Holland, Amsterdam @ The Winston.

We arrive at the club a little late, the traffic was terrible driving into the city. The club is located right in the middle of this touristy area. There are tons of people everywhere, walking around, taking pictures, going in and out of clubs and coffee shops. We meet the Winston crew and load in our stuff. They are super nice, as nearly everyone on this tour has been. Sonny is good friends with the promoter, Maarten.

They chat it up next door at the Winston bar while we set up and sound check. We see Vice Cooler and talk to him for a bit, he’s holding up, I think he’s been our tour since August now.

Must be fun, but absolutely tiring, at any rate, he’s looking well. Sound check. Time for dinner.

We head next door to the Winston bar for some dinner, it’s a spinach lasagna thingy with salad. We eat and have a drink. Then we decide to stroll around the area for a bit. This is a very interesting city, as smoky smoke is legal in select coffee shops. Molly & I can see people smoking bongs and joints through the windows. Looks fun, if that’s your thing, we just window shop and try to steal a few pics of the smoking going on. HAHA. We’re told by some of the gang at Winston’s that we’re blocks away from the “red light” district. Later on we will have to go check it out, I’ve heard that there are windows with naked ladies dancing in them. SWEET!

We head back to the club, the first band is about to start. Barre Bizzarre. It’s really funny, I can’t quite tell what the heck is going on though. He has dancers and video projections and lots of delay and reverb on his vocals. The music playback is going out of an amp rather than the house, so it sounds really lo fi. GOOD TIMES! We grab some cocktails and wait for Hawnay Troof to play. Man, when that guy hits the stage the room just lights up. It’s a good crowd in here. They are loving the Troof! He has a brilliant amount of energy and jams through his set. FUN!

It’s time for us to play. We get out stuff together and hit it. The set goes well. Lots of fun people dancing and having a good time. There is a big group of girls in the front dancing and jumping. This always makes the show more fun, when the crowd gets into it as much as we do. Lots of jumping around with the people, crazy rafters to hang off of. We close the set! YAY! Amsterdam is a success! I really wanted it to be. Bret is swarmed by ladies, HAHA! It’s awesome. Lots of pics, lots of autographs.

It’s time to take a tour of the district, so we pack up our stuff and put it back stage. Then we bundle up in warm clothes and head out for a tour. The guy in the first band is one of our tour guides, along with another cool dude. At some point on the trip, our tour guide picks up a red velvet chair and carries it along. So now we have this chair with us as we walk through the streets.

HAHA! What fun. We find the red light area, and it is true! There are all of these windows, darkly lit, with girls in panties dancing in the windows and waving us to come over. The theory is that you pay them a fee, then you can go into the room and the close the curtain on the window and give you a private dance. SOUNDS FUN! But none of us do it. If i had the money to blow I would totally give it a try just for the experience. But Alas, I am broke and cannot afford to waste my money on such non sense. MAYBE NEXT TIME!

We’re getting hungry now, so we spot a pomme frits place and drop in for some tasty fries.

So yummy, they have a huge menu of sauces that you can a choose from. We all get something a little different and chow down.

It’s getting cold, but the fries are warming us up. Time to get back to the club and load out. The door man, one of the coolest looking dudes we’ve seen on tour, assists us with the doors while we load out.

It’s really quite funny. They have this two doors system. One door opens, the other stays closed, they will ONLY open the outer door if the inner door is shut all the way. It’s quite fun. I don’t fully get why they do it like this, but they take great pride in the system and do not deviate from the way it works.

Sinta (with an

Anyways, Sonny heads off to get the van and bring it back to the club for load out. It’s at this point that Sonny needs to give you a detailed account of what happened when he went to get the van. I’ll just say that we waited for well over a half hour, and while backstage I started to get incredibly worried that something might have happened to him, considering that the van was literally around the corner. Take it away Sonny!

The van was parked, as Aaron mentioned, around the corner from the venue, right in front of a police station (which, as my friend Niels pointed out, might actually prevent the customary break-ins that come with a stop in Amsterdam). Sure enough, the van is just as I left it. But it’s parked on a one-way lane and this is the center of “old” Amsterdam - in other words, extremely narrow streets, hardly any signage, and at night they raise these electronic metal blockades to make most of the lanes “no access” to vehicles since everyone is fucked-up on something and I imagine plenty of car-nage (sorry) has occurred in the past. Fortunately, we had the GPS, which I fire up and re-enter the venue’s address. From that point on, it’s total mayhem. There are literally no unblocked streets leading back to the venue - the GPS is unaware that these streets are not accessible at night - and I find myself being forced into a repetitive loop around this massive old church which has a vast array of cobblestone lanes spoking off from it. Unable to recognize one street from another, it takes me about 15 minutes to realize I am literally going in an enormous circle, over and over again, unable to go anywhere the GPS is telling me to turn, and constantly being stuck behind a parade of what sure seem like drug dealers to me - fancy sports cars, single file through the narrow lanes, picking people up and letting them out a few hundred yards later. I start getting really freaked out and can only imagine what the Anavan folks must be thinking at this point. Finally, out of sheer desperation, I park the van on the sidewalk, and taking the GPS with me, attempt to walk back to the venue to explain and get help. After a few minutes I spot a kid, maybe 20 years old, driving one of the tourist rickshaw-type bicycle things. I flag him down and explain that I don’t have any money on me, but if he will follow me back to the van and then lead me back to the venue, the band will pay him handsomely for his assistance. He agrees, and is even enthusiastic about the challenge, but I start having my doubts once I get back to the van and he starts asking whether I can squeeze the van through these 4-foot pathways next to one of the street blockades. I follow him around the block for about 5 minutes when all of a sudden a motorcycle cop passes us going the opposite direction. I figure this might be my only chance, so I stop him and explain what’s going on. Next thing I know, he’s spun the bike around, yells “Follow me!” and all of a sudden I have a police escort back to the venue. The rickshaw kid just looks kind of disappointed and I wave my thanks to him while I speed up and try to keep up with the cop. The bike or some portion of his uniform is equipped with some radio device that lowers the blockades and within 3 minutes I’m finally back at Winston, and the whole ordeal is over as quickly as it started. The cop tells me that when we’re done loading I can just drive up to the blockade at the end of the street and it will lower - needless to say, when the time comes, it doesn’t, so we’re stuck waiting once again. Thankfully, a police car rolls by within a few minutes and lowers it remotely.

The rickshaw kid showed up right before we drove off (must have been a slow night for tourist rides) and, although he refused money at first, was glad to finally take 10 Euros for the effort. My 4 hours sleep that night were well-deserved.

Now that the van is here, we start grabbing stuff. Thank the heavens Sonny is ok, that was some crazy ass shit! We load out. Time to head to Sonny’s friends house for more chit chat and beddy bye time.

Tomorrow we enter the UK. This is the last leg of the tour. We’ll be in the UK for 6 or 7 shows. Border crossing, customs, all that good stuff. I’m not worried about it at all, we have our papers, we are legal. SO FUN! Good night.