1998 Germany tour

Wave Field + AER 7 E
DECEMBER 1998 Germany tour

5 Dortmund, MeX
8 Rostock, MS Stubnitz
10 Hildesheim, Kulturfabrik
11 Peissenberg, Juze
12 Vienna (A), Rhiz
13 Ulm, Roxy
14 Wuerzburg, Galerie 03
15 KÖLN, Stadtgarten /studio 672 (with MIMEO)
16 KÖLN, Stadtgarten /studio 672 (with MIMEO)
17 KÖLN, Stadtgarten /studio 672 (with MIMEO)

Tour Diary

7
After some cool days in Dortmund, i travelled at night on a very old ex-DDR train to Rostock, in the far north of former East Germany. The travel took hours, and the barren snow-covered landscape made it feel like an endless trip to the end of the world. The show in Rostock was on board the MS Stubnitz, a former fishing boat converted to performance venue. This evening there was an amazing outer-space-cowboy style concert by Bob Log III.
Temperature here is around -5 degrees C, it feels funny to walk in the streets while face muscles freeze, makes it difficult to articulate speech… The Stubnitz is docked on a frozen river and there is snow everywhere. The sound of a boat passing by and breaking ice into thousands of little plates was incredible.

11
Back to the west and to fast travelling on an ICE train gliding at 250 km/h (now slowing down because it started snowing). Today i'm travelling over 600 Km, through a beautiful mountain area.
Yesterday's concert in Hildesheim was surprisingly successful, an unexpectedly enthusiastic response from the audience. Marc and Christina were very nice and all the logistic side was super comfortable.
Weilheim – Martin and Christian picked me up on a BMW playing an Elliott Smith tape. It's a youth center here, people are nice, but i actually don't feel like playing today. Maybe it turns out to be a good gig because of that. It's weird that i tend to perform better when i'm very tired or in the wrong mood.

12
Already on the way to Vienna, towards the south. The gig yesterday was ok. They smoke too much, these youngsters… I'm arriving to a beautiful mountain area. It's a wonderful day and the weather here is a lot nicer, very far south from 3 days ago…

13
The concert at the Rhiz was really great, they have a powerful sound system which made the whole building vibrate on Wave Field's bass region. I met Pita and Fennesz and really loved Vienna. The mood there has nothing to do with anywhere in Germany. This morning i took a walk in the street, which was difficult for the floor was covered with a thick layer of ice. I bought this extra-strong drink with 80 degrees, called Stroh.

Today i'm heading back to Germany, to Ulm, and meet Christoph, who did a fantastic job organizing this tour. His work was flawless, everything taken care of.
After an excellent concert at the Roxy and 48 hours on sandwiches, we went to dinner at a great turkish restaurant. The Roxy is a fantastic place for many formats of live art. The concert room had this really huge cinema screen, on which the Power Field video images looked gorgeous. I met Leonid Soybelman, he was doing amazing stuff with distornion on prepared acoustic guitar.
Next morning i had a really luxurious breakfast at the hotel, with orange juice, scrambled eggs, coffee with cream, yogurt with muesli and peach, german black bread wirth fresh cheese and chocolate cream, fruit salad, and milk with a mix of six cereals. i was full, of course. And so took the ICE super-train to Würzburg, the last solo concert on the tour.

14
The Würzburg concert was excellent, i played AER7E very soft. The venue was close to the train station, so lots of beautiful train sounds were coming in all the time. It's good to play every day, magic happens more often and naturally.
Hospitality in Würzburg was very sweet, domestic type, like in Hildesheim. As i arrived early, i went for a walk with Jochen and baby Moritz. We passed by the city hall, which had a miniature model of the city after being devastated by WWII bombing. Impressive…

15 – 17 Köln
Really amazing 3 days of concerts with MIMEO. The setup was so big that there was no stage. The orchestra simply took half the room! Looked like a vast laboratory. We decided in the end that the orchestra's line-up would remain fixed from now on.

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