How I met Charlie Straight

16.2.2012, Prague, Czech Rep.

2012-02-20T06:29:00.002-08:00

Michaela complimented Michael on his "quite nice muscles". Maybe it's because of his brand new shoes! Do you like them?

Sometimes, Paul's a bit upset because he usually plays gigs hidden in the dark. So by this video I'd like to show you that there is really much going on behind Albert at every gig :-)

The Driver

13.3.2012, Bukovec, Czech Rep./Poland

2012-02-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

In this video you can watch Paul getting smoothly ready for the "SWASH Tour". I'd never expect him to be able to ski at all. I know him as a drum- and squash-freak only... Do you guys listen to music when skiing? Our music? :-)

The Driver

Charlie Straight fashion week

2012-02-08T06:24:00.000-08:00

I've seen some posts on our Facebook page, where you ask about the name of Albert's fashion style. You know, most of my life I've remembered him as a skater boy. He wasn't into the hip-hop style really, but... there's development all around us.. you will hear it on our 2nd album anyway :-) Below you can see Albert developing his secret fashion magazine.

And the next picture shows Michael's brand new towel, designed last week in Třinec. Predictably.

The Driver

mostly 3.2.2012, Prague, Czech Rep.

2012-02-05T05:22:00.000-08:00

The Driver

afternoon tea

2012-01-19T15:02:00.000-08:00

I spent more than four hours at Albert's home yesterday (maybe he doesn't know so don't tell him, right?). His mother's so nice, she gave me dinner and very cool dessert - an ice-cream with cold "hot raspberries" - WOW!

But the important thing is that from tomorrow you can buy tickets for our CD release show at Fleda (more info here). It's gonna be the first place on Earth where you can get "Someone With a Slow Heartbeat".

The Driver

14.1.2012, Munich, Germany

2012-01-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

We haven't been on tour for a month or even more, so maybe that's why it was so full of emotions, full of strong and loud heartbeat. On friday, we took part in DAP's dance party. I saw Yemi AD dancing for the second time in my life and I stood and stared in awe again. Paul was also very impressed so he went to Yemi after his amazing performance and said: "Cool, mate! But as a speaker you really suck. You should work on that part a bit more."

Have you heard Albert's sex podcast? I booked the hotel where the act was recorded. :-) Check out the video below!

Only twice in the history of the band, Johnny overslept more then one hour. Always the day after a gig in Munich :-)

The Driver

Thursday evening..

2011-12-30T02:29:00.000-08:00

It's 11pm. In the past 3 hours I had a hamburger, beef soup, 3 slices of bread with bacon, a bar of chocolate and a nice piece of cheese. I'm wondering if there's a reason for me to eat so much, when proper winter is still not about to come.
Somebody's ringing the doorbell. My father goes to the door to check - who the hell has a time-lag? "It's Albert, he wants you to go out," my father said.

I can't even remember the last time somebody visited me without letting me know beforehand. We've got mobile phones these days! What on earth does he want to tell me now...?
So I step out of the house out and he goes: "You know what? Check out my new phone! I can easily post a tweet anytime I want! Isn't it great? The only thing I can't do is to call you and Johnny. Even if I save your number into the contact list, you're not there..haha!" My bacon started to laugh :-)

We've got a challenge for you! Take a photo of yourself celebrating New Year's Eve 2012, wearing our band t-shirt. Post it on our Facebook wall and we will choose the best one. The winner will join the release party of our second CD "Someone with a Slow Heartbeat" , get the CD and have a beer with Paul - everything for free, my dear!

The Driver

17.12.2011, Ostrava, Czech Rep.

2011-12-21T01:45:00.000-08:00

As you can hear in Albert's new podcast (he said he'd make it that way at least), people often tend to have sex next door when we stay in different hotels in Prague. Do you ever have sex listening to our CD? Anyway, we had an almost secret gig in a club called "Klid". We are happy that the old van we'd used before Liv is still alive, although we crossed Poland a couple of times in it...

Check out Paul's backstage painting below!

The Driver

9.12.2011, Rumburk, Czech Rep.

2011-12-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

There are two pictures below. The first shows the room where Michael said that Charlie Straight is more important for him than studying and playing jazz.

Can you guess what's in the second one? That white pipe is supposed to be a watering can.

On our way home Albert enthusiastically read the memories of Keith Richards to me. I remember two inspiring sentences very clearly.

"For many years I slept, on average, twice a week. This means that I have been conscious for at least three lifetimes. And before thse lifetimes, there was my childhood."

"I was born on December 18th 1943. According to my mother, thaht happened during an air raid. I can't argue. All four lips are sealed."

The Driver

26.11.2011, Prague, Czech Rep.

2011-11-28T08:27:00.000-08:00

Hello, everyone! Have you seen the Slavik Awards ceremony? This time I didn't join the band, because I was taking part in a very prestigious volleyball tournament. :-) But in my mind I was them anyway... straight after our Slavik victory, I had quite an I'm-so-into-it phonecall from my grandma and a cool compliment from sweltering Dubai!

Maybe I told you before, but four beds are never enough for four musicians on tour. At least one bed is always missing! I found myself trying to sort this thing out again in Vlachovice...

On the other hand, we had a beautiful morning on Friday.. It's 9:30 am, we're going through the security check at the National Opera Hall in Prague. It's still half an hour 'till our soundcheck starts so we're looking for some breakfast. Bingo! These two pairs of long legs are stuffing the fridge with some delicious baguettes. "Go backstage, guys. We will deliver all this food to your door in a minute," said one of them.

After a while, our hunger is gone, the band do the soundcheck and I'm about listen to the 2nd album by Charlie Straight. Yes! I see myself walking on Cockle Bay Bridge (in Sydney) again. As usual, Dear Jack ends on the first crossroad. I know that I'll be in the office before the guitar solo in Institutions but it doesn"t matter. I listen to it anyway...

A pair of long legs attempted to lock up in our dressing room, but they had to wait 'til my eleven-track-long dream ended. Eleven is more then two. Sorry.

The Driver

15.11.2011, Bratislava, Slovakia

2011-11-20T01:54:00.000-08:00

Who knew about this gig? :-) It was a secret one for about 13 fans and it wasn't an easy job to make it to the gig this time... That day, I was at school in Brno until 6pm. The soundcheck in Bratislava started at 5pm but Michael couldn't leave school in Prague before 5pm!! Does that sound like an impossible schedule to you? We all made it on time, my friends!

The rest of the band came arrived in Bratislava on time, they went from Trinec. Their journey was smooth except that they almost ran out of petrol. Wankers...

Anyway, the biggest challenge was to get Michael from Prague to Bratislava in less than an hour, so that he could do the soundcheck. We're not in the helicopter business yet. The journey from Prague to Blava takes more than that. In fact, Michael didn't even do the soundcheck. We were lucky to have Mates at hand who drove Mr Šupák straight to the venue enjoying a typical one-hour D1 traffic jam and picking me up in Brno.

The gig was supposed to start at 21:45. Michael (the big rock'n'roll star by then, accompanied by his personal driver and tour manager) arrived at 21:43, played a nice set, changed his clothes and went immediately back to Prague...

The Driver

24.10.2011, Biasca, Switzerland

2011-10-31T05:30:00.000-07:00

We're working on the 2nd album!

If you browse in my blog backwards, you will find a song which we're about to record. My blog is the only place where you listen to this song. Enjoy it :-)

The Driver

27.9.2011, Épinal, France

2011-10-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

In a small city, hidden behind a 16-Euro-long tunnel (ka-ching), we spent 3 nights and spent no money at all. It's because we stayed in host families... The lovely French people made us feel at home! Thank you so much...

Maybe you're asking yourself: Why on earth would Charlie Straight go to France? I'm about to explain it all.. There's a French teacher and a big Charlie Straight fan, Mr. Pfeiffer, who came up with this great idea. The children at his school were listening to our songs and translating them in their English lessons. This had probably been going on for weeks when we arrived because in the eyes of youngsters from Epinal, we were already big rock'n'roll stars.

When we entered the school, the walls were literally covered with posters and lovely messages. As we went for lunch to the school canteen, I got scared. The kids outside were screaming "Charlie Straight" while banging on the windows quite hard. I was thinking:" If they get to us, we're dead." Now I wonder how Albert must have felt.

It was all new for us. We didn't expect anything close to this. We came to a place we'd never been before and the names of Albert, Johnny, Paul and Michael were everywhere... Thank you Epinal. We will come again!

Koule.cz Tour is over. There's just two gigs ahead of us 'till the end of November! The band is going to record the second album now and I'm gonna book some clubs and festivals for 2012! Dear fans, remember you make us want to get up every morning even when the sky is grey :-)

The Driver

17.9.2011, Munich, Germany

2011-09-23T01:13:00.000-07:00

The only thing, which is better than having a "Weisswurst" for breakfast, is having "Wagyu beef" for lunch. Maybe not. I'm not sure... If I was forced to pay for both, I would probably know now...

Wanna ask me if i visited the flower shop? I didn't do it for the same reason why we were given the Weisswurst, the Wagyu and why Albert sometimes goes runs through the crowd during the gig..

The Driver

The videoshoot of Coco, 8.9.2011, Třinec, our hometown

2011-09-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

On one hand, there are people who think that shooting a video with Charlie Straight is a step forward for our city. On the other hand, there are some who don't. For example, there's the Třinecké železárny steelworks which gave us a big fire rescue truck to use to get a view from above. Also, we'd like to thank the grandmother of a friend who was happy that we were shooting in her living room.

But imagine this; it's the last day of the shoot and we're all set up at the local railway station. There's a small shop selling flowers next to the main entrance. So we asked the shop keeper if we could move her flowers a few meters so that the camera could pass through. She was like "of course, no problem, just let me know when you need it and I'll do it for you." But something strange was about to happen...

She left for a while and we moved her flowers on our own. Suddenly, she came back screaming and quickly turned into a cruel businesswoman. She went: "This is gonna be expensive for you lot, soooooooo expensive!! Three hundred crowns? You must be kidding? Five hundread? Pffh! I'm leaving!"
We were too tired and too much in hurry to negotiate with her. So we decided to give her 1000 Czech crowns. She agreed. The director, Tomáš Zilvar from VICE, gave her 500 and a bit later she got another 500 from me. After the shooting, the Tomáš came to me and said: "Hey man where've you been? I was looking for you." Actually, I was in the flower shop paying her the "missing" 500. When she took the money, she became really kind again. She even tried to invite me for a drink with our own money!! What a bitch! Then, the director told me: "You know what, I gave her the rest already. So she stole 500 crowns from us and got 1500 in the end."

Tomorrow, I'll go visit her to get our money back. And if she's not willing to give it back, I'll steal some flowers and give it to a girl in the street.

The Driver

Marne, 20.8.2011, Germany

2011-09-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

Haven't heard from me in a long time, right? Been kind of busy you know.. I'm the one who's driving, I'm the production manager of Coco music video these days, I'm the one who takes care of our Koule.cz Tour in Autumn, I'm the one who's organizing merchendise for you so that's why I'm the one who was on holiday last week :-)

But now I'm ready to tell you what's going on!

Maybe you know that Albert loves the smell of magazines or newspapers. He can smell the difference in it. So when there's a long trip ahead, he buys like 5 magazines full of photos. He leafs through them, he smells them and the world is perfect.
On the other hand, there's this graphic artist Vit Haratek, luckily a member of our team. I was in his place a few weeks ago. He showed me the books he just bought, might be around thousand pages of photos all together. He told me with his persuasive voice: "These books are great! I'm gonna take a photo of each page, so I can fully enjoy the photos in my PC and learn something from them. It's a lot of work, mate!" And he really did that, my friends.

So, there will be a brand new limited-edition Charlie Straight book with photos from the School Beauty Queen video shoot in New York City. Keep checking our website and facebook for updates.

Oh and we've got this new thing you should follow! As we were passing Halle (on the way home from Marne), the whole band in the van on the highway got naked for about 20 minutes. Except me (safe driving) and Paul (for reasons unknown).

Did anybody see Liv (that's the name of our blue van) in Bosnia and Herzegovina last week?

The Driver

Sázava fest, 7.8.2011, Czech Rep.

2011-08-11T02:25:00.000-07:00

So guys, the times have changed.
From now on, we say "NO" to having lunch at some petrol station or worse in a fastfood place. On our way to Sázava fest, we made a 30-kilometer-detour to Bítovčice, just to have a decent meal. And it was so worth it and cheap.
Actually, we came back the following day as well :-) Also, we found out in an article somewhere that a man has drowned in a quarry near Jihlava. So we went there for a swim!

Oh and on Sunday, I was in Switzerland with Michael. There's a pretty nice studio where we'd like to record our 2nd album and very kind people. I spent about 5 hours talking to an Italian guy knowing no Italian at all. Well, he couldn't speak English either. Great day for me and maybe for the whole band..

Watch an on-the-road jam session below on the way from Karviná.

The Driver

Vendryně, 30.7.2011, Czech Rep.

2011-08-02T00:48:00.000-07:00

Another rainy day. What the hell?!

The only good thing about the weather today is yesterday's gig in Vendryně. It was the best performance I've seen from Charlie Straight ever.

After the show, we were wondering with Albert who could help us unload the car. The rest of the band was somewhere in the crowd, so I said: "Hold on mate, I'll be right back" And I really was, but with 4 incredibly beautiful girls. I wish you could see them unloading the car...later on we were dancing with them 'til sunrise :-)

But back to the rain. Today in the morning I went to our rehearsal room, very tired from the previous night. I shouldn't tell you proabably, but this time I wasn't wearing my flip-flops. What is more, I had thermal socks on! As I came in, the whole room felt like the most peaceful place in the world. I sat on the floor, took my shoes off and found out that with every minute passing after minute I am becoming happier (no I don't smoke dope). Do you know why?
There's a lot of pictures, photos a posters on the wall. So I quickly (but thoroughly) went through the band's history and realised that we are kind of the happiest people you can meet. Our company makes some people so happy, that the most beautiful girls you can think of are carrying hardware for us at 1 am...
I think we can have better sleep than any tobacco company owner!

Check out Albert's dancing playlist below.

The Driver

Třinec, 21.7.2011, Czech Rep.

2011-07-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Czech Republic Guy!

Have any of you seen our brand new car design? You can see it(and love it as we do) mostly in Ostrava these days..

The Driver

Berlin, 7.7.2011, Germany

2011-07-11T00:14:00.000-07:00

It seems that Paul is the last one who hasn't been accused of snoring yet. I wish you could watch us negotiating about beds in a hotel...

Last week we were looking for some pizza in Hradec Králové talking shit when Johnny says: "I think I remember this place. I must have been riding a trolly down this hill." You know, we spent 3,000 km on the road and did 5 gigs last week. It's obvious that some of our thoughts are a bit sick.. :-)
Let me tell you about Berlin! We arrived in the afternoon, later on we unloaded the van, played the first gig, loaded the van again, moved somewhere else (Michelberger Hotel), unloaded the van, played the second gig, loaded the van again, had a bottle of Beck's before going to bed and then we all fell asleep in the J-people magazine office!

The Driver

30.6.2011, Karlovy Vary, Czech Rep.

2011-06-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Albert is singing in the shower right now, Paul's probably sleeping, Johnny's discovering the beauties of the city with Michael and I'm pushing myself to do some accounting stuff.

In the van, we listen to Led Zeppelin and The Police a lot!

Good night,

The Driver

Prague, 22.6.2011, Czech Rep.

2011-06-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

"Today, I've been enjoying pleasures..of nettles" :-) Do you know where this sentence comes from? We were having lunch in TTTM Sapa today. Of course, there were no nettles on my plate but it was green enough anyway...

We're all sweating to death right now, Paul wants to try out his in-line skates (in case it doesn't rain) after the soundcheck and I will hopefully find somebody to play beach volleyball with..

I can hear the soundcheck now. Well, the boys seem to be pretty concentrated on these 8 upcoming gigs. You better come see them live!

The Driver

Near future

2011-06-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

Hello there!

Since the school term is over, Albert and Michael are coming back to Třinec from the "no free time zone"! Do you know what it means? It means more Charlie Straight rehearsals and new songs! What do you reckon?
Johnny's slowly recovering from his injury. I saw him dancing yesterday so it can't be that bad... Our mysterious drummer is mostly swimming or calling me. Free calls will ruin our society, I think :-)

It seems there's five gigs ahead of us this week. Anybody about to see the band more than once? The reason why I'm asking is that there's a fan somewhere in the Czech Republic, who's seen 14 gigs already. That's amazing! How many Charlie Straight gigs have you been to yet?

The Driver

A Hitchhike

2011-06-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I was hitchhiking from Frýdek-Místek to Třinec because I didn't want to wait for the next bus. It could mean one and half hour doing nothing. But it took ten minutes and I was sitting in a car. The driver asked me with his strong London accent: "Where are you going?" I was kind of surprised because from my point of view, there's not many English people passing through Beskydy.

In the end, I found out that he lives in Třinec and that he's the organizer of two smaller music festivals in London. So I gave him my business card which says I'm the Tour Manager and he gave me his business card which said that he's the Managing Director. Fair enough.

Yesterday, we were at his place with Albert and now I truly understand the sentence he wrote in an e-mail: "There must have been a reason."

The Driver

Sunny afternoon

2011-05-25T17:39:00.000-07:00

Today, for the first time in my life I've accidentaly joined a rehersal of the band. It was just a few minutes but it was enough for me to realize something new....
You know, sometimes after a gig, the boys are passionately discussing who played well, who was kind of sleepy, who made a mistake, who did the best break ever and so on.. But Paul is always kind of quiet, just listening... he never gets too deep in the after-show discussion.

So this is why I'm surprised that he is very active at rehersals! Almost a leader! :-)

The Driver