THEY KILL RABBITS, DON’T THEY?

(Prague)

From the Adriatic Sea, Dahl takes the wheel and speeds us through an Austrian snowstorm. I navigate but finally fall asleep with the map crumbled in my lap, serving as a bib to catch my oozing drool. I haven’t slept more than five hours since Lyon. I just can’t keep from nodding out now. We wake at the German checkpoint. Serious border guards press their faces against the van’s windows and survey our tiny travel chamber.

Everyone sort of wakes up at once. “What’s happening, what’s going on?”

“We’re being rousted by the German federales, gentlemen,” Dahl replies. “We gotta go talk turkey.”

Two soldiers—I guess they were soldiers, they had khaki green uniforms and pistols on their belts—take us into a room. They speak German back and forth, and punctuate their foreign comments with excited laughter. This would usually follow a close observation of someone’s hair or clothes, then, “Hahahaha.”

They grow very serious all of a sudden, and stare Dahl down. “You, in there,” they say, pointing to yet another room. They follow Dahl in and slam the door.

“What do you think they’re doing in there?” Tim wonders.

“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you, these guys don’t fuck around,” Rat replies most earnestly.

“Mmm,” Simon just nods his head.

“I used to cross these borders all of the time, coming in and out of Switzerland, going off to London, whatever,” Rat recalls. “They would mess with you just for the hell of it, especially if you had funny hair or looked like a rocker or something like that. They assumed you had drugs. The German borders were among the worst. I remember they would always pull out the plastic gloves, and want to look up your asshole.”

“Great. You don’t see any plastic gloves lying anywhere, do you?” I ask.

“The trick is, you have to act like you want it. They’d get out the gloves, and I’d perk up, act like I was getting excited.” Rat demonstrated, making the happy face that resembled a rat about to make a big cheese score. “I’d start to become overly cooperative. ‘Oh, you want to look up my butt!? Shall I pull my pants down now??!!’ I’d take my belt off, and they’d begin to back down. Pretty soon, they’re hustling me along on my way as quickly as possible.”

Dahl emerges from the room, slightly grinning. The Germans point to Z and simply say, “You. Come.” Again the door slams.

“What happened?” everyone asks Dahl.

“Nothing. They just asked a few question and had me empty my pockets. Nothing to it.”

“No plastic gloves, right?” I wanted to be sure.

“None for me, but you guys...” He looks mainly at Tim and I. “I don’t know.”

Everyone gets the same simple treatment as Dahl, and soon we’re on our way. An hour later we’re in Munich, to play once again with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. They’re not around, so we endure another marathon soundcheck—geez, what’s the point anymore? I’ve been cold all day, so I load up on coffee. Five cups, six cups, How obnoxious is it possible to get? I wonder, as the caffeine transforms me into hyper-jerkman. The human body is but a laboratory designed to withstand such investigation.

We think Spencer is headlining, but it turns out we are. With a critically acclaimed debut LP just out and years of NY art-noise-rock history behind him, Spencer is quietly miffed about his spot on the bill. Word is he views us as a nostalgia act, a group with a weak set, padded with covers. Hey, who’s to argue? It’s just showbiz, babe.

Spencer and his Blues Explosion show up as we finish our check, looking beat. They’ve been out just over ten days, but we look better off. We’re going on five weeks. The band’s other guitarist besides Spencer was Judah, a New Yawker. He sits down at my table and silently sips a cup of coffee.

“So, how’s your tour coming along?”

“Eh, alright, I guess,” he says. “Our road manager is insane. He’s either crazy or he’s just fuckin’ stupid.”

He’s talking about Claude from Orlèans.

“The other night I was sleepin’ in the van, and I woke up—the other guys were asleep. There’s Claude, rollin’ down the highway on the wrong side of the road, headlights comin’ right at us. ‘Hey, fuckface, look what the fuck yer doin’!’ Moron, I tell ya. It’s been going like that, yeah. It’s been going a lot like that. We get lost in every city we go to, and most of them have been in France. The guy’s supposed to be fuckin’ French! He can’t even set up our equipment right, and he’s been doing it for a week. Look at him up there! Geez!”

Judah started chuckling at his predicament, and I joined in. I confessed we were lost most everywhere we went, too. Our tour had the luxury of hotels almost every night, while Spencer, like most American bands coming across the waters for the first time, were flopping where they could: fan’s houses, club apartments, in the van, wherever. We’d only had to do that a couple of times so far, so by comparison, we were very lucky.

After a quick change at the hotel, we return to watch the Blues Explosion, who turn in an awesome, high-energy set of their skewed roots rock, while the crowd stands watching them, giving little back to the band. I felt a little bad for them. They were really playing well and getting limited enthusiasm from the nonchalant crowd. It reminded me of our Italian expedition.

The audience here tonight, despite their ambivalence to Spencer, is a rock crowd. They’ve come purposely to be rocked in one manner or another, unlike those Italians. And, to top it off, for the first time in a club for close to two weeks, there is artificial heat being pumped into the interior environment. We are not freezing.

Despite our exhaustion—I feel it’s caught up with me recently more than anyone else—we play an extra-long set, to a pretty enthused crowd. Following the show, we chat with Spencer’s guys in the dressing room, and gather up our shit to get a good night’s sleep. I’m so damn tired I can barely walk properly.

“Hi! Where are you going?”

I turn—with difficulty—and look up to see a sexy girl with an Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, blonde hairdo looking right at me. I try to make a nondescript exit to the van. She exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke in my direction.

“I guess I’m gonna go to my hotel and pass out.”

She emits a forced laugh. “Well, why not come to a party with me? Me and my friends are going, it’s going to be an all night orgy of alcohol.”

She certainly has a commanding grasp of my native tongue. She tells me her name is Elke, and I attempt to explain my condition and situation to her. I try not to sound any more pathetic than I feel I need to.

“You see, I’m part of Factsheet. We wake up, we drive, we eat, play, and sleep, and that is all we do. It is the way.”

“What a deadbeat. You’re putting me on, right?”

“Not really, I mean, that’s pretty much the story. We’re in the army now. You know, even if I was Gene Simmons of KISS and needed to fill in a missing page in the legendary scrapbook, I think I’d have to take a rain check tonight. I’ve never been this tired before, ever. There’s nothing I’d like better than to go to a party with you and get to know you a bit better, but tonight, I’ll just be a liability. I’m sorry. You know, the Spencer guys might be up for a wingding.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Again, she stares me down, and begins chuckling. I look back, but lower my head out of embarrassment. She looks pretty damn good, and a night of drinking and who knows what with some German kitten with a whip would normally be just what the mad scientist ordered, but I just can’t rally. I can hear Ratboy’s signature slogan ringing in my ear: We are such losers. “You could have the time of your life tonight, but instead you’re going to a hotel. Someone waiting for you there?”

“No one human.”

“Well, baby, maybe some other time, then?”

Baby? Sure, maybe some other time I’ll be back thru Munich, swing in and grab her, a delicious blonde Germanic ice-bitch—named Elke, no less—and we’ll go out and tear this poor excuse for a city right to the goddamn ground. See ya ‘round, baby.

As much as I might have desired her a few nights ago or a few nights in the future, tonight was for sleep. No dancing, no television, no topless game shows, no beer until the early hours, no passing the tequila, no hash, no cough syrup, no masturbation, no card games, no reading, no writing, no singing, no walking, no exploring, not even any dreaming. Tonight is for sweet blackness, the other side of consciousness. Goodbye, cruel world.

It’s Monday. The sky is an endless haze of dull white, as the soft but unending snow flurries continue to come and block out the sun. The drive to Prague is pretty much like this the whole way. Everyone’s rested and feeling kind of antsy as none of us have ever before been behind what once was the Iron Curtain. In the middle of what had been Czechoslovakia but was now Czechia, this was more alien to all of us than any place we’d been or would be going, and this included our Euro-natives Simon and Rat.

At the border, we endure another search, but it goes by quickly and painlessly. As we cross into Czechia, we’re stuck on a two-lane road backed up for miles with freight trucks. It seems open trading on the European markets has brought in the business, but the roads haven’t been updated to accommodate. Sitting stock still for twenty and thirty minutes at a time, Simon takes every opportunity to jam on the accelerator, skip ahead of trucks, and hope that no encroaching vehicles are trying to maneuver the other way. With all the curves in the road and the unappeased snowfall, this is hard to calculate. Still he passes wildly, grinning as if he dared the Devil himself to come and get him. Dahl, on the other hand, is not so eager to meet the Devil.

“Simon, goddamnit, slow down!” he hollers. “We’ll get there soon enough, if you don’t kill us. Just knock it off and drive right!”

The situation becomes almost mockingly parental, as Simon, the ornery kid, waits for his stern dad to nod off or loosen up the attention in some way, and as soon as he senses this, we are speeding merrily down the wrong side of the road. Dahl would then jerk awake, shake his head, and yell at Simon. This went on literally for close to four hours—that’s how long we were backed up in this fucked-up traffic. Finally, it all thinned out and we were on our way.

One could almost hear Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” playing inside Simon’s head, as he kicks the pedal to the metal and busts out onto the wide-open highway. Dahl bit his lip and decided not to say anything. The rest of us were anxious to get to Prague. We’d heard it was Europe’s most romantic and beautiful city. Let Simon be Simon, the speed demon.

We zip around a curve when a puny little piece of shit car comes out from behind a bush and begins chasing us. A primitive, makeshift flashlight dangles from the car’s roof, and blinks red behind us.

“I’m no expert, especially around here, but I believe we’re being pulled over by the police,” says Simon softly.

“You idiot! I knew this was going to happen. It’s not coming out of band money!” Dahl yells, while the rest of us sit quietly, biting our lips and trying hard not to laugh out loud.

We pull over and the young Czech cop emerges from his Pinto-sized police car and sizes us up and down. He looks in the van and tries to figure out what type of criminals he’s dealing with here. He barely speaks English, and mutters the word “you,” points at us, then pantomimes playing the guitar. Yes. You called it, Sherlock. We’re musicians.

Simon hops out of the van and begins negotiation. We can’t really see what’s going on, but he is talking to the youthful flatfoot for a while, and they are writing down figures on a piece of paper. Simon walks over to the passenger side of the van and sticks his head through the window.

“Well, it’s not too bad. I can pay him right here and now. I think he’ll take Deutsche Marks, which we have some of. We should be out of here in no time, lads.”

The cop walks up behind Simon while he is talking to us through the passenger side window, taps him on the shoulder, and points to the interior dashboard area of the Renault. They walk away to talk some more, and we can see in the rearview Simon nodding, scratching his chin and saying, “Yeah, sure.” Simon approaches the passenger window again.

“He says he’ll take one of our cassette tapes and call it even. I guess the police can negotiate on the scene here, sort of skipping the standard judicial process.”

“Count your blessings,” I say.

“What should I give him?” Simon wonders.

The backseat is instantly in agreement. “Nirvana!” We chime in unison. “Give him the damn Nirvana tape so we don’t ever have to hear it again.”

“I like Nirvana!” defends Simon.

“We want you to give him Nirvana,” confirms Rat.

“It’s your penance, O guilty one,” laughs Z.

“Oh, fuckin’ hell, alright.” He grabs the cassette and offers it to the Czechian Broderick Crawford. Simon quickly returns.

“He won’t take it. Says he hates Nirvana. Give me the box, I’ll let him pick.”

We were all secretly hoping he’ll take the second most played tape of our little jaunt, the severely beat to death Doors compilation we’ve been listening to since day one. The winner? A new collection by Melissa Etheridge of all things that Simon had brought along. I don’t think we ever listened to it, and it had some real cool stuff by The Cramps on the other side. No accounting for taste, nope, not anywhere in the whole wide world.

We arrive later in the day at Bunkr, the club we’re suppose to play tomorrow. On one side, the club adjoins a coffee/beer bar that coughs out a cloud of hash smoke when the door swings open, and on the other, the fledging local underground rock radio station. Behind all of this were some adjoining offices, and above, the Bunkr’s bunkers, which we’re to call home for the next two nights. A girl that works for the club, trying her best to be a good hostess, takes us upstairs and shows us our accommodations.

The courtyard is frozen solid and is slippery. A half-decayed staircase goes up the far wall to the second floor balcony. From there, a double door leads into the “club apartments.” They’re anything but lavish, honeys: two rooms, five ancient cots with moth-chewed, filthy mattresses. Dahl and Tim claim the room with two cots, figuring it to be the ambassador suite of the two. The Factsheet room is pretty shoddy. I nab what looks like the most comfortable cot in what is rapidly dissolving into an every-dog-for-himself situation. Rat nabs another luxury liner, leaving Z and Simon to double up. The wooden floors haven’t been swept since the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866, and the windows have no curtains.

The girl smiles somewhat sheepishly as she distributes blankets to us all. It feels a little like the last night before being shipped to The Front. She seems a little embarrassed, and I feel kind of sorry for her. We probably seem ungrateful—after all, we are ungrateful—but the fact is she is doing her best with what she has at hand. That’s just the way it is.

It’s not that we are in a poor area, though. The curtainless windows look across and up at lavish apartments. As I relax on my cot in the waning sunlight, I gaze up to watch a native Prague gentlemen log some miles on his exercise bike and stare back down at me as he thinks to himself: More weirdoes sleeping in that hellhole over there.

“You guys will not believe this,” laughs Tim, entering the room. We follow him through our apartment’s front double doors out to the balcony. He points ominously down to the end of the outside hall. “That’s our bathroom, go check it out.”

We approach slowly, cautiously. The door to the small outhouse has been unceremoniously ripped asunder and tossed to the side, covered in snowflakes. The toilet bowl has no seat and, as we get closer and look in, we see that it’s filled with frozen turds. Apparently it doesn’t flush, this is just a place for stool storage. Terrific. Two days, eh? Alternate means of defecation will have to be worked out.

The bathtub is inside, but it has dirt, garbage, and food wrappers caked on it, with rock hard towels freeze dried in place around its perimeter. The mirror above the sink is gone, expect for a sliver of glass that jags its way randomly through the center. Okay, we know they are trying, but this is kind of a drag.

After we nap for a few hours, we adjourn downstairs to the hash bar, where we meet up with the promoter for tomorrow night’s show, Rene. Smoking a big spliff and drinking expensive bottled beer, he asks if we’re happy with our accommodations. We anticipated this, and primed Simon up for our desired negotiations.

“Well, tell you the truth, Rene, not really,” says Simon, acting as spokesman. “I know it’s the best you’ve got, and the budget is stretched as far as it can go, but I’ve got some uncomfortable musicians on my hands. Those cots are reminiscent of the county jails back where this lot comes from. We can’t even shit properly.”

Rene looks uneasy, and he notices Jeff isn’t with us.

“What does Jeff say?” He leans in closer to Simon and discreetly inquires, “Is he angry?”

“He was for a bit, but I bedded him down with a handful of Valium, so he’ll be alright. This lot here, though, I can’t just dope them up and pull the wool over their eyes. They know which way the wind blows, see what I mean?”

“Yes, well, what can I do? How can I correct the conditions, given my restrictions here?”

Simon precedes to secure for us passage to the Bunkr for the evening (our night off) which features—guess what?—dancing. Techno, rave, disco, rap, goth, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, you request it, we’ll shake ass to it. No mean feat in and of itself, our man’s real coup was securing more or less free drinks for the entire evening, free at least as long as Rene was able to financially keep up with us.

Fairly lubed and oiled by the time we hit the Bunkr rock ‘n’ disco (open till 6:00 a.m.), we scan the vicinity to see what’s up with the locals. A mixed crowd, to be sure: kids, couples, dopers, hustlers, dancers, vixens. Toward the stage, youthful exuberance abounds on the dance floor; further back, the chain-linked DJ booth is flanked by legions of dead-eyed zombies awaiting instructions from some unseen master as to their next mindless mission. Past that, into the dimness, are the bathrooms. Outside of them, impassioned couples openly fondle each other, slinging all manner of meat like short-order cooks. After surveying the carnage, we return mid-club to the bar to place our orders with our host.

“Gin and tonic, beer, whiskey, vodka, any red wine?”

Rene wrinkles his brow and digs deep into his trouser pockets. “I’m not the Banque of Prague, you know? I can’t just endlessly buy drinks for all five of you!”

With very serious looks, we silently encircle our balking benefactor as Simon again takes the reins. “Rene, it’s show business. You give a little, you take a little. We’ve brought this band, by popular demand, all the way from the United States. We’ve got to keep them happy, you and I. Now, I’ve done my part, you can ask them. I’ve gotten them here safely, kept them fed and clean and happy. I can’t let them down now! That’s why I need your help tonight.”

“Oh, you’re unbelievable. Get these drunkards whatever they want,” Rene shouts at the bartender. “Next I suppose you’ll want me to set them up with local girls!?”

“Can you?” Simon asks without a blink.

At the far end of the dance floor was the stage we’d be giving the maximum rock ‘n’ roll treatment to tomorrow night.

“Shall we give it a test drive?” Z asks, winking.

“Yeah, sure,” I answer. “Let’s do it for the kids.”

The two of us get on the stage and begin dancing as if we were on American Bandstand or in a cage at the Whisky A Go Go. There really is nothing like being drunk in a place you know you’ll never be recognized or seen in again to loosen up the old inhibitions. While Z and I gyrate shamelessly, the DJ shouts, with a heavy Slavic accent, “Lonely, lonely time” during Zeppelin’s “Rock & Roll,” and lets loose a heartfelt “Fuck You!” during Ice-T and Bodycount’s infamous “Cop Killer.” He was reverently silent during “Smoke on the Water.”

After these songs, I get tired and look to see what Rat is up to. Z stays onstage, dancing by himself with this detached, dazed grin on his face. He dances for over an hour more. What a guy. God knows I love him.

Rat is drinking beer and Simon vodka. They both watch Tim, who has attracted a young girl. Simon informs me that Rene procured her for him. I guess our man Rene is good to go, true to his word, a man for all seasons, hurrah.

This girl gets up on a pillar in the center of the room and undulates like a North Hollywood stripper for Tim, who pulls up a chair and gazes, as if in a trance, up at her pulsating hips and gyrating thighs.

“Things are going to get weird. I just know it,” says Rat. “Care for another beer, McGruff?”

Z is back from dancehall duty and has struck up a conversation with some French girls, while Simon chats up some Dutch treats, who perhaps remind him of his Melanie back home. I dance here and there with various girls, and then by myself, just like Billy Idol. I’m talking with some English girls, and a young guy from Germany, who plans on coming to the show tomorrow. Then it dawns on me: except for Rene, I’ve talked to no one that is from Czechia. Everyone is here from someplace else. I guess in that respect, it’s a bit like Los Angeles. And, like L.A., no one seems like they’re going to stay here for too awfully long, just passin’ through, you know, man?

This scene is fun enough, but around 3:00 a.m., I begin to get bored. Tim has disappeared, Simon looks to pass out soon enough, Rat and Z are talking with some other French girls. I nod to my comrades and head toward the exit. When I look to my right, I see a girl, seated. She stands out from the tourist-infested crowd of vagrants as vibrantly as fireworks in a crystal shop.

Dressed in a lacey, tight, long black dress, and a black, middle-parted hairdo that is positively sinister, she sits alone on a bench to the far side of the bar. She looks miserable, yet beautiful—youthful, yet weighed down with the sorrows of the ages. I can’t resist.

“Hi, I’m Bruce. Would you like some company?”

She barely looks up, doesn’t really acknowledge me, and shrugs.

“Well, would you like to dance?”

Again, no smile, no measurable reaction at all. “Not to this music, this awful music this horrible DJ has been playing.”

“It might not be the best, but I’ve been dancing to it.”

“Yes, I know,” she deadpans, nodding toward the stage, indicating she’s been here long enough to witness me making a fool of myself alongside my man Z. This makes me laugh out loud. I say no more to her. Instead I size up the situation and make a beeline for the DJ booth.

“Hey, I’ve got a request!” I say to the soul-shoutin’ tune spinner.

“What would you like?”

“Play the most depressing thing you got!”

I’d pegged my little Morticia as a full-fledged goth. A gothic rocker: a black-clad, Egyptian mascara wearing, lunchbox carrying death rocker, goose-stepping to the iron-hearted sobs of cold wavers such as Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Mission, and The Cure. Of course the DJ would have something along those lines, but I had no idea he’d go right to crux of the biscuit with the Goth Rock national anthem: Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear us Apart.”

As the poppy-yet-haunting synthesizer lines waft from the speakers, this dark teen queen gets up and does the goth dance; an arms-flailing-in-Egyptian-abandon, eyes-closed spiritual purge that in many ways resembles the LSD-induced soul shake of the undying Grateful Dead fan. But this came from a different spot within the brain, I suppose. As she twirls and divines her place in the cosmos, I sort of mildly bop around in front of her, content to watch the show she’s putting on.

The DJ sloppily segues into “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag,” and her trance breaks, but so does the wall around her. I learn her name in Tanya, and invite her to the bar for a drink.

“What’s a nice goth rocker like you doing in a place like this?” She either doesn’t get the joke, or more likely, just doesn’t think it’s at all funny.

“I’m here from Yugoslavia, where I grew up. I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany, too. I don’t like it there, but I really hate it here. I have to live here with my parents for right now until I can get enough money and go back with the group, back to the forest where I want to live.”

“What group is that? Are you in a band?”

“No, I’m not in a band.” She has a way of saying “band” that makes it sound positively vile. “I was in a group, you might say cult. I was in a group of Satanists, Satanic worshippers. I’m a Satanist.”

“Oh, really? I take it you don’t practice your Satanism at home with mom and dad, while you’re away from the group.”

“No. I believe, I read, I plan, I wait. But I can’t take part in ceremonies away from the group.”

“What sort of ceremonies? Do you run around in robes and drink goat blood?”

“You think you are funny, don’t you? This is serious to me.”

She was most assuredly an extremely serious girl. I apologized for making light of her religion, and tried to get the conversation rolling smoothly again. I wanted to extract information from her, as I didn’t anticipate having a social drink with a teenage Eastern European Satanist anytime in the near future, and didn’t want to botch the opportunity.

As I sat directly in front of her, I could see she was a genuine, natural beauty, with huge dark brown eyes and the whitest, smoothest face, almost like china. The very slightest frown lines were beginning to creep in around her mouth. Oddly, they only appeared when she fought against a smile. Her hair, swept away in all directions from her face, was as black as it was possible for hair to be, and natural to boot. She would have been the envy of every gothic princess in Hollywood.

“Have you ever read any of Anton LeVey’s stuff?” I asked, hoping to loosen things up a bit.

“No. Never heard of him.”

“You’ve never heard of Anton LeVey? He’s the head of the Satanic Church in the States. He’s quite an interesting character, an ex-carnival barker/police photographer/burlesque showman turned Satanic high priest. He supposedly brought Hollywood-types such as Jayne Mansfield and Sammy Davis Jr. into his camp, and, well, look what happened to them. She lost her head! LeVey’s books are actually pretty informative and eye opening. They have a lot to do with observing people and knowing how to use their weaknesses to your advantage, among many other things.”

“Are you a Satanist?” she asks.

“I’ve played in some pretty deep punk-metal bands, but no, I’m not a Satanist. Too much negative PR.”

“Why do you know so much about it?”

“I don’t really know much at all. Just a few tidbits I grabbed here and there. Hey, when in Hell, do as the Hellions.”

The topic shifts to Charles Manson, another mythic figure of California lore that she had no knowledge of. I question what kind of Satanist is ignorant of both Anton and Chuck, but I keep these queries to myself. The DJ spins “First and Last and Always” by The Sisters of Mercy, at which point dancing takes precedence over philosophical deliberation.

Drenched in sweat, we grab a seat and resume the conversation. “So, you’re a teenage Satanist. What makes you a Satanist?”

“It’s very complicated. I lived with a cult, you might call coven, and worshiped the dark ways. Lived very strict lives. Sometimes is was, eh, exhilarating, sometimes it was boring.”

“Get to the good stuff. What about the ceremonies? Did you dress up in robes and drink the blood of your gym teacher while listening to Judas Priest? Give me the scoop.”

This time she almost busts a smile, and reacts calmly to my ridiculous question. “People always want to know the grisly stuff. People refuse to let Satanists worship in peace, when the equally Paganistic Catholic religion is allowed to flourish.”

“Hey, you’ll get no argument from me there. But, you’re avoiding the question. I mean, let’s be frank, how far did you go—virgins, infants?”

“We would sacrifice rabbits at a certain ceremonial spot we had in the forest. That’s really about all.”

Rabbits? What the fuck kind of Satanists were these? Had they never heard Mötley Crüe or Christian Death? Oh well, to each his own. At least I didn’t have to worry about her ripping my heart out, at least not literally. We drink and talk until, what, five in the morning?

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Tanya asks me.

“Probably exploring Prague with a reasonably severe hangover.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

The answer to that was standard, no matter where in the world I was, “No!”

“I’ll show you the city. Where are you staying?”

“About fifty yards the other side of that wall,” I answered, nodding toward home.

“What time do you want to go?”

“Is twelve noon too early?”

“No, I will see you at twelve noon.”

She was so grave sounding that I knew she would turn up. Great, I have a lovely, mysterious, haunted little vampyre to show me through the city of Kafka and romance. It all sounded so abstract I turned into a cockroach on the spot.

At this point, I’m really loopy, giddy from my encounter with Tanya, and drunker’n shit from my pillage of Rene. The rest of the guys are in the same boat, more or less. Tim’s disappeared, possibly with that show-off dancing hussy, but most likely upstairs to bed alone. Simon can barely walk and can no longer form words at all. Rat can’t stop laughing, but is nonetheless more coherent than Z, who is jibber-jabbering away in a language that belongs somewhere other than earth. I gather up the four of us, and we stumble out of Bunkr through the snow to our upstairs bungalows, laughing, tripping over our own feet, and feeling not an ounce of pain. Aw, alcohol, the greatest medicine in the world. How I pity the idiots who gave up drinking and frittered away their free time in unpleasant group meetings talking about their former drunken glories. Geez, what a tragedy, they could be out saucin’ it up. This crosses my mind in a quick blink as we sluggishly flounder our way through the courtyard, guffawing loudly about nothing at all, dragging a rubbery-legged and slobbering Simon along with us as best we can. Up the stairs—no. Not the stairs! I fall down laughing in the snow right then and there—we ain’t gonna make it up the friggin’ stairs. Shit, they won’t even hold us, they’ll crumble right off the bleedin’ wall.

We teeter up, dragging Simon behind us, while all the time Z continues to chatter in tongues. “Bibble-dee-bobble-dee-blech-und-zee-mufa-bibble-dee-blech” followed by uncontrollable laughter from all four of us. Somehow, countering any reasonable bets, we make it to the front door, which, of course, Dahl has locked, just in case some hooligans might try to break in during his slumber and remove from us our priceless instruments. At any rate, entry seems impossible, but, somehow, against all odds, I seem to be the most coherent of the bunch.

“Alright, who’s got the key to the door of our luxurious bachelor pad?”

“Bibbledeebobbledee boo boo boo!”

“McGruff, don’t you have it?” asked Rat, quite possibly bucking for the most in control and the least-needy-of-sobriety-meetings-when-we-get-back-to-the-States award.

“No, I don’t think so.” As I search my pocket, I let go of my supporting grip on Simon, and he crashes to the floor of the balcony. “Shit, that was rather loud. No, I think Simon must have the key. Why don’t you just reach in his front pants pocket and get it?”

“Goobledee Boobledee.”

“How do I know it’s there?” asked Rat. “And, if I reach in the pocket and it’s not there, who knows what I’ll find? You get it off him, McGruff.”

“Nah, no way. We should just stand here and kick him until he wakes up.”

So we did. “Hey, stupid fucker, where’s the key, you limey lush?”

“Blee bleye blow blum. I smell the cum of an English bum.”

“You sad grimleys, you sick lot,” mumbles Simon, talking just slightly more cohesively than our man Z. Still collapsed in a heap on the balcony, he tosses out the key from the much-feared front pocket. We unlock the door and crash into the stuffy, over-heated crash pad, laughing and tripping over whatever was in our way. It must have sounded like a heard of cattle coming to stampede the sandman. From the inner sanctum of Dahl’s presidential suite, came the comforting salutations we’d expected.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW. I MEAN IT!”

Much like pre-pubescent kids whose slumber party has just been broken up by a disgruntled parent, we try to regain composure, but mostly we just tone the rude laughing down to a sly snickering, punctuated by our stumbling boots traipsing across the unfamiliar floor in the dark looking for our rooms and our beds. We openly laugh and make rude jokes, and rebuttals seem to arise from the other side of the wall. In a matter of minutes, we all fade into unconsciousness in our bunker.

The morning sun penetrates the curtainless windows like a prison break. The sirens in hot pursuit came from within, caused by tinnitus, brought about by years of exposure to live rock music. It never really goes away, but sometimes you can forget about it and it can become more or less undetectable. This morning, however, the ringing was being run through the hangover-driven stereo amplifiers located right behind my sinuses. With temporary blindness and a piercing, nerve-splitting brain noise being my first two sensations, I woke up, and realized I had what felt like a dirt clod in my mouth and that I need to pee.

As I walked out of our room, I figured I’d try not to wake anyone—heaven forbid, it’s too early for the extreme volume that accompanies a severe reprisal from the Master—and walk to the outdoor can and piss on the frozen turds, hoping that the site of the profane Butterfingers doesn’t make me nauseous in my awakening queasiness. I notice Simon is busy in the apartment’s indoor bathroom. I walk back to the balcony porch door and see a plastic sandwich bag (or something) whiz past me from a window.

“Oh, sorry there, McGruff! I didn’t see you. Didn’t nick you, did I?”

“No, what was that?”

“Ah, it was me morning shit. I shat into that little bag and lobbed it down there onto the courtyard. Being well below the temperature at which shit freezes—as we’ve seen and duly noted—I figured it was the most sane and logical way at hand to dispose of the unwanted stuff given our present lodgings.”

“I see your point.”

“Wonder if they’ll be bringing around some kind of breakfast. Hungry?”

“Actually, no. For some reason the ol’ appetite hasn’t kicked in yet this morning.”

The other citizens of our micro-world begin to rise from their creaking cots. No one talks much; mostly the silence is broken by painful grumbles and the punctuation of phlegm-spewing coughs.

Dahl enters and inquires about last night’s misadventures. In recounting the bleary incidents of sin and degradation, it comes out that all five of the Bunkr night crawlers have arranged for female escorts to come meet us at our rock star digs and show us around Europe’s number one most-hyped city of passion, Prague.

“How do you guys even know how to do it?” wondered Dahl in regards to our procurement of feminine companionship. “I’ve been married for almost twenty years, I wouldn’t even know what to say,” Dahl remarks offhandedly.

“Sure thing, bub,” I challenge, nodding and winking. “That’s what you tell all the babes, that tale of innocence and stolen youth is sure to ignite the nymphomaniac within even the most devout Catholic schoolgirl.”

Even though Dahl had encouraged the arrangement that brought him off-the-typical-tour path to Prague, he opts to stay in, or at least not to come along with us. We descend the stairs of doom, and Tanya enters the opposite end of the courtyard. With her ankle-length black frock coat, wind-blown jet-black hair, pure white skin, dark eyes, and clandestine demeanor, she looks like a specter coming through the snowy courtyard to mingle with the other side.

“I thought you guys were meeting some people, too,” I mention quietly as we walked toward Tanya.

“I’m sure they’ll be here,” confirms the Rat.

“Hello,” says Tanya flatly.

She asks what we want to do. As we wait for the other girls, everyone stalls, perpetuating meaningless small talk.

“Well, I’m taking off. I wanna get some pizza,” I announce. “I need to soak up the leftover booze in my stomach.”

Tanya and I leave the courtyard and head down the cobblestone sidewalk while the other four huddle to discuss plans. She silently leads me to pizza. As we turn a corner toward a busier street, I notice the four following us, finally catching up.

“We might as well come along with you then, yeah?” Simon says. “I mean, she’s from here, and she’ll know a good place.”

It would be a perfect afternoon, just me, Nosferatu’s daughter, and four guys I can’t help but loving, especially since we’ve been in such close quarters every day for the past thirty-three straight days.

“McGruff doesn’t mind. Do ya, McGruff?” asks Z.

We seem to go up and down a lot of outdoor escalators through numerous train and bus stations, but we stay on foot at all times. After about twenty minutes of walking, I note aloud that pizza is rare in Prague and you really have to cover some territory to track any down.

“You want good pizza or lousy pizza?” asked Tanya, with an icier-than-usual chill factor in her inflection.

“Pizza. How bad can it be?”

“I’m taking you to a good place.”

We soldier on and finally arrive at a small, nondescript pizza house serving an average pie. We eat slowly, talk little, and I sense that everyone is battling a bit of nausea as we eat and try to return to normal. The place has a bathroom with electric lights and working plumbing, and a visit each seems to right everyone’s wrong. Tanya—now the full-fledged tour guide of the Jeff Dahl Band—asks us repeatedly what we want to do, but we have no ideas.

“I take you some place good.”

Prague is an amazing city, with centuries-old architecture surviving in excellent condition. It’s snowing lightly, and we are all walking along pretty quietly, taking in all the breathtaking sights—the river, the bridges, the churches, the shops, the market squares. Despite the fall of communism, you can still see the archetypical Soviet worker, in his gray factory jumpsuit, off to work toting a black lunch pale. Tanya takes us to the historical Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague. Dating back to the 1400s, the tombstones are literally inches apart from each other. People must’ve just been piled up five deep. The whole thing is about the size of a basketball court, but there must be at least six hundred markers. Once again, Euro-Blur 1993 winds through the land of the dead.

“Oh, I know this place. It’s where they filmed that INXS video,” says Simon.

“Yes, that’s true,” confirms Tanya. The rest of us shrug and assume they know what they’re talking about. Next to the graveyard is a historical museum, which we take in. It’s filled with artifacts from the Jewish concentration camp that occupied this site during World War II, most notably a number of very depressing paintings that were painted by the camp’s prisoners. The black and white coal paintings spoke volumes on hopelessness and utter dismay. I took some photos of them. (Months later, while laying out a photo album, I juxtaposed the photos of these paintings opposite photos of the band in our Prague anti-apartment, and the effect was quite eerie, sort of prisoners of war meet prisoners of rock.)

We move on to the main town square, and at a sidewalk market, I spend a few minutes debating whether or not to buy one of those giant, fuzzy Russian hats. Tanya stands patiently behind me, letting me take my time. I discover that everyone else wandered off, and we decide whether or not to go looking for them. It begins to snow harder, so we continue on. She walks me by the huge green opera house where they filmed exteriors for Amadeus, and on to some record stores and coffee houses. We walk past the famous, breathtaking astronomical clock tower in the center of town square. I look over at Tanya and again realize how strikingly beautiful she is, albeit in her own particular fashion.

“Hey, lemme take your picture!” I request, forever the tourist.

“No.”

“No? Don’t tell me you don’t photograph. Do you show up in mirrors? Come on.”

“No. I never allow my picture to be taken.”

“Oh, come on. Who will know? I’ll be off to another country by tomorrow. You’re one of the coolest people I’ve met, maybe the coolest I will meet. Stand with that tower in the background.”

“No!”

She says “no,” but nonetheless turns for the photo when she realizes I’m going to take it anyway. She even cracks an ever-so-slight smile.

After I buy some hard-to-find CDs, she tosses me in a cab, explains to the driver where I need to end up, and heads the other direction back to her parent’s house. She says she’ll be at the show, but I feel I’ve seen the last of this dark princess.

Later that afternoon, Dahl and I do a radio interview at the Bunkr station, which is surprisingly well stocked with cool indie discs, much more so than most U.S. college stations. Rene comes by before our show and offers to treat us to dinner. Dahl and Simon quickly decline.

“I would like to get out of here and get some food, actually,” Rat chimes in. Z and I second the idea. This, for unknown reasons, causes immense tension among the Euro-Blur Six, but as was the norm, the reason for this wasn’t explained. The Factsheet look at each other and shrug. Fuck it. Let’s eat.

Rene tells us where he wants to go and asks if we can go in the van. The bosses say no. We take a cab and Rene insists on paying for it.

The place he’s chosen seems to be the full-on rock hangout of Prague. The wooden polls and walls are adorned with posters advertising recent local shows featuring the likes of L7, Faith No More, and Nick Cave. Guys and girls that look like they play in or hang around bands fill the booths. The place is a-fog with hash and tobacco smoke, and the hearty food hits the proverbial. Everyone checks us out: Who are these foreign rock geezers? A few people seem to know, and others just come up and start talking to us. Most of their English is pretty good, and everyone is very friendly. It seems being an American isn’t as much of a crime here. Maybe it’s just that we’re among the international brethren of rock ‘n’ roll lovers.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the rock show was about to begin. Backstage beer was at a disappointing low. Simon, who’s had fuck-all to do today, is put to work as everyone rudely spews their rider demands: “Juice, chocolate, more beer, can we get some hard liquor for a goddamn change?”

We turn in a pretty decent performance that is met with disarming apathy—mostly people just stand there and look at us. Encores aren’t really forthcoming, but Dahl wants to play them anyway. By now, they are so routine that, as soon as we get to the dressing room, he just says, “Regular three,” which indicates we are to play the same three-song encore we’ve been playing every night for two weeks straight. The same set we’ve played every night since we began in Groningen.

Simon sits in the corner of the room looking surprisingly happy. It turns out he scored a fifth of vodka for us but has already polished it off by himself. We get ready to kick his ass but Dahl drags us back onstage.

Following a faithful rendering of the regular three, I pack up my bass onstage when I hear someone calling my name. I turn and there’s Carol, a nightclub booking agent I know from Hollywood.

“Carol? What are you doing here?”

“I live here now. I’m going to be booking concerts here. I’ve been here a few months and I love it. I saw in the paper Jeff Dahl was playing and I remembered you’d been in the band, so I came down on the chance you might still be, and here you are.”

Tanya had failed to show up, but it appeared I would have some company for the evening anyway. Carol is a pretty but unassuming girl, mid-twenties, five-foot-four with straight blonde hair center-parted. She’s quiet but confident. I’ve always felt at ease around her. After the gear is stashed, she and I head to the bar, where Rene reluctantly gives the okay signal to the bartender and once again the free beers flow. After a single sip, Carol grabs my hand and drags me to the dance floor, where some Pearl Jam has people movin ‘n’ groovin’.

“Bruce, you should move to Prague,” she says to me with genuine enthusiasm.

“What would I do here?”

“You could write for the daily paper, or produce records, or just market things, or import cool stuff from America. My brother is the one who turned me on to this, he came over a few years ago and made a killing as a stockbroker.”

“I do like it here. It’s beautiful. But I don’t know, I’d have to sell all my shit, learn a new language. I’m far too lazy for that kind of commitment.”

“Bullshit, you’re one of the hardest workers I know...”

And so it went, as we argued and debated the endless possibilities of my relocation to the City of New Fortunes, the carrot dangling from the end of the hypothetical international stick. All the while, we never miss a beat on the dance floor, and the more we drink, the hotter the room gets, the more she wants to shake it, baby. Z and Rat aren’t far behind, dancing with a variety of girls and absorbing an assortment of alcohol. A rerun of the previous night’s mindless debauchery seems inevitable. Z stops dancing long enough to make out with some French brunette right in the middle of the dance floor.

Frenchy departs moments later, and Z taps me on the shoulder. “These Dutch chicks have bags full of coke. You want some?”

“No, I’ll pass. You don’t know where it’s been, so to speak. Besides, coke always makes me wanna crap, and given that the coffee shop’s closed up, and I don’t wanna squat in the snow, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“I hear ya. Just thought I’d ask. How ‘bout these Dutch girls, eh? How ‘bout my man McGruff and li’l Carol?”

Z was abnormally chatty and outgoing. It was safe to assume he ingested some coke already. He began singing a Chuck Berry song, which I didn’t think that he even knew. “Whoa, Carol, don’t ever take your heart away. Well, I got ta learn ta dance, if it takes me night ‘n’ day.”

“That’s real good, man. Just don’t bust into a duck walk right here, okay?”

I return to the floor with Carol, where we shake it to some Consolidated, on the industrial dance tip. She is tireless. I try not to look like a total wuss and keep up with her as best I can. I look over, Z is making out with another girl, one of the Dutch clan. I exchange a glance with Ratboy, and he starts cracking up. Simon approaches the two of us, saying something below the level of audibility, given the music’s volume—his slurred speech doesn’t help, either. We have no idea what he said, but given our anger at him for bogarting the vodka, we instruct him to fuck off at the top of our voices.

Time stretches out, as it had the previous night. There seems to be no clear-cut closing time, so people just party full speed all night long. Now, completely in cocaine-fueled mode, Z holds courts with the Dutch trio, talking a mile a minute. Rat and I confer on this situation while on the dance floor, nonchalantly sliding over by one another to exchange opinions and laugh.

“Z is totally hysterical,” laughs the Rat. “He goes from dance machine to debate team captain to Mr. Display of Public Affection. Amazing!”

We just get more and more into the dancing. In a scene that’s straight out of Saturday Night Fever, Rat (now dancing with a barmaid), Carol, and I actually clear the dance floor with an enthusiastic display of inspired moves, twirls, kicks, and ritualistic four-way choreography. The song that inspires this ascension to new heights is somewhat unexpected, and one of my very favorites by The Velvet Underground, “She’s My Best Friend.”

If you want to see me

Sorry but I’m not around

If you want to be me

Turn around, I’m by the window where the light is

The remaining crowd stops dancing and gather around us in a circle. As we wind down at song’s end, they applaud us. What a rush, I swear it was out of some cornball movie, the only thing missing was Ann-Margaret and Elvis. The ovation far exceeded anything we received earlier for playing music.

As the night begins to unwind, I evaluate my situation and decide it’s time to move uptown with Carol. If I’m to relocate to Prague, I need a better feel for the town’s domiciles.

“So, eh, Carol. Ya wanna see something really scary?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Our apartment, upstairs. What must they think of musicians to toss us in such rag-tag accommodations? I’d be embarrassed if it weren’t so damn comical.”

“Didn’t you say Jeff was asleep up there?”

“Well, yes, yes that’s true. I guess I’m just trying to get you to take a little pity on me, as I’m trying to off-load out of here and get myself some more upscale digs, you see what I mean?”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah, don’t get the wrong idea. I mean, you and me, we’ve been friends for a number of years. I was just thinking, maybe we could catch a cab to your place, and I could hang with you tonight. You know, I won’t be in the way. I just want to take a bath and raid your refrigerator. Besides, it’s getting very late, and a young American girl such as yourself shouldn’t be out unescorted at this ungodly hour. Who knows what kind of weirdoes are out there?”

“Well, Bruce...”

“McGruff, check out Z!” interrupted Rat. Z was now surrounded by five girls, he had a two bottles of beer in one hand and what looked like a shot glass of gin in the other, the hand with the shot glass was holding a cigarette, and there was also a cigarette dangling from his chattering lips, which were still going nonstop. I laugh, but quickly return to my attention to Carol.

“I think I’m just gonna go,” she says, deflating my bubble. “I’ve got a busy day tomorrow, and you’ve got to get going. I think we should just call it a night.”

Ah well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, we’ll always have Prague. I’m sure she doesn’t believe that all I’m really after is the contents of her fridge and the comfort of warm bathwater, and why should she? I’m not sure I believe it myself.

Months later, back in Los Angeles, I’d get a transatlantic call from Carol. She told me she’d booked a reunited-yet-again Deep Purple into Prague. It was a bit of a chore, because guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore (my all time guitar hero), had to be treated as a separate entity from the rest of the band—separate car, hotel, meals, transportation to and from the airport, all apart from the rest of Deep Purple. During the conversation, she lets slip that after our night at the Bunkr, she got hassled by some dirty old man in an Aqualung overcoat. He harassed her until she finally was able to hail a cab.

The following morning we arise very slowly and with great difficulty. We have to dig the van out of the snow, and it’s very hard to get everyone to help. Basically everyone just wants to look at the van and hope that it unearths itself, and then wait while all the equipment magically loads itself in. Fighting the cold and our increasingly omnipresent hangovers, we somehow manage to get these chores done, grumbling all the while. Once my stuff is onboard, I lose patience with everyone’s slowness and grouchiness, and take off for the local market, to stock up on road supplies. I make a startling discovery there.

For the first time since leaving Los Angeles, I have found a mother lode of my favorite beverage, the revered Royal Crown Cola. The pride of the South, which Jolt tried to imitate. RC is the tastiest, most energizing concoction of caffeine and sugar known to man. Not only do they have it, they have it in sixteen-ounce bottles, practically unheard of even in the States. Now get this: these bottles are going for the equivalent of about thirty cents apiece. Granted, I’m not a rich man on this Euro-Blur excursion, but at thirty cents a pop, I can afford to buy the store out.

I walk out with two shopping bags full of RC and trudge through the snow back to the van, where I load my newfound treasure.

“What the fuck are you going to do with all that soda?” chides Tim.

“I’m gonna drink it, buddy boy.”

“All that? No way.”

“Well, that’s my problem, then. At any rate—and I want to make this clear to all concerned—these are my RCs. Not nobody else’s. So if ya want an RC, well, you’ll just have to hope someplace else along the way carries them.”

Four hours later down the road from Prague, my RCs take on new meaning. Suddenly, everyone wants one.

“C’mon, McGruff. You can’t drink them all yourself.”

“Sure I can. There’s a lot of this tour yet to go. No problem.”

“C’mon, we’ll buy them off you.”

“Well, fellas, the going rate, right now, is a dollar or the equivalent thereof in any reasonable foreign currency per bottle of Royal Crown.”

“A buck!”

“Take it, leave it, or drink whatever other shit is loose in the back of the van.”

Begrudgingly, the dollars began to appear. This went on for many days, as my RCs turned into a prosperous cottage industry for me. There are many ways to make money on the road. You just have to have a nose for supply and demand.