Budapest to Brighton; Part II

Graz, Austria. 18/11/2010
Nice drive down to Graz. Still no snow - good. Bit foggy but ok and car still works. Had a long walk after finally finding the Jugendhaus Explosiv whch happened to turn out  the punkrock place in town. Nice people though. Learned they're making terrific wines here. Not in the Jugendhaus but in this area. On top of that they've got a huge clocktower up on a hill. Asked about it and know more now. When Napoleon took the town back in the days the citizens of Graz got apparently quite desperate about possibly losing this massive clock. So they convinced him to sell them that tower before burning down the rest of Graz. Sounds as if Mr. Bonaparte was kind of a smart businessman. As it's still working I assume it's a good clocktower and was worth all the money. As for the gig I had a good local support act. A guy named Chris Magerl. Worth checking out his stuff on MySpace.
Bought pumpkin oil and wine the next morning on a picturesque local market before leaving for Babensham to support The Great Bertholinis.


Babensham, Germany. 19/11/2010
Speedometer went on the way to Germany. Not good. As I found out Club Leonhard in Babensham is a wonderful place run by wonderful people. An old Gasthaus - I mean really old, 17th century or something - with an upstairs dancehall. Great food and a hell of a lot of drinks. Big party crowd of good 200 people with at least some few that were willing to listen to a solo performer/songwriter. Got terribly drunk there. Too many people to buy me schnaps after the show. As far as I remember they were friendly. Good place as I said but can't really remember a lot. Must have been an exciting night as my shinbone badly hurts. Woke up late, met cleaning lady, packed my gear and left for Bad Staffelstein-Unnersdorf via Fuerth to pick up Robin van Velzen who's sharing tonite's gig with me.

Übermorgen

Übermorgen ist es endlich soweit. Mäkkelä, van Velzen & The Church of The Blue Nun werden im Nürnberger MuZ Club das erste reguläre Konzert in voller Besetzung - also mit Tobias Stutz am Cello und Jens Petzold am Kontrabass - spielen. Als ganz besonders erfreulichen Bonus eröffnen Mocha diesen exquisiten Konzertaben. Die Mochas sind, wenn sie grade nicht Mocha sind, das Orkesteri von Mäkkelä & Orkesteri. Der Unterschied ist allerdings unüberhörbar: Micha, Gisi und Silvi spielen unglaublich filigrane, eigene Songs, die irgendwo zwischen Drugstore, Mazzy Star und epischer Popmusik gratwandern. Unbedingt sehens- und hörenswert.

Das Konzert beginnt pünktlich um 20.30 Uhr, der Eintrittspreis beträgt EUR 5.- und Ihr müsst noch nicht mal unvorbereitet in ein Konzert stolpern das Euch vielleicht gar nicht gefällt. Weil Ihr nämlich unter den folgenden Links schonmal vorhören könnt.

Mocha auf MySpace
Church Of The Blue Nun auf MySpace
Church Of The Blue Nun auf Facebook

Wir freuen uns auf Euch und vor allem mal auf ein wunderschönes Konzert...

Für die Nicht-Franken unter Euch gibt's an den folgenden Tagen die Möglichkeit The Church of The Blue Nun live zu sehen. Erstmal allerdings östlich von Nürnberg. Am Donnerstag in Chemnitz und am Freitag in Dresden.

Martti

Budapest to Brighton; Part I

It's an ever surprising thing going on tour. Surprises around the corner wherever you're heading. Good and bad. This time for the last big bit of my 2010 tour it began with a nice one.
Few days before leaving for the 1st tourdate in Vienna word reached me that Tobias the cello player managed to sort out a gig in Budapest on pretty short notice. A students club named CDFÜ somewhere downtown. No big money but who cares - Vienna's just two hours away (well...) and I haven't played Budapest. That's the terrible thing - you've got always a good chance to lure me to whatever remote place for a show if it sounds exotic enough for me...

The other thing is I'm most of the time not really careful in checking out distances. In fact Vienna Budapest is really not a very long drive. The motorway bit. The tricky part starts once the motorway through, most of the time not very exciting Hungarian landscape, ends. Those last 2 km to the appartment address on the Buda side of river Danube town took me another good hour. A 60 minute nightmare of roadworks and oneways. Once I figured out where to turn left: no left turn possible. Ok, let's go ahead take the next one but there won't be a next one left. Instead a bridge you have to cross to find just three km further a chance to U-turn illegally but still turn. And no, I'm not going to get into details about the car park situation. To look at it in a positive way: it prepares you in a most decent way for places like Vienna and Brussels. Both towns yet to come on this tour.

The CDFÜ turned out to be a nice little students bar on the Pest side of town. Reminded me of some places I played in Czech Republik back in the early 90s. Not a big crowd, mostly students, but a very attentive one. Good first gig with Tobias doing a great job on his cello. Had my first few Palinkas. Think they were ok. Gonna leave it to this. Even though they told me the real stuff is the homemade one served in 2 l plastic bottles. Scary.

The next day left us enough time for a good deal of sight-seeing. Sunny, warm Budapest with ticket machines giving out tram tickets and change on a random basis. Have to say I'm still impressed. Everything is remarkably huge. Wonderful buildings a lot of them pretty run down though. Can't remember the names of the places we've seen but it's been great. Well, there was the giant market hall. Bought me dried hot chilli peppers as a souvenir. Remembered them few days later in Graz when rubbing my eyes after rummaging in my bag and inadvertantly sticking my fingers into what turned out to be the open plastic bag with the peppers.

Vienna, 17/11/2010

2nd gig and it already feels like being on the road for a week. Been looking forward to Vienna. My 2nd gig here after playing the Cafe Concerto in 2005 on the Penguins Tour.
When arriving a little late after getting lost in Vienna (nope - no gps or road map on us) first person we ran into was good old Ibrahim from Basel whom I haven't seen in ages. Probably since my last gig at the Wagenmeister/Basel. We went for a drink and some food with him after a terribly long soundcheck. The Cafe Carina else is a great venue. Good stage size, good pa, situated in an arch right under the train tracks. We played a maybe even better gig than in Budapest. Actually it was pretty wild for a Maekkelae gig... The basically pleasant mood in the venue changed short time after the gig when some guys started a fight there which got a bit out of hands. Managed to save our gear and left in time. Got lost with Ibrahim, his girlfriend and some of Tobias fellow students from Budapest at the Cafe Concerto.

I was particularly amazed about THE FAN. A lady showed up who happened to turn out my friends Dirk and Britta's new neighbour. She knew only my version of "Volcano God" (propably from MySpace) which was good enough a reason for her to see the gig. Must have done something right with this song.

Next morning we picked up Tobias wife Orsi at the station and had breakfast at the Cafe Jelinek (the definitely most wonderful coffee house in Vienna). Time for them to go for a tour of the Vienna museums and me to leave for Graz after this. Shame these were the only two shows we had the chance to play together. Liked them a lot.

Here's the Link to my Facebook page with some songs to listen to...

The Church Of The Blue Nun @ MuZclub Nuernberg. 19/01/2011 http://bit.ly/f4xkR7

Miss Hertfordshire auf amazon.de

Schau an, schau an: Miss Hertfordshire jetzt auch bei amazon.de...