On tour
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As if this year could not get any better, last month my band the Gore Gore Girls went on a three-week tour of Europe. I’ve never had so much fun in my life!! It was like living a Saturday night for three weeks straight!
We started off the tour with a bang, meeting movie siren Tura Satana, the star of Russ Meyer’s “Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill.” Our tour promoter was just finishing up a Russ Meyer tour as our tour was starting, and our visits overlapped for one night as we shared a house together in Belgium. Tura was really nice and extremely cool. She allowed Amy to interview her, and we really got a peek into the amazing life of this incredible woman.
Throughout the first four days of the tour we played seven shows. The first night we played a small club on the campus of a large university in Brussels. For the next three days we did two shows a night. It sounds exhausting, but we were always ready for more. One of the first shows we played was in Goes, Holland with Belgian surf band the Moe Greene Specials. I don’t know much about surf music, but these guys were really good. They had matching outfits, a small horn section, two great guitar players and a very charismatic rhythm section. My friend Kristof, the guitar player for the MGS accompanied us to a few other shows we played in the area. We played with the MGS again at the end of the tour at the 013 in Tilburg, Holland. I wish we could’ve done more shows with them, they were very fun guys! We played two shows with another surf band in Switzerland, Tiki Tiki Bamboo. This trio was made up of two Japanese musicians and one German kid who all met in Munich. They had a great stage act, complete with palm leaves, Hawaiian leis and silver-sparkle boots! We were lucky to be supported by such great bands while on the road, including the Electras, the Lullabells, Havana Ragdolls, Motorpussy, Morgana-X and the Skidmarks!
After an extremely memorable show in Chur, Switzerland at the Safari Beat Club (any show where someone asks you to autograph their ass can be classified as extremely memorable), we headed on to Innsbruck to play our only show in Austria. The night was put together by Elmar of Choke Media and it went amazingly well. I hate to review my own show, but it was pretty intense. We were really tired that day and kind of crabby from driving several hours, but after the Electras took the stage and pounded a full set of punk rock gems were ready to tear the place apart. After that show the equipment really started to deteriorate. After Innsbruck we played another show in Swiss at the Remise Club, and then onto Italy.
We only did two dates in Italy, but they were very fun shows, and the country itself was amazing. The first was at Jack the Ripper just outside of Verona. It was a very spacious bar and the staff and crowd were so nice. We had heard that Italian audiences go completely crazy, but the people at Jack the Ripper (some who drove over 100km to get to the show!) were very, very polite and nice. We weren’t sure if we went over well or not until the set was over and we nearly got mobbed at the merch booth. The other show we played in Italy was near Piacenza. The club was great, and they fed us some of the best food of the tour, including homemade wine! We played the Madly Pub, and it was one of the most exciting Monday nights’s I’ve ever had. Special thanks to everyone who showed up including Chris from the Stinky Polecats and thanks to the promoter Gianni, who also hooked us up with a place to stay—a reformed prison!
Speaking of prisons, our last date of the tour was a co-ed prison in Antwerp, Belgium. We got to bring a few people in with us so we brought Kristof from the Moe Green Specials and another local musician and friend Farah, and also our driver Ruben. At first the prison looked more like a high-security elementary school. They set us up “backstage” in the chapel of the facility. We had no idea what to expect, but when we got on stage the room exploded with hoots, hollers and cat-calls. It was both hilarious and terrifying at the same time. There were about 80 male prisoners and 20 women, plus a few guards. We rocked them. It was a very strange way to end the tour.
I really didn’t want the tour to end. I could’ve stayed for another month easily, but we go to Spain in December, and Scandinavia in May. However, I’m glad we got back when we did because two days after our return Andrew W.K. played in Detroit again! It was an amazing show, of course. I got to meet him again, for the third time. I couldn’t ask for a better homecoming!
For more details of the fun we had, you can visit the tour diary. There is a link to it on our website,
Coming up in Detroit: The Nice Device and Outrageous Cherry at the Lager House on Nov. 16, Brendan Benson at the Magic Stick on Nov. 23, and The Paybacks and Easy Action the night before Thanksgiving at the Magic Stick.
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