Still, facts and figures aren’t the reason we’re back here for the third time. Polish people are one of the most crazy and passionate audiences we’ve played to in Europe. If they’re feeling the music they’re not afraid to jump onto a table and show it- that’s pretty inspiring for a musician. Poles also manage to pull off contradictions better than most- for example their blend of extreme optimism and extreme pessimism. It’s a little hard to explain.. but it’s very Polish. The most addictive thing for me is that freedom is only 20-years young, so everyone is still celebrating it. It’s how we should all be living life. I guess that’s why we now call so many of our Polish fans friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec_p535tv20

Since we arrived we’ve been on the road full-time and have clocked up more than 100 000 kms in ‘Roderick’ (our baby-blue 1996 VW Transporter). That’s 160 shows and 17 festivals across the continent in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Slovenia, Latvia and Lithuania. A year of little sleep, but a hell of a lot of good times… Some highlights for us were playing festivals with Guano Apes and Emil Bulls (Germany) and Toploader (UK).

We wrapped up the year with a show at Franz Club in Berlin (thanks for the killer photos  Andrea Friedrich):

 

…followed by a trip to Vienna, Austria where we played at the Rocky Horror Picture Show after party. It’s a magnificent city:

2012 is going to be even busier for us. Next up– the official release of our new album ‘King of the Sugarcoated Tongues’. More info coming very soon….

About 5 minutes from our flat is Mauerpark. The name literally means “Wall Park” – which comes from the fact that it used to be part of the Berlin Wall. More specifically, it was part of the infamous “death strip” – a raked area about 30m wide complete with guard dogs, barbed wire, beds of nails, floodlights and watchtowers.

Once the wall came down, the place was turned into a park. But in typical Berlin fashion, that park has evolved into a crazy, multicultural, cosmopolitan place where people from all over the world come to party. No judgement, no negativity. Anything goes – even mass public karaoke on Sunday (check out the vid ).

People from all over the world literally sing, dance, drink, smoke, create art and challenge conventional thinking  on the ruins of the one of the world’s greatest symbol of xenophobia. That, people, is nothing short of fucking A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Damn I love this city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gr0EgdvECQ

P.S. thanks to Stefan for putting me onto this spectacular vid 

There were other pics from later that night, but we decided to deal with those Hangover-style. In other words, view them once and delete them forever…. hahaha. We’re playing our first Amsterdam show tomorrow – so I guess we couldn’t stay away.

Germans are awesome people. And Berlin is the most amazing place I’ve ever lived. Pinning the actions of a small group of idiots on an entire country is no different to what this guy did to me. However, none of our German friends would deny there are still problems here. The great thing about Berlin is that it constantly rages against fascists. That’s one of the many things that make this place feel so alive. If you want to see how most Berliners deal with people like this, check out: http://bit.ly/nzd5ud. Geil.

It’s a shame my German wasn’t good enough to have a proper conversation with the guy. Otherwise I could have congratulated him on representing Jamaican culture so proudly. After all, the original skinhead movement was inspired by Jamaican “rude boys”, listened to reggae and represented the common people. I could have also thanked him for adopting the sacred Ancient Indian symbol for luck and well being – the swastika – as his own. I wonder if these guys realise how ridiculous they look, representing themselves with things from cultures they purport to hate?

Australia has it’s own issues too – let’s not forget One Nation won 9% of Australia’s vote in the 1998 election. Even The Netherlands, the shining beacon of European liberality,  saw Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom take 15.5% of the vote in 2010.  The question isn’t where these people are, but how we deal with them. I say laugh – hard.

Best of all, it’s FREE entry – just RSVP on facebook and we’ll add you to the guest list: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=274998605861233. It’s not a part of the official Reeperbahn festival program, so you’ll need to RSVP to our facebook event. If you’re one of those “facebook is evil” people, just send us an email via www.thesunpilots.com/contact and we’ll add you to the list the old fashioned way.

Showcase details
where: Location Town, Grosse Freiheit 27, Hamburg (near Kaiserkeller)
when: Thurs 22 Sept. Doors open 6pm, The Sunpilots play 8pm – 9pm (1 hr)
cost: free (RSVP required)

Check out the flyer below for more details. So…invite your friends… and cya there!

We’re doing it Rolling Stones style and living together in one flat (in Berlin). We’ve all got separate rooms, which helps keep us sane. The flat doesn’t have any chill-out space though, which is tough. Plenty of people have housemates- but not many work, play, spend 20-30 hours a week in a little van and party (we do almost all our socialising after shows) with their housemates as well. The guys are more like family than friends, but that makes it harder too. Being around three brothers 24/7 is more difficult than being around three mates.

Our schedule is pretty brutal. Leave on Wed or Thurs, drive 8 or 9 hours, set up / soundcheck / play / pack down for 3 or 4 shows (and drive 4 or 5 hours between each show), drive back to Berlin on Sun (another 8 or 9 hours), work on the ‘business’ side of things on Mon and Tues… then do it all again. On bigger legs things get even more intense – our 2 week tour of France ended in Nice and we did Nice to Berlin in one day (and drove through 5 countries). Most nights on tour we’re sleeping at someone’s house on air beds and couches or staying in hostels (hotels aren’t really in the budget just yet). It’s an amazing way to meet people, but sleep deprivation is pretty standard. Getting to bed around 3 or 4am every night doesn’t help!

To put things in perspective, you might not know that we’re touring full time (yep – every week of the year). So we’ve been doing this every week for the last 10 months… crazy times.

Life on the road is an awesome adventure, but we’re usually never in one place long enough to develop deep friendships with people. Now that we’ve been here for a while that’s starting to change (our amazing friends in Geislingen, South Germany are a perfect example) – but it’s a slow process. We haven’t had a lot of spare time in Berlin to meet people either. So yeah, things can get a bit lonely sometimes.

That being said, the other question I get is “so, is it worth it?”. Despite the insanity, my answer to that has never changed. Two words – HELL YES.

-Raj

You can check out the high-res (larger) version here: http://bit.ly/qn5QsH

-Raj

[...]

Currently I am driving past the biggest statue of Jesus in the world, which was recently erected in Poland. I feel there should be something to be said about using ‘Jesus’ and ‘erected’ in the same sentence, but we can explore that later.

[...]

I started this whole journey with absolutely no skill in taking gig photos, I had never even photographed a gig. But I assumed I could, or could pretend I could. But since then I have had the good fortune of touring a large amount of Europe with The Sunpilots over the last 7 months, and despite the copious amounts of alcohol consumed in these 7 months, I have actually learnt quite a lot of little tricks that will make your life a lot easier if you intend to ever pursue this as a career or even just something to do for a summer.

1. Your camera is important.

This seems obvious, but I want to expand on it. The actual camera you have is important, but not excessively, less so than you might believe. If you have a DSLR, that’s all you need. Literally. I have acquired a lot more of course, it all helps, but that’s what I started with. If you have money to spend on a camera, make sure you get a full-frame sensor. [...]

Ok, I cut this post short on purpose, there is still 6 and a half very important and even more useful tips than the one above. If you care to continue reading them then head over to my blog and read away. I hope it’s useful!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9FLkEKiD2M