They said it was crazy. They said it wasn`t "right". They said it was silly. Some even thought that it wasn`t possible. But they were wrong, because we did it, and we did it without reservation, and we did it with much purpose. The purpose was four fold. We wanted to see Mammoth Volume play live and we didn`t want to wait until they came to us, so we went to them. We intended to have a lifetime`s worth of fun during 4 days overseas. We hoped to finally meet some of the European members of the StonerRock.com Discussion Forums. And... We wanted to get really, really, really, fucking stoned. We did all of this and we saw a good deal of The Netherlands while we were at it.

The "players" on this trip were Paul (MadJohnShaft), Ron (ron325ic) and myself (Dan aka El Danno). The entire intinerary for this "trip" was conceived, planned and thereafter executed via the StonerRock.com Discussion Forums in this thread and also through a few emails of a slightly more definitive inclination. No phones and no in-person conversations. Hell, I`d only met Paul once, briefly, and in a state of extreme spacecake-surreality, at SHoD3 and I`d never even seen a photo of Ron, much less actually met the guy. But whatever. Everyone from the forums was invited and welcome and Ron and Paul actually came. There`s really not much more to it than that. Oh except for the fact that I travelled from Vancouver, BC, Canada, Paul flew out of Chicago and Ron flew out of New York a day later than us.

So... I`d just finished moving StonerRock.com to a new dedicated server as well as moving myself into a new apartment, that was in the midst of heavy renovations (and still is) and dealing with all of the stress involved with both of those moves and then BAM! it was time to fly to Holland like we`d planned, very spontaneously, a couple of months previous. I was thinking to myself, "what the fuck are you doing? this is nuts!" as I woke up at 4am, packed, showered and got on the 6am bus from Vancouver, BC to Seattle. You see... I bought a Seattle to Amsterdam plane ticket online for a really good price thinking that getting to Seattle wouldn`t be a big deal. But it was. It was 4 hours on the bus each way and yet another customs search and interogation each way. I later found out that flying from Vancouver to Amsterdam wouldn`t have cost much more - FUCK! I won`t be doing it this way again.

Getting through customs into the states was my first major obstacle. The customs guy tore everything out of my suitcase, my jacket and even my wallet and asked me a thousand questions. And after all of that I got, "you`re not being completely honest with me, now are you?"

And I was like "whattaya mean?", knowing full well what he was referring to.

"It says here that you were refused access into the United States on such-and-such date. You said you`d never been refused access".

"uhhh.. did I say that? uhh.. I mean.. uhhh.. Well, they sent me back to get proof of residence once, and let me through the next day, I didn`t think that was the same as being `refused access`". I became even more nervous than I already was at this point.

"What sort of things are you planning to do in Amsterdam besides seeing a band play" *wink-wink* *nudge-nudge*.

"Uhh.. Drugs?"

"Why did you say that?"

"Cuz I knew that`s what you wanted me to say".

A thousand more questions later and I got the green light. "Ok, I`m going to let you go down this time. I hope customs doesn`t catch you coming back into the U.S. with any of those drugs".

I guess I look suspicious. I didn`t make it through a single check point on the whole trip without getting the whole search treatment over again. I guess "scumbag profiling" isn`t illegal like "racial profiling" is. Oh well. Never travel to another country via the USA - it ain`t worth it!

I got to the Seattle airport 2 hours early and checked in then proceeded to smoke my brains out and drink mucho coffee in preparation for the 9 hour flight to Amsterdam. So with half an hour to spare I start heading down to the gate.. Oh fuck.. A train ride? 3 baggage checks? A "random" (scumbag profiling) wand search of my person and I get to the gate thinking I`m early as can be. The dude is freaking out saying that I`m late. I act dumbfounded and cruise on to the plane and find my seat without waiting in line or anything. Sweet! I don`t recommend this procedure though. Ron did it on his way back from Amsterdam to New York, missed his flight, and had to camp in the Schipol Airport for 22 hours! Poor fucking bastard! It worked out really well though. I have good karma - don`t know about Ron. I`d have to say no based on the 22 hours in the airport thing. :0)

Ok. So the flight was uneventful for me. I got to Amsterdam early by 15 minutes and cruised through customs like nobody`s business. I guess they`re not worried about stuff coming IN to Holland!! hehe - I met Paul at the airport "meeting place" and he looked like death warmed over. He then informed me that he`d suffered a bout of food poisoning while eating his chicken soup at lunchtime. A couple of hours before his flight. So Paul was the poor bugger this time spending the ENTIRE flight in the lavatory puking and shitting his brains and guts out. Oh. Except for the take-off where you`re not allowed to make the toilet your permanent seat. I guess he filled up his puke bag and both of his neighbor`s puke bags. Let me reiterate: poor fucking bastard!

I was like "let`s go get really stoned, that will sort you out" (or did I just think that?) but Paul was in no condition for such extremeties. We hopped into a taxi and off we rode accross the Dutch countryside, windmills and canals but no tulips, to our Best Western (?) hotel in Woerden (pronounced "Vorden"), the setting for the first Mammoth Volume show of our adventure. Paul immediately hit the bed while I decided that I didn`t want to waste my time in Holland sleeping and went strolling through the small town of Woerden. My first impressions of The Netherlands were: "Holy fuck! Look at all the crappy bikes!", "Narrow cobblestone streets, weird!" and "People sure are fashionable here, in a very very conservative way". At the Woerden train station there were literally thousands of dodgy bikes, like the ones you see in old World War II movies, parked in seemingly endless rows of black racks. Black, grey, dark blue and boring bikes. Nothing flashy, nothing cool, no mountain bikes, no ten speeds, no BMX bikes and virtually none of them were locked up. I suppose the reserved Dutch fashion sense extends to their bikes as well. It`s pretty damn cool that hardly anyone was outwardly trying to be "cool". I liked it. Woerden was a quaint little town with a castle over a river and some big gothic church steeples here and there. Bikes and massive, gothic (as in DOOMY) church steeples are everywhere you go in Holland. I then bought a pack of Dutch cigarettes (Cuypers - pronounced "Coopers"), that were pretty darn good, and started feeling like I was gonna pass out. I`d been up for 24 hours by then so I thought it wise to catch a few winks at the hotel before heading to the show and drinking and smoking. This was a very good idea, in retrospect, considering what followed!

Paul and I dragged our tired asses out of bed sometime in the early evening and headed out for dinner at a local restaraunt. The menus were only in Dutch but the lovely Dutch waitress helped us out and we had a great meal and drank our first 3 beers since we arrived in Holland while overlooking yet another canal. We got, what seemed like, easy directions to the Babylon club from our waitress and headed in the general direction of the club. We got to where she told us to go and there was no club. We asked a passerby for directions and were sent down a dark walking path past an apartment building with million watt lightbulbs on every balcony through a very sinister park and it was long after dark. Just as we began to think that we`d been led on a wild goose chase as part of some Woerden conspiracy to make all tourists hopelessly lost in The Park of Doom forever to wander aimlessly under the Rectangular Sun we found Club Babylon seemingly isolated in the center of the Park of Doom. Excellent!

We didn`t even think that we might be on the guest list so we paid our entrance fee of 5 Euros and were then informed that we couldn`t buy beer with cash - we had to purchase drink "chips" in the form of plastic green coins in advance. Obviously a cunning plan to sell more beers - and it worked on us, we purchased 10 drink chips each, just to be safe. We downed a couple of beers at the bar quickly and then caught site of the Mammoth Volume roadie/manager guy, Benny Hansson, who led us upstairs to the backroom. And finally, the moment of reckoning, we met all of Mammoth Volume at once: Jorgen Andersson (Vocals), Daniel Gustafsson (Guitar), Kalle Berlin (Bass) and Nicklas Anderson (Drums and the brother of Jorgen). There were also a few other people up there that we met including a dude named Hank (Henk?) who was the booking agent for the tour and also previous European tours such as Sons of Otis/Electric Wizard and the upcoming Five Horse Johnson tour. Everyone was super cool, although it was difficult to understand what any of these Swedes were talking about at first, even though they were speaking English! But the universal language of free beer from the back-stage fridge was understood easily by all. And the beer was Heineken (in brown bottles (?)) of course!

I don`t recall much of what was dicussed, mostly stories of the tour so far, particularly "their worst and drunkest failure of a show so far: Switzerland!" which was brought up many more times over the course of the next 3 days through painful eyes and expressions of despair, but I do remember that it was one of those experiences that was so enjoyable that you`d never forget it, even if you don`t actually remember any of the details. One thing`s for sure: Mammoth Volume are all great, real, genuine and extremely friendly people - no egos, no attitudes - just like everyone else I`ve met in the scene. One more band met and one more failed chance to disprove this rule.

During these converstations we made many trips downstairs to use the toilet and also to watch about half of the opening band`s set. They were called "57 Chevy" and were a local Holland stoner rock band - from where in Holland I`m not sure - who had just fired their singer very recently. They were OK as an instrumental band but it was obvious that the songs were written to have vocals over them so they came across as somewhat too simple for an instrumental band - but they did have some fabulous breaks and riff-jam parts ala Karma to Burn. But those parts were few and far between. They`ve definitely got the potential though. The basist wore a huge afro-wig that was a little offputting.

We also met BillsBrother, Extalapoketl and Luna Loca from the StonerRock.com Discussion Forums. They both came up to the back-stage room and hung out with us and Mammoth Volume at different points in the evening. Luna Loca kept telling me how drunk she was and BillsBrother kept buying me beers, even though there was a fridge full of beer upstairs for the taking. BillsBrother wouldn`t take no for an answer so I ended up spending my drink-chips buying beers for him and Luna Loca.

Mammoth Volume were using all of their available willpower to remain sober enough to play with joints being passed around aplenty and a refillable fridge full of Heineken. I`m glad they did, this time, because they then proceeded to put on the tightest set of the 3 shows. It was equally fun to see them play while completely loaded at the next two shows but I`m so happy that they used restraint for this first show. Their performance at the Babylon club was exactly what you would expect live Mammoth Volume to sound like after you heard their records. In your wildest dreams, of course. Anyone who`s heard their albums knows that the songs are complex arrangements with tight breaks, eclectic styles and powerful, soulful vocals that span a great deal of range. Only the very hopeful believe that Mammoth Volume could pull these songs off flawlessly live - but they did. Songs like Seagull, Bighead, Vipera Barus, Helly`s Creek and Matador were nailed without mistake. The only thing that was missing was the keyboard. Otherwise, BAM! Spot on.

Although, it wasn`t exactly what I expected. I was expecting a more subdued, mellow atmosphere to their live performance but in reality it was like watching an intense heavy rock power trio with a vocalist. Daniel`s guitar playing was laden with soul, style and skill, packed with fuzz at times, clean and mellow at others and wah-wah leads that would make Jimi Hendrix himself throw the goat horns and smile. Nicklas played a relatively small kit and pounded the skins hard and relentlessly with much precision and intensity. Kalle, with his spanish-inquisition goatee and general fun-loving demeanor was all over the stage, bouncing high off the ground and generally goofing off at times, playing with vigorous concentration at others, but always holding the rhythm section together with an unfaultering groove. And then there was Jorgen, a big man, who occupied center stage with presence and grace generally not seen in this scene where there are very few stand-alone vocalists. He exibited the same power and soul that Joe Cocker exibits - without the "I`m-retarded" Joe Cocker schtick though, of course. You know what I mean. :0)

They did it. They pulled it all off live beyond our wildest imagination. Paul and I kept looking at each other in amazement throughout the set mouthing "WOW!!!" and "HOLY SHIT!!" to each other repeatedly. Paul had that look of confusion in his eyes that told me he couldn`t believe what he was seeing - and I suppose I did as well. Wow. What an experience! I guess "A Single Book of Songs by Mammoth Volume" didn`t get voted #1 Album of 2001 on StonerRock.com under the false pretenses of a live act that couldn`t compare to the studio noodling of the CD`s production. Hell no. Not at all! I still say "WOW!"

After their set was over things got very blurry. The club owner, Menno, who supplied the live photos for this first part of the feature (I stupidly forgot my camera at the hotel), apologised for not getting us in for free because we`d flown all the way around the world to see Mammoth Volume play. He smoked a joint with us. Someone else smoked a joint with us. I semi-successfully peer pressured Paul into smoking more of these huge joints that were being passed around the club. People kept buying me drinks. Luna Loca left with the band cuz she lived in Utrecht, the same town where Mammoth Volume were staying. BillsBrother and Extalapoketl vanished into thin air - or did they? Paul and I somehow made it back to our hotel. I have no recollection of the second trip through the Park of Doom.

Well, that was day one. I hope it wasn`t too boring/long of a read. I`m trying to include lots of the small details so that the setting of all events is put into perspective as well. So that both the magnitude and atmosphere of the experience are portrayed completely. As much for my own reminiscence as for your reading enjoyment.

Please feel free to discuss this feature in this thread...