FraKctured

June 6, 2000 -- Bonn, Germany / Museumplatz

Pat and I stopped by Beethoven's birth house this morning. About 15 years ago, I went to Mozart's birth house and it was a very creepy experience: here is a button from his coat from when he was three; here is lock from his hair; here is a spoon, kind-of-like one that he might have used if he had been born in a different part of the country. I didn't have too high of hopes for this place.However, it was really good. They described quite well the era that he grew up in. Both, his grandfather and father were very successful and talented musicians. Which, it does seem to be, an incredible asset for a young musician. Especially, professionally. I never knew that old Ludwig's father tried to sell him as the next, up and coming, Mozart baby genius. His first published composition was at the age of 12 and never looked back.They had lots of his original manuscripts and an amazing letter from Count Waldstein that read:"Dear Beethoven,You are about to travel to Vienna in fulfillment of your long cherished wishes. The Genius of Mozart is still mourning and weeping over the death of her pupil. She found a refuge, but no occupation, in the inexhaustible Haydn; through him she wishes to form a union with another. With the help of assiduous labor you shall receive - Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands."That's quite a blessing, eh?

Tonight's show was outdoors and we were a little worried about the weather. It, in fact, did rain but the area was covered so everyone was okay. When we went in for soundcheck I had to strangest notion about this place. Looking out across the audience area I noticed that the whole floor was cover with some kind of small gravel. This made it look, from the stage, like a giant cat box!It was a difficult show to get going with. There was a large and anxious crowd awaiting us. But when we began to play we sounded soooooo wimpy. Like a very small little ghetto blaster turned up to two. The monitoring sounded completely different from the soundcheck as well. And to top this off you could tell that the people right in front of this very wide stage could hear nothing of what was going on. This was due to the way the PA was set into the venue.Often, on a big stage, you will have side fills (speakers on the side of the stage throwing the sound directly across to the people down in front) or even speakers over the stage pointing down. But, we are limited with the PA that the German promoters have supplied us. In most places it has been adequate. But here we were hurting. There are a few reasons for this situation. One is that the German government takes 32% of the gross of the ticket sales. This means that we can't afford to bring in a PA from outside of the country. In fact, we can't afford to play in Germany at all without some of the tour costs being offset from within the country. Hence we have hired a PA rental which can come off the tour gross. The other issue is that there are so many tours going on right now, in Germany, that there just aren't enough speakers to go around. The PA company man said that he went down to their wherehouse to see if there were any extra speaker that we could use, but it was completely empty. A sight that he has never seen before!So, in order to compensate for the limpness of the beginning of the show we started to play some of the tunes faster. This is the way that musicians subconsciously try to generate excited in a dead situation. Actually, subconscious is really the right word because I was very conscious of it. Even as I felt myself rushing ahead of the beat with every bar. But, I couldn't help myself.Eventually we found our stride and the sound came together. The audience seemed generally pleased with having us there and we did three encores. Thrush was stunning with a spinning solo from RF and nice ending from myself. We did a new Projekct X improv in the middle of tonight's show and Adrian showed like a demon. Yes!On to Frankfurt and our last German show.It turns out that there was 95 decibel sound limit to this venue. And George tested the audiences applause and find it was reading 97 decibels!