At a Dutch rest stop Mike, a professional chef, described the process by which his sandwich had been made. “They took pesto made from pickles and then they pissed on it.”
On the day sheet for today’s show:
| Will food be provided? | YES |
| Will drinks be provided? | YES (+/- 5 drinks/musician) |
| Will accommodation be provided? | YES |
| Any other useful information: | Can wait to see you |
They could wait to see us…
Thankfully, when we arrived in Liege a few hours early (!), Julian from Honest House happened to be walking by. Not only was he able to wait for us, but he also provided a wonderful walking tour of the city while we munched on Belgium’s famous frites. Belgium frites are to french fries what Tesla was to Marconi. Tesla the band that is.
After some café ole, Belgian beer, and a hearty dinner at L’aquilone (which means “Aqualung” in French), The Friendly Dogs took the stage. The overly talented trio took control of some truly unwieldy Beefheartian punk. The singer was a British ex-pat with an absurdist streak that kept the crowd in chuckles between spurts of rubber chords. The bassist switched between electric, upright, and several wooden stringed oddities. The drummer was the most impressive drummer I’ve seen in the flesh. A presence of tall French calm, he had a wingspan the length of Liege. His tiny jazz kit was augmented with a Vistalite bass drum, a jungle gym of cymbals, small gongs, and bell trees, a xylophone of cowbells, Hanna Barbera electronic triggers, various sheet metals or foils, and an endless magician’s kerchief of shakers, shlingers, schlangons, and zeezles.
He played with precision randomness and hummingbird quickness. I don’t think he’s played a quarter note in twenty years. It was almost like his talent was a sickness.
My favorite song was about a sad dwarf called "Super Dwarf", a thrice-shifting number that boomeranged flourishes of press rolls and slide guitar with auxiliary bass drum thuds and electronic drip drops under the tortured perspective of a lionized dwarf. I was humbled to say the least.
The L’Aquilone bi-monthly playbill described The Bitter Tears as “flexible”. I was hoping the crowd would be flexible, too, now that we had to follow The Friendly Dogs. And they were. We were our normal selves, caked in grime, singing, provoking, sometimes screaming. I got many compliments on my prom dress, even though it kept falling down around my elbows, revealing my developing man-boobs. It made sense that after seeing The Friendly Dogs' drummer, their favorite part of my performance was the dress.
We hung out afterward forever. It seemed like the night would never end. In the outdoor plaza we talked shop with Andrew from The Friendly Dogs while Julian kept our hands continuously filled with Jupilers. Each time I visited the bathroom, I saw my own breath.
Eventually, we found our way to La Zone, an underground hostel and café. Reid’s curiosity was piqued by the half-closed door to the café, brimming inside with the sounds of B. Bumble & The Stingers. We poked our heads in to see several girls dancing slumber party-style. Mike followed.
“Where are we?”
We were told that it was after hours and the employees were celebrating the end of the day, and that we were welcomed to join. And so we did. The walls were themed in basketball, with photo collages affixed to silhouettes of slam-dunkians. An LA Lakers jacket and a Dennis Rodman jersey hung with pride (?). It’s always hard to tell what is or isn’t ironic in Europe.
I talked at length with a Belgian man who had spent two years working in a power plant in the hairy border town of Matamoros, Mexico, and with another Belgian man who had a bit of a learning disability, and knew more English than I did French, Flemish or German combined. We talked about the environment, Obama, and eating dandelions, clovers and poison ivy lasagna.
I don’t know when we went to bed. No one knows what time it is ever. All I know is that I left Reid, the lone single Bitter Tear, to his own devices with the friendly group of spirited Belgians. And in the middle of the night I was awoken by the sound of small, nearby Flemish kisses. Dreamily terrible!
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