Day 9 - April 15th - Review of TR's scary "punk" festival in Rheinberg

Today is the last day and gig for TEAM ROCKIT in Germany. I can't help but feel a bit bummed and excited all at once. Although it's only been 9 days, it feels like you've been away from home a lot longer when you're in completely different surroundings. On the other hand, I'm just getting used to touring again and feel like this is what I should be doing all the time (and hopefully will in the future). Last night's gig in Rheinberg was fun and puzzling at the same time. When we heard we'd be playing a punk festival there, we were excited as there would be a huge crowd. Some people warned us of the "old punk" that would be there, but we thought nothing of it since TEAM ROCKIT definitely has a few faster, punk-like songs, but we weren't prepared for this...

1. Joe collects his thoughts before the show.

At the venue we started seeing people arriving for the concert with huge red, green, and blue Mohawks 2-3 feet high. Some of the other band's names explained it all: We would be playing first out of five bands, which was a little weird, but again, it's only our first tour here and we're still very unknown. The bands were: TEAM ROCKIT (USA), Atomspione (Atom Spies), Massendefekt (Massive Defect - obviously!), Betontod (Cement Death- yikes!), and a famous German band called Normahl (simply "normal" in English).

We had great sound since Joe was playing through a small, borrowed Marshall combo amp, AND we had real stage monitors. I guess we should have figured from all of the merchandise stands that it would be an uphill battle to win the crowd over. First of all, I have never seen so much merchandise in my life with all of the bands putting together their own elaborate booths, all with nothing but black t-shirts with bloody skulls and daggers on them. I could only laugh at myself a little bit with the other guys as we truly didn't fit in with our cutesy ducks and geese on our merch set up next to all that. Nobody in Germany understood what "Duck Duck Goose" meant and of course, it didn't have a skull on it. Oh well, we were going to tear ass anyway. And we did as the first band going on at 8pm. It looked like they liked us at first as we played the Ramones cover from the German compilation early in the set, but then it seemed like we lost a lot of them by the end of the set. Maybe they just didn't want to get too loud for the first band, but all of a sudden I felt like TEAM ROCKIT was being analyzed through a microscope or being burned like little ants through a magnifying glass. They just simply didn't clap that much, they wanted OI! Punk and it weirded us out a bit.

1. Team Rockit @ Zuff, Rheinberg, Germany.

We made it through the set and truly did tear ass, but it felt like we might have to fight our way out of there. We found out that this was just an exaggeration on our part, as later in the night a decent amount of people came up to us to tell us we were very good. We also met Ole, the singer from Massivdefekt. He was super cool and wanted to know more about us even as we loaded in. Apparently they had been touring a bit with Normahl and were more rock than punk as well. They had played some huge shows with big bands in Germany and might even hook us up with shows upon our return. The coolest part was that they sung in German. I like when German bands can just be German without having to be "international" or American while embarrassing themselves with English lyrics that are trite or would never fly with an English speaking audience. This obviously isn't the case for all bands, but definitely a good percentage of German bands fall into this category.

 
1. & 2. Joe & Mark @ Zuff, Rheinberg, Germany.

Back to the show: we stayed to watch all of the bands, and it turned out to be a great evening. We sold a bunch of CDs and even the show's promoter "Boris" bought a t-shirt. He was extremely nice (Zuff! was the name of the club, it's associated with www.volkshochschule.de). A woman named Petra came up to us and couldn't believe we played first. She thought, in addition to the promoter, that we were the most musical band of the evening. She ended up buying a CD. Also there were these 3 young kids standing in front of the stage right in front of Joe the whole set. One of these girls - who was about 14, jumped up on stage after the set, picked up one of my broken drumsticks, and trembled as she asked us to all autograph it. Joe, in true Joe fashion, had a broken string hanging off his guitar which he yanked off, cut off a small piece, and tied into a small hoop which he then placed on the girl's finger like a ring. This practically sent her into convulsions, especially when Joe pointed out that he had cut up his hand playing so hard and there was blood on the string-ring. The group of girls hung around talking to us afterwards at the merch table for quite a long time.

We stayed late drinking with Massendefekt until there was no bier left in the backstage area. A guy named Rene did the cooking and he was also very cool. It definitely wasn't our best on the tour, but it definitely was a bit of a wake up call concerning what kinds of audiences we should be playing in front of in Germany. Our driver Franz said it best when he described some of the other bands and the audience as "barbaric" and/or "rednecks." On to Herzogenaurach...

1. Joe @ RABATZ in Herzogenaurach, Germany

This was yet another amazing gig to end up the tour, but we had to leave so quickly after this gig that there was barely enough time to write another tour entry. I usually wrote the tour entries the next day after our shows, in the van. Well, we hadn't slept all day and it was dark on the way to the airport. By the time we got on the plane, we were beat from rocking out consistently for the past 9 shows in 9 nights...what an awesome exeperience.

1. Mark @ JUGENHAUS (Youth House) in Herzogenaurach, Germany

O.K., so details from the show. A guy named "Smiley" was the promoter at this venue. He seemed extremely cool and he also plays in band called Ragindiarrhea- I didn't believe it either, but alas that is the name of the band and apparently they do pretty well when playing in this town. Speaking of "Herzogenaurach", I could barely pronounce the name and I can speak German. I wanted to thank the crowd and the town at the end of our set and the word just couldn't come out of my mouth. I think they understood, though!

We played with not one, not two, but THREE bands tonight that all opened for us. The first band was a French band that had a show that fell through in Nurenberg(sp?). They were called "One Step Out" and seemed cool. I have to say I have a little prejudice towards French people only because all of the people I meet there have some beef with the United States. It's true, we can be idiots, but the manager of this band was no different by saying that good French bands don't get good opening slots for international bands in France as bands always bring their support groups. He has a valid point, but I could almost tell that somthing like that would come spewing out of his mouth. Bottom line though, I applaud any band for getting in a van and touring. No matter where they come from. And I would like to play with them in France when we get to go there. They seemed to sell a lot of CDs and some people (or at least one lady I heard) was buying it to support French bands. It was a "political statement" she said as she plunked down the 5 Euros. It was like Europeans supporting European bands. Good for them, but I don't think I'd ever buy a CD from a band just because they were from a specific country. Maybe just to support them being on the road...I could go into this for hours, but will leave it at that.

1. Matt with the Team Rockit merch.

"Senior Kickstart" was the 2nd band. I only remember that they were very melodic and could really play their instruments. I liked them a lot just because they weren't metal or weren't trying to be indie rock. They were just playing good songs.

M.I.GOD. was the 3rd band. The singer of this band, Max I believe, looked just like the guy from Disturbed. The band sounded a little like them too. I had even more respect for these guys after I got home and heard their CD. Very produced and tight like a Sevendust record. I wish I could say I saw their whole set, but we were sort of prepping to tear ass on stage. If you like tight, produced metal, I would definitely suggest you check out their record. They do it a lot better than most of the bands in the states that I know.

1. Mark loves graffiti.

Concerning TEAM ROCKIT's performance that night, we were sort of in party mode as it was the last tour date and when you get hours to just eat and drink before you play, it feels like it takes a little bit to get going on stage. By the way, Thomas (the main contact at the club), cooked up some mean pasta for the bands and he even interviewed me for a local paper. If you read German, you can check out a little piece done on us from the show here. It was a great way to end the tour as we sold the most CDs after the show and we pulled out all of the stops with a slew of extra covers on top of the TEAM ROCKIT set. The stage was large and the sound was amazing. A lot of people didn't understand why we have come to the small town of Herzogenaurach to play. My response was simply, "one fan at a time...one fan at a time". Or really, we didn't know where we were either, but it followed suit with the shows in the smaller cities being better.

Overall, the tour was a great success, especially for our first time in Europe. We had no major problems or hassles, and we had good gigs, signed autographs, did multiple encores (ZU-GA-BE!), and we sold a lot of merch. I'd like to thank our driver Franz for being sooo German and for his great knowledge and experience. Also, a big shout out to all the promoters, booking agents, press agents, label reps, soundmen, and venue owners that were great to us. We are already planning our return, and we'll bring the ROCK with us again! And most of all, we'd like to thank our FANS, who make all of our years of hard work worth it. Thanks to all and we'll see you again soon!

1. Team Rockit tour poster.