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TRIP DIARY - ON THE ROAD WITH REBEL STORM There's no experience quite like touring with a band, especially when your father is the bass player for that band, and the band is touring Europe, and it's the first time they've ever toured. I got the chance to do just this when Rebel Storm headed to Europe for their Stormin' Europe tour and my sister and I tagged along with our dad and his girlfriend Molly. We figured it was a great way to combine some family time with a vacation to places we'd never been, with the added benefit of hanging out with the band. Rebel Storm has been around for a couple of years now, and their latest CD is all the rage in parts of Germany and other areas of Europe. For the first time, the band was set to tour Europe over three weeks with several shows that would take them around Holland and Germany. Unfortunately the band's guitarist Mark Baker couldn't make the trip - in a pinch and only three weeks before the tour, the band recruited Billy Leach of the Billy Leach Band, who's opened up for Rebel Storm in a few shows in the Tacoma, WA area. After cramming like a student for the SATs and getting Billy ready for the tour, the guys - Billy Moss (lead guitarist), Don Swensen (bassist and my dad), Joe Turnbull (keyboards), Bobby Nesbitt (drums), Billy Leach, roadie John Cooper, my dad's girlfriend Molly, and manager Jeanne Comansky - set out for the unknown wilds of Amsterdam! The guys went on a three-week tour, but I joined up with them during their second week, missing the shows they played in East Germany. Still, I managed to catch 2/3 of their tour, and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. Kudos to the band for putting up with having a couple of tourists tagging along with them - fortunately for us, the band already knew Xoe and I and we think of them as family, and they said they really liked having us around (moral support, you know). If you haven't checked out the pics from the trip in the Gallery, head on over there! There's also, of course, all the coverage of the trip you could want at the following places:
September 24-26, 2002 I arrived in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at about 7:30 am. The flight was about 10 hours with a 2 hour layover in Washington D.C.'s Dulles Airport. My dad was there to pick me up and then my sister, who'd get in an hour after me. It was fun coming all the way to Amsterdam to see my dad. On the plane I crammed in as much Dutch and German as I could in preparation for the trip. I'd had two semesters of German so I was somewhat prepared for that, but given that I'd gone on the trip on some short notice I didn't have any Dutch experience. Didn't matter, though; I learned later that nearly everyone in Holland speaks English.
We got to the Botel in Amsterdam and met up with Billy Moss and Molly, who were having breakfast at the hotel. The plan was to walk around Amsterdam for a bit, checking out the sites. Loosely translated, that means, "checking out the Red Light District", because you can't go to Amsterdam and not hang out in the Red Light District, right? We walked and walked and walked, just seeing the sites. We took in as many of the historical sites nearby that we could. At one point around lunch we met up with Bobby and Billy Leach as they were off to sight-see. The hotel wasn't far from the Red Light District and so we naturally wandered into that area. Here's the thing about the RLD: it's so hardcore. I'm not a prude by any means, but it just strikes me as so odd and faintly disturbing that hardcore porn shops with graphic pictures of sex in all positions and orifices on the windows (and don't forget the naked women in the windows trying to get you to come in) are often right next to the most ordinary things, like book shops or - and this was great - the butcher. That last one has to make you wonder. The first day was mostly spent wandering around, some of it in the Red Light District and some in the other parts of the city. That night Xoe and I tried to get some sleep so we could adjust to the new time zone. The next day we wandered around the city again. Now, let me tell you something about the citizens of Amsterdam: they're very clearly insane if they're on a bicycle. Apparently the food chain, from top to bottom, goes cars->bicycles->people rather than the other way around. You could tell we were the dumb Americans because we kept wandering into the bike paths without looking and nearly got run down by some crazy Dutch bicyclist. I think they can smell fear. We took some of the canal rides through the city, which give you a nice historical overview of some of the sights. We got off near the Van Gogh Museum and of course walked through that. Now, all of this was great, but you know that what you really have to do when you're in Amsterdam is go to a coffee shop. It's pretty much a requirement. So off we went, our first adventure into the illicit wilds of Amsterdam. It was I, my sister, our dad, his girlfriend Molly, and Joe the keyboardist, and we went into a coffee shop that Joe said specifically was pretty good. Now, you'll never believe me when I say this, but I've never done any drugs and wasn't planning on doing any in Amsterdam, either - I just wanted to see what a coffee shop was like and see the menu. And contrary to what you might believe, it wasn't weird going into one with the Dad. Our dad was a child of the 60's and 70's, so he's ingested his allotment of the drugstore in his time. We all sat down at a table and ordered some coffee (plain, unlaced coffee). Joe explained the menu to my sister and I and what each thing was. It was quite an education. While we sat there taking in the ambiance, my dad saw the chocolate cake on the counter. He was hungry, so he asked the girl behind the counter if it was just cake. He didn't want anything but actual, unlaced cake. She said that it was indeed just cake. He got two pieces. I was hungry so I had a couple of bites of one of his pieces, and he ate the rest of that and all of the second piece. After a while we left the coffee shop and parted ways with Joe while we found a place to have some dinner. Apparently later that night our dad found out that the cake wasn't just cake at all - according to Molly he started acting really uptight and paranoid, and my dad suddenly realized he was stoned. I had started feeling funny myself but chalked it up to the beer and jetlag - I'll never know if the small pieces I ate had anything to do with that. My sister and I spared no expense pointing and laughing at our father for getting stoned in Amsterdam accidentally. And of course it was all our fault - I mean, who asks for regular, plain cake in a coffee shop in Amsterdam and actually expects to get it? At some point during our time in Amsterdam we heard a story that happened before we got there. Billy Leach had come prepared with some language phrase books, and while the guys were out Joe needed to stop at a store and ask for some cold medication. He asked Billy what he should say, and Billy diligently told him the phrase from the phrase book. What Joe didn't know until just before he'd gone in was that Billy had told him how to say, "Excuse me, I have a vaginal infection." Joe realized something was up just before he was about to ask. He laid into Billy a bit, but everyone had a huge laugh anyway. |
