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July 2007 Archives

July 5, 2007

Off to Finland

After a solid week of rehearsals, we are back with a vengeance! We got all our shit loaded up and a private jet booked for Turku, and let me tell you motherfuckers we’re stoked!

Our new intern, Jason Fields, will be manning the website until we get back from our tour. He’ll be in charge of posting our blogs, keeping in contact with friends, et cetera. Unless he’s sending attractive girls lewd messages again, you can consider him an official conduit to Abysmal Crucifix.

Hope to see our Finnish fan base on Saturday! ROCK ON!

—Girth

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 5, 2007 4:26 PM
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July 7, 2007

Tour Blog: Permanently Banned from Tremorden Castle and Ruisrock

The plane ride was uneventful but excruciatingly long. We made two stops for refueling, one of them in England, so I insisted on visiting Tremorden Castle, the former U.K. headquarters of Kelleystein Recordings and the site where we recorded our 2002 masterpiece, Girth McDürchstein’s ‘The Hedge.’ Unfortunately, the band and label’s recent financial problems forced us to sell the castle to an unattractive Scot who insisted on turning it into a restaurant/medieval theme park.

I was embarrassed to discover the castle is no longer a castle at all—the first thing I noticed as the private limo arrived was an enormous Ferris wheel rising high in the sky behind it. A huge parking garage had been erected at the base of the hill, and as we pulled up toward the castle, a neon sign shrieking MEDIEVAL EMPORIUM OF SWEET TREASURES nearly blinded me.

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 7, 2007 7:22 PM
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July 11, 2007

Tour Blog: Midwinter of Bullshit

Our booking agent/intern, Jason Fields, called in sick, so I had to follow up with the booking of our 2007 WORLD TOUR!!! We concentrated pretty heavily on our Scandinavian and Japanese fan bases (sorry, Canada!), so one of the first places I called was obvious: Kyrpien keskitalvi in Helsinki, which we played during our 1998 WORLD TOUR!!! I dialed all 37 digits of the phone number and listened to it ring.

“Päivää,” said a gruff voice on the other line. Like most transcontinental calls, he sounded like he was about five miles away from the phone microphone. With all this advanced technology, you’d think Europe would finally have decent phones. It really is a wasteland.

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 11, 2007 8:22 AM
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July 13, 2007

Tour Blog: Car Theft in Oslo

After far too much time in the truck, we arrived in Oslo late Thursday night. I parked the truck and took the boys (plus Margo and Mikey) out for an early breakfast at Günter’s, a little diner in Majorstuen. It was a great meal with excellent service from a bleak-looking waitress. All told, we spent over two hours simply eating and chatting. Since Carl, Riffs, and Mikey had to ride in the back with all the instruments (and no access to the many boxes of Cheez-Its Margo and I kept in the cab), they were starving.

After we finished, I spent several important minutes giving the waitress lewd suggestions for alternate payment methods. She frowned at me and refused to respond, so I’m pretty sure she didn’t understand English. We paid the bill and dragged Riffs away from the mechanical-claw machine (I didn’t know they had those in the wasteland!).

Mikey was the first to notice the truck was gone. “What the fuck happened to the truck?” he asked helpfully.

“We’re parked on the other side,” I said confidently. On the other side of Günter’s is a train yard, not a parking lot. Embarrassed, we trudged back around to the front of the diner and I finally accepted it: the truck was gone. All our instruments, clothes, the special black silk tablecloths and sheets I bring on tour to spice up the motel rooms, the Cheez-Its—all gone!

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 13, 2007 11:55 AM
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July 14, 2007

Tour Blog: Some Shit Is Going Down…

Gently, I caressed my small plastic credit card within my fingers. The Njord brothers didn’t count on the good credit that comes from having all poor investments and financial mismanagement run through a bankrupt company. They didn’t count on my $10,000 monthly spending limit, my $100,000 maximum limit—or Margo’s ability to shop.

We left the boys and Mikey at the hotel and went to a flea market in the city center. Margo got me all dolled up in leather, while she strapped on some fishnets and a purple pleather skirt that left very little to the imagination. The lack of panties left even less to the imagination when she sat down teamster-style and waited for me to pay. But we had our outfits: a filthy Norwegian prostitute and her uptight pimp, the perfect front to hang around outside car thieves’ headquarters.

To the untrained eye, Helgensgate 12 looks like any other abandoned factory in Europe: from dusk to dawn it surges and throbs with endless house music, but during the day it shudders with inactivity. Unless you know where to look…

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 14, 2007 11:54 AM
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July 17, 2007

Tour Blog: Stockholm Syndrome

Our intern, Jason Fields, called me on the road on Sunday to tell me our show at Arenan in Stockholm had been canceled because of poor ticket sales. We didn’t even get the message until we arrived at the hotel in Stockholm, thanks to poor cell reception. It’s pretty crushing to know that Abysmal Crucifix can’t sell out a large club in one of the few places we’re still considered “popular.”

Since we still had a hotel reservation and a few days to kill before driving up to Lund, I did what everyone comes to Sweden to do: drove to the beach. There’s a nice one at Långholmen, and I needed some relief from the cool night air and the pressures that came from such a disappointing tour. We’ve been on the road for over a week, and we haven’t yet played one show.

I just sat there on the beach, thinking. After awhile, I waded into shallow water, trying to cool off from the heat of the Swedish summer. When I returned to the beach, I fell on my knees. With my eyes closed and brow furrowed, I prayed, prayed to the gods of the Church of Rafelman, a divine order I belong to that believes many of today’s rock stars are reincarnations of ancient gods and goddesses; for instance, I am believed to be Paoponicheleus. Borne of a lesbian affair between Demeter and a water nymph, Paoponicheleus brought soil pH measurements to Greek farmers in the same way I bring the rock to anyone willing to open their ears. I prayed to the reincarnated gods I worship, and when I felt a cold gust of wind coming in off the colorless lake, I turned around and saw—

A man in a heavy black robe. His face was very pale and he kept his hands hidden in the wide folds of his cloak.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am Death.” He spoke with a light Swedish accent, in the deepest bass I’ve ever heard.

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 17, 2007 9:47 PM
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July 18, 2007

Tour Blog: Cancer Crisis

When I got back to the hotel, I told the rest of the band exactly what had happened: my ex-fiancée, Sarah Goss, had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. Prognosis? Terminal. My arch-nemesis, musician Owen Autumn, confronted me on the beach and Långholmen to give me the news. Grief-stricken, Riffs ran into the bathroom and locked the door.

Mikey and Carl sat on a love-seat, trying as hard as possible to not actually touch. Mikey muttered, “Serves that whore right,” which prompted Carl to smack him in the back of the head. Then he looked at me, shrugged, and said, “I didn’t know her. I mean, I feel bad on a general ‘wow does cancer suck’ level, but it doesn’t go any deeper.”

“That’s what she said,” Mikey said, trying to avoid eye contact with me.

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 18, 2007 10:45 AM
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July 20, 2007

Tour Blog: Persona Non Grata

When it was time to leave for Lund, Little Riffs Nicky still wouldn’t leave the bathroom. Through the door, we could hear him moaning and whimpering softly, like a small dog who doesn’t quite understand the permanence of death, but somehow instinctively knows something has changed forever. We tried coaxing him out with Jell-OÂ® Puddin’ Pops, the sensual sounds of “Put It Where It Doesn’t Belong” (his self-confessed favorite Abysmal Crucifix song ever)—we even went so far as to hire one of the millions of prostitutes constantly roaming the streets of Stockholm. The poor guy wouldn’t budge.

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 20, 2007 3:08 PM
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July 21, 2007

Tour Blog: East to Iceland

Unfortunate scheduling forced us to ferry our truck back into Finland and drive clear across the country to get to Russia. We spent most of the day enjoying the Finnish countryside.

Click image for a larger view

It was dark before we got to the border. The road divided into three lanes with wide medians as we approached large checkpoints. A man in a midnight-black uniform came from the guard-shack, assault-rifle slung over his shoulder. He came to the truck and spoke hostilely in Finnish.

“Do you speak English?” I asked.

The soldier sneered at me. “Little,” he grunted.

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 21, 2007 12:34 PM
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July 23, 2007

Tour Blog: Gone to Grenoble

This tour has had its share of financial difficulties, and our lack of income from not playing any shows (so far!) is really putting a chink in our monetary armor. In fact, we’ve spent so much money that yesterday I had to turn in the truck to Lainata Sinä Kuorma-Auto in Helsinki and figure out what our next move was. We couldn’t afford to fly to Reykjavík. Hell, we couldn’t even afford to fly to Grenoble, the French city where we planned to just chillax until we went to Japan.

Then Margo came up with a brilliant idea: “We can pack everything, including us, into a huge shipping carton and ship it to the EconoLodge in Grenoble!”

Carl interjected, “Stupid question: won’t we die?”

Margo shrugged. “Doubt it.”

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 23, 2007 2:10 PM
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July 29, 2007

(Temporarily) Banned from MySpace?

On late Thursday night or early Friday morning (Pacific time—here in the wasteland, it happened around eight in the morning), we were banned from MySpace. I suppose it happens to everyone, but not everyone is Abysmal Crucifix.

At first, I really didn’t know what caused it. I received an automated message from MySpace:

Hello,
MySpace has deleted your profile because we received a credible complaint of your violation of the MySpace Terms of Services.

Prohibited activity includes, but is not limited to:
-Any automated use of the system, such as using scripts and/or bots to add friends, send messages, etc.
-For band and filmmaker profiles, MySpace prohibits sexually suggestive imagery or any other unfair, misleading or deceptive content intended to draw traffic to the profile.
-MySpace also investigates credible complaints of copyright/trademark infringement and will delete any materials that infringe upon the intellectual property rights of third parties.

For a more thorough list of prohibited content/activity, please refer to the MySpace Terms of Service located at the bottom of MySpace.com.

If we delete your account, it cannot be reinstated.

Thank you,
MySpace.com

I thought, “This must be some kind of a mistake, or perhaps it’s spam.” While replying with my credit card information and Social Security number, I thought, Maybe I should login and check to be sure. I tried to login, and it let me—sort of. It said I was logged in, but refused to take me “Home.” I decided to go to the link to our profile—and it was gone, replaced with a generic message telling me I’d either typed an invalid ID or the profile was deleted.

“Noooooo!” I roared, then quieted down so as not to wake the others. I had snuck onto the computer intentionally for—personal use, let’s say.

Posted by Girth McDürchstein on July 29, 2007 11:46 AM
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