Miss Massive Snowflake
Queen’s Headache European Tour
March 28, 2008
On DB ICE Train 1557 to Dresden

Miss Massive Snowlake Tour Diary #2 from localcut on Vimeo.

I am currently sitting on the train listening to Ennio Morricone. I have taken a short nap since last night’s sleep was very short due to staying up late cleaning other’s heads. I feel refreshed and the sunlight is streaming in through the window of my train car. We are passing a small village surrounded by farming fields. It has yet to snow today which has been quite a regular occurrence on this trip. I guess this is a good thing when your band is called Miss Massive Snowflake. Sort of like extra promo.

We will arrive in Dresden around 2 pm or 14:00 since we are in Deutschland. I will be met at the train station by Kai Lautenschläger, who is a foreign exchange student that lived with me for a year in Billings, Montana in 1988 for our senior year of high school. He is from Essen, Germany and can play piano and cello wonderfully. He is now a doctor, married with children, and lives in Dresden. The last time I visited him Germany was still a divided country. I am looking forward to seeing him. I am going to try and recruit him to play some cello tonight on a few songs.

Even though I am far from Billings, Montana, tonight is sort of a 20 year class reunion for the West High Golden Bears class of 1988. Besides Kai being there, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Cory Vielma, will be at the show also. He is one of the few Golden Bears that I still keep in contact with besides Kai. Jamie Smith / Danghead being the other.

Cory is a married man like myself and he now lives in Berlin with his wife Suzie. He performs music as the Sadnesses and we will be sharing a bill at ZMF in Berlin next week. I am sure that there will be some collaboration between us in each of our sets, too. In the late ’90s Cory and I had a band / project called “Revenge From Beyond the Grave” and released the CD Fuck You With My Dead Dick on Jalopy Grotto Records. We were also on a Nillacat compilation. Who knows maybe we will perform the party classic “Jesus / Dildo”. Anyway, Cory is driving down to Dresden tonight from Berlin to see me and Miss Massive Snowflake perform and tomorrow we will travel together up to Berlin. Cory has not seen Kai since high school 20 years ago.

Growing up in Billings, Montana pre-internet was a weird time. Cory, Jamie, and I were continually called “fags, wavers, and homos” by the meathead jocks and gun packing ranchers we went to school with. Now everything we liked then is pretty much mainstream culture—skateboarding, punk rock, weird art, and baggy pants. I will forever be indebted to Cory Vielma for turning me on to Nick Cave, the Descendents, Septic Death, Die Kreuzen, the Misfits, Corrosion of Conformity, D.R.I., Sun Ra, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and so much more.

I may not listen to most of the punk now but it set me on the path of following one’s own unique vision and Miss Massive Snowflake is definitely unique. Who else has band members who are from 4-44 years of age and with some on the Autism Spectrum. We are a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-gender, multi-sexual amalgamation of artists, friends, and family members who want to show the world that love, trust, hope, family, friendship, laughter, beauty, and song are so much more powerful than Marshall stacks with loud guitars played by people singing of pain, isolation, and disenchantment.

I now sign out of today’s journal with a large hug for you and yours. I hope that you continue to read these thoughts, memoirs, and happenings of Miss Massive Snowflake as we travel through Europe. Don’t forget to smile at a stranger, kiss the ones you love, and if you can, please end the war.

Links:
Miss Massive SnowflakeSpace

Photo of the Golden Bears Cory and Kai courtesy of MMS