NEWS FROM HAPPY TOM - TURB INTO AMERICA!! New York, New York! We played at a very corporate venue named after Nokia, the Finn who invented the cell phone and Nightwish, SMACK DAB in the middle of Times Square and hey you know what the best part was that they showed moving images of us on a huge screen right there on Broadway!!! First junior college, then psychiatry and now Broadway!!! This deathpunk thing has been very good to us. We are joined by the great sounding powertrio Year Long Disaster, very cool dudes with a great vibe. The crowd was fun, especially The Dolan Brothers of Hoboken who opened a MAJOR can of whoop-ass on some kid who kept annoying them, NJHC IN DA HOUSE! The sweet people at The Motor City had a great after-show party for us, thanks Angie! Donald Trump's daughter whatshername showed up, I like a lot. Like father like daughter: her dad has a toupèe, she has the breast version of a toupèe HAHAHA (not a mattress of hair on her tits but fake tits). Then it was off to Washington DC, to play at the Black Cat, Dave Grohl's suave rock dive. The heat keeps following us (not as hepcat lingo "the heat"; i.e. cops, but actual heat). This would be our first show without Rune, as he had to fuck off back to Norway for three days to attend a business seminar at work. Pål pranced as only he knows how to do across to stage left and played guitar for the entire set, it sounded great, we almost sounded like a proper band HAHAHA. Hank told the crowd that Rune had died in his bunk on the bus that night from "a lethal cocktail of vomit and cancer", and that his last words were "tell...them (the audience)...to buy...more shirts..." and something about how he wanted the good-looking girls there that night to come backstage and suck our cocks after the show. Some people didn't get it and actually started crying! Knut was the man of the moment and saved the day by reminding them that "Hey, come on you guys, he was really OLD anyways!" We are Norwegian NIHILISTS, never forget that, please. It was classic. Ian MacKaye was nowhere in sight, as usual. WHY? Neither was his brother Alec. Does anybody remember that Faith/Void split-12"? That was the SHIT, people. Day off in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We sleep like motherfuckers. I have to go to the hospital for bronchitis, thanks to the AC on the bus. Thanks ALOT, mr. technology. The next day we play at a funny place the looks like a chicken shack. It was moist and Southern in a sexy, tarantino-esque way, which suits us just fine. I could bring up the Blues Brothers-at-the-c&w joint-with-the-chicken-wired-stage analogy here but I choose not too. The Appalachians eat it up! Southern hospitality + Northern hostility equals YUMMY YUMMY. Oh, I shall never forget, I promise. Good times. Atlanta, Georgia is one sweet town! We play at The Dome just across the highway from the yuppie mall, a bunch of fights break out in the crowd and our buddies in Mastodon show up for good times, after that we go to the Turbojugend party at the discoteque next door and pose for a bunch of pictures w/ beer in exchange for beer. We drive into the Southern night gobbling local peanuts. We hit New Orleans like a Katrina of denim and brew! Nick "rides with us" in our bus and we get up in the morning to watch miles and miles of destroyed city, it's insane and spooky, it looks like Godzilla went there for spring break (SPRING BREAK FOREVER DUDE!) with the other destructo monsters in his frat. Some environmentally conscious and very wise person pissed in a Gatorade bottle and put it in the fridge of the bus, and as we are staring at the destruction rolling by I take a big sip and instantly start puking, so there I am, cruising through George Romero's cityscape, vomiting. Nick shakes his head at the sheer horror of it all. "Why did my eyes have to see this?" he says, as he tears out his eyeballs, throws them on the floor and starts stomping all over them before he shoves them back into his skull, bad bad eyeballs, they had that coming to them. To compensate for this we go to the empty Hustler club on Bourbon Street where we take turns at the pole. We play a fun show at a intensely cool ancient voodoo-ish vaudeville place. After the show we take turns raping this stupid Norwegian artist woman who stumbled drunk around on stage and nearly ruined it for everyone, while we listen to gang rape music (Limp Bizkit and Maroon Five), pretty hot stuff. WE WISH. Just kidding, relax, you party POOPERS. Speaking of hot, the next day the heat in Dallas makes our brains melt, so we just know that it's gonna be another great night in our favorite state Texas! Tomas Dahl The Substitute Drummer turns 30, so we all have a fancy-ass dinner across the street from the club at a swanky gourmet place, mmmmm...tastes good. Some of you already know Tomas from his drumming in The Vikings with Knut and me back in 95 ("Good Head" was written for and about him!), he has also done backing vocals on our last three albums and recently went to Japan with his very own very great powerpop quartet Caddy, in which he sings and plays guitar. Tomas is a songwriting genius and an instrumentalist of vast prowess who single-handedly saved our tour with his powerful and classically elegant drumming after Chris injured his ankle, THANKS TOMAS! I would recommend ANYONE with the faintest interest in great music to check out the Caddy record asafuckingp. Austin is – as ALWAYS – a sweet stop on the way westward and oboy is Emo's a great venue or WHAT! TJ Austin is out in full force, we have ribs at Stubb's and my cousin Kim who I haven't seen since I was a little kid shows up from Corpus Christi with her daughter Samantha and Samantha's boyfriend Ryan, we top off the night with a few mellow seltzer beers at a hipster bar down the street where the TJ are celebrating, SKÅL. We have a day off in El Paso, an extremely unhappening town. We sleep and walk across the bridge to Mexico to buy Viagra (not that we need it HOHOHO) and end up at a bar where Hank entertains the locals with dancing and heartfelt ballads about his heroes "los narcotraficantes", it's pretty fucking rad. Tomas IS a Ghostbuster and interviews the staff at our hotel about The Little Boy; a lot of people spend the night on the couch in the lobby after waking up after half an hour of slumbering with a little boy ghost next to them in bed. Wouldn't it be a much better world if NAMBLA could molest the little ghost boys instead of the living ones, ONE MIGHT PONDER. Consider it a suggestion from "downstairs". Across the desert to Phoenix to play an all-ages show, we don't hate the kids anymore. Next door is Alice Cooper's restaurant, which turns out to be a big-screen tv sports bar full of real estate agents and anti-abortion dads who jerk off to pornography full of women who have aborted. Hey mister casual friday: if you're so against abortion stop acting like you should have BEEN ONE YOURSELF. Let me abort you. I write a poem about Phoenix, called "Oh, Phoenix": Oh, Phoenix That's Corinthian for "penis" From ashes rise ...hotter than hell Oh, Scottsdale Where the clerks of Ceasar go to die Because the dry air keeps them alive yet one more day ...blood clouds the pool SKÅL! San Diego, California! We are HOME! Vestal send a limo to take us to their office. We stop at Volcom and bankrupt them, as usual, then we turn back to the venue, stopping only for a classy meal at a restaurant that belongs to a Denny. The limo sputters to a stop on the shoulder of the freeway and the driver (who looks like Stevie Nicks approximately 1986) turns around and says "At this point, my advice would be...TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE CAR!" We do as advised as smoke bellows out of the engine, standing by the road like retarded monkeys stranded in nowhere. The sheer drama of it all, it's too much. The little glamour we are afforded is taken away from us so suddenly, it makes you think about life and how fragile it is. We are not unlike the feather-like turd set adrift in the winds of a violent storm. Should write a song about it. Off to Los Angeles to play at a festival downtown by the court building, several of our famous friends show up but the highlight is of course meeting Don Bolles, who looks just like he looked 28 years ago. Now that's LA for you. A lot of people in this town bleach their anuses (ani?); they aryanize their assholes, so to speak. I go to the Turbojugend Rad Dudes party in Pasadena, very sweet (free beer). The next day we get to play at the Henry Fonda ("Hanoi Henry"), one of our all-time favorite venues. Wee Man does a cameo as mini-me, made up to look like H.I.V. Man HAHAHAHA. It is apparent that our LA shows have turned into major social and sexual events. That's hot. We celebrate Brian O'Connor's (the yeti looking early man in Eagles Of Death Metal) birthday, he turns 78. San Francisco opens its golden gate and is full of sailors, it's Fleet Week! We do two shows in one night at Slim's, the final one is interrupted when the barricade breaks and almost chops off the legs of some of the security dudes, whoa nelly, this is one wild-ass crowd! Jello and Blag join us for "Life Of Crime" before we drive into the night for a stopover in Bend, Oregon to rest and shoot guns with my brother. We are especially impressed by his Israeli one, the "Desert Eagle" which spews fire and vengeance LAMF. Our tour manager Dean goes on a killing spree against a beer ("lager") can in the woods. The Brits, man, give them a gun and they start oppressing everything in sight, it never fails. Seattle is always fun. And rainy. We spend the day sleeping, smelling the fish market and shopping for books. Our EXTREME SPORT buddy Ranquet takes us for dinner and we go shopping for sunglasses. The show is great and Eddie Spaghetti brings his awesome kid Quatro, who has turned into our mascot. Vancouver, holy cow! Must be the prettiest city in the world. This is what people in Oslo THINK Oslo looks like, damn fools. Some guy gives us a pizza box full of pot as we get off the bus, right next to some real Royal Canadian Mounties. Shad Jak takes Tomas and me sightseeing, the better you look the more you see, as we all know. We go to PDs Hot Shop where I buy a bikini and a bicycle, you never know when you might need them. The show is very nice, at a great venue with 2.000 canadians on a bouncing (no shit) floor. Nick somehow makes it across the border and him and his boys play a great show once again. Portland, the final show of the tour. We dedicate Fuck The World to our late great friend and mentor Pig Champion and feel the darkness throughout the city, it is magic and seriously touching. Sometime during load-out some "fan" (probably one of many junkies in this fucked-up city) sneaks back and steals Euroboy's officer's cap and my entire wardrobe, including my Jak's Team colours vest and my age old Turbojugend Follo jacket, thanks a lot. We go to a pretty lame go-go bar and then to a cool bar with some TJ and finally to Taco Bell with Thee Slayer Hippie before we wake up the next day and as we board the plane post-ejaculation depression sets in. What a tour. WHAT A TOUR. Thanks to the crew: Jerry, Rocky, Lars, Laura and Dean, hope we get the chance to exploit you guys again very soon. Thanks to Mondo Generator and Year Long Disaster, and to Vans, Vestal and Volcom. Last but not least thanks to TJ USA and TJ Canada for bringing the noise. Dear America, we kicked your ass, you licked our ass, let's call it even. Thank you. NEWS FROM HAPPY TOM - TURB INTO AMERICA!! Hey guyth! How are you? After a non-eventful flight from Oslo via Frankfurt (except this one ol' geezer who had a heart attack) on Tuesday we hit The Windy City where it BLOWS alot and turned it all around to something positive by playing a good, fun opening night with the awesome Mondo Generator at the Metro the following night. There was a so-called "baseball game" across the street at a Wrigley Field, a team called the Chubs playing against another team called the Packers Of Dolphins. Alas there was no hooliganism involved, only fat people sucking on hot dogs, placidly. Great aftershow party at The Liars Club, it was electric. People in Chicago drink alot due to their Irish-German-Lithuanian genes. They drink to forget about the tragic fates of their ancestors. Rather successfully, I may add. The next day was Detroit, also known as Automobile Town. The club was called Small's and was small as hell. The Midwest in late September is very hot and humid, like an eager vagina in the industrial zone. The next day we were still in the vagina; Cleveland, Ohio. We went to the Rock'n'roll Hall Of Fame and looked at capes and hats, some of them looked familiar. We played at The Grog Shop for their 15th anniversary, and the consumers went bananers! Then it was off to Canada, America's little brother. Toronto treated us like royalty, but Nick was stopped at the border so no Mondo Generator tonight. Such are the wages of SIN, Nick. Journey into the center of the night, also known as the Homo Vilagge of Montreal, rainbows galore, where we did laundry, smoked cigarettes and inhaled amyl nitrates with the locals. Just a typical Sunday, so to speak. Tonight is Boston, which is not much of a college town anyway, so we do not feel entirely at home. Hope the blind guy from Mission Of Burma shows up, that would be awesome. It is hot again, like Hell. NEWS FROM HAPPY TOM - HAVE DENIM, WILL TRAVEL What a summer! Hot, crazy nights. Tropical rhythms. Sweat. Snakes. Big fires. War. Vampires. Cancer. AIDS? Ah, the spoils of youth (the youth, man, love 'em, skål). Hey amigos, festivals are like hemorrhoids: sooner or later, every asshole has one. They are everywhere and so are we and it ain't over yet! We've done every one between Hultsfred, Quart, Download and Wacken, and Pukkelpop, Lowlands, Reading and Leeds are coming up before we curve starboard across the Atlantic to penetrate (sexual/sexy metaphor) USA, starting with Chicago on September 19 (with a detour to Canada, America's sailor cap). What the fuck! We wrap up in Seattle a good three and a half weeks later, head back to Santa's factory (Norway, NOT Finland) to put in 16 hour shifts before we hit the sport arenas of Europe with Marilyn Manson (the son of Charles Manson and Marilyn Monroe) for a month! Phew, we ARE show biz and you people love it! Retox is now out in the US this week, and remember; downloading it is like jerking off to third-grade internet porn, but buying it is like having the entire band (including Rune) come to your house for some heavy petting. Besides, if you do download it we will send Lars Ulrich over to curse at your crotch in Danish. Mental note to self: drink 270 beers. Later, DAWGS! "Meng. Ey meng. Chit meng." (Tony Montana) NEWS FROM HAPPY TOM!! "Ladies and gentlemen, germs and Germans! Retox hit the shelves of Scandinavia LAMF! and we like when that happens. Today we got the Norwegian Gold Record trophee and also hit number 3 on the Swedish album chart only beat by their national hero Per Gessle and some blind guys called The Traveling Wilburys who are flogging their dead horse by releasing a greatest hits album and by that RUINING our chance of a number one position. It fucken SUCKS man. These cripples beat us at it in Norway too, landing us a second place. We WILL bury the wilburys, mark my words. Hey! I'm throwing a fucking TANTRUM over here! We did a small club tour of Germany, Belgium and Holland and nearly destroyed the infrastructure, pretty cool, you know. We also played London (with our new favorite brothers-in-arms&beards Valient Thorr!) and had a great show at the Download Festival. We also did some Norwegian shows just to show people that we have not "forgotten where we came from". Don't be fooled by the cocks that we've got, we're still Turbo from the block, aiiight? Today there was YET another "scandal" in the Norwegian daily press about how much booze we demand from local concert promoters. HELLO? CAN A MOTHERFUCKER LIVE A LITTLE? Jeezus CHRIST. The asylum has been taken over by the insane! Norwegian media is the CABARET OF THE RETARDED. Which is kinda cool, actually. Håkon Moslet is currently wrapping up his extensive work on "The Saga Of The Denim People", the authorized Turbo biography due out in Norwegian in September on Gyldendal Publishers. So you better start taking Norwegian classes if you want the LOW DOWN & DIRTY on us wild and crazy guyz. Those who have seen the primary script claim that it is the most negative text they have ever seen. Poor eyeballs. Poor, poor eyeballs. Keep them peeled, though. This summer will be festivalville BIG TIME, before we head across the Atlantic for a RAD tour of North America in September. After that, it's Euro time and then sometime after that Australia and Japan. Stay tuned for global fun." - Happy-Tom   TURBONEGRO © 2008