Tag: 2022/01/16

Day five 

Monday December 6

Maja:

Why did we tell our friends that we would play for them at such an inhumanly early time as 2pm? Why? This is what I’m trying to get my head round as we both attempt to wake up at noon. We finally manage to crawl out of bed and into the shower at around 1pm, and I am in no way fit for any kind of performance. I am exhausted. My voice seems to have found a comfortable spot somewhere around the bottom of my endlessly crammed suitcase, and it certainly does not want to find its way back to me. I’m slightly out of it as I stand letting the hot water scald my shoulders in the hope that the heat will somehow wake me up. Disappointingly, it doesn’t seem to work. But I have made a promise, and there’s no way I’m not keeping it. Promises are meant to be kept, and I just need some clothes, along with some concealer to hide the big dark bags under my eyes. Mark has already started moving the gear up to the function room, setting up for us. When I emerge, Cintia and Mattheus are waiting for us. Eric is nowhere to be seen, but there’s no point waiting around since we don’t know when or if he’ll be here. Cintia is working, using the function room as an office, with her computer and advanced looking house plans scattered all over a big table. She works as an architect, and I am sure she’s a brilliant one judging from the professionalism and dedication she is showing. She knew she’d be working during the time we planned this, but was very clear last night that she wanted us to come and do this and that she wanted to be a part of it.

So I guess that we’re going to be a little bit of an entertainment break and perhaps background music while she works. Great. And Matteus is a fellow musician; he is currently busking around Europe with his saxophone. Both of them are very eager to hear us play, which they’re going to. But today we will also be using it as a little rehearsal, since we’ve barely been able to rehearse anything since our arrival in Berlin. Great. They help us film, which is really cool, and we go through a lot of our songs playing them as if it was a set, although we allow ourselves to restart songs a few times so that we can hopefully record a better performance video. But there is something that is bothering me. It’s holding me back. Incredibly so. And that is the sound of the function hall. It is so empty that the amplified sound bounces all over the room, and I hear myself as echoed and probably distorted from all directions, making me completely lose control my own sound. It feels awful, and no adjustments I am able to make help with this problem. After trying to adjust everything I can there’s nothing else to do but to give up. Balls. 

This is as good as it gets. I’ll just have to do it anyway. So I sing, and we manage to fight ourselves through tiredness and echo, performing and practising most of the songs in our set. After about an hour I’m so tired I can barely stand up. So we end there, and I get to chat with Cintia, Matteus and Eric, who managed to arrive in time to catch half of the show. They seem to have appreciated it all, and the song ‘I Like You (Better When You’re Naked)’ seems to have stuck in all three of their brains. It’s quite incredible that they like the songs enough to really remember them, or at least one of the songs.

It’s really nice sitting and chatting with them for a little while, but I am way too tired to be any kind of company, so I soon excuse myself and go back to bed. I’m good for nothing today. Mark is kind enough to take care of the teardown and pack up of the gear as I intend to spend the rest of the day sleeping. I did the rehearsal/mini show today, and I’m incredibly proud of myself for having done that, but now I need to repair a little bit from these intense last couple of days. 

And how did the recordings turn out, you wonder. They were all just noise. The echo made them completely useless. Oh well, we tried. Now we’ll rest and hope to get something decent recorded soon enough. Good night. Tomorrow is a new day, and I’d like to be my usual bright self for any performance that just might happen.

Mark:

It really can’t be any surprise that events have caught up with us today. A week ago Maja was in Sweden and I was in Ireland. With that, we had our individual preparations to finish then we both left our respective starting points on Tuesday, Maja’s epic journey continuing deep into Wednesday, the same day I had my mad walk of around 20 kilometres. Then Thursday was the walk out to buy our gear and walk back, with the weekend then beginning taking in Friday’s hustle and gig followed by Saturday’s gig then the big night last night. Is it any wonder at all that we’re finding it hard to even move today?

Almost as soon as we’re ‘awake’ which is somewhere around 11, we decide there’s no way we’re doing the open mic tonight. 

Once we are up and upstairs to meet the guys, we encounter rumour again, which is soon confirmed. After our little brush with pre-pandemic world yesterday, it’s back to reality today as we discover that Berlin is to ban dancing in nightclubs from Wednesday. Despite the encouraging words we heard last night, Corona and its attendant restrictions may yet close in around us in Berlin and end our plans.

Day six

Tuesday December 7

Mark:

We’re all hanging out in the canteen this morning when Katia announces she may have a temporary room coming up in her apartment covering Christmas and the new year. If this could be more or less immediate, and dates aren’t fully clear yet, this could be something for us and we quickly let her know that we’re interested. She says she’ll keep us up to date as things develop. If the dates do work, the plan could be to take the place and keep it until the first week or so of January which would encompass our trip to England to stay with my family for Christmas. We would be looking at returning to Berlin, possibly for December 31, and so New Year’s Eve, and then make plans for whatever’s next. 

Maja:

Today it is time for my first ever open mic. Apparently open mics are a thing, and many people appreciate attending them. Myself, I’ve never really heard of them from anyone other than Mark. Mark is trying to educate me in the ways of the music world. Educating me has become one of his passion projects. I guess that is because I just know whatever I know and not much else. So the next gap of knowledge needed to be filled is open mics. They’re supposed to be great craic, but who am I to tell you? This is my very first time. And the place for tonight is Zum crocodile, a bar in Neukölln. We manage to slip through the doors just about 7 pm catching the start of the show. Mark goes through to the host and puts us on the list, but since the show has already started it seems like we’re going to be on late. Great. Just sit back until then.

Our friend Eric is here too, so the three of us enjoy the show together. There are a lot of musicians that have gathered from all over the place. A girl from Portugal is up quite early. She has a story about how she ran into a window and wrote a song about that. It’s mellow, calm and nice. Like all the songs on the stage tonight. They are mellow, low key, calm and nice. The songs are mild, the performers are using their nice singing voices. The pitches are mostly perfect, no-one makes any big mistakes. But who would make mistakes in that environment? No-one is really trying anything special. It’s just calmly played guitar with calm controlled vocals. Beautiful, but I’ve heard it a thousand times before. Perfect to enjoy with a glass of red wine and then go on to forget about forever. 

Listening to the show and its gentle tones I start to get a strong feeling that maybe we’re just a bit too much. Too loud for this room. So I lean over and whisper to Mark, ‘Maybe we should play some of our quiter songs?’ He looks at me and replies, ‘No way. We go in hard and play bigger than the room as always.’ And then I realise what I’ve just done. I’ve read the room and I started to want to adapt to it. Just like I know that I can never allow myself to do. I need to aim to play bigger than the room. Great that I had Mark to stop me there, stop me from wasting the performance. This is exactly the place where you should play as big as you want, even though no-one else is doing it.

I am starting to feel a little bit stressed, time goes on and on and we’re getting close to 10 pm, which is the ending time for almost all live music in Berlin. They have to stop at 10 pm sharp to avoid noise complaints from neighbours, and we’re getting awfully close now. Then all of a sudden, host Conor announces, ‘And now it’s time for our last act,’ I’m convinced this must be us now, but instead he calls someone else up on stage. My heart drops, and the three of us all look at each other in sheer confusion. Are we not going to be able to play? Mark discretely runs up to Conor to check if we’re still going up, and comes back with a smile. Yes, we’re on, Conor must have said ‘the last acts’ and we heard ‘the last act.’ I’m starting to feel a little bit nervous. I’ve only had half a glass of wine since I prefer not to drink before performing, so I’m clear headed, but I’m also very conscious that I can’t shake this feeling of stress. Mark goes to tune up and comes back all ready to rock. I feel like ‘How in the world will we have time to perform?’ It’s really close to 10pm now. Conor announces that everyone will only have time for one song now, and please no introducing or talking about your song. Get up, play, get off. Another act goes on and then it’s time for us. And I feel stressed. We go on stage, connect the microphone and guitar real quick, and I test the microphone by saying ‘Hello, we’re the diaries on tour from Ireland.’ As I say the words I get interrupted by Conor counting us in. ‘One, two, three, four.’ I feel so stressed. Not nervous, but stressed in a way that feels completely unnatural for me. Mark ignores Conor’s count, pausing to do his own and then we start. But still, my legs shake. I have a hard time singing, my heart is beating so fast it can’t possibly be mine. But I am singing, I know the song and I get the reaction that the song deserves. Complete amazement from everyone. I feel how people look up at me in shock, with the expression spreading over their faces saying ‘Am I hearing this right? Is this really true? She can’t possibly be singing this…’ 

Mark:

Yes, you could say the song has a slightly gimmicky feel with the tag line of I like you better when you’re naked, but the whole place is totally into this from the beginning and they never let go. And those choruses and stops. Well, there are mini explosions from the audience all the way through the song. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this, let alone been a part of it. And when we finish, the reaction is spontaneous and absolutely enormous. Seeing the video later that Eric shot, we can see that we have finally captured what The Diaries are really all about and the effect we can have on an audience. We might have only had one song, but with that four minutes of stage time, we’ve achieved everything here we could have possibly hoped to have achieved. Tonight’s show, short as it was, has been an announcement. In the end, just getting that one song was perfect. 

Maja:

In the middle of the song, Conor, sitting on the stage behind us, explodes in a cheer bouncing his head like crazy, but I don’t even notice. I am too busy performing. By the second half of the song, the stress has reduced and I am able to actually enjoy the performance like I normally do. But it feels like such a waste that I allowed myself to get stressed. A performance takes the time it takes, and there was really no use for me to feel stressed. Even though we were the second to last act with just eight minutes to go. 

Mark:

For all Maja’s talk of stress and nervousness, I was there on stage with her, and saw the video afterwards. No sign of it. No sign at all.

Maja:

When we finish the crowd erupts in huge applause and cheering, and the last act goes on. They get a huge reaction as well, but I can’t help to think that it may have been because we warmed up the crowd for them. No-one is ever going to know that for sure, but to me, it feels that way. Now everything’s finished, it’s time to mingle. At open mics, you don’t talk when others are performing. That’s considered rude and a disturbance, so I’m discovering that it’s afterwards when you really get then chance to talk to people properly. And there is this one performer that I really want to say hello to. He is called Mabloni, and he sang two really fun songs, one about how he’d never been to the USA and another one about apple pies baked with pineapple juice. I manage to say hello, and we have a lovely chat. And he recommends another open mic tomorrow at a bar commonly nicknamed the red bar. Great meeting you, and yes we’ll check that out tomorrow. 

I go back to the table to hang out a little bit more with Eric, who’s managed to get our performance recorded. When we check it out,we see that he’s come up with the first real recording that captures what we can be. Finally, we can actually share what we’re up to. 

I walk back to the hostel with a victorious feeling spreading through my chest.

Day seven

Wednesday December 8

Maja:

Yesterday I performed for a total of four minutes, but I gave it my all which I can totally feel in my body as I wake up. Today we’ll go to the open mic that Mabloni recommended yesterday, so there’s no real worry to be had for the rest of today. I can allow myself to just chill and recover a little bit then go for it again tonight. I haven’t yet really got a feel for just how physically demanding performing can be, but as of now I have performed something every single day, and while it is incredibly fun it also takes its toll on the body. As the evening draws closer, I manage to feel a little bit more like myself again. 

The place we’re going to tonight is called Laksmi. Nicknamed the red bar, it is located in the middle of Kreutzberg, and after a short antigen test detour we make our way there, arriving at a quarter to seven. As we walk through the doors I am surprised by the size of the place. It’s small. By far the smallest place we’ve been in up to now. It has two rooms, the bar and stage area in the first room with seats in a L shape around the bar and the stage is right at the apex of the L. The second room is a smaller backroom with more seats. I would perhaps say that there are 25-30 seats available in total, and there’s a steady stream of people that just keeps on coming in. Just after we enter, the host of the evening greets us. His name is Mooves and we sign up on his list. He tells us that he doesn’t expect that many performers tonight, so there’s going to be a lot of time for us to perform. We may even get two slots. Great. We’re prepared and have a lot of songs ready, so it would only be really cool if that happened. He says he’ll give everyone two songs rather than the normally expected three, but with that, he expects there to be another round where everyone goes up again for another two songs each.

We sit down with a glass of water to enjoy the show, and what strikes me about this place is the thoroughly friendly feeling that spreads between both the regulars and new people. Most of the people here tonight seem to be regulars, they know each other and they all talk to each other. Except for when the show is on. Then the whole bar turns silent. You could hear a coin falling to the floor even though the bar is crammed by now. Every seat is taken, and the room is filled with the gentle tunes of first the host and then a wonderful performer on ukulele. As the show starts I realise that this is a completely unplugged event. Which actually feels quite cool. It’s nice to not have to bother with any mixing boards and cables, especially considering the minimal stage area which is just about big enough for one man and his guitar. Or maybe you could squeeze in two people. Possibly.

Six or seven performances later, it is time for us and once more we open with I Like You (Better When You’re Naked). And I am able to perform it in a way I have never done before. I feel light, energetic and it is just fun. I’m standing in front of the stage, pretty much on the edge, slightly in front of Mark, and I am almost floating with energy. I perform to the people in the room, but I’m also bouncing off of Mark. The whole room is with us. In every breath. 

Mark:

Then, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, we both step off the stage and start walking through the audience still playing. We have the bar to our left and a slightly raised seating area to our right so we have a good, natural path to follow, all eyes on us all the way. Already we can see the looks of appreciation on people’s faces like we’re giving something different and are really putting it out there. I’m in front and Maja’s walking behind singing. Then, as we reach the back room and give a quick blast in there, we turn round. Or rather, I turn round. Maja decides to walk backwards, crouched down and singing towards me. Now we’re both crouching down, passing through the crowd and both singing. To each other, eyes locked. The whole audience has disappeared to us but we can feel their presence and silence. And complete captivation. It’s like we’re having a private moment and they all just happen to be inhabiting the same space. But at the same time, we really are all in this together. This is our moment, but everyone else feels it.

In this backwards way we move up to return to the stage. Maja first, still singing, me still playing. My front foot reaches the stage and I start to step up with my back foot. I’ve totally forgotten my phone is hanging out of my back pocket. Now I feel it catch under the edge of a table which is now directly behind me. I’m already far too committed to my forward movement and I can do nothing as I feel the phone start to tip the table. Not a massive amount but enough to send a full pint sliding off to smash spectacularly loudly on the floor, in the process totally soaking the poor unfortunate man who happens to be sitting right in front of it. 

Maja:

There is now glass absolutely everywhere, including on the stage. Me and Mark both stop, because we have to do something to help, right? But as soon as we do, an urgent noise comes from the crowd as they shout, seemingly as one, ‘No, no. Keep going, keep going.’ The guy that got drenched is also looking up and nodding happily, urging us to continue. I look at Mark, and he shrugs and nods. And we jump back into the verse, exactly where we left off. We finish the song and the bar absolutely explodes in cheers and whoops.

Just wow. We just stand there on stage for a moment, and I catch a glance of Mark’s eyes as we take in the feeling and taste of the excitement in the room. During this little moment I can feel how everyone around us is filled with a shocklike anticipation. We hold onto the beautiful anticipatory silence, Mark taps out a four on the guitar, and we’re back in.

Mark:

It’s an amazing moment, but in the excitement of it all, I completely forget which verse we’re on. Do I hit the chorus after these four lines, or do we have another four to go in this one? I have no idea. I’m looking at Maja’s back so there’s no communication to be had. I just go for it. Into the chorus. And she drops right into it too. Damn that was the songwriting equivalent of red wire, blue wire. With slightly lower stakes. 

The reaction after our first song, our actual introduction to this place, is enormous. Far bigger than anything we’ve ever experienced before and we’ve had some pretty good experiences with it. Damn, this is big.

Maja:

And now off we go into the next song. Rock ‘n’ roll Tree. This is an epic singalonger and we can see almost everyone in the room moving with us. As we reach the climactic conclusion, I find myself smiling wide and I lower my body preparing for the explosion of sound that I know will happen soon after. We smash into the peak of the last notes of the song and the room blows up once more. 

Mooves, the host, gets back up on stage and jokes ‘Thank you to The Diaries. If you sit in front, you have to expect to get wet.’ 

As we make our way back to our seats, it seems everyone from here to there has something to say to us. I just manage to catch a couple of encouraging words before Mark comes with the first beer of the night, and the room returns to silence in respect of the next performer. The taste of that beer is the best feeling in the world. It tastes of success.

Mark:

This feeling of success is only heightened when Mooves starts to ponder what he will play next. He looks up at the audience and says, ‘I’m just thinking. I haven’t got anything as good as I Like You Better When You’re Naked.’ He’s surely half joking at the sheer audacity of the song’s title, but it sure feels like a stamp of approval.

Then, as Mooves is into his song and the room accompanies him in respectful silence, a guy at the bar turns to me and says, ‘That glass smash was just epic. True rock’n’roll. That’s how you make an introduction.’ Well yeah. I guess we have. The initial feeling was one of embarrassed horror, but looking back now, it really was quite the moment and it’s probably become the huge punctuation exclamation mark over a performance I think people in here are going to remember. We certainly are. 

Maja:

Now we’re managing to talk a little with a few other people between the performers but the focus of the people around us is not on what’s happening now. Instead, we’re getting a lot of expressions of excitement for what we’re going to do with our next set. This comes up a lot sooner than we were expecting; a few people played everything they wanted to play first time round and so decline a second turn. So it’s not that long before it comes round to us again. As I walk up to the stage, a girl sitting at the bar says that she looks forward to our performance. I get up on the stage with even a bigger smile than before. But this time it’s just me. I’m alone on the stage and Mark is at the back, in the other room. 

Mark:

We kinda planned this. Or, at least I did. Maja has no idea what I’m going to do. Well, neither have I really. We said we would start with Bang Bang this time and I thought it would be fun, with the whole unplugged thing, for us to start on opposite sides of the room. And we’ve been able to really get ahead of things and start immediately following the performer before us; this concept of everyone playing again massively helped because as soon as we saw the guy we went on after last time, we knew we were up next. So it is, before the applause for the last guy has even died down, Maja has ended up on stage on her own and I’m now at the back with an expectant table full of Irish people looking up at me, as well as the rest of this back room. I have an idea. I thought we were just both going to start singing but now I’m going to try something I’ve never done before. I’m going to get a clap going before a song begins. ‘OK everybody, on me,’ I say with huge confidence, knowing that anything less will get no reaction at all. And, hands above head, I start clapping. 

Maja:

I hear a clapping begin down in the other room and it starts to seep into the front bar. I join in while also showing my part of the audience that they should clap too. At this, Mooves thinks he’s missed something and runs up to the stage to introduce us. As he does, I turn to him and say ‘Hang on, we’ve already started.’ I can see the surprise spreading across his face as he says ‘Oh, wow. Great. These guys, wow, they’ve already started.’ This comes out in a very impressed and happy way as he hurries back to his seat. During this time, the whole room is still clapping along in unison and we haven’t even done anything yet. I stop clapping, but Mark continues. And we start to sing. We can barely hear each other, but we’re letting the people around us hear us. So we walk around, meeting each other in the middle where we bounce off each other for a little while and then switch sides, me going into the back room and Mark going next to the stage, the space I’ve just left. In this manner, we sing and the whole room is clapping. Oh, except me. I don’t clap. I just sing. 

Mark:

As if it was all choreographed and perfectly planned, we hit the stage at the same time with a few bars of the song to go. I now put the guitar on and I’m ready as soon as we finish to a wonderfully joyous reaction from our now wholly interactive room.

Maja:

We now use the time in between songs to talk a little bit more about ourselves. I present our tour and say they can read about our adventures online in The Diaries. In the meantime, Mark’s ready with the guitar and we’re off into our last song Insanity. It’s a calm song, but it is very pretty and impactful.

Mark:

Again we utilise the whole room, which we feel like we own by now. We start with me on the stage and Maja standing on a stool down on the floor and dominating the room. But then again we start to move around the whole area. This is a quiet song, we’re unplugged and we want everyone to be able to hear it. So around the bar we go, giving everyone a piece. This might mean that not everyone hears everything but they all come along with us on this journey, sharing in the epic feel of the moment as we wander right from the front to the back and back to the front again. There’s even a verse where I’m at the back singing it to those guys, and Maja is at the front singing to her people. Then we meet in the middle again, then once more it’s back to the stage. And every single person in here is with us the whole time while they’re also wondering just what the hell is going on. As we finish and the applause rises up from the crowd, getting louder and louder, we stand there and take it all in. For Maja, this kind of reaction is just normal by now. For myself, across every open mic I’ve run, played at or just attended, I’ve never ever seen a new act come in and dominate and own an evening like we have tonight. In fact, I’ve seen very few established people even do anything like this. For us, this has not been an open mic. It’s been a show. Our show. 

Maja:

Insanity seems to have hit this audience like we’re playing them our favourite song that we’ve worked on for 10 years. As we finish up and Mooves come back up on stage, I’ve actually forgotten all about the time we played it at Zimt Und Zunder, and I tell him that this was our first time performing this song. It certainly felt like it was the first time I’ve ever sung that song. And he absolutely loses his mind over that fact which actually isn’t that far off being a real fact. 

As we leave the stage this last time, there’s one closing performance featuring some regulars and Mooves putting on some covers. The whole bar sings along and this totally affects the room as soon as the song ends. It all turns into one of the best parties I’ve ever been to and I feel like a rockstar and center of attention the whole rest of the evening. 

Me and Mark just walk around the place talking to everyone, and everyone wants to talk to us. It’s incredible. We meet a couple of Irishmen, and one of them tells me that he’s honoured to have shared the stage with me tonight. Wait what? Did I catch that right? Come on Mark, did I really catch that right?

Mark:

Yep. That’s right. That happened.

Maja:

Ok. So someone honestly just said that. I can’t really believe it. That seems like such an absurd over the top thing to be told. But I’m grateful, and I chat around with other people some more. Then I move over to the next table. There, I get chatting to a girl who suddenly breaks off to sing ‘I Like You (Better When You’re Naked).’ Stunned, I join in singing the song with her and then she tells me how much she loves it. Now, still singing, she starts to dance. Wow…is this really happening? Next I go to the bar to get myself a drink, and the girl that said that she looked forward to our second performance earlier on has some other amazing things to say. We talk for a while, having a wonderful time. I get to chat with her boyfriend as well who also played tonight. He’s from London and is an excellent musician. He seems really impressed as well. Then I talk a bit with Mooves who also has a lot of warm words to say. And he says he wants to introduce me to his producer friend at the other side of the bar, as well as the usual regular presenter of the open mic here; I learn now that Mooves fills in for occasions when it clashes with something the regular guy has on. Like a gig. Great. I’m happy to chat a bit more with these guys while Mark mingles around the rest of the place. A bit later the people in the bar have started to turn over and there are now a lot of new people here. They missed the show which means that the mingling part becomes a little bit harder. But that’s OK. It’s around time to leave now anyway. So we tell Mooves it’s been wonderful and start to say our goodbyes. This has all been so much. We’ve both been caught in a whirlwind in here tonight and we’ve barely seen each other since the end of our last performance. Just like it should be. Two people mingling is double the amount of contacts made. 

What an evening. This was by far our best performance, best reaction, and the best evening we’ve had since we’ve been in Berlin. All at Laksmi, the red bar. I really want to come again.

Mark:

Yep, that would be brilliant but unfortunately this is the last such event here until after Christmas. But maybe the bar itself will be open next week. It could still be pretty cool to come along to for the hang.