It's a week later. We're all back in Ontario intact now. Thanks for everyone's help and concern. Sorry to have been away from computers while everyone was stressing about it but my mind was blown and I think that goes for all of us. I'm just starting to get back to everyone one at a time.
It's like a sudden death that you can't wrap your head around, it hits you from a different angle every few hours, just as your mind is wandering from it you're aware again that it's still that day, that week, it's still happening. Anger, grief, frustration, suspicion, paranoia, futility, in that exact order. And repeat. It's been like that since that morning.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
Mulheim Germany, the last, very fucking last morning of tour. And finally a good real squat show, where the promoter (Jan) and everybody from the place was nothing but great to us. Sleeping in a room on the 2nd floor of a locked building, on a compound that nobody lives on, Tomas is outside in the van, the 4 of us and Sam are set up in the band room. There are a lot of little details that keep going through my mind, like the cheesy votive candle I lit in the room. I am the last one to sleep, I'm washing some socks and underwear in the bathroom sink, having had no clean (or even dirty but dry) clothes for a good week, hoping they can dry by morning, which is only a few hours off. I take a bath in a gnarly bathtub, it is late and no one there to care, and it seems like a good enough way to wait for the ringing in my ears to subside enough to sleep. I wring out the wet clothes, go back in the room and hang them up on a bunk bed by the light of the candle that is still burning, blow it out. No trace of a bad vibe. Remember thinking how nice it is that no one is snoring. Fall asleep. Next thing is voices shouting, morning light, and the whole thing. Sam's bag missing, him asking if we're pranking him. Christian's bag also missing. Found outside the window, tossed and pissed in with selective items missing. Sam's bag, having contained all the tour's money, in cash, and several passports, not found. The formality of German cops, joking to Jan and the squat kids (there again getting breakfast ready) - "What do you want me to do, take DNA samples?" . I get it, it doesn't matter. It's a formality, it's already over my the time we know it has happened. Car ride. Brooding. Tension. Cursing. Questions racing through my head, such as who the fuck would go to all that trouble and then hang out tossing a bag right outside the building when they may have just woken us up? If they had to break a lock or force the door it would have made enough noise that one of us upstairs or Tomas (in the van just feet away) would have heard it. With no signs of tampering to the lock or door, how could anyone without a key have been in there? Was it before or after I went to bed? Et cetera. The list goes on but none of it is tangible, nothing you can point at except that it has happened and that everything is suddenly over. We get to Arnhem, to Reflections. Johan and Suzanne are being amazing about it, pragmatic even in the moment's chaos. We had decided on the spot that that was it. The fact that we still had to play that night was secondary. There are a lot more details, I'll save it for round two. End result is, someone did it, and got away with it. And the hole it left us in happened to be the last straw. If it had been a few years and a few hundred shows ago it might work otherwise, but for our reasons, we are taking the hint and deciding to trust the reaper on this one. If there's any news or plans that come up, we'll make them formal. But for now, we all need some time and space.
There's been overwhelming support from all of you. It's encouraging, it's genuine, it's incredible, and at the same time equally maddening that all their sincerity and good wishes are compensation for the one motherfucker that killed it. It's hard to let that part go. Sorry to anyone that wrote in the past 10 days and didn't hear back. In the wake of it all, I wasn't anywhere near a computer and am just now getting to it all, trying to get to everyone one by one.
Important - If you are involved with any donations or benefit shows, anywhere, please contact us directly about it so that we can direct any money raised in the right directions firsthand - no middlemen and no grey area. The possibility that anyone might take further advantage of the situation and doing bogus benefits, would blow my mind even further. For the record again, the cursed myspace page isn't related to us. If you or someone you know does it, please just put something up there saying that or better yet, quoting this. There are paypal donations via the Burning Love and Goodfellow sites. And thanks to everyone here in Toronto that got last week's benefit show together in lightning speed. Same for Willem & Co. and anyone else in Amsterdam doing the same. If you're anyone else taking the initiative, as a lot of people out there have, it's very much appreciated. Please get in touch so we can make it official.
As for Cursed. This spring's shows were awesome. We got to play the shit out of Southern Ontario, all the places we cut our teeth on. All the basements, record stores, halls and clubs in our own stomping grounds, and all the awesome and energetic kids and bands in our own backyard. Don't let up.
It was a high note to go out on. Of course it would have been ideal to know it was coming. Or would it?
There's a lot more to be said, it's still getting resolved, so stay tuned. I have a huge ton of photographs from the whole tour I'm gonna try and upload them somewhere online and make links here. Also, our friend Karol made a video to The Void that is fucking awesome and I'm gonna upload it here in the next few days. So keep posted. And hey - I know its inevitable but please try to discourage the internet rumor mill. I don't care to hear theories, they won't be anything that hasn't already been doing circles in my head, but I hear it's getting a little out of hand. Unless you were in that room, this here is the best information you're gonna get, and (like us) the most anyone can do is speculate. It's a big fat fucking question mark. But again, thanks everybody.
Whoa Guy. Europe is coming up fast. Last weekend was another bl'ast, filled with vomit, late nights and shit getting broken. This weekend is the last stand before we head off. Thanks a ton to Scallen, Dave Shaw and everyone associated with End Hits, same for Dan and everyone at the Blackdot in Montreal. Our late show got busted mid-Bionic and shut down, but we'll totally do it again first chance we have in the summer, and hit Sherbrooke, Sudbury and Kingston in the process. And thanks to Titan, Eating Glass (Spencer, you're not THAT bald...yet), and Living Darkness. Check out their show with Disfear coming up in T.O., and I'll have their 7" on hand in Europe, and hopefully the new Cheap Tragedies EP too.
came out. We're trying like the dickens to get our P2 visas for US shows when we get back, we've got some plans up our wizard sleeves about that. And as soon as the Japanese step up to it, we'll be working out the details of that tour (and with that, Australia and NZ). We're also on the verge of being able to announce a really fucking cool Canadian tour in the fall. In the next few weeks hopefully the details will get hammered out and we can make it official.
