Euro Tour: Day 8, Leiden

We woke up in a place that reminded me of the Project Mayhem squat in Fight Club. The bathrooms reminded me of the first scene in Saw every time I had to use them. After everyone checked their e-mail and Facebook on the squat’s computers, we headed into the Amsterdam city center. We wandered along the canals, stopped at the train station to change money (and pay .50 euro to take a piss), eat some sandwiches and fries, drink some coffee, and stop into a coffeeshop. We managed to find our way to Leiden (sans GPS) and made to a club early for the first time on tour. We had a drink in a little bar and then hooked up with Gabry from the the band Boutros Bubba, who helped us set up the show. We loaded into the tinniest room I have ever played in. Then went upstairs to hang and to eat a fantastic vegetarian meal.

Boutros Bubba played a great show. They reminded me of Hoover or Unwound with some spazz-jazz influences. Joe 4 played a great show, but were somehow restrained — holding back. Despite a few stops for tuning and Josip’s heckling, we played a pretty good show. We had neglected to write a set list so we called out the songs and it worked OK. I met Ivica from the Dutch band Gone Bald and we discussed our love of old guitars and Touch and Go and AmRep bands. He has been playing our stuff on his radio show and seemed genuinely happy when we played some his favorite songs during our set. We stayed with Jeroen, BB’s guitar player, and the size of our accommodations matched the size of the venue last night. Josip, Sasha, and I spent some time messing around trying to download updated maps for the GPS unit with little success. We may have to navigate the old fashioned way — with maps!