Deutschland

Never have we been so overwhelmed by a country like Germany... we can't thank enough the promoters who put us on, the friends we made or the people who came to see us. We've had an unbelieveable time over the last week and we feel it's only right to fill you in on our adventures, where to begin....

Incredibly, the psychopathic northern machine that is our manager Craig managed to make the journey from London, leaving at 1am, to Hamburg, arriving at 7pm, only having nearly killed us twice. Instead of bedding down for the night, we decided exploring late-night Hamburg was worth the price of feeling even more bleary-eyed in the morning, and suitably we ended up playing poker in a sports bar 'til 4am... until i had to go back to the hotel crying from being too drunk on weissbeer.

In the morning we took a stroll around Hamburg, and discovered just what a great city it is. From the wonderfully anarchistic support of FC St.Pauli (where the emblem is just a skull and crossbones) to the plethora of independant record shops where Roary found his soul again, mainly in little-known garage rock vinyl. We met our good buddy david in a cafe and he toured us around and showed us Hamburg's greatest stationary shop.
Our gig in the evening was at the Indra Club in Hamburg, which is where the Beatles first played in Germany. And we had some familiar faces in the audience in the shape of buddies we'd met at Dockville festival the last year. The show was faaabulous, we had no idea what to expect and the amazing crowd gave us 3 encores. We drank beer to celebrate. Before going our with our good friends Florentine and David, which involved seeing Germany's most famous gas station, the golden poodle club, and sitting in a hotel bar at 8am while Roary asked everyone if he could have a sausage. He couldn't.

Next day we made the trip to Leipzig with our friend Yannick...who was to put up with a lot of us over the following 24 hours.....
When we got to Leipzig we were playing at the Sweat Club, which in England would've been our worst nightmare...like a nightclub with dancey tunes where people just wouldn't want to hear us. But god damn it was different here. We went on at 1am and people were fabulous, the front row were singing the words and even the slow songs went down well. Afterwards everyone came to the bar for some Jagerbombs, which we all enjoyed, and to listen to the amazing barman Emmanuel. He was truly a genius. Formerly the drummer for Jason Mraz and Jamiroquai... he taught me many things, and shared several cocktails that would burn the hairs off a toad.

Waking up at 3pm on our day off was an unexpected form of bliss, and after revitalising ourselves with lemon beer (a suprising success in the morning) we returned to the venue to find Evan had drunkenly written 'The Kabeedies' over most surfaces in the club.

We returned to Hamburg to spend a few stolen hours with our music shop friends, who made us coffee, replaced the things i'd inexplicably lost, and enticed Roary with a rare bass head from southend...

Kiel was our next date, playing with a fine fine lad by the name of David Park who'd been our guide to all things German thus far, and had also taught me the proper way to kiss. Before the show we'd recieved an email from the bar saying that we had to "play quietly", which we found odd.... but upon reaching the venue (which was a charming cafe-bar) we realised it was pretty much a semi-acoustic gig...which we're rarely prepared for.
After being kindly fed and watered, and meeting possibly the fluffiest dog in the world, we set about sellotaping my clothes onto the drumkit to dull everything, and turning the intstruments down to -1.
Saying that, we really really enjoyed this show, the audience were fantastic and the gig was a real challenge that we kind of pulled off. We'll be returning to Kiel soon no doubt.

Roary had a tattoo appointment arranged the next day, to get Damon Albarn's head on his left butt cheek - so myself, Evan and Katie set off to motor FM in Berlin, for a radio show with an amazing presenter who had to translate literally everything we said instantly. That place was reeaaal nice, very trendy office, if you ever want a cool office job - look up motor fm.
The gig in Berlin was at the Bang Bang club under a railway in one of the poshest parts of Berlin, and the architecture was bloody stunning. The whole place was stunning really but we were wrenched away from sightseeing to soundcheck before going for a lavley meal. The gig was great and as our last show in Germany we gave it our all, it was probaly our smallest crowd but there were some real characters in the audience and we had a wonderful time. We returned to our hostel very very satisfied, playing pool 'til 4am and having arguments about prostitutes (rory and evan had been approached by a pimp during the night) with our new friend Marvin. Marvin was a bio-molecular scientist and explained to us how worm-eggs can cure asthma and how we should feed them to Katie, so throw them at her the next chance you get. In the morning, we left Marvin at his lab as he attempted to save the world, and we hopped in the van for our 11 hour drive home.

We'll be returning there very soon, June and September.
Kann Ich Habe Eine Wurst?

Love, Fab-Kabeedie xxx