Day 26: Berlin
Nau mai
Yesterday we played a headline show in Berlin.
We were staying in the Tempelhof neighbourhood and this meant we were in close proximity to a number of Turkish cafes and restaurants. It could also be said that staying anywhere in Berlin would have you in close proximity to a number of Turkish cafes and restaurants, but I don’t know the city well enough to proclaim this as a fact.
A fact I am confident in proclaiming is that I walked to Café Evim and ordered a Yumurta Tava – scrambled eggs with cheese, olives, salad, and bread.
It was an exciting day for Liz. The gear rebuild continued with acquisitions happening on several fronts. Our frontwoman was now the proud owner of a Hellenic Pelican Case, specifically a 1615 Air, a lightweight plastic protective enclosure to transport pedals and other essentials like spare strings, or a travel kettle.
There was a fresh shipment of effects pedals ready to be unboxed and placed on the board, each one carefully chosen to contribute to a meticulously crafted sound that the guitar section of The Beths had worked long and hard to perfect.
Liz turned up at lobby call with a 2.4 metre sheet of UV-stabilised corflute which must have been a nightmare to carry back from the hardware store. As well as being a great value cladding for carports and pergolas corflute is the material of choice for The Beths pedal boards (™ ™ ™) being both extremely lightweight and strong when laminated correctly. As a band that is obsessed with optimisation this opportunity to shave half a kilogram off our suitcase weight is gold plated, or perhaps just lightly gilded.
We arrived at Lido nice and early and took a moment to appreciate this handsome old theatre in the neighbourhood of Kreuzberg. It was to be our second time playing in this room and it felt nice to be back, the enormous mirror ball and the mid-century décor in the dressing room dredging up several pleasant memories. In particular it was good to see the old drip coffee machine that had served me up the most caffeinated beverage of my life, a potion that made me feel like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. On this occasion the coffee was gentler and I glid through soundcheck with only a slightly raised pulse and greatly increased alertness.
There was time for a jog before soundcheck and I enjoyed having the chance to explore some of the surrounding neighbourhood, in particular the Landwehrkanal, which was a popular spot for some early evening recreation. The wakes left by a bevy of Swans were the only disturbance in the glass surface of this waterway, as families with strollers walked the banks, and couples sat gazing out into the evening sky enjoying cigarettes and a moment of quiet romance.
If it wasn’t enough to have a new pedal board and case Liz had a whole new guitar for the show yesterday. Master luthier Elliot Trent had been working tirelessly at his workshop in Poole, UK, the last couple of weeks, and had built a replacement for the beautiful pink instrument that was sadly lost in our van break-in. These Trent guitars are simply wonderful, custom body shapes and colours, high quality hardware, and the entire process taking place in-house right down to wrapping the hand-wired pickups. We cannot thank Elliot enough for his incredible generosity, and for helping us make the shows the best they can be.
This guitar didn’t get to Berlin without some magic happening, though. The backchannels were opened, and cogs began to turn. Officials were bribed and false identities created. A seat was purchased on a flight from the UK, and a bodyguard was hired to escort the guitar on its journey. When Chris Hughes arrived at Lido with this brand-new instrument slung over his shoulder and we were safely in the dressing room an airline ticket was produced, and the identity was finally revealed. Mr Item Seat was here and ready for the show.
The Berlin crowd were huge fans of Mr Item Seat. They even began a chant in his name, which might be my favourite chant I have heard in Beths show. They were also a gifted group of hand clappers and managed to deliver a tidy rhythm at the end of “Metal” seemingly without any rehearsal. We were in a great mood throughout all this, and we played a good set and loved every strum and every sing. It was hard to dampen our spirits even when we had to rush straight into a rapid loadout to get the room ready for a club night. People need to partie, and we are thrilled to enable that activity.
Shower Door Daily comes to you from the Mercure Hotel in Tempelhof, Berlin. I have seen variants of this design before, but I think this might be one of the worst examples of the genre. While I am okay with a mere 400mm of splash protection, I found that the gap at the bottom of the glass panel was substantial and had significant outflow. A puddle of water on a white tile floor is slippery and nearly invisible in most lighting conditions and can be highly dangerous.
“⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”