The Flatliners (Episode 2)

Tonight's Dispatch is the second from Toronto's The Flatliners who recently took off through Europe with NOFX. The band's Chris Cresswell checks on.
You can click Read More for the dispatch.

In this moment I feel as crazy as Gary Busey is in reality. And folks,
that certainly is a mindfuck of a feeling. But I suppose 9 weeks of tour
can bend someone like that. So much has happened since we left our last
note. I'll cut the shit and get right to it:

We were reunited with our fellow Canadian friends Rich, Joel, Sacsha and
Katie in Gay Paris (the "s" is silent - no doggin' on Paris here), and the
booze cruise ended at 5 AM with some very expensive personal items being
stolen/lost/everyone was drunk/stolen. Wicked hangs though! Never did I
think that we'd all be in Paris together one day, back when we were all
very obviously underage and drinking at the Q Bar in Toronto. Ah, those
simple pleasantries of just being a kid… The show in Paris sealed the
deal that every single show in France is the hottest show ever, without a
doubt. They were all amazing shows though, so cheers to the French.

Once we got to the UK the rain started, as did the almost-nightly disputes
with NOFX bootleggers outside the shows. These guys were like vultures
selling shit they'd made themselves for dirt cheap, and it was so, so
weak. We tried to "hoot" them away like we were from Shelbyville and they
were from Springfield, but it didn't always work. It was a pretty sad
thing to see someone doing too. They were really just taking advantage of
their basic human ability to recreate something that doesn't belong to you
and make a profit doing so. Fuckers. The first show Snuff played on this
tour was in Birmingham, and it was a definite treat. I was talking to
Duncan beside his drum set right before they started and I could
understand every single thing he was saying to me, like a usual
conversation. After a minute he said they were about to play, and sat down
behind his kit, immediately grabbed the microphone and launches right into
saying something to the crowd, and I had absolutely no idea what he was
saying. I realize it may seem ridiculous, but it blew my mind. I remember
going to sleep that night pulling a dork move and listening to Attack in
Black's song "Birmingham" in Birmingham. HAHA.

Onto Ireland. Our cherries were popped as this was country number 13 for
us folks. And it was a blast. Pun certainly intended. Once we got into
Dublin we took a stroll around Dublin Castle, where our (French) merch
guy Seb (who sings in an awesome band called PO Box) tried to convince all
the French people waiting for a Castle Tour to follow him for the tour. He
had never been there before. The show in Dublin was fucking incredible,
and was the best show of the entire tour. I got my second chance to play
the ending of The Decline and managed to fuck it up. But what I think is
more important is that I still managed to have fun. So get off my back.
Although I'd classify this show as the best show on the whole tour, it did
suck large that we were only allowed to sell half of our merch designs
inside the club. Luckily we were able to improvise and set up a guerilla
style merch table outside the show. Thanks to that Chinese food place
beside the club for serving as our display area. After the show we go to a
shitty bar with Limo (from Scotland) where we all essentially black out,
walk blocks and blocks to the house we're staying at, and end up sleeping
in strange places. I don't remember where anyone else slept, but I barely
remember going to sleep in a closet in all my clothes. Ah, Dublin. The one
and only.

The next night we played in Belfast. It was a small show for NOFX to play,
and it was fucking insane in there. Other than Jon and I getting properly
shocked every single time we touched our mics, I think its safe to say we
all had a good one. The next day we reached our country number 14:
Scotland. This was our own headlining show, and I, myself, am a total
cake-eater, so I was more than stoked to visit the hometown of my
great-grandfather. We played a small show in the basement bar of this cool
vegetarian restaurant in Glasgow, 7 years to the day after our very first
show playing together. That made us all pretty proud. We, of course,
deemed it supremely appropriate to celebrate full-fledged. During the
celebration, we meet a friendly Scottish guy named Bruce, who seemed to
have an available spot at a show with great bands every week of the summer
in Glasgow. Now, it wasn't that we were ungrateful of having been offered
so many great shows in Glasgow during a ten minute conversation, but we
felt we should let the man in on a little secret. We're from Canada. This
little tidbit of information was much more difficult to convey than anyone
could really imagine, so we probably just came off like assholes. It did
seem that Bruce had likely been celebrating something of his own that
night… as our states were comparable. Sorry Bruce. We wish homie, we
wish.

We returned to jolly old England after our Scottish adventure, with our
first show back being in what seemed to be the ghost town of Newcastle.
This place was like no man's land before the show started. We momentarily
turned into pre-pubescent girls and visited a nearby
Make-Your-Own-Milkshake place. I got a Ferrero Roches/Kinder Bueno
milkshake. And it was fucking amazing. We got the official news that we
are playing at this year's Leeds and Reading Festivals a few days before
we played Leeds with NOFX. This show, I think, turned out to be one of the
best of the entire tour, so thanks to everyone in Leeds for going off. It
was an early show, so I remember walking around the city with Jon and our
merch guy Seb, pretty drunk and looking for food. If I remember correctly
it was barely midnight, so at this point all signs seem to be pointing to
me passed the fuck out early, and sleeping all day. Shortly after, I'm
about to go to sleep in Ed the Duck's van, listening to NOFX's new record
Coaster, when Fat Mike and Limo open the door and bring me, Jon and Paul
onto their bus to have a…. smoke of some sort. Yes… some sort. Has our
influence of living the "turtle life" reached Fat Mike? Hell no. The man
just wanted to party.

We're at the tail end of our 9 week long tour of the United States, Japan,
Europe and the United Kingdom. And we're all absolutely fucked. It's been
fun though. Hot damn, its been fun! We've been lucky enough to play these
great shows we've been playing, with these great bands we look up and have
learned so much from. And after this we head home to record a new album.
Life is exciting, and I'd say "its like our oyster", but I hate oysters
anyways and that is pure blah blah horse shit. Thank you folks for wasting
a small part of your life reading about ours.

Cheers!
chris