I told myself that I would find a place to live for a little while this past November as a gift to myself for turning 25. I chose Barcelona, which seems glamorous AND punk. I’d been there before, I flew there for ten days in early 2007, when I was spending few months in Dublin. Ireland was good, it was okay, kids were real nice and we had this stupid band going that was asked to play a 17-year-old’s Saved by the Bell party, that was cool, but everything was small, damp, dank, and expensive. Barcelona, in comparison, was so warm and dry and so free. I was put up in an old squatted linen factory, beer was a cold 60 euro cents for a bottle at the bodega across the road, and I was staying with Americans who’d make me stovetop espresso after stovetop espresso while sounding off on me their ideas for a Unabomber-themed hip-hop project they were recording. I think it was called THE POWER PROCESS. I’m pretty sure they were calling their album “Surrogate Activities.”

For those unfamiliar with the Unabomber Manifesto, basically, the power process refers to what Ted Kaczynski believed was the basic human drive to have goals, to have these goals require a certain amount of effort, and for these goals to be reasonably attainable. Important for some is to have this process be reasonably autonomous. The lack of these things, imputed to modern industrial society, results in demoralization or whatever, you know, middle class vacuity. This leads to us pursuing a surrogate activity, or, an “artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward.” (paragraph 39)

I had timed this ‘07 Barcelona visit around a FUCKED UP show, right around the Hidden World LP hype-era. It was fairly glorious. “We love you, Barcelona,” they said as a massive enthusiastic crowd climbed all over each other. “Me, too,” I thought.

“Maybe I’ll move here,” I said the next day, on the rooftop terrace of the linen factory squat, a beautiful 4-storey oblong building no one paid money to live in. I was looking over a palm-treed, green mountained skyline, 21 degrees in January. (Americans: sorry, 70 degrees)

I heard that in Pittsburg, these punks encourage other punks to move there by offering them a bike and setting them up on two blind dates. When I tried to move to Barcelona, it felt that the punk house you’re told is way cool to stay at, but you when stop by, it’s totally the wrong time. Like they won’t make you sleep outside or anything, but they are kind of bummed, they’ve been having a lot of house guests lately, a bunch of shitty ones, it’s been a strain on the house, there’s some tension. When I showed up there, all my friends were gone, all the squats were overpacked and stressed out, and for reasons too complicated for anyone to ever translate into English for me, every show coming up during my short stay was cancelled. Plus I didn’t know what I’d do there. I needed some goals. Squat eviction was a big problem, but I am bad at fighting cops. Maybe I’d learn Spanish and be able to finally read LOS CRUDOS lyrics. I really wanted to research Spanish punk, but when I tried to move into the empty room in the apartment of the dude rumoured to have the biggest record collection in Barcelona, the vacancy was usurped by an Italian industrial design student. Then I accidentally moved in with some racists in the suburbs. I avoided their shitty comments by staying in my new bedroom with the window opening into a tiny courtyard that every kitchen in the building opened up into, every day waking up to the grumpy morning routines of five other families, pushing me towards my decision to skip out on rent and to go to Paris and learn to play the keyboard in order to join an old roommate’s band, this pop indie unit, a 9-person group-singing weird instruments combo that needed some lead melody reinforcement due to both an accordian player and a keyboardist having mental breakdowns and quitting the tour.

I think someone from that punks-playing-old-timey band PINE HILL HAINTS once likened being on tour to being in heaven, in that you never grow old and you always see your friends.

I once said in my previous column that touring is a easy way to absolve yourself of the depressing responsibility of finding meaningful ways to occupy your time. So I caught a rideshare to Paris and sussed out my new situation. I was now spending my days and nights (the tour had some down-time due to a cancelled UK portion of tour, the usual immigration problems) in what the band was calling The Eggshell Apartment, a small flat with a big living room where we’d sleep in an adorable summer camp-esque row. The two bedrooms off the living room belonged, respectively, to one of the drop-out band members and her roommate that liked personal space and hated houseguests. Outside was snowing and overpriced. Oh well. I sat in a corner, sharpied the notes onto the keys of a casio, plugged in some headphones, and practiced the parts I needed to play onstage, thereby qualifying me for transport and feeding on the band bill. I tried to seem quiet, non-intrusive, and invisible when the previous keyboard player made the trip from her room to the kitchen. Maybe it was a little like Barcelona, but at least I had activities, and eventually I’d move back into a van that I knew would never leave without me.

When the indie pop tour brought me to Lyon, France, I went to go visit my friend Alex, whose band PIZZA O.D. my other band, the Canadian punk one, had toured with just a month earlier. I didn’t invite him to the show because I knew he would hate it but I wanted to see him, so I stopped by. He told me that he was asked to book another comprehensive European tour, like the one we had just done, this time for some New Zealanders, but that he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it. Why?

“It was just so much work, months and months of stress and booking.. And touring is such an easy, non-challenging way to travel. Plus,” he said, referring to the tour we’d just done, “if I had written what I thought would happen at each show before it happened, it would’ve been completely accurate.”

I wasn’t offended. Okay, maybe I was a little offended, but I tried not to be. But I disagreed too. I guess for the Canadian contingent, having no frame of reference for what the actual, run-of-the-mill basement squat scene in most of Europe is like, everything was pretty new for us. We couldn’t have predicated how even the usual played-out cities like Paris would go, much less, say, Slovenia. Plus Alex and I, who had become penpals via his fanzine RATCHARGE, had decided to do that tour before ever meeting each other, like we met up at an anarchist radio station in Paris, interviewed each other on air, introduced our bands, and went to 11 different countries in 30 days, and it going swimmingly is one of the reasons that I’m—and please excuse my boring cliché rehashments of punk enchantment— still stoked on punk. Or, after touring with a completely not-punk band, I should say, rather than punk (although varieties within this genre are still my usual jams of choice), the underground realm of DIY organizing and networking.

But, sure, I can see where he is coming from. I probably I could do the same predictions with a Canadian tour, maybe even American. But still, even retracing a small portion of Western Europe again, the same cities, it was was pretty fucking different from when I had just done it a six weeks earlier. Guys, indie pop tour world is weird. It's a chaotic experience of always free alcohol, but not always the guaranteed food and lodging I had thought was characteristic of touring Europe, one of not having a hired driver and only the drunkest member of us being able to drive, one of mandatory, hour-long sound checks, one of weird French clubs in Berlin that we can't play drums in with furniture nailed to the ceiling. True story. Safe travelling, sure, but still weird. As in, I played the a casio in front of a hipster audience. As in, I guess I had a goal and I guess I attained it and I had to exercise my own power to do so. As in, I've staved off demoralization for another month. I think.

Stay punk.
julsgeneric@hotmail.com

column, january?

I'm in Amsterdam, right? It's pretty embarrassing. I am on tour but it's a day off, we're not playing here or anything, so that's extra embarrassing. But I swear I didn't choose this; our itinerary was arranged by our non-stoner french tourmates. I guess it's just a small beautiful city everyone wanted to hang out in. It is kind of beautiful, I mean, there's a lot of canals and ducks and shit. I like weed and all and appreciate the convenience of this whole "coffee shop" thing, but at the same time, I'm not that into being in a place populated mainly by 18-year-olds who are getting silently all high as humanely possible while watching MTV. I lived in a place like that once. It was called high school.

I guess this is a tour diary, which is conflicting. On one hand, I want to write about it, because touring is what I do more than anything right now --I'm at that punk age, you know? Like when enough small groups of people in other cities will dish out some change in exchange for the fifteen-minute set by your somewhat okay-liked band to make these annual month-long things justifiable. Add that to knowing enough other people doing the same thing who have yet to grow sick of you and your habits and will therefore allow you tag along on their tours, making touring constantly available to you. Add that to being really impressed with the idea of touring as a kid, like it seemed like the coolest-fucking-thing-ever, so every tour you go on is ticking off this "childhood life goal" checklist in your heart. Negate any ambition to have a relationship, job, or meaningful long-term personal project, and there you are, early 20s, give-or-take, always on the road. What else am I going to write about? On the other hand, with tour diaries, it is fucking hard not to meander into "Touring is the best and I love being punk and it is so inspiring to do what I want all the time" territory (trite) or the Get in the Van-esque "Sometimes I don't know why they're here. Sometimes I don't know why I'm here" realm (annoying, and insulting to anyone involved in the tour, be it bandmates, bookers, or audience), or the usual "Here's some wacky anecdotes tacked onto a dry list of every city conquered" (boring, unless the reader is scanning for a call-out).

The band we are on tour with has a song called "Amsterdam." It goes "Ohhh, ohhh, Amsterdaaaam," and it's about being depressed in Amsterdam. They also have a song called "Toxic Touriste," which, in the non-french countries, is explained on-stage in english. It's about people who travel to do drugs. Like, you know, American kids coming to Amsterdam to get high and safely relying on the fact that everyone speaks English, which, you know, they do. Despite this english-prominence thing, though, I'm having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what the fuck is going on most of the time.

Like I'm in this "coffee house," right? I'm already stoned, I'm just there to get an actual coffee but I don't think I want to stick around, especially since there's a mid-30s man in a full track suit close enough to me that our elbows are touching. He can speak english, he's gesturing over his own mouth, he's saying, "I like your piercings." I'm like, "Great, thanks." He says, "They are very nice... I bet you could do very…nice things with them." I'm like, frown.

"Hey," I address the man making my coffee, "Can I get this to go?" which is an embarrassing term to use, because I'm pretty sure it was invented by McDonalds.

He looks confused.

I point towards a paper cup on top of the till, one that's used being for tips.

He says something in dutch. I look confused. The track suit man says, "He wants to know if you want sugar."

"Yeah, two, but…"

The coffee-making man drops two cubes into the shot, dumps in the milk, and pours the whole thing into a normal, nondisposable cup, I get worried and repeat myself, saying all extra clearly and loudly, "Can I have that in a paper cup?"

"Yes, yes, una memento, senorita," he answers, totally snarky, and I feel dumb, like another dumb customer making twangy English repeated demands. Like all, Please understand me. If I talk louder, will you understand me?

He grabs the paper cup I've been pointing at, finds another receptacle for the coins inside, gives that shit a quick rinse, and pours my coffee in. I say "Merci," mistakenly (wrong country), and leave.

A few days later, I'm in the van. We're circling around Berlin, trying to leave it, right? The night before had been my first of a few when I tried to mingle with the locals while my tourmates choose sleeping, so I can avoid looking like an idiot in front of my friends. So after our Berlin show (squat basement bar), the sort-of squat where we're staying is having a metal night (sort-of squat basement bar) and the guitarist from the grindcore band we played with is translating a joke about Helmut Kohl (German president) visiting a zoo. The punchline involves something about a mispronunciation of the word "dangerous," and when he finishes, I am at a complete fucking loss for words. The language barrier gapes awkwardly between us. It is like a fucking black hole of communication wherein every word spoken will be sucked in, never to be intepreted in a way at all near to the speaker's intentions. So I go sit with the promoter, this french kid who now lives in Berlin. Things aren't much better with him, every sentence we exchange is like, "What? Sorry? Huh?" At one point, it is a literal five minutes to determine that he is talking about the band KYLESA, just because of the way he pronounced it; and then when this is established, all I can be like is "Oh. KYLESA. Two drummers, yeah, cool." The only time dude uses enunciation I can comprehend is when he's singing along to NOFX, which happens around 7 a.m., immediately after which I nod out in his chair. We have to get up at 10, so this extremely strained social interaction seems like a weird choice in retrospect and it's not even until the next morning, in the van, being lost, that I realize that every time I thought he was saying "Providence," he was actually saying "Powerviolence." He was trying to figure out which of the five-thousand CHUCK NORRIS bands I was touting with the patch on my hood and I was like, "No, I don't think there's a CHUCK NORRIS in New Hampshire; I like the one from Vancouver." and he was saying, "No, powerviolence, powerviolence." and I was saying, "No, no. Canada." And I really want to be like, "Isn't it weird how at least four bands with the same name were formed with a pretty small time frame? And how the one from Canada and the one from Brazil released their first 7 inches within a month of each other and had a few really funny similarities common within the fastcore genre?" Like I want to talk about international trends in punk without the presence of one singular monopolized information source, but maybe I don't really have to say it; we're both 24 and know every single word to "Lori Myers."

And then Poland, fucking Poland. The surreality of it was obviously contributed to by this disorienting hangover I had. I don't usually get wasted, like once a year, maybe, so when it happens, I feel pretty crazy and unfamiliar the next morning. But there was a band-gets-open-bar policy in Leipzig, they were serving vegan white russians, and there was an American who picked up on every subtle circa-93 north american television allusion I made, so I was like "Oh my god, let's hang." He tells me, "I love it here but no one understands me. They all think I'm a fucking nutjob," and the night ends with me passing out in a hallway outside the bathrooms. The next day we cross an invisible border and I'm told I have to exchange my money into a currency of a worth I can no longer roughly convert back into Canadian dollars in my head. Our guitarist tries to enter a toilet room and gets yelled at by a small, round woman wearing a kercheif, pointing at a sign with new letters we can't pronounce. We have to drive 13 hours on tiny winding roads, passing 90-year-old couples on horse-pulled buggies to get to our show somewhere really, really north, to a place called Olsztyn, which, when it comes out of my anglo mouth, sounds similar to "Austin," which makes everyone laugh. Olsztyn, Texas.

Four days later, still in Poland, it's not any better. I'm in Krakow, going to see our friends GHOST MICE with our roadie on a day off. We are outside the show and some people of skinhead appearance approach and everyone's like, "Oh, fuck, here it comes," because you always hear stories of Poland being where Nazis will probably come to your show and start shit, and I hope GHOST MICE won't be offended by my saying that they are on the wimpier end of the punk spectrum, like, you know, they have that German member who plays children's toys in lieu of real instruments. But it turns out the skinhead presence is the opening solo act and his friends. I watch him. The show is in a bar that is probably actually just a cave around which they built a building. The skinhead opening act is playing an acoustic guitar with a thick chain rather than a strap and his songs, which I obviously can't understand, are so riling the crowd is circle-pitting. I am in Poland, watching people circle-pit to an acoustic guitar. One especially enthusiastic kid crowd-surfs the bag of concrete powder being used to keep the microphone stand upright. It falls, splits open. I think, "Why does it smell like a pool in here?" and then start choking and have to leave.

The next day, the van again, headed to the Czech Republic. I'm reading this Steve Martin autobiography about his stand-up career, a book someone else shop-lifted from an airport giftshop. I'm at this part in the early days of his career, where, after learning in a college psychology class that conventional comedy is based around a raised tension that is released with a punchline, therein creating the laugh response, he decides to explore creating comedy devoid of traditional punchlines. He wanted to see what would happen if he raised tension and never broke it, built it up to a climax and only deliver an anticlimax. His theory was that the tension would have to be released via laughter sometime, but the audience would have to choose when to laugh rather than rely on cues, even if the choice is made out of desperation. The van is pulling over and I'm stoked because I think we're stopping for gas, which means a gas station store, and I've been really into Polish potato chips. They have delicious unconventional flavors there, usually vegetarian (I think), like there were these Kebab & Onion chips when I first arrived, and I had these delightful Chicken, Rosemary & Blueberry chips in Warsaw, and I've been meaning to try this Wild Mushroom & Cream variety I've seen kicking around and maybe they'll have it at this store we're stopping at. I look up from my book and we're actually at Auschwitz.

I know that sometimes it feels overwhelming to have to translate things into languages everyone can understand, but forgetting to tell your tourmates about the death camp detour is a little much. But okay, we're at Auschwitz. Auschwitz. What am I going to do? Not go in? Fuck. It's cold and windy and so big. I walk to one end of the camp because I want to see everything at once, to try to look at all of it and feel its weight, but when I get there and look back, I can only see a few outside walls of barracks, blocking the rest of the camp. I walk back to the middle entrance and the cold everyone else has been getting is hitting me, my head is filling up with snot and disorientation. Everyone else is headed towards the gas chambers, shrinking in the distance. I find some sort-of grass outside the barbwire fence and fall asleep, waking up to an emptied bus of German teenagers surrounding me. All I can understand is some of them reading the patches on my pulled-up hood, "CHUCK NORRIS" coming clearly through the otherwise indecipherable sentences.