The Home Stretch

A nice surprise awaited us after the show, when our good Oslo friend (and getting better all the time) Eivind informed us that the band he was in Goteborg with shooting a video had opted to return home to Oslo in the wee hours of the morn, thus leaving empty a pre-paid hotel room that, should it be required, could be used to house us instead! We jumped at the chance, and lived in style, at least for the few hours left between the end of the show and the end of the free breakfast. Of course, there was, er, confusion that prevented us from simply checking out and being on our way; the short version: The problem was fixed. The longer version: Much phone calling and faxing and emails and parking-meter-feeding later, the problem was fixed. There is much more here, but suffice it to say that the hotel-which-shall-remain-nameless was a very nice place to spend a night, and not such a great place to spend three hours of the late morning. And note: No good turn (me actually admitting that we were five, not four, and wanting to pay for the extra bed; us not just leaving the keys and leaving without a goodbye) goes un-mafaned. But eventually we were off to the third country in as many days, and here we are, as I write, in Arhus, Denmark, at the home of Andrzej of Clean Boys, the band who (along with Herr. Griner) will play alongside Subs tomorrow night: The first day of the third month in the fourth country of Subs’ third European tour. That’s a lot of numbers. And another number: seven. The number of days until we board a plane back to China. Before those seven days are up though, the band will spend three days in the studios with Quartermain Records’ Morten Softing recording down another collection of songs.

Fans certainly got more daring as time went on -- at least, above, in Porsgrunn. Kang Mao did get him back, with a timely finger flipped, and his face (and dreads) equally, if not more harshly, shmushed back. The Porsgrunn show was as rockin as the photo insinuates. Every second weekend, the venue is host to blues on Friday, rock on Saturday; Subs played the first weekend of the new season, after summer break.

Porsgrunn is a lot like the rest of the world: Harry Potter is rock and roll here too.

From Porsgrunn -- and the TLC of hosts Tove and Paal -- it was back to Oslo: Cafe Mir, a small bar in the city’s bohemian district (Grunelokka), was to host us for a Sunday night show. A small place, it was perfect for what was mainly a gathering of friends: Another room if not full of, than at least containing many, Mandarin speakers meant that yours truly could take a break from his translation duties.

It’s Leif! From Bonk, the band that started Subs’ Norwegian connection back when they appeared in China in 04, who worked the sound desk at Mir like a star.

A new Subs-booster, Eivind, proved to like the Mir gig so much that he invited the band to perform at a party -- “Not,” he insisted, “a bachelor party” -- for Kaizers Orchestra guitarist Terje Vintersto, in celebration of his upcoming marriage. Thus, the band added another “last Norwegian gig of the tour” and played to a room full of Oslo rockers. Eivind will re-appear later, to add to his already long record of Subs-boosterism.

The groom-to-be, who, Kang Mao said (to paraphrase), was “going to make all of the other girls sad” by getting married. He made the band happy -- or, his fellow partiers did -- with the kind of festivities none of the Chinese visitors had before witnessed.

For the first time this summer, a photograph I took from the shotgun seat of Xiao Bai, while someone else drove! Here, it’s Guangzhou resident and Norwegian native Oyvind, aka “Wind”, who put us up for a couple of nights in his place, and who also was the connection to the Cafe Mir gig. Needless to say, it was a pleasure to be driven around. But it wasn’t to last, as we were off again to Goteborg, 25 days after our last visit. This time, with help from Dagfinn “artspages.org” Bach, we were connected to Sticky Fingers and the boyz from GBG Rocks, who slipped the band into their monthly series, held the last Wednesday of each month.

I was slightly worried, during soundcheck, when Swedish For Beginners played their Belle and Sebastian-inspired indie pop -- not because it wasn’t good (it was), but rather, because Subs might seem out of place alongside a band who, at one point had seven of its eight members singing ‘ba-ba-ba-bah’ doo-wop backing vocals. But when Memfis brought the kind of metal I’d generally (incorrectly, I assume) refer to as somewhere in the black-death range (growling vocals, screaming guitars), I was no longer worried.

The energy was high onstage, but lacking in front of the stage, which is possibly what inspired Kang Mao to end the set with a bird flipped and a glass of water emptied in their general direction. Alas, the people liked what they heard, and the shot of the lone banger up front should not be mistaken for a lack of a crowd, or the crowd’s disinterest. But don’t tell Kang Mao; it’s way more rock her way.

The people did move up when SFB asked them to. But then, they did a cover of ‘Be My Little Baby’, so there you go.