Sitting here watching my ‘Paul McCartney Back in the U.S concert film’ DVD trying to find the mood to blog. The weather here bites; it’s gray, raining, and freezing. The people here, well, in my neighborhood anyways, are absolute snobby pricks who pick at each other about every tiny thing. Seems like every citizen here takes it upon themselves to be a cop. It’s like being in the army here. Speaking of cops, I did have one run in with them since I have been here in Berlin. I was roller-blading home the other night from visiting my gal pal Andrea and web master, Nobbi and I always skate in the streets, as it is smoother.
It was about 1am and the cops yelled at me through their bullhorn and told me to pull over. I just blurted out wicked loud “I don’t speak German sorry!”. Making them stutter and try to tell me in English to skate on the sidewalk. What ever. I waited until they were gone and hit the streets again. There were no cars out anyhow at that time and the sidewalks here are mostly made of cobble-stone(aka skating hell).
I am going mad living between these two countries. Jasmine just called me from NYC, she is taking two of my vintage Stones concert shirts and selling them at some shop in the East Village that pays A LOT for old concert shirts. Mine are worth a mint. She said they just gave her $100 per shirt. She only has two of them with her, thank god, as we all know being in NYC with lots of cash only leads to binge shopping and no good.
I pretty much want to sell every thing I have except my star photographs, cds and clothes. Tired of being bogged down with material items. I have over 200 STONES LPS! They are all mint condition, not one scratch, most sealed in original coating. I have over 500 music cassettes (most live music) which will slowly be put onto cd format by my Zappa freak pal, John. Then I want all that shit gone. Amazing how much crap one can gather over the years. Now I have tons of shit in both countries. Not too E-Bay savvy, so that won’t work. Maybe I will just have a tag sale someday.
I do have pictures and tales of my karaoke early birthday bash to share though. Even though my birthday isn’t until October 19th, the magazine I write my Ask Dr. Dot column for over here in Berlin called the ‘Ex-Berliner’ and my German Agent, Bjoern, threw me a party at the FRANZ club. Karaoke Monster “Ron” was the DJ and so it went like this, first there was normal karaoke, which had the BEST sound I have ever heard so far. The Franz club has their own SOUND GUYS and lighting guys. There is a huge stage, I mean I have seen bands like the B-52’s, Ramones and Madness play on smaller stages then this. After 90 minutes of karaoke, a live band came on called “the Human karaoke machine”. They have a big list of songs they can play and you sing the song you want with the live band. They all put these wild purple punk/mullet style wigs on and kick ass. The female bass player is from Detroit and the rest of the band is German.
I felt so comfortable with them that you may think we have jammed together many times. You can look and listen to the video Andrea made of me singing “Whole lotta love” on my web sites (click on camera number 5). Andrea’s camera is not a professional video camera, it is a digital camera that can also make tiny videos, so it isn’t the best quality, but you get the idea. Of course it doesn’t do the sound quality any justice, but I will have to have Jonesy video tape me with a good camera once I get back to the states. My knees are still black and blue from doing my rock star crap on stage that night. Little did I know, karaoke monster shows a video before everything starts to warn people to put knee pads on before they start karaoke.
That above is me with the Human Karaoke Machine. Below, Sabine and Andrea (two very good pals of mine)
Above: Sammy my French pal; known him for years. He is sarcastic as hell, he has an attitude, like the French do (heehee) hard to explain, but he is a good laugh, wicked fun to hang out with. He won’t do karaoke and he chain smokes, but I still adore him. He belongs in NYC (maybe then he would quit those nasty cancer sticks).
