World Exclusive: Ghouls' Belgium Tour Diary - Part One

Hey all you lovely people! Maz from Ghouls here, I'm gonna scrawl down a few words for your perusal, but alongside this there should be an awesome video shot by our own Benny that is probably a lot more interesting, go check it out!

Still with me? Don't say I didn't warn you! OK, so some time around April of this year we released our debut album Ten Thousand Words On... (which you can grab on iTunes, Spotify blah blah etc). To celebrate the release, we had a massive party/gig at The Monarch in Camden Town, which still ranks as one of the best gigs of my life, maybe some of you were there? If so, you know what I'm talking about! We hand-picked the line-up for the show, so we obviously put on our best band mates, the incredible Riskee and the Ridicule (if you haven't heard of them before whack their name into YouTube, I'll wait....), as usual they tore the place to bits, and after the show we got royally smashed at the after-party together. One of the many drunken conversations we had was about taking the Ghouls/Riskee experience on the road together, and hell, if we're gonna do a tour, let's do it properly and take it to Europe!


….so it was the morning after, and nursing a massive hangover and desperately trying to clean up the shambles our house had become post-party, one of the fuzzy memories I had was the conversation about the tour. In the cold, sober-ish light of late afternoon, organising two bands, nine people's worth of different schedules, with no budget, no van, Riskee never having toured before, and us Ghouls with a fair bit of touring under our belts but only one-offs ever done on the continent, the prospect of a 'Euro Tour' seemed daunting enough to be ridiculous.

But the idea never really went away, and whenever we saw Riskee on the UK circuit we still kept drunkenly chatting about Europe after the shows. Finally, I was sat at home with the idea percolating around my brain, and thought, 'fuck it, we should stop talking about this and DO it.'. We're both DIY bands, no one was gonna do this for us, so it was time to step up.

Roy

I'm not going to get into all the details of the booking procedure and all the hurdles we had to get over (for example, the only time all nine of us were free was August, which is apparently the WORST time of year to hit Europe, as many venues are shut due to the massive festival scene there). But with a bit of luck, and a million emails and texts sent, it all came together. At this point we should mention Jason of El Topo Bookings, whose network of contacts and hard graft (while on holiday no less), single-handedly saved the tour, top lad! With four gigs lined up in Belgium, we were good to go. Well.....everything aside from the fact between us we didn't have any wheels that could fit us and the gear into.... But then somehow Riskee lucked into a 'van' (the beloved Roy) a week before we were due to set off, saving the day!


Day One

Dragging ourselves out of bed at the ungodly hour of 7am, we headed out from London, capital to capital, aiming for Brussels via Dover/Calais. As usual we were massively late, and managed to get to the ferry port at the last possible moment, pulling into the place at the exact same time as Riskee, united in our disorganisation! We were also pulled over for a customs search, realising at this point we did in fact have contraband on board.... Not the rock'n'roll standard hard drugs, but a knife. For cutting...home made flapjack (us Ghouls know how to live life in the fast lane, yo). Still, we escaped from our brush with the law, so onwards to the ferry bar to grab the first of about a billion Belgian beers.

Ferry beers

Arriving at the venue in Brussels, 'Le Spione', we had no idea what to expect. We weren't disappointed at all: it was a proper punk squat! Our promoter/host for the day, Pierre, showed us a massive fridge full of free beers (a running theme this tour). Cracking open a lovely Jupiler, Riskee Dave and Jimbo busted out the acoustic and busked outside, giving people a little taste while the venue filled to the brim. A local band, Spoons of Knowledge opened the show, warming up the crowd in time for Riskee and the Ridicule to blow them to bits. I've never seen a crowd in the UK respond so quickly to a band they've never seen before, it was nuts! We had a tough act to follow, but the crowd did not disappoint, with our first stage-diver of the tour throwing themselves into the crowd during Dive In.

After the show, we found out several people had journied pretty far just to see us, including someone all the way from Holland, which blew our minds a bit! We were crashing that night at Pierre's house, and when we got back (after many many more Jupilers, Grimbergens, and way more lovely variants), he put on an awesome spread of spaghetti bolognaise, garlic bread, wine and beers, and sorted us out with some beds, our first taste of the amazing kindness and hospitality of the Belgian people. Jimbo for some reason decided to sleep in Roy the van though (which proved to be a bit of a wise move when he vommed all over the place...). The rest of us had a lovely sleep / beer coma!

First crowdsurfer of the tour, Day One

Day Two

Waking up well rested (despite the slight hangovers...) we bid Pierre farewell, and headed into Brussels to explore the city. One of the beauties of touring Belgium is that the country is pretty small, so you have loads of time to see the sights and stuff. It turned out for me and Rusty however that this pretty much meant sleeping our hangovers off in the car while the others explored the place...

The others came back a couple of hours later to wake us up, and we headed into the city centre to get our busk on, smashing out an acoustic Ghouls (plus Matty from RatR on cahon) set to a load of tourists and local people. Taking our earnings to an incredible local that sold beers for a single euro, we quenched our thirst before the drive to Diest.

The venue in Diest was our first experience of the Belgian Jeugdhuis. These are incredible non-profit spaces/venues/bars, staffed by a family of volunteers. The idea behind them is that they can be used to put on gigs and other performances. They're often owned or subsidised by local government, who take some of the financial risk of putting shows on out of the equation, as there is no rent to pay. That is not to say the places just magically work though, they're only made possible by the hard work of people like our host for the night, Jens, and his friends, who explained the Jeugdhuis set up to us over yet more beers and awesome home made food (out of a second very well stocked rider fridge...). He'd even recently had awesome UK bands in the space like Gnarwolves, River Jumpers, and others.

A slight spanner in the works occurred here though.... We realised on unpacking, that the Riskee boys had left one of their very nice guitars back in the venue in Brussels. However, some frantic phonecalls later it was tracked down and we arranged to grab it the following day.

The show was probably the smallest crowd we played to on the tour, but those of us who were there knew how to party, and we had a blast. We were also sleeping in the venue that night, so we got absolutely smashed with the amazing locals, realising we were all into the same bands, Jens stuck on some Gnarwolves, Bray ordered several of the biggest kebabs I've ever seen to be delivered to the venue, and we partied until we all crashed out in various parts of the venue. One of the most baffling parts of the night came when Randy Newman's You Can Leave Your Hat On came on, and one of the local lads performed an impromptu striptease on stage. Jens and his mates didn't bat an eyelid, leading me to think this was a pretty regular occurrence. We never actually found out the full story there, but someone told us the guy on stage "takes it in all holes"....

Jimbo actually decided to sleep with the rest of us this night, choosing what appeared to be the acoustic centre of the place, and letting his enormous snores echo round the place. Cheers mate, very soothing...


Part Two will be available exclusively on The Punk Archive next week...

Riskee and the Ridicule are throwing the launch party for their debut album, the incredible Dawn Of The Dog on Friday 5th September at Platform 5, Ashford. Click here for details:
https://www.facebook.com/events/258119400979026/?ref=ts&fref=ts