It was the First Summer of Freedom in Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall had tumbled in the previous November and "229" decided the time was right to go and deliver our own brand of music and art behind the old Iron Curtain.

We loaded all our eqipment onto the back of a specialy modified 7.5 ton truck which we named "Techno Billy". One whole side could be opened up to create a stage. It was on this stage that we performed our gigs, in towns, cities and beaches all over continental Europe. See tour map for details

We were on the road for 8 weeks and played 20 gigs. There would have been more gigs had the truck not broken down in Czecoslovakia. That delayed things for 9 days.

At every gig, Bizzo split his time between singing and creating a huge painting. You can see some of them at the bottom of this page.

One thing was clear from the out set. This was to be a tour based entirely on entertainment and fun . No person anywhere would be making any profit out of the people of the countries we visited.

Nobody knew where or when we would be playing....not even us. We just drove into a town, had a look around for a nice spot, opened up the side, plugged in the generators and played (for free) to whoever was passsing. We usualy started at about 2 or 3 in the afternoon then played, on and off, until everybody had had enough, that was sometimes as late as 2 or 3 in the morning.

Staromestske Square, Prague (right)...You can just see us in the lower left of the picture. This was taken before the gig. By the end of the evening, the whole area in front of us was full of people, dancing and partying.

We were worried about being arrested by the notoriously opressive police in some of the countries we visied. In fact we had absolutely no problems from any authorities in the ex-eastern bloc countries. However, we were physicaly removed from a police station in Milan, (Italy) whilst simply asking for permission to play in the city centre. Parisian police moved us along and London's authorities wouldn't even consider the possibility of us playing in ANY public place.....so much for freedom in the West !

Here you can see Dave painting during the gig in Budapest. At the end of the tour we had 14 finished paintings (see below). We've used some of them in the booklet of our CD. Click on a picture for a larger version.

All paintings by David Bizzo. Acrylic on canvas

This is the painting Dave did at Amsterdam, our very first gig. After the gig we hung the painting up on the inside back wall of the truck, as a backdrop to the stage. All subsequent paintings got roled up and carefuly stored until we got home. This one got splashed with beer and wine and was seen by everybody who saw us play, so it seemed apropriate to use it as the front cover of our album, "The Edge of the West".

Prague, or Praha. This was probably our biggest crowd on the whole tour, with people dancing and having a great time on a warm summer's evening.

On the way from Prague to Budapest, a stone flew up off the road and punctured the radiator, the engine overheated and ceased up. We had a temporary repair done and managed to limp to Austria in second gear. In Vienna, Mercedes Bens put in a brand new engine, which took a whole week. Sid waited there, whilst Dave and I took the train to Budapest where we spent the week chilling out. Budapest is known as the "Paris of the East" and is a cool place, highly recomended by us. When Sid and Techno finaly arrived, we got back to gigging. This was painted at our show in Vorosmarty Square.

Arad is a town in the north west of Romania. It is the first major town you come to having crossed the border from Hungary. We arrived at 3 in the morning and everywhere was closed. We had the good fortune to meet a guy named Marin, who let us stay at his place. He also cooked us breakfast the next day and came to the gig. The local TV station also came along and filmed us. The people here were amongst the friendliest we met on the whole tour and some of them joined us on stage for jam sessions.

We ended up on TV again in Timisoara. Some people followed us down from Arad, bringing us flowers and grapes at the gig. We played right in front of the Opera House in Opera Square, the scene of the Ceausescu's brutal suppression of a demonstration for human rights. You can still see the bullet holes...

Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. I have to say the lasting memories of Bulgaria were food poisoning, having the truck broken into and a drunken gun toting Bulgarian customs officer confiscating our passports until we gave him our Whiskey, cigarettes and a giant Toblerone. But it wasn't all bad. We did 3 gigs in Bulgaria and had good reaction at all of them.

The ancient walled city of Dubrovnik is one of the most beatiful cities we visited on the whole tour. White marble all over the place. We couldn't get the truck within the old walled city, so we had to play outside. There was a young Russian girl who came up on stage and played piano with us. We recorded all the gigs and her performance can be heard at the end of the last track on our album "The Edge of the West". In case you can't make out the painting, it says "Adriatic".

This is "Split" in the former Yugoslavia. We had planned to do a gig in Sarajevo, but the mountains had got the better of us. Too many windy roads in our trusty slow waggon, having crossed the border from Bulgaria, was enough to make us say "No more hills". So we stuck at sea level and went to the beach between gigs.

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