A Barking Dog

The culture of waiting in lines, or queing or “on line” as it’s called by some, is vastly different in each part of the world. In the US it’s mostly docile with a sort of unspoken social contract. In some other parts of the world, Western Europe for example how one waits in a line is even more of an indicator of how behaves or is adjusted on a general level. In the former eastern bloc, it’s a whole different story. I disembarked from a fairly lengthy flight feeling beat to hell. Sore back, sinus issues and dog tired. We were met by a gate agent and interpreter and were told we were to be “Elvised” through immigration and customs. Elvising is the term used by some roadie types for getting preferential treatment in getting through without having to wait with everyone else. As our entire flight exited past us, it was determined that only the “VIPs” as they were called, were going to get Elvised. The guy doing the Elvising was quite an asshole, barking orders, pushy. I don’t think that anyone was in the mood to deal with him. The guy had become a buttplug in the asshole of progress. After his change of direction on who to take through, it meant we all had to stand in the line from hell to clear immigration. Not only that, but it was a Russian line.

Waiting in line in Russia, be it the metro, airport, whatever is largely a form of human sized chess. Nearly aggressive in most cases, clearly aggresive in some cases. It works like this, if you are waiting in line and don’t fit right exactly behind the next person, someone will fill that space. It’s a lot like driving in rush hour traffic where is you leave a gap, someone will fill it. It’s a weird sort of comparision, as over here we respect the personal space while waiting in line and not when driving and over there it’s mostly a free for all. Except for the very well to do, these people have spent the better part of their lives waiting in line for one thing or another. During the Soviet era waiting for everyday goods was common, today it’s for the metro or just getting from place to place.

Normally when one is entering a country to gig, you need a work permit. In the afformentioned email from talent producer dude he stated that we were traveling on tourist visas because “it was easier that way”. The gov knew why were were there, where we were going to be but thought it easier to enter as tourists. The staff of guitar player that sits didn’t exactly like that. In most countries where you come in to work they won’t let you in without proper work authorization. Here we were told to indicate on the landing card that we were entering as tourists, we had tourist visas and those meeting us at the airport were government employees and the gig was in a state operated venue that was basically the venue the Kremlin uses, the Russia Theater. In some other countries, I might have been concerned. In Russia though, they know why were are here and likely might not have admitted us otherwise. Other than the line, clearing passport control was easy.

I cleared immigration well ahead of the rest of the party by working the line like the locals were, a few times passing the same guy who finally resigned to giving up the spot, but not before his wife snaked in about five ahead of both of us. I suppose it’s like auto racing in that regard, if the leaders are fighting it out for position they might be passed by someone from behind them in the field. Total wait to clear immigration, about 80 mins. I headed to recover my luggage and start on the 10 pieces of gear we carry. Another 20 mins or so and I was joined by the rest of the party, recovered the luggage and gear and had met one of our interpreters, Tatiana. One in our party, our backliner, was delayed leaving The Emerald City for LAX and barely made the flight. Had I not moved to Bright Light City last year, that would have been me too. The amount of paperwork and redtape was astounding. Brownie would have been proud. The gal behind the desk, well, I think it was a gal, she was wearing a dress was a stereotypical old school Soviet era bureaucrat. Complete with the hairdo and attitude to match. At one point he made a mistake in the paperwork. She looked him in the eye, ripped the form to shreds saying “this no good for me, you make mistake”. What’s interesting is that the baggage claim process is dated about 20 years but the software running the facial recognition and passport control entry process is state of the art. All about priorities, I guess.

We were hoping to make it into the city to catch a bit of nightlife. I knew that the Bolshoi was doing a special presentation of Don Quiote that night. No way in hell would we make it now. Between getting the carnet stamped and backliner losing his luggage, we were delayed about three hours total. They only had one bus coming for nearly 30 of us. How the hell did the party get so big? Well, we had us, six pieces of muso plus four crew, myself, backliner, my longtime pal at the other end of the snake, and Jose, our tour manager. Jose (spanish for his real name) is one of the best tour managers I’ve worked with. He started as a lighting guy (and I don’t hold that against him) but he’s the kind of guy you want in charge when the shit hits the fan.

As we all made it out to the bus, there were several others we did not recognise. And they were pretty surley. Not that I cared. It turns out that the surley musos were part of the 14 piece high priced cover band that we were sharing the bill with. A few of them were just plain assholes. The leader of the cover band the key members were pretty cool, but there were a couple of shitheads in the group. As we made our way to the bus loading area, a particular dickhead started to be particularly loud. He clearly was out of his element. As well gathered in the bus boarding area, he and his companion started loudly “questioning” what we were doing there. There was a coach parked where we gathered, but it wasn’t ours. He and his companion started in on the driver. Jose, myself and our backliner corrected him that it wasn’t our bus and I stated he really wasn’t in a position to know what was happening. I said this because, well, he was sans clue. The handler wrangled our bus to the boarding zone and we got on. Loud cover band guy was holding up our boarding by trying to get his three bags together in one bay. We had to break the news to him that we had about 20 bags and when we hit the Grand Hotel in Moscow, the porters would separate his bags anyway. Again, another buttplug in the asshole of progress. The ride to the hotel was interesting. We could tell they were a club band. Just prior to our landing, Jose quietly gathered our passports and those of guitar player that sits band and planned to exit quickly, first off the bus to check us in. We would wrangle our luggage while Jose checked us into the hotel. It worked like gang busters. We had our key packets while cover band was floundering in check in hell. That’s karma, babe.

We discussed getting some dinner, but it was 2130 and we had a production meeting on site at 2300. We thought that we might delay it until the next morning, but we were informed that the crew would be living at the gig for the next three days. That has to suck. But they seemed to be OK with it. We decided not to have meal together and I had a 20 euro cheese burger from room service . With frites and a Coke. In about an hour we’d see exactly what kind of gig we had.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 3:50 am and is filed under Moscow 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.