By David Urbanic
Chronicler
Prague, Lubbeneau (Germany), Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm! Five doorbusters in a row have left Zelazowa weak and weary! The last five shows in brief… The Chateau Rouge in Prague is a wild place. The stage is located in the third sub-basement of a four hundred year old building. The standing room-only crowd made for quite a sweaty time, and with each climbing degree in the venue, so too did climb the concern with the lack of fire exits in such an old building. The crowd was packed in so tight that Zelazowa half joked about the possibility of crowd surfing to the stage just to start playing! Lubbeneau is a small community about an hour outside of Berlin and are high in the running for places challenging Poland for “most ravenous rock music fans.” After spending the day touring the Berlin Wall, the Bugatti dealership, and taking a lackluster boat tour (not as informative when you don’t understand the language), Zelazowa roared into the Duncker Club like an audio bulldozer. “Sweatiest crowd on record,” was uttered more than once by Bryan Weber as for once, the crowd’s clothes seemed soaked more to the bone than his after a performance. Wild moshing turned to several near-brawls before all physical confrontation or movement of any kind, for that matter, was extinguished only by the sheer number of people in the room.
All of those shows, as epic in the Zelazowa history as they were, could not compete against the majesty of their appearance in Copenhagen! Copenhagen is home not only to the best terrestrial chewing tobacco available, but also to the hottest women (as Terry Sharkey would soon find out). Zelazowa exploded all over the unsuspecting throng of spectators in the world famous Studenterhuset! Upon the completion of their set the band found themselves bombarded once again with autograph seekers and girls yielding digital cameras, eager to nuzzle up into the stinking, sweaty embrace of Zelazowa for one picture!
Terry Sharkey found himself in the crosshairs of cupid, but for only an evening, as one drink turned into two, two drinks turned into five and five drinks turned into Terry painting the town red with one particularly amorous femme! In all of his perspired, rugged disarray Terry made his way through the alleys and squares of Copenhagen, a bottle of wine in the crook of one arm, a beautiful Nordic angel in the other. Their night climaxed at a local jazz club where passion and embrace at last had to come to an end, the two parted ways and Terry clumsily made his way down the near empty streets of post dawn Copenhagen.
Two problems, of course, presented themselves. For one, the rest of Zelazowa was fast asleep in an upstairs room of the venue. Terry’s night of romance turned into standing in the middle of an empty street throwing pocket change skyward against the third floor window panes. Unfortunately for Terry, the windows in the Studenterhuset were thick, double paned glass and prevented anyone slumbering inside from hearing Terry’s call for assistance on the street below. Terry meandered the streets aimlessly for a time, thinking it might be favorable to simply walk the streets for several more hours, see the sights, have some breakfast, and catch up on sleep on the long drive that faced the band later in the morning.
This may have been fine, but two things that had been plaguing Terry for the last week or so once again reared their ugly heads. For one, in Prague Terry made a much needed stop at an ATM to withdraw some cash for food, drink, and fun. When attempting to withdraw 400 Crowns (the Czech currency), Terry accidentally hit an extra zero and withdrew 4,000 Crowns. This left him with a tremendous amount of money that could only be spent in one country, and since then the band had been having trouble finding currency exchange places and thus had been limited in how much money they could spend in certain places. 4,000 Czech Crowns in pocket and no way to buy breakfast! The other debilitating personal plague was the severe lack of sleep that a professionally touring drummer endures, which led to the second of the major problems.
With no energy left to stay awake, and no usable currency to kill time with, Terry found himself falling asleep on foot. His search for breakfast soon turned into a search for an empty park bench or a clean patch of dirt under a bush. Every time a suitable resting place was found, it seems, Terry was tortured by a new, unexpected challenge. Bums and homeless rule the early morning streets and despite his ripped jeans and wild, unkempt, up-all-night appearance Terry still looked like a wet-behind-the-ears, displaced tourist who got locked out of his hotel. Prime target for bums, to say nothing of the local authorities who would probably frown on someone sleeping the day through on a park bench in hip, central Copenhagen.
Desperate, tired and alone, Terry made his way back to the venue once more, searching high and low once again for a suitable sleeping habitat. The fruitlessness of his previous search came about only due to his earlier strategy of only searching low. With his new strategy that included high a surprising discovery shone down on him from above. Scaffolding!
Inside the venue, Ian and Kyle awoke around 9am to make a trek to the car and pay for several more hours of parking. As they opened the stage door to go back inside and get a few more hours of sleep, they were startled by an excited voice calling down to them from above. As they looked up they saw the gleeful and excited face of Terry as he scrambled up from the nest he had created for himself on a landing of the scaffolding. The scaffolding made for safe, suitable, and surprisingly comfortable accommodations that morning, and though Terry was far from well-rested, he was more energized after catching several hours of sleep skyward.
The following show in Stockholm, Sweden was another delightful success. With a sensational venue, the spectacular hospitality of the incomparable DJ Dake, and another adoring crowd, the Stockholm experience was marred only by the shameful lack of available alcohol after midnight. Liquor and convenience stores all seemed to be closed, as was the hotel bar, and room service refused to deliver a bottle of Jack Daniels to the post show party in Kyle Weber’s room. That is, until Life Legend, and Zelazowa touring partner Chris Gannett was called in from the bullpen to put on a fireworks display for the unsuspecting, unwilling staff. With his svelte lyrical moves, Gannett was able to persuade the room service attendant into submission by providing him and the late night staff with gyros from the nearby kebab stand. Within a half hour, Gannett returned to the hotel with two grocery bags full of gyros, a bottle of Jack Daniels mysteriously appeared at Kyle Weber’s door, and a bacchanal of Greek proportions ensued. By dawn the room was in shambles, and the group made zig-zagging courses back to their rooms smelling heavily of aged Tennessee whiskey and cucumber sauce.
A few hours of sleep were all that rewarded the men as they were once again stirred from their slumbers by the beckon of another tremendously long day of travel. As I write, the band is in a collective stupor, regaining their composure after seven hard hours in the car on their way to Oslo, Norway where they will play tonight. The hotel has 24 hour room service and there is a kebab stand on the corner. It is going to get rough.
It’s official.
Once the time came, we boarded the 9pm AirIndia flight to Paris where we were delighted by personal video screens at each seat, exotic flight attendants, and free booze. Air India (or as Terry Sharkey would have you know, AirKamaSutra) has no policy on the level of intoxication that can be achieved by it’s passengers. In the words of the exotic flight attendant, “You can drink as much as you want for the duration of the flight!”
This challenge was met by the lot of us, but none more than the venerable T. Sharkey. Perhaps the following observation will be cleared up in further blogging by Terry, but perhaps the myth will only grow. All we know is that Terry disappeared shortly after the announcement was made that, since the flight was terrifically underbooked, all passengers were free to move about the cabin and choose more comfortable seats. This was about the time that the musky French tarts in front of us disappeared as well. The only clue we had that Terry had not simply passed out in an empty row of seats was his clockwork-like reemergence to our overhead storage bins every hour where he would rifle through things with an ever increasing level of excitement on his face, and an unusual way of shuffling down the aisle. Six hours later all that was known of his escapades in coach were a suddenly unusual level of calm, and a curious wet spot on his jeans. Too large to be attributed even to Terry’s mythic urethral activity, but just the right size to be attributed to a sudden, but brief loss of bladder control due to legendary levels of free beverage intake.
The day in Paris was spend trodding about the city, eating baguettes, and touring Notre Dame cathedral where Ian Sharkey spent some memorable times with suspected pickpocket gypsies. The night brought wild times to Zelazowa’s table, plentiful drink and good cheer, and an overly excited French woman who would not take “No”, from Bryan Weber, as an answer! “Kiss me Br-r-r-yan! You MUST kiss me!” as she chased us down the late night Paris streets! The party raged on at our friend Phil’s apartment until nearly dawn when we began to pass out one by one, having had our fill of French YouTube rap and Eel Soup.
ZELAZOWA 