This article appeared in the October issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.In the fall of 2004, I joined Bloc Party as the band toured from London to Lille to Amsterdam, opening for Interpol. To me, a rookie music hack at the time, and compared with Bloc Party, a troupe of shy nerds who'd yet to drop its debut LP, Interpol seemed like a bunch of seasoned rock sophisticates. So when the NYC band suggested we take mushrooms after the show in Amsterdam—because last time Interpol saw Nietzsche's face on the wall of a club toilet—we all agreed. Far too much peculiar shit went down that evening to recount here, including a failed foursome and me spending a good 40 minutes watching someone remove an iron from its stand and then put it back again. Suffice to say, I didn't fare very well. Super high and keenly aware that I was supposed to be observing and remembering everything for my story, my inexperience as a reporter, paired with hallucinogens, instead had me clammy and trapped in my silence. Actually everyone seemed pallid and sweaty that night.Eventually, Interpol's guitarist noticed I was panicking as his keyboardist stream-of-consciousness-ed in my face, so he took me on a 4 AM walk. We got lost in all 120 acres of the Vondelpark for three hours—an experience that bonds us to this day. I have no idea what Bloc Party got up to during that time, but at some point, wandering the streets between the hotel, and the park, and the club in search of Nietzsche, I found this pin, rusted and squashed into the dirt on the edge of the sidewalk. It summed up the weirdness of that night perfectly.This article appeared in the October issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.
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