Well, I’ve been back for a few days following our Crossfyre “Iron Horse” album release tour through Estonia, Poland and Germany, and I’m still recouping! Erradic hours, irregular and short sleep, and 5,995 kilometers of road later, it tends to build up and wear on you.
But whose complaining?! We had a great time, life on the road, like a band of gypsies, rocking and rolling. Dreaming it and living it are two different things. We got to take in some great experiences and meet some fantastic new people along the way.
Morning scenery from the Super Rally grounds
First of all, The Harley-Davidson 2014 Super Rally in Tallinn, Estonia (which I chronicled in and of itself earlier HERE) was off the charts. 15,000 bikers from all around Europe ventured to Estonia’s capital for some boozin’ and cruisin’ June 5-7. We played the main stage at the Super Rally on Saturday evening, right after Mr. Bill Davidson, CEO of Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, raffled off a brand new bike to a lucky Finn in the audience, who was dumbfounded when his number got called. All in all, the Super Rally was a sight to behold, but the food was somewhat overpriced for the serving sizes offered. As an added bonus, I was able to hit the fantastic Sparta sports club in Tallinn the day after the show with a big fan of mine from many years back named Keio, getting in a blasting compete body workout before moving forward on our journey.
As Hulk Hogan would say, “Hangin’ and bangin'” at Sparta gym!
Driving through Latvia, we got to see some of the finest beaches that there are to be found in Europe. Riga was ridiculously overpriced, and I wondered what industry fuels their economy to justify the extravagant prices that we saw everywhere. Riga was also the place where we picked up our regular bassist Dan Rönnbacka, as Sami Salminen (of The Slidemobile) filled in on bass in Tallinn and left the day after the Super Rally to go back to Finland.
Lithuania was up next, with a stop in God knows what town, and a hotel right next to the railroad tracks. Damn. That was a bad move. The Latvian two-star vs. Estonian four-star hotel were quite different from the other, let me assure you! Pretty much everywhere we travelled in Latvia and Lithuania, we had to use bottled water, as purportedly the tap water is questionable to drink.
The stage at Alchemia in Bialystok, Poland
Poland was a blast! Our first gig in Bialystok on June 10 saw girls dancing on tables and the audience shucking and jiving in front of the stage. Small venue. Alchemia by name, the place was very intimate with William Blake-like artwork and interior design. There were even a few wrestling fans at the show, who came out to see StarBuck, which was a nice thing.
The next stop was 5 Sztuk in Siedlce, a student town, of which 25% of the population account for students. Once again, just the night prior, the people on hand were going bananas by the end of it all when our rendition of ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man closed things off. After the gig, we got invited to the local Gryf MC headquarters for a drink, as we presented a rebel Confederate flag for their clubhouse also.
Next up was the Alligator music club in Poznan, which was a big city and we found ourselves smack-dab in the center of the marketplace. Let me say this about Poland: if you are a bachelor, then plan a trip there, as the women will be sure to catch your eye! Alligator was a very cool club, with some of the niftiest interior design that I have seen so far in any club. Very high-scale environment.
Getting the mood right at Alligator music bar (photo by Gozia Czek)
Our last gig in Poland was in the city of Szczecin at the Free Blues Club. I know I keep sounding pretty high on Poland, but I have to expressly note that the stage sound at Free Blues Club was in the top five of any stage that I have performed on in the past 15-years. It was pure pleasure to play the this place, as I could make every instrument out crystal clear and I didn’t have to push my voice at all.
Best stage sound around at Free Blues Club (photo by Ryszard Pakieser)
Then it was off to Barnaby’s Blues Bar in Braunschweig, Germany. Barnaby’s is like our home away from home, an establishment that we have now played about five times. Local Radio Okerwelle DJ Florian Damm is always up for having us appear on his show for an hour-long interview every time we are in town the day of the show. We rocked Barnaby’s in familiar fashion, leaving the folks screaming for more…were it not for the soccer game that was just starting 10-minutes after we finished our set. It should be noted, that soccer takes precedence to anything and everything in Germany. People would probably skip their grandparents’ funeral to watch the soccer championships!
Hanging with some fine folks on the Reeperbahn
Our last gig of the tour was in Hamburg, Germany, right on the infamous Reeperbahn. The place was called Cowboy und Indianer, like cowboys and Indians, and it was frequented by folks who knew their rock and blues. Older musicians, rock police if they chose to be, had filled the bar by the end of the night. I saw people taking out their cell phones, calling their friends, like “get your ass here right away, you have GOT to see this band!” People just kept filing in throughout the set to see what the commotion was all about. Let me say this: we did something right that night. To turn the heads of musicians with 40+ years of experience, you have got to have your shizzat together. I am proud to say that our gig on Hamburg on June 15 was one of the finest performances that we have ever pulled off!
From Hamburg we drove straight through the night to catch my plane from Copenhagen back to Helsinki in time to make my WWE Eurosport broadcast on Monday night. I didn’t get a wink of sleep after leaving Hamburg, and let me tell you, I was knackered right out of my boots on air that evening.
Next up, the Rockin’ by the River festival in Iisalmi, Finland on June 27, followed by a gig for Kolisewa MC in Karkkilaon June 28. The Crossfyre Iron Horse keeps on rolling!
starbuck.fi 
The Inconvenient Truth
Posted: July 12, 2014 in Life, Life coaching, Social commentaryTags: Anthony De Mello, Anthony Robbins, awareness, clairvoyance, clarity, freedom, George Carlin, insight, truth
I just had a flash of visceral clarity today while I was out jogging in the woods. You know, no phone, no Internet, no other voices, no distractions. I just thought to share this moment of clairvoyance with all of you who read my blog.
We live in a day and age of distraction and haze, unlike any other prior in human history. Our brains and minds are overloaded with completely useless information and clutter, with propaganda and worthless entertainment. Much of this, dare I say perhaps nearly all of it, is directly due to our enslavement to technology. In particular, this has to do with the Internet, with smartphones, tablets, PC’s, pads and what have you. Basically anything that keeps a person disconnected with the here and now, live and in living color, in real life. Just think of a group of friends going out on a Saturday night and everyone sitting there, playing with their smartphones.
The sad truth is, that we – and by and in large by this I mean the western, ”free” world – have sold ourselves to the slavery of virtual existence and viral life. We live vicariously through our computers, deceptively imagining that we are somehow part of a huge, global, online community and that our voice counts for something amongst the masses. How foolish we are.
The truth of the matter is, that our brains are overloaded. Our minds are full of fog. We are kept intentionally distracted from what is really going on behind this all in the world. Like iconic comedian George Carlin (RIP) so prolifically once stated, ”Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything….It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in The big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.”
Fear is the single greatest motivator in the history of mankind. Moreso than love, fear makes people act. Organized religion knows this, the governments know this, global corporations know this. Like acclaimed lifecoach Anthony Robbins so aptly stated, ”We all make decisions based on two forces, and that is to avoid pain and to gain pleasure.”
People are more hedonistic now that at perhaps any time before in world history. Perhaps an argument can be made for Ancient Rome before its fall, but I dare say nowadays we are even more self-indulgent, based on the fact that we are more effectively sold the illusion of luxury and status through the virtual and advertising world and media at large. We are made to want and aspire after things that we don’t even really want in and of ourselves, nor do we need them. Useless clutter. Stuff. Shit to fill up the empty spaces in our lives.
We have come to a day and age of learned helplessness, a chosen self-defeat. We fall back on the excuse that nothing is our fault directly, we can always pass the blame on to someone else, and something or someone doesn’t please us – BANG! Out they go, right out the window. We are a society sick on our own self-indulgence. It’s the grand day of ”me, me me.” Trust me when I tell you, there ain’t no room for ”you” when it’s all about ”me.” No wonder relationships never last nowadays.
This society so desperately needs a strong, swift kick in the proverbial ass that would snap everyone out of their secular haze. Nothing around us is as it seems. Everything is doctored to suit someone else’s bigger purpose at large. Everyone knows that they can’t do much about it, so we just fall back into accepting our fate. How the civilzations of old would mock and scorn us! Speaking only of the vikings, I believe they would have no mercy on our pathetic state of affairs.
The bottom line is: YOU are 100% responsible for your life. At the end of it all, you cannot shift the blame to anyone else for what you have done or left undone. You cannot play the victim and expect anything to change for the better. You will answer and pay the price, or conversely reap the rewards, of your own choices and actions. The bitch of a fact in this whole deal is that you can’t even remain neutral or ride the fence, without taking a side or moving forward, because time keeps ticking away, and stagnancy only results in death. Just think of a cancer cell, if left untreated or unremoved. At the end of the day, no one else is responsible for your life: you alone make it or break it. As the old saying in Finland goes, you are ”the blacksmith of your own destiny.”
It takes personal responsibility to activate empowerment in one’s life. It takes you and I saying, ”I am responsible at least in part for what has happened to me, and I will make the effort to change things.” I am not speaking on high from a soapbox here. I can only call it for what it is, recognizing our collective predicament. I just have clarity. And along with the knowledge that comes with clarity comes the responsibility and obligation to do something with that insight. Having the cure for cancer and keeping it all to yourself will not help anybody in the end.
It’s time to snap out of it. Time to realize that we have been fed a big, long line of bullshit. We have become willfully ignorant, believing that our chosen ignorance will become bliss. Forget viral culture and virtual lives, it’s time to go out there and become active.
In closing, to paraphrase something from acclaimed author Anthony De Mello, ”If you have ears to hear what I just said, then great. If not, woe is you.”