april 15 – video camera saga II, munich olympiahalle show

had every intention of sleeping that morning, but somehow wound up in the breakfast room of the hotel with skype, ichat, email, and george mehren on the phone trying to track down what the hell happened to the video camera. as various people in the hotel awoke adam noted that i was getting the ol’ stink-eye from everyone coming in for breakfast... allison had called with the update earlier.
- apparently customs seized the camera because they thought we were trying to operate some sort of import/export business, one camera at a time from the u.s. to germany, so they needed all kinds of documentation proving otherwise
- they also had evidently thrown the previous day’s fax in the trash, not really understanding what it was all about, in spite of us having sent it and all the documents therin at their behest
- several hours later we discovered that they mistook two tracking numbers, and believed our camera to be some sort of weapon, shipped to someone in the german military, and that it needed some additional documentation to clear customs (which begs the question – why is the german military ordering weapons from amazon.com?)
of course, in order to get the camera delivered before we left munich, the only option ended up being a private subcontractor ferrying the camera (we finally convinced them that was indeed what it was) from frankfurt to munich during rush hour. cost: $400 or so, pretty much the same cost of the camera itself. so that not really being an option at all, we finally wound up with the solution to get on an early-ass (read: 528a) train to frankfurt ourselves, taxi over to the fedex office at the frankfurt office, present passport, etc... then get on a one-hour commuter train on to cologne for the next show. nightmare. but at least we’ll save the extra $400 private shipping.
at some point during the negotiations, adam and al headed out to once again try to get his camera fixed—only to return with a video-camera-shaped paper weight and a sprockets-esque comedy routine about the “accumulator.” useless. anyhow, all of this information took about 8 hours to assimilate, a constant ichat connection to allison in the u.s., several dozen calls to fedex in germany and the international office. by then it was time to head to the show, so that was how we spent our nice extra day in munich. whee...

munich’s olympiahalle is in the olympic complex that was built for the 1972 olympics. it’s a beautiful area, and the arena and it’s surrounding pavilions have a sweeping webwork of arches, with dark panels and tethers connecting them to cement supports. after a leisurely stroll around the entire arena searching for the backstage entrance, we arrived in time for a quick lunch and soundcheck – the merch people were really into our soundcheck rendition of the commodore’s “easy.” still no sign of alanis, but we seem to be getting in a little closer with her posse and dog, “boogs,” so hopefully our introduction is just a matter of time.
adam found some sort of futuristic thing in the dressing room which turned out to be a wall-mounted hair dryer, and went back and forth between that and his practice pad, hair dryer, practice pad, hair dryer, practice pad... at some point after dinner (incredible – adam/carson got the grilled marlin, allen/i ordered southern fried chicken) i sequestered myself in a little interrogation area attached to our dressing room and tried to warm up my voice, which is losing a little bit on the top end but is so far holding up. dinner conversation with jason (one of alanis’ guitar players) consisted of 6 degrees of guitar players & ferret legging (that’ll need a whole article – if we can find it online we’ll link to it).
olympiahalle show was the best so far – rearranged the setlist to get the crowd singing “me and myself” for someone else for one day by the end of the set, and replaced go up to go down with wish this love away. crowd seemed into that one, the kids love their 8th notes. anyway, the clapping and singing gave us all extra energy and we put on a better show as a result i think. sold double the cds and must’ve signed every one, so we’ll probably stick with this new set for a bit. “overflow” has been voted down so far, although we’ll throw it in at some point ‘cause allen claims it’s the best song on the new record. alanis was feeling the energy as well, apparently, as she put on perhaps her best show of the tour thus far.

hard to believe we’re only 4 shows in, 7 to go, feels like we’ve been out for a long while already.