VARESE, Italy — Macy Ridge, lead singer of Baltimore punk band Forced Circumcision, embarked on her first solo tour of Europe to get free medical treatment in Italy, confirmed sources within the EU.
“I’ve never had any reason to play by myself, I’m pretty bad at guitar honestly,” said Ridge as she recovered in a friend’s apartment, eating Fontina cheese. “But I needed an easy, outpatient surgery done. In Europe, if you’re there they will just do it for you! So I scheduled like three dates, Paris, Lyon, and Milan, and just rode the train by myself. I actually made money doing the surgery this way. I’m in no rush to get back to Baltimore.”
According to scheduling nurses at San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Ridge is not the first American artist to show up at their hospital while on tour in Italy.
“Ahh, yes, many, many artists from America have come through these doors to receive small surgeries and that sort of thing,” said Sofia Bergamaschi, a nurse at San Raffaele and avid music fan. “They come to us and we say ‘bonjourno American artist we can fix you!’ and so we get them in and we fix them and they put down a fake name on the documents and they never pay. I say to them ‘acqua in bocca!’ I tell no one.”
Fans in Europe are becoming more used to Americans visiting for short or in some cases completely made-up tours to get health services.
“If you see someone coming all the way from America for only three tour dates, they probably will not even play them,” said Belgian music blogger Jules Merten. “They will arrive and say ‘oh I am actually ill, sorry Brussels! Will be back! But we know they probably had a cyst that needed to be removed. I wish Americans would fix their health system so we could stop having so many artists on socialism tours of Europe, or at least maybe they could start getting enough time off from work to actually play some shows while they are here. What an absolute trash can of a country.”
At press time, Ridge was also thinking of applying to attend free college in Italy using her friend’s Milan address on the application.