Rushing Whispers

    Amoeba had smashed through the rest of the French tour in fine form; even getting positive reviews in the various Europeans journals and magazines that provided the masses with photos, reviews, and interviews of all the popular rock bands on tour at any given time.      Yesterday’s performance in Stuttgart had been the first Amoeba show in Germany in nearly eighteen months, and the crowd had definitely missed them. There was a second show at the same venue tonight, and then off to two nights in Munich and one in Augsburg before the month’s end.      Two writers from Rock Galaxie , a prominent German music magazine based in Stuttgart, were backstage with us tonight. There would be questions before and after the performance to cover multiple facets of musicianship, I was told. I had never been a big reader of magazines, mostly getting news of the music world from my local record store, but I was excited to see how artists inte...

    We arrived at the hotel in Paris at three o’clock in the morning, having left not long after the Reims show ended. Tonight’s show would be held in one of the popular Right Bank Parisian districts at a concert hall, with tomorrow’s performance taking place at a medium-sized club on the outskirts of the city.      When Cameron and I checked into the hotel and got to our room, I immediately asked him what had happened with Dale in the dressing room.      “I’ve been trying to figure it out myself,” he admitted. Cameron sat on the bed and shook his head. “I’ve never seen the man cry, let alone sob as he did.”      I sat beside him and put my hand on his. “He’s lost a child, though, even if it wasn’t his own.”      “Yes, he has.” Cameron nodded. “But the letter isn’t explicit. He showed it to me, in the room, before he spoke.”      I sighed, my head resting on his shoulder. “So, we don’t kn...

    Amoeba finished the English tour in fine form; after the last date in Brighton, we spent the nine-day break at Geoff's summer home in Eastbourne. We flew from Gatwick to the Lille airport two days ago, the band had been quite happy that I was able to communicate with the customs agents. Having spent all but the last ten weeks of my life in a province where the majority of people were French-speaking, and learning to speak the language by writing it, had given me the ability to simply modify my accent and be very well understood by most Frenchman.      The day after arriving, the band performed at a club in Lille, where the owner became very happy to meet me once he realized that none of the band’s members or crew could speak any more of his language than a simple “bonjour” and “bon soir” in greeting.       Tonight, we were playing in a concert hall in Reims that held just over one thousand people. We weren’t expecting a...