Day 20: Hamburg
Nau mai
Yesterday we returned to Germany for a show at Knust, in Hamburg.
The streets of South Amsterdam were empty on this wet Sunday morning. My taxi driver was enjoying this fact as he confidently sped between rows of tidy brick apartment buildings, their surrounding footpaths and bicycle lanes messy with the debris of Autumn. An incredibly generous offer had arrived in our inboxes the previous evening and I had left the hotel early to capitalise on it, sacrificing sleep to give my new bass the spa treatment it deserved.
There was light on in the window of the small guitar shop I was approaching, and it looked cozy and inviting. Two friendly gentlemen welcomed me in, Roman offering me coffee and Twan carrying my Ibanez straight to the massage table and getting to work. As the strings came off and the hot rocks were laid on the fretboard we chatted and I was given a tour of the shop, the walls of which carried a simple collection of used instruments, all unique and interesting specimens that I would have loved to spend a few hours exploring. They were ruthlessly determined to help us out in any way they could, these two men, and they tried to lend us every piece of equipment they owned. We ended up walking away with a beautiful Gibson acoustic guitar for Liz to play for the rest of the tour and a Fano electric to keep Jon happy, as well the complimentary setup and makeover for my Ibanez Blazer. This generosity was heart-warming, and we can’t wait to go back and spend a proper amount of time at The String guitar shop.
It was a long drive to Hamburg. Just over seven hours were spent in the van thanks to a few closures that redirected us along some beautiful but indirect back roads. To pass the time we listened to our favourite song, “Am I Honest With Myself Really?” by Chaz Jankel. Since we last checked in with this recording it seems out all of Chaz’s early work has been removed from the internet, so we had to resort to an old technology known as Mp3 - kind of a cross between Spotify and CDs. You can’t hold it in your hand but it’s not on the cloud.
This is not a real Mp3 player, just a photo of one.
At some point I had my breakfast from a bag, a Kue pastel with a filling of vegetables and vermicelli.
At 5pm we finally reached the venue and jumped straight into loading, 90 minutes behind schedule but confident in our abilities to make up this time without breaching any health and safety standards. Our equipment was carefully lowered from the van using only the most stable postures and we wheeled them across slick, wet cobblestones that could have threatened to topple us had we not used such careful footing and balance. We entered a building that was a pure rock club - dark and a wee bit grimy, walls covered in posters and graffiti, and smelling of fresh cigarette smoke. It was a former abattoir, one of the two veteran techs told me, as he pointed out the old anchor points for the carcass railings that since had been removed. These grisly old technicians had been working at this club since it opened here 22 years ago, and they were as gruff as they were helpful and determined to assist us in putting on a good show.
Although the evening began in a rush it ended with a relaxing ninety-minute stay on the small stage of Knust, interacting with the crowd in a fashion that felt refreshingly conversational. There was a discipline maintained by this audience so that if any individual wished to speak with the band the rest of the room would maintain a silence to allow the sentence to be heard. In this manner we were able to ask useful question in our areas of interest, for example, “is Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg’s best tourist attraction?”
Jon and Liz both enjoyed playing their borrowed instruments and I had great gig on my new bass, which plays beautifully and has the familiar sturdiness of my lost axe.
