It’s The Zimmers Band, starring 90-year-old Alf, from an advance clip of a BBC television documentary made by Tim Samuels to air in May ’07. (This clip was recorded at the Beatles 2 Studio at Abbey Road studios, hence the reenactment of the Abbey Road cover photo.)

yuri trying to figure out how to use his camera on the actual balcony of the actual place where roman grew up. or. where he spent his early years, it will be a sad day for all of us if he ever grows up. by the way, yuri never did figure out how to use that camera, as none of the pictures came out.

our first night we stopped in gmunden, austria. look how fresh we look. the next morning, adamant about going swimming and unconvinced by the locals who warned us not to, we jumped in the frigid traunsee…and then just as quickly jumped out, shivering and cursing. roman shook his head and laughed.

our first show, in the half indoor-half-outdoor space at the kunsthaus passage in vienna, with a beautiful viennese night scene in the background. as the roman games began their first song, a drunken mook (don’t know the austrian equivalent) started a barfight so we had to stop and make sure everyone was okay. shaken, we played the rest of the set and had to calm our nerves with plenty of beer.

yuri and heather “networking” after the show.

yuri’s nerve.com photo

next night in vienna at the socialist youth headquarters, vekks. our austrian tour manager extraordinaire, hilde, gave orders like a general and had them rearrange the stage so quickly. notice the lazy chick in the foreground, avoiding hard work as usual.

hilde, post roman games show where she literally let her hair down. Hilde is an extraordinary artist working in sculpture, installations, costume-design, and performance, often merging all these elements in various ways.

morex optimo playing on the properly aligned stage. NB: i played my best show ever here.

the palm tree is especially humorous touch since it was probably the dankest, darkest, mustiest basement ever.

the socialist youth of vienna.

then, later that night, we bolted to our next gig at the anarchist youth squat, EKH. here are the anarchist punks of vienna, watching the roman games. I played my best show here.

roman’s nerve.com photo

barango, our host in budapest. he is true, old-school punk and a geninuely kind and generous human being. and i have never seen punk rock played on a *5-string bass*!

aggi, our other host and barango’s bandmate and ladymate. playing keyboards in shades, with beer in one hand. it cannot get much cooler than that.

kristofer’s nerve.com photo (men seeking men). roman had a word with him about keeping his shirt during shows on so this won’t happen again. i say if you got it, flaunt it. guess it depends on what you think ‘it’ is.

budapst by night…and about 10 seconds before we got pulled over by cops! who made kristofer breathe into a little machine and then tried to get us to cough up 100,000 forints to let us go home! fortunately barango talked them out of it.

another view of budapest by night. and then roman– haha, nothing, forget it.

i thought this statue extremely hilarious: it was right over a garden of little impatients and the statue was a soldier with a sword and a whip. it looked like he was commanding the little flowers, under pain of death, to GROW! GROW! no one seemed to think it was as funny as i did, but they humored me anyway.

our charming hosts barango and aggi.

we drove straight from budapest to vienna, to pick up the lovely hilde again, and she took us to a beautiful house on the attersee. we sat on the porch drinking hungarian palinka and watched shooting stars. BOO-RIIING!!

the next morning, my running route. a few cows played defense but i was wily and pulled some fancy moves to manoeuver around them. kristofer was grumpy about anyone taking boring landscape pictures so we had to sneak his camera when he was asleep to get shots like this. soo boring. hey, what’s YOUR desktop photo these days kristofer? uh huh. boring landscape, right?

i don’t know if kristofer mentioned it, but we went swimming quite a bit.

kristofer writing a thank you note.

roman, ever the teacher, correcting it.

in zürich, at club helsinki. our trusty “psychedelic fur”. i came down with the flu in the middle of this set. i didn’t play my best show ever on this one.

well, we’d planned out what we’d do if kristofer broke one string (a given) and two strings (woops) but not THREE strings. here is the backup backup plan where kristofer recites rilke in german. despite our strong misgivings, yuri and i had to admit that it was kind of charming. then again i was sick that night.

kristofer with silvana, our lovely and generous zürich host.

me, flugrippy and sheepishly explaining to kristofer why it wasn’t my best show ever. he looks more admonishing than he was.

st. gallen at the very cool grabenhalle club. i played my best show ever here.

in basel, at an abandoned german railyard. very spooky environment but a bunch of very hip outdoor clubs had cropped up.

roman rockin it in basel.

hotel alpenhof, aka hotel “fa”. our friend fa (with the big hair) was up in the mountains in an empty hotel and invited us up to stay and play. by the way, fa is the man responsible for the most beautiful cross that led to my most beautiful goal ever, by the way. and a brilliant drummer and musician, a veteran of the mashup.

yuri, freaking out.

lokalmatador roman heating up his hometown rorschach. this, after 6 hours of soccer, after 1 hour of sleep the night before. and oh, it didn’t even stop here!

the elsener bruvvas, in proper nyc attire.

later, at hotel fa, with frank. this picture should be WAAY more blurry than it is.

another delicious meal, courtesy of chef yuri. kristofer and yuri are having one of their romantic “soul stares”. it was kind of charming at first, but got uncomfortable after a while.

roman games at hotel fa, the early bird set.

morex optimo’s last show. consummate tubthumber, and not expecting to play a “mellow” show, i quickly had to forage for twigs to play gently for this one.