TALL DWARFS

Rip It Up, Issue 202, 1 June 1994, Page 14

TALL DWARFS

First thing is that the air seems clearer, the sky bluer than five years ago when I was there with the Clean. And things are more organised, people actually meeting us at airports and other simple but important stuff of that nature. Roger Shepherd seems more relaxed on this side of the world, if no less twisted in his sweet way.

London's big but too familiar. We play really well to a 50% English (!) crowd and move on to more exotic locales. Den Haag (the Hague) proves to be a little hard to navigate round in our little Popemobile but Ge, our driver, hasn't used this form of transport for a while so we forgive him and eventually arrive at the club. We meet fellow travellers Smog for the first time. A thrill for me 'cos I've grown very fond of Bill Callahan's stuff and the woman in the band turns out to be the mysterious Cindy Dall whose photographic work has been so intriguing in recent issues of Rollerderby (great US zine edited by Lisa "Suckdog" Carver . . . search it out). This is only her second gig with

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the three-piece and she’s nervous as all hell. They meekly ask if they can use our amps . . . uh, do you have a spare lead ... or two? Then, after their soundcheck, you have fuzzboxes? Uh . . . sure you can. These guys travel light. And play brilliantly. Even if it takes Cindy five attempts to get past the first verse of one song without dissolving in nervous giggles. (We are magnificent!). Ge takes a wrong turn to our hotel and we end up on a motorway so fuck it, it's off to his place in Nijmegen where we play the Fast Forward Home-Tapers Festival which is why we flew half-way round the world to start with. Our pen and phone pal of the last few months, Frank Van Den Elzen helps run Doornrosje which is sorta like a Youthtown for disaffected young adults. It's a venue, a bar, cafe, gym, information centre and occasional Hashcafe. It's very Dutch, the good side of their inbred ability to organise, we like it. And darlings, the people we meet. 000, isn't that Eugene Chadbourne? And look there's lovely

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wee Lou Barlow from Sebadoh and that just must be the looming grandeur of Barbara Manning. Not to mention the antipodean terrible twosome of Alistair Galbraith and . . . gasp . . . Peter Jefferies. (Which reminds me, the above Sebarlow had three times neglected to see me or TDs play in his Massachussetts hometown and it was with great pleasure that I could call him on this as he came out of the very London pub toilet that I was itching to use. Uh, this was a coupla days before and they were playing there . . . thought you might like . . . no? . . . fair enough). Missed most of Eugene who played his entire set with his ten year old daughter. We had to do a TV interview for the nationally broadcast VPRO which was great but couldn’t it have been during Mecca Normal's strenuous set? Alistair showed his greatest Super 8 footage edited onto one three minute reel in an adjoining room but it got caught in the gate at the first edit, fried and died. And we missed that too. But did get to see him do a coupla paintings interspersed with horrific travel anecdotes. Smog were (again) painfully, quietly brilliant. And, as first night headliners, we slew the bastards. True! We had to keep leaving the building throughout this first night ‘cos everybody in Europe fucking chainsmokes and the air was restricted to a 7mm band at shoelevel. They even have that nasty English habit of ingesting their (cheap! strong!!) hash mixed with Port Royal or the local equivalent. I won’t tell you what . . . gasp . . . Peter Jefferies was doing back stage. The next day was beautiful, sunny and crisp. We saw a German style Oompah band doing 'Daydream Believer’ in the town square and drank lots of delicious Witbier, did interviews and put down some trumpet (me, first time I’d really tried to make one work) and backing vocals on a coupla songs for James “Dump" McNew's next record. Listen out for the Beach Boys ‘I Can Hear Music’ and a Half Japanese cover on the new Dump CD, Barbara M’s on both of 'em too.

More interviews and back to Doornrosje in time to see most of James' Dump set and even allow him to drag us onstage to do an unrehearsed encore of 'Swimming Pool’ (a very old song by the Enemy, an early NZ anal emetic)

which was very nearly enjoyable under these circumstances. Gasp . . . PJ was most impressive but A. Galbraith’s set started as a wee fuckin’ blinder. Unfortunately I had to go to the other room to show some old vids (which went down well). Watched the extraordinary Tuli Kupferberg (of the legendary and longlived Fugs) do a slideshow/talk on “The Secret History of the USA”. Great, illuminating stuff . . . and two hours long. Somewhat drunk I decided that the cake I’d ingested earlier needed a kickstart so I convinced the people at the little room

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with the impressive pricelist to sell me some of their more potent wares. Minutes later I left with two guilders 50 credit and thrilled to Barbara Manning’s solo set. Then it hit me and by the time Sebadoh came on to do a totally “rockin” set I was unable to see single, had lost all sense of the

geography of my immediate surroundings and was wildly hallucinating at the periphery of my woeful vision. I had exactly no fun for about quarter of an hour before things started to settle back into their rightful places. My pillars of sanity were Messrs Bathgate and Shepherd ... yes, so destroyed was I that Roger seemed like a haven of normalcy! I think the Sebs were great (Lou had done a magnificent solo set earlier). Meanwhile gasp . . . Peter’s grin was threatening to bifurcate his head. Sheppo and us were the last to leave ... at about 6am. It took me that long to get back to pure drunkenness.

Next morning (at 2pm) we said our goodbyes to Frank, Peter . . . gasp ... J’s thanks were particularly effusive and I could swear that the top half of his head did indeed levitate above the lower half for a few seconds.

On to Amsterdam with driver/mixer/ moneyman Willem and the übiquitous Mr Shepherd. Such was the soft pulpy condition our skulls were in that the only topics of conversation on the drive were bowel movements and the very nature of our low-order-primate cerebra.

More Smog (who had a slightly off night), the abridged History from Tuli to a totally disbelieving Amsterdam audience and we started off great but our loops (now digitally stored on

recordable CD) wouldn’t play proper so we went a bit limp near the end but still managed to mercilessly slag the trendy pretensions and studied cool of yer average Amsterpunter in a rather fine version of ‘Woman’ (you shoulda heard what Alec was doing to his poor guitar!).

Traded unlikely stories of the animal kingdom with Tuli back in our hotel room but eventually had to boot the old dear out. Then drove to Paris. I guess we slept somewhere in there but . . . surprisingly, the Club Arapaho in the shopping centre of Paris gave us our wildest audience and overall our best European reception. They were truly overjoyed to see us and there were twice as many people as our Parisian promoters expected so an exceptional night was had by all. Our Parisian “day off” lasted till midday and recommenced at 10.30 pm. Instores, live-to-

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airs and interminable interviews. But all good fun and we went to Jim’s cemetery and avoided his grave but saw the section devoted to victims of the Holocaust and felt quietly shattered. After “doing” Notre Dame and the Eiffel fucking Tower ... it is ENORMOUS, don't be an antitourist prat and miss it, we left for Belgium where we played our last gig with the insinuous Smog at Democrazy in Gent. A lovely town, full of faces that are straight out of the less commercial end of Belgian comics, all chinless and squinting, spudlike and spineless, wonderful. Smog were back in good form and Bill even did a solo song. We did our fond farewells to them and to Frank who’d wandered over from nearby Holland to have a last perve. (I should at this juncture say that Roger had gone back to London after the Paris gig and yes, we did rather miss him and his obtuse but cosy sense of humour). I get to tour solo with Smog in the US in August and I can hardly wait. Into Germany for the last leg of our blitzkrieg. Koln welcomed us warmly and again provided twice as many locals as the promoters had dared hope. A good CD player ensured

that all went flowingly and we finished with a ‘Woman’ that became dark and twisted. One woman who’d been upfront throughout couldn’t hack it and left. I found her later, she hit me, then laughed and told me her boyfriend had told her how we’d turned the song round by the end and that she understood our (well . . .

my) approach. Later we spent the better part of an hour chatting with the wonderful Wreckless Eric who’d dropped in on the offchance and thought we were great. A right tasteful little gent and his partner, Ina, was likewise rather lovely. Our hotel that night had an electric toilet seat cover!

I’d missed seeing Koln's amazing cathedral in 89 with the Clean so I made sure we saw it on the way out next morning. It was worth the wait, made Notre Dame seem quite clunky and bland by comparison. To Enger (a tiny town with a great club, the Forum) where, by some fuckup, we’re supported by Warners-sanctioned, large roadcrewed, tired-as-fuck, next-big-thing Green Days. These guys are gonna be huge because it’s their turn and they've got large dollars behind 'em, but they’re like a Buzzcocks covers band starring Stiv Bators played by David Byrne and they hafta leave immediately after their set to drive to London, play, then back to Belgium. Ha! They’re getting stiffed at every

turn and little ‘ol kiwi Dwarfs are having a good time. We choose to bask in the delicious irony. If this is Saturday it must be Bremen and we play with two German bands, one of whom is forgettable (except for the drummer playing from an armchair) and the other Kinky Garlic who are a coupla buskers who’ve (slightly) electrified and sound like the natural successors to Trio's gloriously minimalist throne. We do a nice loose (god, almost funky!) set then retire to our sumptuous rooms in our private hotel. Ya shoulda seen Alec’s! Stylish to the max, right down to a bed under a skylit pyramid and my room had original Picasso prints on the wall! Such trust. And then Hamburg. And the amazing Fabrik, a converted munitions factory with a lot of the original machinery hanging from vast cathedralic oak rafters. Our sole support gig so we could relax and leave the real work to the Supersuckers, a third generation Sub Pop band who came on like the Johnnies (yeah, boots and hats) but without the sense of humour. Scary! And one of their entourage was an ex-Wellingtonian who used to be in the Dwarves . . .

Rather than watch them we left Willem to count the money and accepted a desperate invitation to play at a private cafe. It turned out to be a hastily converted livingroom with a bar. We played, virtually unplugged, for an hour or two, during which charming set Mr Bathgate actually inhaled something serious and proceeded (it was his first time) to make lots of mistakes and then some glorious sounds. We received 50 deutschmarks and ecstatic club owner's little plastic, handheld basketball game toy thing. Ahhhhh.

And that was it. The next day we went to the best shop in the world, got mildly drunk and spoke important words to each other. Y’know, like warmly, mildly drunk human males do at the tail-end of a prolonged bonding ritual . . . And the whole thing worked, we played, ate, slept and shat well. Audiences left wanting more, they bought 175 of our CDs (we ran out with three gigs left), interviewers laughed at our jokes, we got broadcast on Dutch TV and national radio and we came home with a lot more money than we left with. But mainly, it was a well organised and very friendly three weeks. You all should do it.

CHRIS KNOX