ok, i promise that this journal entry will have nothing to do with sleeplessness or insomnia.
i promise(even though i have been averaging 2 – 3 hours sleep per night for the last week).
you have my word.
after the show tonight in zurich we met up with a bunch of people who make their lives either doing extreme sports or leading tourists on extreme expeditions(whitewater rafting, canyon jumping, etc).
and we met a really nice man named paolo who had just arrived from uganda.
today was paolo’s first time outside of uganda, and he seemed a bit freaked out by being in such a foreign environment.
i have a feeling that if i were spending my days white water rafting and kayaking and canyon jumping that i probably wouldn’t suffer from insomnia(ok, i broke my promise, i mentioned my sleep problems…sorry).
now we’re heading to geneva and then st petersburg and then moscow and then kiev and then prague and then warsaw and then riga and then paris and then dublin and then paris again and then london and then greece and then…home?
today was the official 1/2 way point of the european tour.
i like touring, but i’m looking forward to being at home at some point.
maybe i’ll be able to go upstate and swim and ride bikes and run around outside.
i think i would like that.
moby

just arrived in barcelona.
had a 15 hour bus ride.
and…here’s the big news…i actually got more than 2 hours sleep!
i know, it’s very exciting.
i think i’ll celebrate with a big cup of coffee.
and we played scrabble on the bus and i lost twice.
once again, rock and roll touring at it’s finest.
the show in vienna was fun.
the show in bologna was fun.
the show in munich was fun.
the shows, overall, have been fun.
and ‘honey’ keeps getting longer and weirder.
i think that in vienna we did a version of ‘honey’ that
was around 15 minutes long.
thank you for letting us play weird versions
of songs that go on for a long, long time.
and we’re working on finalizing the time/place/date/etc
for the december boardies/acoustic/disco night.
thanks,
moby

ok, i know that some of you might still be laboring under the misconception that there is something glamorous about touring.
to preface this small story let me say that i enjoy touring.
i enjoy playing music.
i enjoy hanging out with the people with whom i work.
i enjoy seeing new things.
but there really isn’t much that’s glamorous about touring.
this morning, for example, we woke up in an underground car-park in birmingham.
we had driven overnight from manchester and, as we usually do, we parked up outside of the venue while we were all still asleep(this is actually nicer than waking up at 7 a.m and going into a hotel). today, though, in order to park up outside of the venue we had to park in the basement of an underground car-park, as that’s what was outside of the venue.
if you’ve never woken up underground in the basement of a car-park then you don’t know just how odd it is to wake up and look outside and see concrete and have no idea what the weather might be or whether or not the world might have ceased to exist and somehow you’ve been spared the cataclysm but the price that you must pay is to live underground in a network of concrete car-parks kind of like the omega man.
it’s odd.
and again, just to clarify, i’m not complaining.
i’m glad that i can now add ‘woken up in an old underground car park’ to my list of lifetime experiences.
tonights show was fun. apart from the upcoming luxembourg show, tonights show, birmingham, is/was the smallest show on this european leg of the tour.
we call different sections of tours ‘legs’.
and as this tour has many legs it could be conceived more like an arachnid.
i’ve posted a picture of the underground car park where we slept last night so that you can share in the unrelenting glamour of the rock and roll touring lifestyle.

-moby

so after 4 months of travelling around and talking about
‘hotel’, i now get to go out and begin the concert tour.
at present it looks as if the tour will go until december,
which is, suffice it to say, a long time.
so now i leave new york(after being home for 3 days)and the sun is shining and it’s warm and i’m excited to actually be playing music instead of just talking about music(and myself, being a narcissist and whatnot).
ok, time to get on the train(literally, although the ‘touring train’ would be an apt, if overly used, metaphor).
see you later,
moby

in kansas city now.
and there are many things that i love about touring.
i love performing.
i love travelling around the world with my friends.
i love truck stops at 3 in the morning.
i love reading books in my dressing room.
and many other things.

but what i don’t love is sleeping on a tour bus.our tour bus is very comfortable. it’s a very nice bus. but i have never, not once, in my entire life had a good nights sleep on a tour bus. and for some reason last night was particularly bumpy. so there’s me, being bounced around in my bed with my eyes wide open just hoping that maybe my brain and body will let me sleep.
alas, no.
but i shan’t complain.
i like touring.
i would just like it more if at some point while on tour i actually had a good nights sleep.

i remember doing an interview during the ‘play’ tour and someone asked me when i had last had a good nights sleep. and my honest answer was, ‘well, i think i slept for 5 hours in a hotel a few months ago…’
ok, no more whining.

i really enjoyed our first show last night.
thanks for coming, everybody.
moby

and yes, i’m in my hotel room in london and it’s 3 a.m and i’m awake and my room is a fucking pigsty and, and, so there.
i was given a bag of 200 cd booklets to sign, but the record company failed to include a magic marker. so i will sign them with my teeth.

so let’s talk about touring.
yes, area2 will be fairly short this year. but i will be going just about everywhere that area2 doesn’t go. so those of you in texas, florida, etc, please be aware that i will be visiting you on my own. which might be small comfort seeing as area2 won’t be coming to your neck of the woods, but i shall be there, god willing.
at some point in the next month or so we’ll be posting my other north american tour dates. and i believe that we’ll be announcing my 2002 european tour dates any day now.
personally i want to go everywhere. but there are a lot of everywheres in the world, so i can’t go everywhere. but i can try.

touring. it’s been a while since i’ve slept on a tour bus and woken up in parking lots. what the fuck is wrong with me that i’m actually looking forward to peeing in truck stops and waking up in parking lots and eating hot food from a bus microwave? am i so white trash that i actually like living on the road? yes. it’s true. in fact, one of my favourite things is to be touring in the states in the summertime and to stop at a southern truck stop at 4 a.m in august and stand on the tarmac and feel the heat radiating up and listen to the cicadas and the diesel engines.
one thing that i will say about the good old u.s of a, our truck stops kick ass.
i love europe, but european truck stops are kind of wimpy compared to american truck stops. although european truck stops usually have better stuffed animals.
i have no idea why that is.
but american truck stops (the very big ones) are like weird cities for diesel dinosaurs.

oh, yeah, touring.
the plan is to be on tour for a very long time. so hopefully i’ll be able to visit each and every one of you.
now i’m off to brussels. or bruxxeles. is that how it’s spelled? it looks much cooler like that. in fact i believe that henceforth i shall spell it ‘bruxxelexxexx’. more places should have names with ‘x’s in them. like ‘parix’ or ‘los angelexxx’ or ‘xan franxixco’ yes. being alone for too long in a hotel room does adversely affect me.
why, can you tell? ‘go crazy? don’t mind if i do.'(homer to marge in little treehouse of horrors iv).
-moby