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Set List
Drka
Dumb
Forever
I am, I Said
Screw
Sweet Dead Friend
Crvena
Ruza
Sunday morning and John can barely speak now. The show last night was not helpful for his voice. John's all bitchy since he stopped drinking because of his throat, so what does he do? He goes out into town and buys a pack of Croatian brand cigarettes. So he starts smoking and drinking turkish coffee, saying he's sick of tea and really doesn't give a fuck and that he's gonna enjoy himself. By two o-clock in the afternoon he comes back with a bottle of Croatian Brandy (Rakija) and starts pounding the stuff. Krsko revisited? We get to sound check at about 5pm and when we try a song John's rented amp takes a shit. It just completely dies. John's pretty toasted from the rakija and he just starts beating on the thing like crazy but it doesn't fix it. So then we ask ourselves. Now where in the hell are we gonna get another Marshall stack in Peteranec? We ask the guys at the club and they make a few calls but no luck. We jump in the van and go to Osijek, but it's Sunday and there is nothing open. We're fucked so we call our bud in Varazdin from Osijek and he says not to worry he'll take care of it. Not to worry? It's almost 7pm and John has no amp! We go on at 10:30, so he has three and a half hours to save our ass, not to mention drive down from Varazdin to do so.
We get back to the club at about 8pm and John just says fuck it. He goes accross the street to a little caffe-bar and disappears. Tone and Tony are left in the club wondering if they can get ticket by 10:30 to go back home before the crowd shows up. A friend of the club owner comes by with a small Fender practice amp. Tone and Tony know if John sees this he will fucking throw it across the room. They end up going across the street to get John, and find him with a fresh pack of cigarettes talking politics with some local old men and sipping on Slivovica (Plumb Brandy). Well, before they can get John's attention, he says something that offends one of the old men, who just blows up at John and starts swearing at him in Croatian, John tells him to fuck off or something in Croatian and Tone steps in as peacemaker and gets john out of there. It seems that John upset one of the old men, who we guess was in HDZ or something, by saying that the former Croatian President Tudjman and his party HDZ were all crooks and have destroyed this beautiful country. Well the night get better trust me. At about 10:15 or so with a pretty full klub, our buddy from Varazdin shows up with a killer Mesa Boogie half stack. So now John, who has not stopped drinking, tries to set up this thing with out friend's help in front of the audience. Oh shit is nothing. John finally finishes tinkering with the amp at almost 11pm. Thirty minutes after we were too go on. The club owner is completely pissed and just swearing up and down at us. John like earlier just smoking his cigarettes and doesn't give a rat's ass. We finally start the gig at a little past 11pm. And strangely enough after all the shit, we sound completely tight. Just kicking everyone's ass in the place and they are eating it up like free pizza's! John's voice is holding up in the strangest way, with a Tom Waitish tone, he's not missing a note and he is completely hoarse and drunk as a skunk. So do we pull it off? Well, the day full of suprises brings us one more.
Right before we were going to begin "Crvena" someone
in the audience shouts out, "Vukovar, do Vukovar!" and John in his best
Jim Morrison impression shouts back in english, "Shut the fuck up, we don't
do that song anymore!" the guy again requested "Vukovar" again and John
of course had to play with him and shouted back, "If you want Vukovar so
bad, get the fuck out of the club and go there!" With that we started "Crvena"
and we could see that this guy was pissed off. John just stared at him
the whole time during the song. After the song, the guy and some friends
tried to get closer to the stage, but we just ripped into "Ruza". They
got to about 3 rows back from the front and towards the end of the song
started saluting us with the Heil Hitler salute and started yelling "Ustasha!".
When the song ended, John told the audience in Croatian, "I don't play
for Nazis or Ustasha, thank you goodnight.", unplugged his guitar and walk
off stage. We only had three more songs to go and there was actually two
police men in the club that we noticed after the show. The club owner wasn't
too pissed, he didn't want any trouble. A few drunk idiots, John included.
No harm, no foul. A great show though even with all the drama.