Yesterday morning our booking Manger heavily annoyed me by calling me on my phone at 10 in the morning. This Morn Omina had to cancel due to sickness and he had no other choice but to ask us. Six hours of time left to get the boys and the stuff ready. And we did. Even though I wouldn’t consider us to be the perfect replacement for our Belgian colleagues, the crowd did not seem to be too disappointed to see us. In deed it was amazingly amusing to play at Christmas and to throw chocolate at people. To give you an idea of what happened Jana was kind enough to provide us some Photos.

In the the Name of all of us at Straftanz I would like to thank Alex, Bianca, Armin, Photor, Bernd, Kirstin, Sandra, Frank und Sabi, Chris, Yvonne, Holger, Nina, Julia and Daphne for their support. Also I would like to thank all the others whose Names I do not know. Thank you for being there, for stomping your feet and showing your beautyfull hands.

With Love and Unicorns.

-jl-

Comrades, Revolutionaries, Nominal Members,

as good travelers we at Straftanz never had fixed plans and never had any interesst in arriving somewhere. Neither did I. This little tour of ten days with VNV-Nation and Ayria might have been our greatest travel so far and I have no idea where exactly it brought us to. Still I am not interested in where I am, as I am ignorant towards the concept of positions in that particular manor. Instead of thinking about were the road Straftanz travels might lead us, I prefer to celebrate the things I learned on that journey.
I learned how to live on a bus with twelve people and one toillet. I ate a deep fried mars bar in scotland and learned how scotch is meant to be drank. I had hot chocolate in Belgium, ate pizza that was more italian than Italy itself and had cocktails in Antwerp’s finest cocktail bar. I learned about the importance of food and drinks for me in general and that culture is perceived at best when it got swallowed.  I learned most spiffing new words and met most interresting people, most of them for a moment too short. I learned how it feels like to be in a place where I knew almost no one but almost everyone knew me. Even the search for food at four in the morning in a foreign city can not be more surreal than that. I learned how much a city can change within nine years. Today’s Sheffield seemed to me like a Sheffield 2.0 compared to the one I remember from the nineties. At the Slimelight I learned, that my Tequila Trauma is finally over and what it’s like to be kissed by Mark Jackson. I learned even more about the amazing toughness auf our singer and shouter, about his quality of never giving up and about his stubborness alike. I could not image anyone else at the center of our stage. Also I learned how much I can miss Jings presence on stage and learned his true meaning for the integrity of this project because we were forced to do this without him on the UK Shows. It is not the same without him. However. We grew and once more we were confirmed that we are doing the right thing and travel in the right direction without having any idea where we might arrive. 

For all these things I would like to say thank you to each and everyone making all this and more possible and to everyone beeing involved. First and foremost these are Ronan, Mark and Peddy for being courageous or ignorant enough to let us join the VNV-Nation tour. Everyone here at Straftanz is sure you did the right thing. I would like to thank Ayla, David, Daisy and Peter for a most splendid day in Antwerp. Hanging out in your beautiful city almost feels like home. Jennifer for the amazing pink tape. Mike for feeling bugged. I wish the world would be full of people like you. Gab for the Jelly Babies. Sebastian for his revenge on the world and for das Bus.  Diana and Tobias (with true love) for the constant support and everything. Jana (with even more love) for everything. Ingo for the space invaders, LED mice and that patchcable. Michael for not letting me touch anything. Volker for the second shot. Revolution by Night. You know why. The crews and security people from the venues we traveled, especialy Simon from London. All of you were simply amazing. Well, maybe except for some “get out” shouting bollocks at the scala. But I don’t mind.

Finally I would like to say thank you to our most excellent Audience: Mariann for helping me out with my stuff and for the charming company on day zero. That guy at the Slimelight and that most lovely girl with him. I lost your names but i still say thank you for the tequila and for the end of my trauma. Army is over at last and you did that. Also I’d like to thank all the other people at the slimelight whose names I lost. Case of you people read this, please remove these blind spots. Heidi and her company for being the energy hotspot in sheffield’s crowd. Lara, Katie and these people that sigend my book unreadable for enriching my english language in most spiffing ways.  Basically I need to thank the whole crowd of Sheffield for their kindness and their full force despite the fact that we needed a chair for doing that gig.  Norman, Fiona, Angela and the glowstick junkies from Glasgow for simply beeing there. It really would have been difficult without you. The cyberred Mark  for joining us on stage once again. We love you. Laura for the 1up, it truly helped. Luise for being beloved and for showing of with that. Also I would like to thank that guy that also signed unreadable. By the way, next BK after next BK is on me. Sylvie and Richard for getting in, despite all difficulties. I was happy to see you.  Normann (the one with two n) and the other Richard from Birmingham. The loudest scream of Birmingham, front right. Fiona, Sarah and Jenny for signing. Vicki for the lovely conversation. We constantly repeat: People like you are the driving force behind this project. You are the reason and the cause.

We are no one.

Bassdrum is the law.

-jl-

PS.: Please take a look at the final tour photo collection. You will like it. Obey.

Just a little update of the VNV Nation Tour Photostream.

Guys, you uploaded Video like crazy! Here is the youtube recap of the last 24h on Youtube:

More Videos bellow. Thanks for recording and thanks for sharing. We will give you some major update within the next hour.

Effenaar 1
Effenaar 2
Effenaar 3
At the Slimelight with Revolution by Night.

Love, -jl-

[SinglePic not found] Hengelo was quite some fun. The Firealarm at the Soundcheck, the great brandnew venue and the fact that we were the first nightliner ever ariving at that place speaks for itself. But more impotortant than that, as always were the people we met ther. The Dutch truly seem to be a special breed of partypeople that even didn’t mind to endure 20 seconds of genuine Gabba sound. After that awesome, yes awesome Audience, and by awesome i mean awesome, at the Metropole in Hengelo, we expect nothing less from Eindhovens Effenar. The Effenar is one of the coolest concert venues I know, large stage and a labyrinth of an backstage on 5 floors with about 2km of stairs. At least these are felt 2km of stairs. I’ll show some photos later on, in the next post, until I do, enjoy the updated tour photostream.

Love,

-jl-

[SinglePic not found]After a wonderfull stay at Antwerp i just arrived in Hengelo. Antwerp was awesome as ever. Even though I had some minor technical problems on stage and despite the fact, that our setlist was suboptimal we had an Audiance that made that up. I actually think we scored. After a fantastic evening with Pizza, hot chocolate and nerdy discussions on protolanguage i ended up traveling to Hengelo.  I set up a photostream here so follow it if you like.

Love, Rainbows, Unicorns.

-jl-

This wasn’t planned and this was fast. Maybe a little bit too fast. Due to some unfortunate events our beloved comrades Felix and Vasi had to cancel a series of Frozen Plasma Shows as support of VNV-Nation. While this is unfortunate indeed, it gives us the chance to play eight high energy Straftanz shows in three Countries. We are looking forward to meet you there. Be prepared. We are.

13.10.2009 Antwerpen Hof Ter Lo
15.10.2009 NL Hengelo Metropool
16.10.2009 NL Eindhoven Effenaar
17.10.2009 UK London Islington Academy
18.10.2009 UK Sheffield Corporation
20.10.2009 UK Glasgow Classic Grand
21.10.2009 UK London Scala
22.10.2009 UK Birmingham Eddies Rock Club

Pictures from the Backstage Club.

This was our last gig for some time. For the first time since 2007 our schedule is empty. As this gig at the Backstage Werk in munich was a huge success we can say, that this is exactly the way how a series should end.

The audience in Munich was awesome, the promoter did some epic work there. We can not stress it enough how important people like Sconan are for the whole scene, for the whole subculture. Without people like him and his fantastic Black Painting Crew nights like that simply would not happen. We would like to thank them for their great work, for their kindness and for the sausages. People, what we got here was a top quality festival evening for free. This is a one in a million event and wereally do apreciate that.
We would like to thank all the people that partied along, that danced, that screamed, that entered our stage. We would like to thank each and everyone that understood our spirit and made that evening unique. We would like to express our respect for our Colegues of !Distain and Absurd Mind and would like to thank them their patience and kindness. We were happy to share a stage with those. Finally we would like to thank our special friends from austria, for the wodka, for all the fun, simply for beeing there.
Despite the fact, that our live video crashed with a dreaded BSOD, we had a great show, a great night and a great stay. We added some visual content for proof.  Take a good look at Jana’s photos and please also note Magicwoody’s hillarious Video:

Straftanz im Backstage München am 18.7.09

Süddeutsche Genossen,

die Tanzflächen zu befreien ist kein Deckchenstricken. Das ist nichts für die Schleimscheisser die uns erzählen wollen was gut und böse ist, sondern für die Leute die ihren Arsch vor die Tür bewegen und sich nehmen wollen was ihnen Zusteht. Am kommenden Freitag Samstag haben wir die Chance auf dem Tanzboden des Backstage Werk die Bewegung zu feiern, zu zeigen dass die Langweiler und Schwätzer nichts mehr in unserem Club zu suchen haben. Hört auf in den Foren mit den Besserwissern zu diskutieren und trefft uns am kommenden Samstag in München. Der Eintritt ist frei. Wir sehen uns.

Zuletzt: Wir werden ein neues Stück zu ersten mal Live testen. Ihr könntet dabei gewesen sein.

-jl-. straftanz ZK.