Between the time after recording the tracks for the still as of yet, unnamed album (at that point) and before I left for Denmark, there was still plenty to do, like, name the album, come up with a name for a tour, get the tour dates, plan a budget, figure out what to bring with, figure out what I can actually take with and so and so forth. Correspondence with Pedro via text, Skype and email was almost a daily routine at this point, but since Pedro, Mule & Marks were taking care of the tour dates and the other tour related stuff-the only thing we had to settle on as a whole, was a name for the album and the tour, the actual recorded tracks, which were sent back and forth and writing the liner notes for the record which was left up to me. On or about March 7, I finished writing the liner notes for the record, which we at this point decided was going to be called Safari Freakshow Adventure.
Here is the original liner notes I wrote for the album---before they were edited…
2009 was supposed to be my year, top of my game-then my world fell apart. That fall, I decided I wanted to do something totally brand new and so I strung together what I dubbed as my own punk opera; my own life story, as it relates to my own mental illness: clinical depression.
We arranged a date at two venues; Swing State! In Lake Villa, Illinois, while they managed to arrange a Denmark TV studio. The date we set was February 6, a Saturday night at preciously midnight. For Clean Boys it would be at 7 am. From there, everything seemed fine as wine, until January 2, 2010, when a fire broke out at Swing State! My venue was in limbo for some weeks, so I shopped around for another place to perform/record. Meantime, Pedro told me not to worry, as I began to chant that this date was cursed. I soon secured another date through the mistaken kindness of another friend, only to be kicked out a week later, for what he deemed us, meaning me and Clean Boys as too weird, even for his eclectic tastes. I wrote at least half-a-dozen proposals, all to have them turned down flat.
Nearly a week before, our show, Swing State! looked promising, as they had re-opened their doors for business once again and I felt a great sense of relief. And, like me, Clean Boys were handed a pink slip from the Denmark TV studio, who for all intensive purposes, backed out on them without explanation and they themselves, had to resort back to their own rehearsal space.
The record itself was recorded over Skype, a free downloadable telephone software program, plus two computers on both ends. I had a both a sound engineer, Popz (Dan Lee) and an events coordinator, Hugh Kennedy on my end and they had approximately five technicians, which included the other two Clean Boys, Andrej Marks, bassist and Jacob Mule Nansen, drums.
At sound check, that’s when all hell broke loose! The Clean Boys, who kept telling me to use two computers, one to receive and one to monitor sound/performance, throughout the time leading up to our live recording session, had the unfortunate luck of having their internet system crash, leaving them in a bind! I found that too humorous because we all expected my side to crash and the technicians at Swing State! managed to hold it all together!
By the time all was said and done, we recorded the album, with about nine people left in the whole of Swing State! I packed my car up, got some food before I hit the highway, tanked up at an interstate oasis and arrived home at 3:30 am. Now, if I was told nearly a year ago that I would end up making a record with a Danish punk band and ended up going over to tour with them, I would have said, “Yeah right!” But here it is, for your very ears to feast upon, my record w/Clean Boys.
Sid Yiddish, March 6, 2010
Pedro for the past several months had been calling our collaborations a sort of freakshow and one night, as I had come back from a routine pick-up from a local Freecycle group member, picking up a child’s flashlight, on the side of the flashlight had imprinted the words, Safari Adventure. I inserted Pedro’s phrase and viola! It made total sense: Safari Freakshow Adventure. The four of us had at last agreed on something that would represent us, perhaps in the light (pun intended) that we were supposed to have shine down on us in the first place.
Mule and I had been calling each other over Skype and we both had pretty long talks that would last well into the night. They had been doing their research on me and I did my research on them, so overall, I felt there was an even-keel pace to continue checking each other out.
But with different countries come different complications and it was perhaps one of the more usual complications of the entire trip. Back in December of 2009, I had stepped into Andy’s Music, a local instrument shop located in Chicago and while looking at instruments, I had struck up a conversation with one of the employees, who told me, that I would most likely need a permit to carry my shofar overseas, since it was a genuine animal horn and according to some, animal parts carried disease and without it I might be sunk.
So, I decided to contact the locale Danish consulate in Chicago and ask them. I made an inquiry and lo and behold, they had no clue and suggested I try the Washington, DC consulate. When I called the DC consulate and posed the same question to them, no one there knew and after prodding them for a bit, they gave me the email address of a Danish veterinarian, who he himself didn’t have a clue and then suggested I write to someone at the top Danish animal behavior school in within the country itself. In the meantime, I posted ads on Jewish-Danish forums with the same sort of questions, but to little or no avail. I was getting nervous, afraid my prize shofar would be confiscated when I entered the country.
Also by this time, the final rough mixes had been edited down and put in their proper place on the record, the photos for the album, including the CD label, liner notes and proper credits that would morph into the CD booklet and tour poster had been settled on, as well as final preparations for the tour itself, including the four writing workshops which I was prepared to teach, were finally in place!
With only six days to go an email arrived from Lone Henninger, a veterinarian from a Danish university in Ringsted, which was located about 35 minutes outside of Copenhagen, read in full, effectively giving me permission to carry a shofar with me. By then, I decided to play it safe and I purchased three additional shofar s that I could easily transport and keep well hidden in the event something happened.
But then of course, nothing prepared the four of us for the ultimate and seemingly final curse that was about to come shortly before I left America and arrive in Denmark.
And I mean nothing!
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