30 Seconds Over Copenhagen

30.SECONDS.OVER.COPENHAGEN
DESERT RAIN'S DANISH TOURS

. In the Spring of '94 we found out

that we were being deported. Something

about the State Department being pissed off at Doug....
After careful deliberation, we decided that we would flee to Scandinavia. In the end we chose Denmark because it was the easiest country to sneak into.

EXCERPTS FROM JAN'S DUMB JOURNAL APRIL 27
   4:20 pm (JFK Int'l Airport)       Just checked in for our flight.   The guy at the Icelandic Air counter was an asshole.... maybe the onboard crew will be friendlier.   Some Iranian dude is video taping us, I hope we aren't forced to kill him.
   6:31 pm (Still at JFK...)     A lot of people think that this Rock and Roll lifestyle is a bed of bleedin' roses. Well, the stress can be intense!   Only two hours into this tour and we're already at each other's throats. John has quit the band three times today, and we think that Randy may have killed our keyboard player, Doug....
   9:10 pm (Airborne)    Nope, Doug's alive and ok.   He showed up just as we were boarding.   Apparently, he was off partying with the Iranian dude and his goat.
     The flight crew aren't any friendlier than the other Ice-people we've met today. They wouldn't let me fly the airplane; even after I offered to smoke a joint with them.
APRIL 28
     2:15 am (Reykjavik Airport)    Waiting for our next flight.   No wonder these people are so grumpy; this place looks like the friggin' Moon!   The currency has us stumped.   I bought a glass of Tang, and only got three fish back . John bought a glass of tang, and a lunar module and he got six fish back. What's that about?
     There's a big poster on the wall advertising that Iceland has "a girl behind every tree".   THERE ARE NO TREES IN THIS COUNTRY.   ok.... I get it. Stay away from me, Lars!
   5:47 am   ok, through the magic of science, it is now 11:47 am   The city of Copenhagen slides past out the window, as we begin our final approach.   Arrrrggghhhh.. my ears are gonna pop!
10:30 pm   (Roskilde - our home for the next month)    Finally here, Trolls and

Astrid's B&B.   Spent the evening drinking Carlbergs with our buddy Poul-Erik, who helped us put this tour together. He's happy 'cause we're not another Latvian band. We occasionally shower, and know how to use modern plumbing, and that impresses him.
APRIL 30
     8:44 pm   (Strandpubben, Bjergestrand)    Our first show. A nice beach town on the western end of this island.   We are jammed into the smallest area we've ever set up in before; a booth stall with the table taken out. The owner here, an expatriate Englishman named David, and his beautiful barmaid have been plying us with beers.   Almost show time...
MAY 1
   3:02 am (In the rented van)   Home again, home again.   Well, we won tonight.   Kicked arse in Bjergestrand!   Un-fucking-believable how beautiful the women are here. And there were so many of them dancing in the bar...   Met a conga player from Helsinger named Erik, who smoked some hash with us.   Life is good.
   3:10 pm (Train Station, Roskilde)   Underway on our day's adventure. Today's target will be Copenhagen.   They tell us that we can openly buy hash and weed in Christiana, so that'll probably be our first stop in the city.
       3:55 pm (Copenhagen)   We are watching Danish frogmen dredging a canal.   They are looking for a woman's torso that is missing.
   4:20 pm (Christiana, Copenhagen)   This place is like a throwback to the sixties.   Lots of psychedelic wall murals and dope dealing Hippies.    Christiana is a "social experiment" that began 20 years ago.   It's a big walled off section of the city for druggies to hang out in.   These days, even the tour busses come by here.
     We just scored smoke from three separate dealers (variety is a good thing), and are puffing on a dube of Lab grown Dutch Skunk.   Mmmmmmm.....
   4:41 pm (Copenhagen Center)   A bicycle powered chanting street fish just peddled past the front of the Royal Palace.
MAY 4
   1:30 pm(Sitting in a bar)    I have finally figured out how the Danish money works, at least the coinage:
             20 KRONER These are the best ones.   One of them will buy you a        hamburger, a beer, a falafel, or half a gram of hashish.
             5 KRONER This will get you a cup of coffee,   dry half your laundry , or get you two games of pinball.
             2 KRONER We haven't found anything to spend these on.
             1 KRONER Worth about a minute or so on the pay phone (but only if you are calling across the street).
12:30 am (Rain gig, Taastrup) Just met our main promoter for the first time.

Jen, The Red Devil. This guy is intense.   He's probably escaped from an institution of some sort, but I can't really tell if he's dangerous or not.    I think he hates music, bands and Americans (and especially American musicians).   I'm sure we'll get along great.
MAY 5
   noon (on a train) Some of the request's we've been getting are pretty funny. People've been asking for mostly older stuff .     Heard "Johnny B. Goode" asked for a couple times this week.   Also "Smoke On The Water".   Canned Heat, Toto, C.C.R.    ehhh...   Haven't found a ton of Deadheads here yet.
MAY 6
   1:43 pm (at home in Roskilde)   last night's was the best gig yet. Caught a room in Copenhagen with half a dozen heads in it. Had a great blues-harp player/Deadhead named Jens-ole sit in on a "Mr. Charlie" and a "Red House".   Our "Dope Song" went over really big.   The whole bar was singing along on the Dylan tune "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere."
   8:30 pm (between sets)   PLaying on a flatbed trailer in a beer tent at the Vanlose Fairground. Decent crowd.   Some girl started kissing me after the first set because I look like Baumser (apparently a Danish singer).   Talked with a high ranking policeman named Pier.   They found the lady's torso in the harbor.   She was killed by her Egyptian husband.   Cool. We are well on our way to being drunk. We got tricked into playing a "Proud Mary" (which we've never touched before....   Doug sang it.
MAY 8
   5 a.m.   (Home again.)   Two gigs yesterday.   A bunch of young people followed us from the first to the second job.   They have a band too.   After the late gig, we went to their rehearsal place (in a basement in a school) and hung out.
   6:50 (Medborgerhus)   Poul-Erik is translating a newspaper article about us.   It says that "we've been at the top of the Billboard Charts, and now you can see us in Albertslund."   That's pretty funny.   One job billed us a s from Nashville.
MAY 9
     3:02 p.m. We've been checking out Roskilde this afternoon.     Nice place.   There's a big twin-spired cathedral here that hosts the biggest collection of dead kings and queens in the world. We didn't go inside, but instead walked down to the fjord and sat on the seawall enjoying the sunshine and watching all the pretty schoolgirls.    The Viking Ship Museum is right there and was pretty much swarming with school kids on field trips.    The museum costs 30 kr. , and only Randy paid to go inside.
     Walked around the marina for a while.
MAY 10
   11:20 a.m. (awake)    A second day off.     Jethro Tull was playing in Copenhagen last night, but we found out too late to go. Doh!   I would have liked to see that one.
   4:20 p.m.   (Freidricksburg Park, Copenhagen)   Oh My!!!!   Hundreds of naked Danish women, sunbathing in the park.   Unbelievable!!!!    Doug, quit drooling... try to fit in.....
     Life is , like, uh, really good
MAY 12
   4:20 (Boy, 4:20 seems to come up a lot in this journal...)   We just had our first brush with the Danish police.    These little Toyota vans we've been renting have a yellow license plate, not a white one; which means that nobody's supposed to ride in the back.   Poul-Erik told us to play dumb Americans if we got stopped, which we did...      The cop spared us any fines, but made the four of us jam into the front cab before he'd let us go.   Once we were out of his sight, it was buisness as usual.
   2:12 a.m.   Just finished playing in Allerod. While we were setting up there was a football (soccer) game on the television.   About an hour after the game ended. a bus pulled up and the victorious team spilled off and into the bar.   Yow.   Drunk jocks are the same everywhere.
MAY 13
   4:40 a.m. (riding in the van)   Another killer gig tonight, in a town up north called Farum.   Here's the latest fuck-up with our name: they had us billed as "Delta Rain".   This bar was awesome: a real party, and we hung out late, getting drunk enough to begin playing an extra set at three in the morning.    Signed a bunch of autographs - that happens quite a bit here.
     It's already getting light here, being so far north.   We are driving along a big fjord, with lots of windmills.
MAY 13
   7:30 p.m. (right after the sound check)   This place is great.   We're playing tonight at Nysted Camping, on the island of Lolland.   Looking out on the Baltic Sea, towards Germany. The room here is beautiful, with a big stage and lots of wood. Really sweet sounding hall.     The lady who booked us in here, Mea, has been listening to the tape the Devil send down. She wants to be sure we play our "Country Music" song.
MAY 14
   11:45 a.m. (Still in Nysted) Got flashed all kinds of boobs last night.
     Our host here, Finn, is amazing. His family too. Four o'clock this morning we were still standing at the bar drinking with him.   Finn's a bass player; a dixieland jazz musician, and showed us his 50 year old stand-up.
     At one point during the night, he ushered us in to a back room and showed us a array of PA and recording equipment. Finn's son, Kim, is a recording engineer. Right now he's setting up gear to record us.
(Later...   Listening to playback) We played 12 songs for the tape machine. Not too bad.....   now we have a record of how we sounded with all this borrowed equipment we've been using.
MAY 15
7 p.m. (Copenhagen)   There's a newspaper here, the Ekstra Bladett; they sell it everywhere.   Every day, on page 9, a local girl is featured, naked.   It has become part of our daily ritual to check out the page 9 girl.
MAY 17
   3:45 p.m. (A Copenhagen Bar) We picked up our womenz at the airport.   My Darlene, and John's Brenda are here to finish the tour with us.   We've already taken them to Christiana for Falafel and a buzz.
MAY 20
     9 p.m.   (Helsinger) Almost ready to start. They told us this town would be full of drunken swedes. Helsinger sits just across the water from Helsingborg, Sweden - a short ferry ride.   In Sweden, it's really hard to get drunk because of the laws and the taxes, so the Swedes come to Helsinger and get cocked off their asses.   The Danes goof on 'em 'cause they can't hold their booze, and indeed, a drunken Swede has already barfed in front of where we're set up.

Here we were billed as "Dessert Rain". This place is way down in a stone basement, down a narrow winding stone staircase. Sort of a pain, carrying all our gear down here, but, oh well. Eric, the fellow who got us stoned at our very first Danish gig, has shown up here to see us again. Hey! Another drunken Swede has just thrown up on the floor.
MAY 21
8:30 p.m. (Hvalso Fairgrounds) 1st set finished of our last (paying) gig here. A beer tent packed with people and girls dancing. The Red Devil is here , set up with an illegal roulette wheel. I've been watching him taking money from children. I'm sure his wheel is rigged....
MAY 22
(Going Away Party, Taastrup Medborgerhus)

This is a free concert from us to the community center where Poul-Eric works. This has been our command post for the past month and our benefactor for stage gear. Lot's of people turned up, including our buddy Jens-Ole, from Copenhagen. It's been a great big open jam and even Poul-Eric and The Red Devil sat in.
In the morning we separate. Doug and Randy are flying home. John and Brenda are heading to Amsterdam for a few days. Darlene and I are Eurailing around for a couple weeks and then flying home from Amsterdam.

OUR 1994 TOUR
April 30 - Strandpub, Bjergestrand
May 3 - Centerpub, Kastrup
May 4 - Harold Blatund, Taastrup
May 5 - Cafe Rundelen, Copenhagen
May 6 - Sport Grounds, Vanlose
May 7 - Glostrup Bodega
May 7 - Mik's Bik's, Albertslund
May 12 - Pillen, Allerod
May 13 - Akacie Pub - Farum
May 14 - Nysted Camping
May 15 - Nysted Camping (Live Recording Session)
May 20 - Helsinger
May 21 - Hvalso Fairgrounds
May 22 - Taastrup Medborger

The 1995 Tour

May 18 - Kings Het, Lygby
May 20 - Bodega, Glostrup
May 20 - Old Timers M.C., Ballerup
May 24 - Medborgerhus, Korsor
May 26 - Strand Pub, Bjergestrand
May 27 - Kogeveg, Taastrup
May 27 - Club Sisi, Naestved
May 30 - Bodega 16, Taastrup
June 2 - Mik's Biks, Albertslund
June 3 - Centerpub, Jyderup
June 3 - Lovepuben, Ringsted
June 7 - Medborgerhus, Taastrup
June 8 - Pillen, Allerod
June 9 - Cafe Paradise, Hornbeck
June 10 - Campgrounds, Nysted
June 11 - Harold Blatund, Taastrup

At the end of our second Danish tour, we partied in
Amsterdam for 10 days... But That's Another Story.