GENTLEMEN & ASSASSINS GET DOWN WITH DEAD SOULS IN PRAGUE
London and Brighton anointed the crew with glorious adulation and much revelry. We were ready for the mainland, the continent. Good thing too, Prague was next.
This Gothic, Renaissance, Holy Roman Empire, global city was one we were all excited about. One never really knows what is going to go down in this shadowy, mysterious place . Although having Marika Provovotor of Provokotor Magazine at the helm, working the show was good for all. Plus, we had the next day off.
Producer extraordinaire Martin Bisi would be joining us with his band. He’d be driving the van from Berlin and was bringing musical all-rounder Patrick Muller with him? Patrick is stationed in Hamburg, I hadn’t seen him since December when he had invited me to play a night with his band Tonfang. Excited to see him again. The man has an uncanny, soothing effect on everyone. Good player to have around on the road.
Got into Prague airport and the lovely Nina was waiting for us with her trusty Skoda at hand. How we were to all fit in this can (I say “Can” with the utmost affection) was another thing all together. Let’s see: the English had the Mini (70’s style), the Germans their Trabant and VW Bug, The Indians the Ambassador (my Uncle had a fleet of a dozen at one point, ran a driving school) you get the picture. We rolled our gear onto the parking lot and the Skoda, remarkably, seemed to appear smaller the closer we got to it. We were all in disbelief as to whether anything was to fit. Nina knew better and got down to orchestrating the maneuver and before we knew it we were off into the glorious country side, sun and clear skies dousing the scenery with magic.
My mind started to wonder. Imagining the gig to come. Local band Dead Souls made up almost entirely of expats, were to be our stage mates. As you might have guessed from their name, this was a Joy Division cover band. I was hoping they would be good. I was almost more excited about seeing them than performing our own set.
As we were to play later that evening there was not much time for sightseeing. Into the cavernous Dungeon of Chapeau Rouge it was. Soundcheck. Ron from Dead Souls was awaiting us, excitedly introducing us to his band, the space and spouting off various lesser known truths of the city that he has come to call home. You wouldn’t know it by the look of him but this was a hardened “recovering war correspondent”. Read the news in the last forty years? You might have some inkling as to what that means. I was all ears. It wasn’t a pretty picture, how could it be but the vividness and enthusiasm, for still being alive and relatively sane, was palpable.
He told me the very first gig the Dead Souls ever played was at a wake for a killer who, after spending 20 years doing time in the States, was eventually released and fled immediately to Prague to fashion a new life as a poet. He became quite notorious forming various literary committees and presentations etc…Old habits die hard however and he had been known to severely traumatise poets of a lesser caliber with the threat of dismemberment to to the point of death!
My appetite, so tantalizingly whetted by more stories of this kind from Ron, was ready for anything. Good thing too, soundcheck was about to commence. Dead Souls was up and what I heard was perfect. I had never seen Joy Division or New Order or Warsaw or any of that lot and these guys sounded so like the record “Closer” that I felt like a groupie.
I’ll post some vids and links etc. Not really in the mood to describe how we played and the uproarious response from the punters. Needless to say Sxip, Brian and I were getting into the groove of things at this point and having Martin on the bill made everyone feel like this was going to be a good group of people we would be living with for the next three weeks.
The usual mayhem ensued after the show: packing up in the dark, rounds of strange local brews being sloshed about from from person to person on wet trays. Marika was desperately trying to corral us all to the next destination The “Iron Curtian” for more drinks and food. Didn’t sleep where I was supposed to that night and woke up sun-drenched on the balcony of our friend Yana’s apartment next morning. She runs Fullmoon Magazine and was, as most responsible people, hard at work. It was just a dazzlingly perfect day and gazing across the Vltava River and towards the Charles Bridge I was ready to dive in. Sxip and I both were on look out, as usual for instruments and curiosities, Brian and Melissa had a day of horse riding with Nina, Patrick would be on the headphones editing new music, and Martin would be tailing us one minute then off into distance the next. Caught up with him and lost him several times that day. it was easy to find Sxip and I at lunch though. Devouring wood roasted Kilbasa in front of the Astronomical Clock in the Town Square. Lovely!
