CRUMBS on tour in Europe... again.

CRUMBS are on tour in Europe. Yes, we're on tour again. We just did our show in Hamburg at der Motte. Here's how it went.

First, we show up and for some reason they haven't got turntables for Dj Hunnicutt. We've played there before so I don't know why they didn't think we needed out turntables. But after some phone calls, the turntables showed up. Then we did some classic CRUMBS show fun.

For our inspirations we got the classic occupation of "dentist" and the not as classic suggestion of "deep living". Deep Living was the title of a book someone in the audience was reading. He gave us the explanation of it as "there's a boy and a girl... you can imagine the rest".

So of course the show started off in a dentist's office where we saw a man who was afraid of the dentist. His mouth was in really bad shape but had it all fixed up. Fixed up so well that he became more handsome and more confident. So confident that he decided to divorce his wife and live the life more suited for a man of his stature. He gets a promotion and a new secretary. The thing is, while his outward appearance improved, he was still in love with the woman he just broke up with and broke the heart of. He couldn't even have sex with his sexy secretary. His wife tried to start over too, going out to the club and took home a bouncer for some meaningless sex. The bouncer just happened to catch the husband coming home for his wife. He beat the crap out of the husband... so much that he had his beautiful teeth knocked out. The husband and wife eventually made up and got beck together, on the promise that the husband would never make the same mistake again. Love prevails right?

The other story in the show involved a failed writer alone in her house, lonely. Her books about pigs that go on adventures for some reason won't get published. A failing traveling salesman, of course he's selling travel packages. They meet and it turns out, his last travel package is to Hawaii, where she finds out that they have pig roasts. She decides that they have to go there and set the pigs free. They go on their own adventure and fall in love. Again, love prevails. I guess you can imagine the rest.



After the show we go to the "Kleine Pause" for a little break (and a little bite to eat). We then go the "Crazy Horst" for a little drink.

 I would like to dedicate this post to Frank.

CRUMBS takes pictures

CRUMBS on tour in Europe (yet again) and taking a ton of photos (yet again). Here are some of those photos for your eyeballs. The above photo is Lee and myself in the Crazy Horst bar, our local bar whenever we are in Hamburg.

This is Germany's most famous hand model showing off his talents with our CRUMBS flyer.

















And this is a poster of Horst advertising a book he is in that has famous words from famous Hamburg pub owners. He is saying something about peacocks... translate it.






















Backstage at our show in Hamburg at the Motte.

















Crazy Balloon?

The Hammer

The Hammer = Hamburg
















CRUMBS are again in Hamburg, again in St Pauli and again at the Crazy Horst. We do our show tonight at the Motte and then return to Berlin.

St Pauli is the area of Hamburg we live the most and the home of Germany's best Football club. Not the nest because they play the best on the field, but the best because of their fans. It turns out that a lot of right wing fascists are fans of the other teams (not just fascist as an insult, but actual god fearing fascists) while the St Pauli fans are the only real team that the Left can call their own. We heard a story where a whole bunch of hooligans from across Germany showed up before a football match and decided to "cause a ruckus" in St Pauli. What ended up happening in the ensuing violence was all the apartment windows opening up and the residence making it rain bottles on the invading trouble makers. The cops eventually showed up and tear gas was used, but not before humans got hurt. Hurt over sports rivalry.












I am so glad that hockey is not treated the same ferociousness in Canada. Image if all the Harper fans loved the Maple Leafs and the Liberals loved the Habs? This is just plain crazy. You should be able to be a fan of whatever team you want, no matter what your politics. I call for a separation of Sport and State!















Speaking of crazy, The Crazy Horst is a bar in St Pauli run by a legend named Horst. I have written about the bar on this website before, so I won't go on and on about it. But it is nice (and more than a little strange) to have a regular bar in a city so far away from home.

CRUMBS in the Hammer!

Hamburg, the Hammer! And no I don't mean Hamilton, Ontario...


The first thing I should say about Hamburg is that we did some great workshops with Die Spieler (which translates directly into “The Players”). Super fun and generous group of people.

The second thing I should say about Hamburg is that we saw Gogol Bordello play a show, tear the stage down and set it on fire with their Gypsy Punk energy. Let me just say this, on their second encore they walked out on stage with a Mariachi Band!



The third thing I should say is we visited the St. Pauli store. This is St. Pauli's 100 year anniversary and a celebration of their entrance into the Premiere's League.

The fourth thing we should mention is the show. The suggestions were “Space” and “Nurse”. Now we have done many shows in spaceships and we have done many shows about Nurses and Doctors, the trick is to keep it fresh every time you do it. The trick is to not fall into the trap of laziness and be tempted to repeat... because repeating loses the magic. We also don't want to simply redo ideas that have been done before by other people, other movies or other stories.

We started with a nurse (let's call her Ruth) who was incredibly good at her job. The doctor was incredibly bad at his job. The doctor kept asking Ruth why she had never become a doctor and was always just satisfied being “just a nurse”. This of course drove the nurses in the audience mad (there was at least one nursing student in the audience who may or may not have been one of the members of the host group). The doctor was working on an Olympic javelin thrower who was mysteriously sick. The doctor could not figure it out (even though he had taken x-rays?).


Space. Space is vast. Space. With matter and anti-matter. With stars and comets and planets and quasars and pulsars. Space. With extra terrestrial life? We zoom in on a space ship looking for alien life forms. The Captain is in a hurry and wants to fly the ship faster. The first mate is a loser and a wimp and is bullied by the Captain. On the ship we also have an engineer (which garnered at least one cheer from one person in the audience... I can only assume was an engineer) and a robot (again X-13).


Ruth (the “just a nurse”) begins to research on her own and figures out what is wrong with the Javelin thrower (we will call him Jimmy). Ruth gets books out of the library (known as a book place to some) and even does her own blood tests. Jimmy meanwhile is going through some rough girl troubles as his girl Jacklin has now hooked up with Mark (the new captain of the javelin throwing team going to the Olympics).


It turns out that the Captain of the ship is desperately looking for “Space Women” that he can sex up. This has clouded his judgment and the wimpy first mate tries to stand up to him. This all happens as an alien ship approaches... Of course, with Space Women that then board the ship demanding sex, but from the robot.


The doctor feels horribly guilty for not being able to do his job and learns the secret to it all lies in actually caring about the patients. The doctor and the nurse switch roles and forge each others diplomas and certificates. Meanwhile the doctor has become famous as the person who cured Jimmy the javelin thrower. Jimmy won the gold medal by throwing his javelin past everyone else's, past the previous world record and right into the heart of Jacklin, who was in the audience trying to win Jimmy back.


The sexy Space Women end up being impressed by the first mate standing up for himself and decide to take him back to their home planet for endless space sex. Leaving the Captain alone and confused. (he was obviously the alpha male, why didn't he get the space sex?).



The fifth thing we should mention is the Crazy Horst. This is a famous bar in St. Pauli that we visit every time we are in Hamburg. Horst (the owner of the bar) was a boxer, ran a Bordello and now runs this bar. He has famous people and tourists pay a visit to this little place (it can seat maybe 20 people comfortably). He has even kicked Brad Pitt out of his bar for being smelly (“I don't care who you are, you smell and this is a small place”)