July 11, 2007
Tour Blog: Midwinter of Bullshit
Written by Girth McDürchstein on July 11, 2007 8:22 AM
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Splitcock Tour -- Europe & Japan '07
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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.
“Is this Urho?” I asked, referring to the name of the manager we had written in our records from 1998.
“English,” the gruff voice groaned. “Who fucking is this?!”
“I’m looking for Urho,” I repeated.
“Who is you?” he demanded caustically.
“My name is legendary rock star Girth McDürchstein,” I said humbly. “Let me talk to Urho.”
“He ain’t by,” the gruff voice said. “You talk with Ville.”
“Okay, let me talk to him,” I said.
“He’s me.” I heard exasperation in his voice.
“All right, Ville,” I said. “I need to book a night or two at your club.”
“Which?” Ville said dumbly. I should have suspected something, but I assumed he owned more than one.
“Kyrpien keskitalvi,” I said, “in Helsinki.”
Ville chuckled and said, “You want book show?”
“Yeah, for sometime in mid-July. We’re playing Ruisrock in Turku on the seventh, so—”
“You come July eleven,” he said sternly. “Good time for make trip from Turku.”
“July eleventh?”
“Twenty hours,” Ville said. At first I was confused, but I quickly realized he meant 8:00 p.m.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“You wire money now.”
“What?”
“We need five thousand dollars American advance. For…we make hotel reserved and rent stretch limousine.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s great, Ville. Urho never did any of that shit for us.”
“You wire now!” Ville screamed. I got the impression he didn’t like small talk.
I took down the information and wired the money. I wrote the date down on the calendar, happy that it was so easy to book a night at a sought after club.
I found out why it was so easy.
Despite what happened at Ruisrock, we spent a few nice days in Turku before making the arduous trek along E18 to Helsinki.
When we arrived, the hotel address Ville had given me after I wired him the money did not exist. The name of the hotel was not in the phone book. At first, we just assumed it was a language problem, but even when we asked a few English-speaking Finns, they laughed and told us the name of the hotel was a traditional Finnish insult. It felt suspicious, but we booked a room at a local motel anyway. We were in Helsinki for at least the night, so we needed to stay somewhere.
After getting settled in the motel, Mikey Parker and I took a drive over to Kyrpien keskitalvi, on the edge of Helsinki in a once-abandoned warehouse district now dedicated to clubs and artist lofts. This is what we found:
A pile of rubble stood in place of Kyrpien keskitalvi, the best metal bar I’d ever seen in Europe. I fell to my knees, screaming in anguish. Mikey laughed and snapped some photos.
I have to apologize to our entire Finnish fanbase for completely ruining this leg of the tour. If you are able, we’d love it if you’ll join us in Oslo on the 13th and/or 14th.
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