White Flag 2008 Summer Tour of Europe featuring Chips K and Kent
June 2008
THURS 19TH – Rehearsals for the White Flag tour started in Den Helder, Netherlands.
The line-up on this tour was Kent Crimson (That’s Kent’s White Flag name), El Swe (Chips), Pat Fear and Trace Element.
SUN 22ND – The White Flag tour started at ”El Engel” club in Den Helder. Local band Dyson supported. Toine Ramler and Olly Eikelenboom from the band S.U.C. IT joined White Flag on stage for a couple of songs singing and playing bass.
MON 23RD – White Flag supported NoFX at the ”Rockhal” arena in Luxenbourg.
TUES 24TH – White Flag supported NoFX at ”Melkweg” in Amsterdam.
There was a bit of panic for a while since our amplifiers got stuck in traffic. There was no chance that the car would arrive in time foro ur show, but NoFX and the people at Melkweg was very nice to us and helped us getting a new backline together
Kent
WED 25TH – White Flag played at Little Devil in Tilburg, Netherlands. Support band was once again Dyson. And unknown member of the audience got up on stage and sang the Kiss classic ”Deuce”. Toine of Dyson/S.U.C.IT sang the Cheap Trick song ”He’s a whore”
The smallest show of the whole tour. We had a day off so instead of doing nothing we played at this small bar in Tilburg. Lovely place.
Chips
THURS 26TH – White Flag, Adolescents, Reagan Youth at Hof Ter Lo in Antwerpen, Belgium. First show of the White Flag/Adolescents part of the tour.
FRI 27TH – White Flag played at the Ruhrpott Rodeo Festival in Germany. Some of the other bands were Reagan Youth, Adolescents, Angelic Upstarts and the Buzzcocks.
SAT 28TH – Sator played in Motala, Sweden. On this night White Flag played in Bremen with Olly and Toine filling in for El Swe and Kent Crimson.
SUN 29TH – White Flag played in Bielefeld, Germany again with Olly and Toine filling in since Chips and Kent didn’t make it back in time for the show.
We arrived just in time to see the Adolescents. After the show we watched Spain winning the European championship in fotball against Germany.
Chips
MON 30TH – White Flag and Adolescents at Hafenklang in Hamburg.
Chips and Kent took Pat Fear on a ”The Beatles in Hamburg” tour around Reeperbahn checking out the clubs where the mighty Beatles played and lived.
July 2008
TUES 1ST – White Flag, Gigantor and Adolescents at Indigo Glockensee in Hannover. Tony Adolescent sang The Simpletones classic ”I like drugs” and Jay Lansford (original Simpletones member/Gigantor) also joined the White Flag on stage playing guitar.
One of the highlights of the whole tour in my book. I don’t know who came up with the idea but we tried the song at soundcheck twice and then we just did it. We got to play with two of our heroes at the same time.
Chips
Four if we count Pat and Trace.
Kent
I also got the see Gigantor, a band I’ve liked for many years.
Chips
WED 2ND – White Flag and Adolescents at Alte Mältzerei in Regensburg, Germany.
Another contender for the best show of the tour and quite possibly the hottest one! The weather was extremely hot and so humid ! We were sweating oceans every night.
Chips
THURS 3RD – White Flag and Adolescents at Walfisch in Freiburg. The last German show.
A quite small but a cool place. One of the best Adolescents shows with Tony climbing on the bar.
Kent
FRI 4TH – White Flag and Adolescents at Pieffe factory in Gorizia, Italy. The only night on the tour that The Beatles song ”There’s place” was performed. After a request from the audience Kent and Pat performed the whole song accapella.
SAT 5TH – White Flag played at the Dirty Old Festival outside the town of Pozega in Croatia.
There were many great shows on the tour but this was definitely one of the best nights. We had a great time in Croatia. Very nice people.
Kent
The day started out pretty bad. We drove for hours looking at bombed out houses from the war. There are still bullet holes in every building! Quite depressing actually. But when we finally arrived it was great.
Chips
MON 7TH – White Flag and Adolescents at Arena in Wien, Austria.
After spending our ”day-off” driving for 12 hours we finally got to be tourists for a couple of hours. Instead of checking out the sights we all went to an art museum to see a punk exhibition. They had lots of cool stuff like original Sex Pistols ”Destroy” T-shirts and things like that. So our ”day off” from punk was spent on punk anyway.
Chips
TUES 8TH – White Flag and Adolescents at Music House in Graz, Austria. Second and last show in Austria.
WED 9TH – White Flag, The Small Jackets and Adolescents at the Spazio 4 Festival in Piacenza.
I got to see the Small Jackets playing. They worked really hard even when they played so early that most of the audience were still getting in. A great band.
Chips
THURS 10TH – White Flag and Adolescents at Twitty Twister in Cagliari/Selargius, Sardinia. Steve Soto of The Adolescents, Agent Orange… sang ”He’s a whore” with White Flag.
We got to play with another hero this night. I mean he’s been in several of our all time favorite bands. It’s an absolute honour to share the stage with guys like this. We also found out that Steve’s grandmother came from Luleå in Sweden. That makes him even cooler!
Chips
FRI 11TH – White Flag and Adolescents were supposed to play in Torino but the show got cancelled at the the last minute after a rain storm because the stage got drained in water.
All the equipment got totally soaked so it was impossible to play the gig. Hopefully we can come back to Torino one day. I heard that some poor guys came all the way from France to see White Flag.
Kent
Yes it really sucked. We had also travelled a long way for this show but we didn’t want to die on stage. Electricity and water is a bad combination.
Chips
SAT 12TH – White Flag and Adolescents at the Masseria Vacarella festival in Taranto, Italy.
There were many long drives on this tour. We drove all night to get from Torino in the north to Taranto in the south. It was about twelve hours on the highway but it was OK. Our driver Dolores did a great job.
Chips
SUN 13TH – White Flag and Adolescents at the Beer and Bones festival in Palermo, Sicily (after another twelve hour drive).
That’s one of the down sides with touring. You never get any sleep. But you get to see many gas stations and the Italian ones got much better sandwiches than the rest of Europe.
Kent
Another really good show and the food in Sicily is possibly the best in the whole of Italy. We also stayed at a really cool hotel on the beach. You got the feeling that it must have been a really fancy place in the 50’s or in the 60’s. It had that certain kind of worn down elegance.
Chips
MON 14TH – White Flag and Adolescents at Castello Suevo in Costanza, Italy.
This was also a great show. Most of the Italian shows were outdoor. Thank God for that ’cause it was a very hot summer.
Kent
As usual there were some local bands supporting as well. We often didn’t get to see them ’cause they played when we’re checking in at the hotel. But this night I remember that we saw the support bands and they were great but I never knew their names.
Chips
TUES 15TH – White Flag and Adolescents at Init in Rome. Steve Soto once again joined the band on stage singing ”He’s a whore”. Last show for White Flag on this tour. The Adolescents would continue another week on their own. In Germany and the UK.
Our flight home was terribly early so we had to go straight to the airport after the show. We were tired but happy. It had been a great tour. You always get to meet so many nice people. That’s one of the upsides of touring.
Chips
Yes and it was a pleasure to tour with the Adolescents. Great people all of them.
Kent