Duggie's travel report special - Heavy Metal in Latvia

Travel report by Duggie Chop (and Mr Stickleback):

Heavy metal in Latvia is a kind of way of life – even more than the UK (or Germany…) I visited ‘Depo’, a club in Riga, Latvia’a capital and was totally spaced out by the sounds resonating from this basement venue. [Less of the purple prose, Dugg]

(“Nah”, said Mr Stickleback, “I reckon he handled that ok Mr Writerman.”)

[Ok, I’ll let him off…]

Can I continue? Says Duggie Chop to these two invisible critics.

(Mr Stickleback: “Of course!”)

[Steve the writer: “Yes”]

Thanks. As I was saying, at Depo a wild mix of sounds resonated from the basement, on comment I read on the web said: “a musical programme that makes the Glastonbury line-up look like a commercial hit parade” combined with: “Decor consisting solely of broken furniture and black paint, toilets graffitied with sexual obscenities (in various languages).”

Yeah that sums it up. However, on the night I visited, there was no Heavy Metal, just some crap guy playing records…loud [you mean a DJ, Dugg]

I left by the side door, passing a couple of geezers throwing up this spirit drink that you had to keep in the fridge. One of them was leaning against a scantily clad…[censored!] Hey, don’t censor me – I was about to say scantily clad police officer, who had placed his warm winter cloak over the body of a large dog that had just been knocked down by a drunken driver! [blimey, me and my imagination!]

This bloke wearing Viking garb tapped me on the shoulder, “Svieks,” he said (“That’s Latvian for ‘Hello’, informally,” Mr Stickleback) “es esmu Edgars…” Hey, said Duggie at this point. I dunno what yer on about pal, but I’m not liking your Viking garb…

“Piedodiet (“that means ‘sorry’” Mr S) My name is Edgars, I can help you discover what is good about the heavy metal in this town.”

He took me to another bar, a broken down hole full of bearded weirdos and we drunk some strong shots of something and he told me more….

To be continued….

Report from Mr Stickleback:

Being a fish, I can’t frequent human bars, so I had to content myself with exploring the waterways of old Latvia. There’s like 1200 rivers in the place. I was swimming down the Daugava, through the Hydroelectric dams and other Soviet era architecture. Couldn’t understand a word of what the other fish said, except one carp family from the Humber who had decided to winter in Latvia, due to the abundance of a certain type of algae, glowing in the unique pollution of the area.

“snot bad,” they said, devouring another small flotilla of the stuff, “sorta exotic, you know and it’s dead cheap to gerr ‘ere, too”

Dead was a word that immediately can to my mind as I left to make my way towards the Gulf of Riga and the Baltic.

More later. Ta!

Brrrrrrrrrroooogh-fffffffff. Blimey, the dust in here!

[Duggie shakes his head...vigorously, it seems]

"Gerrroffff!" Says his mate, "that's a flamin' snow storm!"

"You saying I've got Dandruff?" says Duggie, and I tell you, he's a large fella.

They start wrestling, like the guys in The Rainbow by Ken Russell (but not naked, too cold for that)

"Hey you two," says the writer, "what do you think you're doing?"

"Ugh?" [they say this collectively]

"Your public are watching..." says the writet.

"But we've been left in this bloody cupboard - along with a load of dancing porcelain figures for months!" says Duggie, spitting out a mouthful of hairy dust and flies.

"...and Duggie's been playing only Tangerine Dream all that time," says his mate.

"What the soundtrack-writing Krautrockers?" says the writer.

"You got it. And he's only using vinyl, Steve didn't give us a CD player when he locked us away..." says Duggie's mate, watching Dug unwrap a Twix, his first in 5 months.

"Mmmmmmmmmn" scrunch, scrunch, "ORRRmmmmmmm" says Duggie, immersed in Twix-dom.

"Alpha Centuri's gotta groove to it, but Zeit. Huh! I had to focus on the crackles on the record, it was weirding me out and no mistake!" said his mate, shaking hands with one of the porcelain dancers.

"Enchanted, my sir," says the dancer, curtsying, "do not say you are leaving us. So soon?"

"So soon," said Duggie's mate, "we've been in here for months!" He quite fancied this dancer, despite her being a 6 inch tall figurine.

"Months! Ha!" she said, "Myself and the troupe have been in here since 1956."

[NOTE: Porcelain timescales have no human comparison]

"mmmScrun...ttt, MMMwe...mmmm..brrr...here... now!" said twix-ed up Duggie.

"Duggie says," says Duggie's mate, "we're back and here to discuss music and other things. To pick up the thread that we dropped sometime ago. To bodly go, where no piece of psychedelic surrealism has gone before..."

[Oi - none of that splittinglyness of the infinitives...even in a paraphrase]

The writer pseaks: "Until next time viewers...I think it's Lativan Heavy metal then. Bet you can't wait."

["nor can I," says Mr Stickleback]