Day 3, Fall Tour 2016

Sep 9

Day 3 Fall Tour 2016, September 9th

I've just found myself a seat on the 1233, Munich to St Gallen train. This tour begins in Switzerland, so that's where I'm heading.

I spent a wonderful and intimate evening in Mering in the company of Pat and Michael Fleig, and their kids, and about 500 locals who had gathered for a spaghetti fundraiser.

Now let me make this clear, they were not fundraising for more spaghetti, they have plenty, but rather they were paying for a spaghetti dinner Al Fresco, with all of the proceeds going to the Italian village that was recently devastated in the earthquake.

Before I talk about the sauce, I wanted to revisit my flight entertainment which I encountered on the Lufthansa 747-400 aeroplane on my journey over.

I firstly watched the bio-pic "Ray" about Ray Charles. My son Fintan has been telling me to watch this movie for years, and I've no idea why I didn't. The movie blew my mind on so many levels, far more levels than I usually have in my mind actually. Jamie Fox was simply unbelievable, did he win an Oscar Ed? Ray Charles is a legend and like all legends his life is as rich as his music. If you haven't seen it, do. Listen to my son.

I was then drawn to the music documentary or (rockumentary section if you will).
I flicked through the uninteresting ones like "Phil Collins Live from Butlins Bognor Regis," "In the Large Ballroom," and Ozzy Osbourne performs Palestrina, also "In conversation with Van Morrison". I like Van the Man but that particular film was only one minute 20 seconds long, and one minute of that was the opening titles.

Then I saw "Deep Purple Live from Wacken" in Germany. Lots of reasons suddenly presented themselves to me. Of course the guitar riff from Smoke On The Water, the iconic song about, well, Smoke on The Water, something about the chemical properties of more dense smoke molecules. When I was in my teens I was a devout heavy metal fan and there were some essential accessories you needed to have if your were to survive in this group.

1. Long Hair (obviously I'm into folk these days, my days of headbanging are long gone. Headbanging without hair is about as pointless as trying bribe to an El Salvadoran soccer player.)

2. Air guitar skills (I was good at this. Still am actually.)

3. Leather jacket. It doesn't have to be real leather, although mine was.

4. Denim waistcoat. This does have to be real denim.

5. Denim waistcoat. This must have band logos sewn on.

6. On the waistcoat there are some "must have" band logos:
Motörhead (hardcore fans always remembered the two dots)
Deep Purple
Rush

7. The denim waistcoat must simply reek of patchouli oil, Ed?

There are others but these are the core aspects.

I had Deep Purple on my waistcoat. I even had one their LP's, bought mainly because of the very lovely lady on the cover. I had hair, I had rhythm, who could ask?

So, I hit the start button and off I went down memory lane, gently bobbing my baldy head in a sad but poignant tribute to my once flowing mane.

The concert was from 2013, and the lads have changed a bit. Roger Glover on bass however looked pretty much the same, but the rest of the boys had moved on from the crazy throwing-TVs-out-of-hotels look, to fixing-TVs-in-a-small-shop-off-the-high-street-look. Ian Gillan looked like a used car salesman, but the voice was still there, in fact the band were amazing. Don Airy on keyboards is a total musical heavyweight, and the drumming was tight and powerful, with a solo lasted 19 minutes. I lined up for the loo at this point though.

If you've ever looked to the lyrics of 70's heavy metal songs for spiritual enlightenment then you probably don't need me to tell you that you'd find more divine guidance in a Trump speech. In fairness I couldn't really hear that many words but I was convinced I heard in one song "Right up your Jacksy." It was in a ballad, I think.

I stuck with it, however something really funny happened at 1:33 into the film. It was at this point that one of the cameramen spotted a topless lady in the crowd. "Not unusual, I hear," you think, and you'd be right, but up until that point we had been treated to Gillan's thrusting (I sincerely hope he got permission from his orthopedic doctor) pelvis and the guitar players L'oreal throw-back-and-tilt-my-head-pose-so-my-hair-can-look-amazing-when-they-do-a-slow-motion-edit.

The editor of this film, who like me had had to sit through 1:32 of Deep Purple being deeply visually boring, obviously decided he'd had enough of rock nostalgia and old men's clumsy and lived-in bodies, and so the movie took on a whole different artistic direction.

The lady appeared again at

1:36

1:38

1:41

1:59 (I think she must have wandered off to powder her nose for a few minutes)

The lady got featured so much it wouldn't surprise me if she gets her own "spin off" (tempted to write "clothes off") film.

So, back to the sauce. I actually didn't try it (it had meat in it) so I opted for a veggie pesto sauce my teacher friend Veronika had brought along. She's a strict vegetarian. Actually, that's not fair; she's mostly very relaxed.

Keep Right On,

Duh Duh Duuhhhhhhhh, Duh Duh, Duh Duuhhhhhhhhh
Duh Duh Duuhhhhhhhhh Duh Duuhh

P.s.
Just to be clear, the pictures posted are not from the Rock Concert so don't bother looking for her.