilly
bucolic pastures and remarked on the plentitude of fat, brown cows dotting the
sloping green fields. But their
lack of movement was alarming, and, after passing a half dozen or so herds, I
suspected fake animals, hoisted up by the enterprising Swiss to promote
tourism. The band agreed and even Mitchell, the keyboard player (who is
partially vegetable), ceased his senseless bobbing up and down
on the back seat to chip in with,'They're fake animals alright,' before
relapsing to his usual state of lassitude.
Arriving at the gig we were greeted by a bug-eyed little fellow named Pieter
who claimed to own the joint. Studying the jumble of bizarre junk sculptures
that
littered the grounds outside the thatch -roofed club, and the plethora of
stuffed foxes, deer and wildfowl (more fake animals, I thought with a grimace)
that hung from the ceiling within, I concluded that Pieter was obviously a
lunatic and my doubts about this mission increased by the minute.
Alas, those
doubts were not allayed when the audience filed in that evening and began to
jerk spasmodically to our opening tune, a ballad, which would usually solicit
mere languid swaying motions from a normal crowd. Unbelievably, once the tempos
picked up, the punters (consisting entirely of men with beards yet no
moustaches and pinched-faced girls wearing flared trousers) went into an
extraordinary array of ancient dance styles ranging from the Frug to the
Watusi; one bone-headed brunette actually lurched between the Black Bottom and
the Twist during a reggae number! Roll on tomorrow and London,
I thought, where we will probably be greeted by gnarly old pub-rockers with
'impress me' looks on their faces, a stance I can relate to heartily.
Graham Parker's current album, 12 Haunted Episodes, is out now on Grapevine.
Reproduced with kind permission from Graham Parker.
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