I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much from this week. I mean, I haven’t really been into performing solo shows this year—I have done just a modest handful (half a dozen before this tour, and always only by request…I never solicit them); my head is really actually into The Disciplines, and I accepted the Posies 20th Anniversary shows as a worthy diversion. But, despite the fact you could say I am touring to promote the release of the Covers EP, really I’m mostly playing songs from my albums, the last of which was released four years ago—an eternity in terms of most records’ lifetimes. It’s a compliment to the strength of the music and the hard-won development of my live presentation that I am still being asked to do these shows.
But, tired as I was after my long day of travel from Oslo, I arrived in Vienna with rather low expectations—my 7th solo show in Vienna since the start of 2006. Who could possibly...care? Did I? Not having played a solo show in 2 months (the last one having been in…Vienna!) was I going to be any good?
When I landed and claimed my gear, I found there were *two* people picking me up—Klaus, who booked the tour, and Eva from the National Radio. Turns out that Klaus was going to have to wait for a severely delayed Asha Ali and band, they had missed their connection from Sweden. So, Eva had volunteered to be a second driver, bless her. So she shuttled me to the Szene, a nondescript interior in an industrial neighborhood of Vienna not often frequented…except when there’s a show.
I got settled in the backstage, and Trouble Over Tokyo’s soundcheck was in progress. TOT is the project of one Toph (long ‘o’, as in ‘toe’), who, due to his popularity in Austria and so far not really elsewhere (I suspect that will change soon), I had assumed was Austrian. Until I ran into him in a bar in London a couple of months ago…and found he is a cheerful (and blond) British lad from Kent. TOT is his bedroom project, I think on the (amazing) album he played/programmed almost all the music. He had been playing shows singing and playing acoustic guitar, accompanied by tracks from his laptop, but now he has put together a live band—he brought his friend Galli from London, who has a hipster beehive (kind of Robert Smith vs. Amy Winehouse) and plays keyboards and sings; he recruited drummer Max, who I knew from when I supported Garish in Salzburg last year—Max is an outstanding drummer, and managed to fuse the drum machine parts of the record and his own feel and beats, seamlessly; bassist Marlene and guitarist Renee, who are a couple, are immensely talented, play in their own band in Austria (voted the best looking band in Austria at one point!) and are both, well, diminutive in stature—but massive in presence.
So, we chatted over dinner a bit. I soundchecked and email checked and met Asha Ali and her band when they arrived—Asha, her keyboard player Daniel, and guitarist/harmonica player/vocalist Therese.
The venue filled up, I met the A Life A Song A Cigarette guys, and Asha played…I had a ton of email stuff to catch up on and plane tix for Disciplines shows to buy, so I didn’t really get to watch much, but I knew we’d have more opportunities as the week went on.
Then I went on, and straight out of the gate I had one of the best shows I’ve had, ever—by far the best show I’ve done this year. My Vienna track record is unbroken. I was able to play in the crowd to some 300 people, get them all to listen, and they went absolutely mad after each song. So good! I sold an entire box of CDs after my set, a good sign of how people were reacting.
There is a couple in Vienna who have asked me to play at their wedding this summer, and they were at the show and kind enough to bring me a bottle of very fine wine, which, since there was no way it would survive the upcoming travel, I had no choice but to share with my friends. We sat at picnic tables out back, and had a lovely time. Sort of the same story with TOT, I knew I would see them later.
A brilliant night, however—everybody played exceedingly well, and the audience was delightful.
SIDE NOTES
Asha Ali band profile.
Asha is a songwriter from Sweden. She’s ethnically Somali, spent her early childhood in Uganda and Kenya, and is fully culturally Swedish, having lived there since the age of 9. She sings in that pure way that Swedes can do so well, gentle breathy vowels and sweet tone; however, she can also growl and purr in a kind of Billie Holiday way too. She’s incredibly bright and positive. She has big active eyes and is quite thin and delicate looking, but also has great strength.
Daniel, the keyboard player has a kind of 50s tough guy look—slicked back hair, tattooed forearms. He is absolutely gentle and is prone to playing Burt Bacharach when he’s warming up.
Therese has her own band, Lowood; it’s basically her, singing and playing guitar—also with that pure, sweet tone that Swedes do so well. She harmonizes magnificently with Asha—they sound sometimes like an indie pop Carter Family.
Trouble Over Tokyo band profile.
Toph is Trouble Over Tokyo. He generally records everything himself…it’s a marvelous mix of soaring, dramatic falsetto vocals, programmed beats, strings, pianos…the music has moments of almost Erasure or Scritti Politti but that’s selling it sort. It’s not really retro at all, actually. It’s kind of like emo-tronic Kate Bush, if I had to describe it. He can devastate you with just an acoustic guitar (his set closer is a song that seems to be written from the POV of a couple about to be disintegrated by a terrorist’s bomb, called ‘Eyes Off Me’ that is jaw dropping. It’s like, Glastonbury huge. And he’s the nicest, most cheerful person you are likely to come across. Very unassuming, dressed in jeans and trainers and something stripe-y, with glasses and blonde hair going in various directions. He opens his mouth and you can’t believe what his voice can do. I can’t recommend enough his album ‘Pyramides’. I never once saw Toph in a bad mood.
Galli, also a Londoner, was in a band with Toph BITD, and he recruited her for this and other upcoming adventures. She’s usually seen smoking a local brand of ciggies, and singing along with all the TOT songs—and she sings marvelously with Toph. She has lots of hair, black streaked with blonde piled up in a kind of ‘Winehouse’ but with out the ratty bits. And she plays keys too.
Renee, guitarist. He is an absolute perfectionist—but will also be the drunkest guy onstage—but will also yet play perfectly under the circumstances. He and Marlene take care of each other like two doves.
Marlene might even be quieter than Renee. She has a way of speaking that shows she chooses her words carefully—in English, to be sure, but also it appears to be the same in German. She rocks in such a tough way on the bass…it’s so cool. I guess she is about 5 feet tall, and always looks so serious onstage. Amazing!
Max I realized at last walks like a sheriff in a Western Film. Or he has aviators on, and at that point walks like a Highway Patrolman. “Are you aware of how fast you were going, ma’am?” He is the ultimate van pack organizer—you can’t even help him—just bring the gear close and back off. He is also the main driver, although Renee does quite a bit too. We had two vans for the tour—Klaus, the agent who put this together, Asha & co, plus myself in one; TOT in the other. On the last day, since Asha was off for more shows, and TOT and I were heading home, I spent one day in the TOT van…
LJUBLJANA, 5/7
We were staying in my favorite Vienna hotel, the Furstenhof. It’s family owned, a little bit rickety and old fashioned, and extremely comfortable. The décor is a bit 70s but the bathrooms have all been redone, it’s in fact just perfect esp. for the price. In the lobby there are photos of guests from the entertainment world—a few indie bands, the odd Austrian comedian, etc. I have been trying to get a portrait on the wall for years now, but I usually have to leave early in the morning—not this time! I sat for my portrait after breakfast and in 4 shots it was done.
Now, a week before the Ljubljana show, the promoter called our agent and wanted to cancel. He begged us to do anything we could to help the show. I asked Chris Eckman, ex-Seattleite now living there, when I ran into him in The Hague, and said—no surprise, Ljubljana is always a disaster. The local media doesn’t support alternative music at all really. The Orto Bar is pretty much the only game in town, so we were at the right venue, but it couldn’t have been at a worse time. On this very night, there was a massive, free music festival aimed at the student crowd. Why our promoters didn’t just move us onto that bill…so, we had 13 people—11 paying, and I had put Chris’ wife on the list plus one. However, it was a nice way for all the bands to bond—we all watched each other’s sets in their entirety. I played mine basically from the bar, walking across the empty show room to approach the shy attendees who were sort of hugging the wall there. I still managed to sell 6 CDs, so it is true that those in attendance loved it…
Afterwards we stashed the gear in the dressing room, and Klaus was too drunk (i.e., he had two beers) to legally drive in Slovenia so we took a caravan of taxis—who I swear were driving 75 mph on city streets—it was like ‘Bullitt’ on the way home. We were in a hostel, just given a pin code to get in and we wound our way up and down stairs til we found our rooms—one for each vanload of people. I bunked over Asha and Therese’s heads, and Daniel woke up every hour or so, having been punched from below by Klaus, in an effort to arrest Daniel’s supposedly out of control snoring. I never noticed it—I was asleep immediately.
GRAZ, 5/8
We weren’t in a particular hurry this morning. Klaus had risen early and actually walked back to the club to retrieve our van, and then we drove back to the club area with Max, who was to drive back and pick up TOT in their van. We parked and went in search of breakfast, which we found in a busy little café downtown. I introduced the Swedes to the mighty burek, my Balkan breakfast item of choice (they are excellent for lunch as well—recall the Zagreb bus ride last month). Oddly, when the Disciplines played in Drammen last week, there was a burek stand in the venue. Well, you can’t keep something that good a secret for too long. My macchiato (which I ordered in the Slavic fashion, saying ‘macchiat’—I had even ordered my burek with meat in Slovenian) was so excellent I ended up having another. Eventually, TOT located us, and we decamped to a sunnier terrace. Asha and co and I walked across the Dragon Bridge (the title of Steve Wynn’s excellent new album, recorded in Ljubljana with Chris Eckman at the helm) and explored the market. Daniel wanted to get a typical local product for his g.f.; I suggested, ‘why not a cabbage?’
Eventually we drove on, thru the beautiful countryside that Austria and Slovenia share at their common border, and in the afternoon we reached Graz. Checked in once more to the dreary Etap hotel basically across the street (they did, however, provide me with an excellent iron and ironing board) and eventually we set up camp at the PPC—you might recall that last year I played the small room (our dressing room for this show) upstairs, to a full house, but was cut off by the thumping (and empty) disco downstairs—then taking the crowd into the gents for more songs, finally ending up in the driveway basically busking—I even sold some CDs to passersby. IMHO, the PPC is a weird place—run by a very un-rock-n-roll family, with unsmiling security guys and basically 0% sensitivity to the artists. And their patrons are known to be the worst kind of audience for me. This is the kind of place that will put on a thumping 120db disco to an empty room while I’m playing to a packed room (and the rooms aren’t isolated from each other) and then kick me out unceremoniously when I want to play to the interested people; it’s the place where 300 people are talking thru mine and Asha’s sets. I did my best, really I did, and I did have some fans there, and I gathered the people around me on the floor comme d’habitude, but I can’t say this was a * fun * one, it was a bit more of a struggle than pure joy. In that sense playing to 13 people was more rewarding, as they were all into it, and they were moved. I did get some great compliments tho. And to be fair, this was TOT’s night to shine…they were immense this night and the people were clearly devoted to them. It was great to be a part of what I think was a very important night for them—it just wasn’t as fun to *play* as some other nights.
I did have the best off-the-cuff line of the night, at soundcheck—when the sound guy saw me putting yet another keyboard in front of TOT’s input-heavy backline, he said, barely concealing his dismay ‘new keyboard, eh?’ I replied, instantly: ‘well, it’s slightly used, but just by a little old lady who used it just to get from A to C each day’.
BASEL, 5/9
The next bonding experience—getting up and hitting the road at 7. It seemed like the entire hotel was surging at the metal grating, waiting for it to lift at 6.30 and permit entry into the breakfast area. I mean, who gets up at 6.30 by choice? It seemed like people were excited to be up and having breakfast at this most inconvenient hour. We simply had no choice—we had a 9-hour drive ahead of us.
Even at the breakfast table I was telling stories and making merry, trying to distract everyone from the pain of the early morning hour. We piled in the vans and headed off, driving across most of Austria, up into Germany for a while, into and across most of Switzerland. We entertained each other as best we could.
My only previous experience visiting Basel was for R.E.M.’s 2005 show at St. Jakobshalle, a small indoor arena that I played deep in the haze of the nasty flu that everyone in the band and crew passed around during the very long winter tour that covered virtually all of January, February and March, and in fact ended in mid-April.
In other words, I have almost no memories of Basel at all. Well, in spring, it’s just a miraculous place. We were playing the Kaserne, which is part of an old military training ground, meaning, a square of extremely solid buildings enclosing a field of grass and a huge paved area—it’s now a park, with people laying on the grass or playing basketball, and the entire region is strung with cheerful lanterns and ringed by outdoor bars and cafes. It looks suspiciously like paradise. The Kaserne has three showrooms, one could easily hold 2000 people; we were playing on a small stage in the bar. The night was a bit too lovely to get too many people inside, I guess we had 30 or so people there. However, it was an incredible show, I was simply deeply into it and felt free to give all I had. I even got a kind of encore—delivering a version of ‘Reveal Love’ that was calling on places spooky by even my standards. I hadn’t planned on selling CDs but I ended up selling three of them, including one for CHF20, i.e. more than I was charging, to the #2 of IKEA—his daughters happen to be Asha’s friends. I, too, was guilty of wanting to be out on the terrace, so I skipped TOT’s set this night and hopped the different little wine bars around the square, eventually joining a table with one of the CD buyers of the evening, and his friends (none of his friends had gone inside with him!). We had some (more) wine, and had a great time talking. I then saw we were loading out, so I helped, and afterwards all the bands transported all the remaining alcohol from the backstage, took over a couple of picnic tables that we joined together, and proceeded to have a bonding session! At one point some Palestinian kid jumped right in from playing basketball, grabbed one of the wine bottles and took a lengthy swig, and ran off saying thanks, back to shooting hoops…we all had a big love fest, although I wisely avoided the vodka bottle, sticking with white wine—Toph and Renee heeded no such restraint. At one point Toph was leaning on the picnic table and said ‘this table is completely staggering drunk—I am trying to hold it still!”
INNSBRUCK, 5/10
The next morning I was just a bit wobbly, stumbling down to breakfast. The hotel, the Balade, was so wonderful—my room, my bed, the artwork in my room, the espresso at breakfast, my incredibly powerful shower…oh my, best hotel of the tour, if I just sidestep my loyalty to the Furstenhof for a moment. Check out was 11, and I had been on the phone with Claus and Dominique (another cool feature is the direct line number for your room). I jumped in the shower at 10.50 and texted Klaus that I was going to be 5-10 minutes late.
Like it mattered. When I came down at 11.15, Klaus was the ONLY one in sight. Asha and Therese were next, but Renee had to be coaxed out of the room very gently indeed. We were all sitting around the terrace of the hotel restaurant, and Toph was playing me a song on his Ipod, when we were gob smacked by a man who walked up from the park across the street, followed by a duckling. He led the creature to the fountain by the hotel, scooped it up, and allowed it to swim around. It was 12 days old, with fuzz pointing out in different angles of cute-reinforcing perfection from its head. After a short bath, he scooped it up again, and walked off, the bird following at his heels. When he had walked just a meter or two from the fountain, the bird squeaked with concern. We couldn’t believe our eyes; we were being absolutely irradiated with cuteness.
There being no hurry to leave, we walked around the Kaserne fortress after putting our bags in the vans, and walked down to the Rhine. There was a little stand there selling a limited amount of food and drink, and I had 3+ CDs worth of Francs to get rid of, but I couldn’t even make a dent in them—even after a sandwich, salad, glass of wine, and macchiato. We sat at the riverside, watching families of ducks, an anxious dog who was afraid to jump in and retrieve a ball, etc. Eventually we had to leave and start making our way to Innsbruck. On the way back to the van, I was walking with Renee and Marlene, and we saw an enormous metallic green beetle, searching for a place to roost in a bush…it was easily as big as a USB key.
We took the scenic route to Innsbruck—avoiding a 12km/€12 tunnel and driving up into the mountains past the tree line, where everything was still covered in snow. The road winds up thru a few hardy villages and now closed ski resorts. There were people riding bicycles on this route. I mean, really now…
At last we pulled up the Bierstindl, a little theatre with a biergarten tucked up against a wooded hillside. A truly idyllic little spot. Wir haben Weisswurst gegesse und wir haben weisswien getranke. The showroom is a small theatre, indeed they had it nearly fully seated when we arrived, and left it partially seated for the show.
Tonight truly was Asha’s night, I thought she never sounded better than at this show, her voice was just on, emotional and deep. A hard act to follow, really, but I did my best—people dug it, but I think they were ready to rock when I came on.
Over the course of the dates, starting with Ljubljana, I had Therese join me to play harmonica on ‘110 or 220V’—I had forgotten to bring mine along. I played it in G, and she was able to play along by inhaling on her C harp. She added some vocals over the days, and this was sounding great by Innsbruck. We also worked up a duet for ‘Communication’ by fellow Swedes the Cardigans (I introduced the song, saying it was by a great group from Sweden…Entombed). We did an alternating line thing, very Peaches and Herb. Great! Before my set was done, my last CDs had sold, so I guess that was a sign of approval…
TOT was also excellent this night, I preferred their show on smaller PA’s, just a little quieter level made the drums sound more natural and you could hear all the vocals. I’ve said it before, but Toph is just a phenomenal singer. I don’t know how he does it. He can just swoop up to the damn rafters with his falsetto…it’s truly unique, and absolutely affective.
Now, this weekend being a big holiday weekend in all of Catholic Europe, and Innsbruck being a destination for many of said travelers, all the hotels in town were booked. So, we were assigned to two different B&B’s outside of town. As TOT was driving me to Vienna, and Asha was going back to Switzerland for the next show, I was to stay with TOT at their accom’s. It was quite emotional to have the abrupt load-out/farewell to the three musicians, they were just lovely people and we had come to enjoy each other’s company pretty much instantly.
I found room in TOT’s van, and Toph, being the guy that he is, instantly had delicious caramel-filled chocolate that he shared with everyone. It’s hard to imagine someone with a more uplifting outlook on the day. We wound our way up into the hills outside of town, and eventually found our little gasthaus; Klaus had already checked us in and delivered keys to the venue. I went to my room, after we spent 10 minutes admiring the stars visible in the mountain air (equally beautiful: when I went out to the van during the start of Asha’s set to get my toothbrush, and from the hillside vantage point of the Bierstindl’s parking lot, I looked across the valley of Innsbruck, against a backdrop of incredible deep velvet blue—the sky not yet fully night, but just showing the liquid blue evidence of what was once light).
In the morning, I was uncontested when I headed to the common shower room that served all the guests. I was alone with strangers in the breakfast room having my dark bread and liver pate. Eventually we started to assemble and we drove down the hillside to meet up with the freeway, and headed first to Salzburg airport to drop Toph and Galli for their flight to London. Toph being just so damn cheerful, even his goodbyes are happy. Amazing person.
The rest of us drove on to Vienna—the TOT band had to get their rental van back by a certain time, which made it impossible for them to take me to the airport—but they dropped me at the Westbahnhof, and even before my bags were out of the van, the airport bus pulled up. It was leaving in 20 minutes, so I had time to say good bye to Max/Renee/Marlene, buy a newspaper and some water, and was still first in line to pay my €6 and get a seat right in front. I arrived to VIE with time to spare—and thus have been at Caffe Ritazza for an hour, just 30 meters from my gate, and the flight won’t leave for almost another hour.
It’s Mother’s Day—I already called Dom (even tho the French assign mother’s day to another weekend). I’ll call my mom when I get home; I guess they are just waking up in Bellingham now.
Another epic tour—these 5 days have been full of images and experiences as rich as the 20 date Posies tour, in a way. All my musical experiences since I left home April 7-the Posies tour, the Veliki Prezir sessions, The Disciplines shows, the solo tour—34 days, 9 countries, 27 cities, 27 concerts— contain some of the best I’ve had (I would highlight the Posies Stockholm/Amsterdam/ Eindhoven/Den Haag shows, and my Vienna show as the absolute top, perhaps?), and I’ve had great company, and hey, I came home with a little money, too. Now to see the people that need me most, and that I need most, in 3 hours and change.
Love KS VIE ‘B’ Gates
5.08.2008
Interview and photos from Serbian studio sessions last week here.
Love KS Graz, AUSTRIA
5.06.2008
THE HAGUE, 4/29
We slept in. That was good. Yes. Fred brought croissants and made coffees, and we got our acts together, went record shopping with Fred (he bought CDs, we didn’t) and then he dropped us at the train station. We had time to have yet another sandwich lunch (I wonder how many sandwiches I have eaten in the last year in train stations/airports/on trains/on planes?). We boarded our train, already on the platform, and settled in. I read the IHT, and after about 15 minutes, we pulled out. It was a lovely ride through green crevices cut into the hills of the Ardennes. Hardly anyone on the train, too. That is, until we started to get close to Brussels—for the last half an hour, the train was quite full. As we stopped at each of Brussels’ stations, we made our way towards our pile of luggage standing by the doors. We weren’t sure which side of the train the platform would be, but, thankfully, it was the one we were closer too (the foyer of the train car was filling up with people anticipating disembarking). We had just 7 minutes to make our connection—and the platform for the second train couldn’t be found online, nor could the ticketpeople in Luxembourg tell us. So, we got off at Bruxelles Nord, and I checked to see if just by chance the other side of the platform was our train. Nope. We grabbed our stuff and went down into the passageway leading to the other platforms, found a monitor. It tells you the ultimate destination of the various trains, departure time, and track number. There was an Amsterdam train with the same departure time as what we had on our itinerary. That seemed like the one. Unf. they don’t give you train numbers anywhere—not on the platform’s sign showing the next train, either. Seems like that would be helpful. We hauled our gear up to the Amsterdam platform—then by reading the printed timetable up on the platform, a massive list showing the departures for all the trains serving the station, found our train number, and yes it was an Amsterdam train, stopping at various places including Den Haag.
The train arrived, and we fought our way on board—and found ourselves on a train so crowded—every seat, every aisle, all the foyers, packed to the point where we were all unable to move even one step, true Tokyo commuter sardine style. Two hours of this, eh? I practiced deep breathing. Occasionally we stopped and exchanged basically the same amounts of people with each town. Sometimes people would manage to barge their way thru the crowd, thinking there was a better place to be—but there wasn’t. They got to where Jon & I were and found the train just as crowded as where they had come from (well, it was one person more crowded, wasn’t it?).
I counted each minute til we were at the Hague, and we got in a cab at the taxi queue, to be informed that with a flag drop of €7.50 (normal in Holland) and €3/bag (not normal, but not told to us until we had loaded it all in) our 5-minute cab ride would be €20. Oh, but it was a small price to pay to not be on that train anymore. We found our hotel, the ‘T Centrum, to be a groovy joint, very stylish. Unf. we were confronted with another Dutch tiny staircase, but, after climbing it, we were greeted by a stunning, spacious room with a very sleek and modern look. One side was glass, with a small balcony—and the view was of other rooftops, didn’t seem like there were too many windows looking back in at us. So, it was private, but exposed. Most pleasant!
Free computers in the lobby allowed me to catch up on email, and soon we headed to the venue—courtesy of a van the festival organizers sent to pick us up.
I had been joking that “Queen’s Night”, the holiday that provided the occasion for the festival, was the night when all the worker males of Holland were expected to mate with Queen, following which she was to lay several thousand eggs which would thereby guarantee the survival of the Netherlands. Actually, it’s the eve of Queen’s Day, which is NOT the Queen’s birthday (sounds like a holiday devised by Monty Python). The last Queen had her birthday on this particular day in April, and the current Queen (occasionally listed as Europe’s richest woman, at least before Harry Potter books started showing up in bookstores) decided her winter birthday would not make a very nice holiday for people to go out and get drunk in the streets in. So, Queen’s Day stayed in spring, as the first occasion for non-football fans to be drunk outside in the calendar year. And they were doing their royal duty as we drove to the gig at about 9pm. Many dressed in Orange, the Dutch national color, which of course ISN’T represented on the Dutch flag. Bands were set up all over the city (The Hague, being the nation’s capital, generally hosts the most vibrant celebration on Queen’s night, but there are outdoor concerts and events all around the country), each providing their own little pool of noise. We were playing in a regal little theatre, which itself was divided into 4 parts—the city’s premier cinema, which I imagined wasn’t doing much business, and the 3 venue of the ‘Binnenach’, or ‘Inside Night’, which is a thoughtful attempt to counterbalance the drunken hordes and their evil rock and roll with some highbrow singer/songwriter music. Incredibly, a handful of people actually attend this event.
We arrived, met the crew, were shown to our shared dressing room, and then went to have some dinner—the only reason we were showing up 3 hours before showtime was to get in some free vittles. After dinner I went for a stroll thru the battlefield—it was pure chaos on the streets. I was in search of espresso, which seemed to be unobtainable in the theatre. Across the street at the Mercure hotel, it was obtainable at the bar. The hotel was crawling with rockers and wannabees and all kinds of weirdos. Meaning, businessmen of course. I had my coffee and went back into the fray. There was a band flailing away in the square next to the hotel, I thought they looked a bit familiar so I paused as orange-clad stumbledrunks boinged off each other (not dancing, but just in their attempts to navigate), and the orange-jumpsuit-wearing trio onstage happened to be Voicst, who supported our 2005 UK tour.
Back safely inside, I checked out Dirtmusic, with Chris Eckman, whom I know from Seattle, where he played in the Walkabouts; the band is a trio of –you guessed it—singer/songwriters, in a nice, atmospheric setting. There’s also Chris Brokaw from the band Come, and Australian crooner Hugo Race who was in the Bad Seeds. They were in the big room, which is seated. People still drifted in and out like they would at any festival. I slumped in a chair and shot dirty looks at the sound guy when I couldn’t hear the vocals. Which was too often for my liking! After the set I chatted with Chris, hoping he might send some buzz around about my upcoming show in his adopted town of Ljubljana. We checked out Johnny Dowd, who is a kind of whacked-out jazz/gospel/freak of nature with a fantastic band, with a zoned out version of Chloe Sevigny’s mom on occasional, 1000-yard stare accompanied, vocals. Oh yeah!
Eventually the chatting, with the other bands, with fans, with the crew, with Dom on a phone I found backstage, with record label owners dropping by for Disciplines handouts, with our emcee from the National Radio/TV, whom had interviewed us many times in the past, etc., it was at last time to play. Jon & I had been moved to our own dressing room when one became available; we’d been paid. Then at 12.30, it was time for music. Now, given all I had described taking place—free, loud rock and jazz shows all over town, hours of country bumpkins and intelli-folk music, you’d think the LAST thing people wanted was to hear more music (I didn’t see it, but the blind pianist who had been playing in the foyer, a kind of lounge music for the actual lounge, chasing Jon around backstage singing ‘Dream All Day’ in a crooner voice. He is kind of autistic, I think. I mean, the piano guy) but many of the people who attended the event, not numerous to begin with, stayed. And they were very into our show, as were we—another great, effortless occasion. I was really going for elaborate runs on the guitar, and pulling them off with no runs, no drips, no errors as the paint commercial says. And then it was done—we had just an hour allotted, and it was 1.30 after all. They allowed us one encore, and then they wanted everyone out of there. Fine with me really—tour done! We said our goodbyes to the crew (fantastic backstage/stage crew this night) and headed to the hotel. The lobby was closed, and anyway, access to our room was thru a door down the street, so we hauled our guitars up the tiny stairs, cracked a bottle of wine to celebrate, and were asleep in like two minutes.
Up in the morning, I took my time to navigate down the tiny stairs and into the lobby with all my belongings, had breakfast, checked us out, and wrangled us a taxi (no more trains after yesterday’s experience). We earned a few minutes in the back of a Mercedes with our hard work. We were dropped off at the Schiphol, which evidently means ‘place where ships founder’ back from the days when it was underwater. As usual, our taxi driver wanted to talk about the Rolling Stones. Fair enough. He was quite jovial. He told us that the drummer from Golden Earring lives right around the corner from where our hotel was.
I saw Jon off, and then checked in for my flight to Belgrade, on the airline that bears Jugoslavia’s name, and dates from the days of that particular union. JAT they are currently known as, and have planes with colorful dots on the tail; a zoomed-in version of the SN Brussels logo. The flight was indeed packed, and I did some sleeping. It was such a relief not to wear contact lenses for a change. Ah. AH. AHHHH!
Touched down in Belgrade, retrieved my bags, not even a glance from Serbian customs, and met my hosts, from the studio I would be recording in the next days. We first headed to the hotel Slavia, taking the same road I had driven into Belgrade on the last visit, which parades you past enormous apartment buildings and convention centers, built apparently to look friendly for an invading Martian army that they expect to billet there. They seem to serve no actual current function. One of the apartment buildings is covered the length of its broad side by a hanging advertisement, upon which is a design made to look like a smaller design in amongst windows that are in fact printed on the hanging sheet. So, I guess about 75 apartments that would normally have views just see the inside of this sign. How awful is that?
The hotel Slavia is another one of those time capsule wonders you find in Serbia and other places in the liberated east-- rotary dial phone in the room, brown and green furniture. Personally, I love it, it’s like being in a museum. I also love old school hotels that have their own self contained world with way too many employees within—this hotel had a bank, a dentist office, a travel agency, a net café (not working). They didn’t seem to have a gift shop. And they definitely wouldn’t let me have access to an iron. I had to surrender my shirt to the staff for pressing. It’s one way to make a buck. They pull this stunt in Italy too—‘ah, it’s against the law, it’s a fire hazard’. SO, why aren’t all the other hotels in the world that allow me to iron my own clothes burning to ground as we speak, then? In fact, the last hotel I saw that had burnt nearly completely was in—ta ta ta: Serbia. A huge hotel in Novi Sad that was torched by a sore loser from the casino within who stormed out and returned with a Molotov cocktail, killing at least one person.
We walked down to the studio, and I met the band (some of which I had met before). Veliki Prezir, which is an untranslatable pun in Serbian. They play a wonderful kind of psychedelic, playful rock. A sort of mix between the Kinks and Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ album. Great! I was there primarily to play keyboards, and I immediately got to work. I hadn’t heard the songs before, so with each of the 8 or so songs I played on, I would listen, come up with ideas, play along very badly for one or two takes, listen again and take a few notes, then go in for the final take and make a part for keeps. They had some fantastic instruments for me to play—a ridiculously cool Farfisa console organ, for starters. You know console organs—the kind that film directors use when they want to show how cheesy a character’s aunt is, they sit her down and have her wail along, with a beat on the ‘foxtrot’ setting. These machines are made of plastic simulating wood. They have built in drum machines and weirdo effects, and when you touch the keys on the lower end of the lower keyboard it fakes a kind of bass line, so you accompany yourself, and play the melodies on your right hand on the upper keyboard. Perhaps you play some more bass notes with the pedals at your feet. Unfortunately these machines are pretty much dinosaurs now, everyone uses keyboards like Aden’s Delson CK49. Ah, but this Farfisa is such a wonderful beast! I used it on almost every song. It had its own speakers, which gave it a big, heavy bass output. They also had a MemoryMoog, and a Rhodes, both of which were used extensively.
I was able to work on about 4 songs that afternoon and evening, and we had time to pause for lunch and dinner, at the same restaurant (for dinner I had spicy, cheese covered tripe). They brought in lots of nice wine, and proceeded to pretty much drink it all! I think I had a glass with dinner…maybe one in the studio…maybe not. Anyway, at the end of the night, I walked back to the Slavia, and was amazed that right in the lobby, I was asked “you want girl?” by a very kind eyed old gas cooker slightly past the sell by date. I guess the hotel actually pimps them out? I mean, she was asking me immediately after I retrieved my key from the desk.
The next morning, after she left my room (kidding), I had breakfast, and set out in the brilliant sunshine to meet the band at a café on the corner by the studio. The streets were gloriously empty; it was May Day, the International Worker’s Day, when all the workers of the world do something other than work. The Yugoslavian Communist Party HQ was on my way to the studio (when I told the guys this they assured me such a thing didn’t exist). Out front there was a guy holding the hammer and sickle flag, being photographed in front of his Yugo. I felt like the two guys might have been the only ones showing up for the rally. I felt sympathy for them, in fact. I was at that point a communist sympathizer.
The café was open, but almost empty. The café by the studio is part of a cinema, and there’s also a wonderful, crammed little bookstore there, which unf. I didn’t have time to explore, but mysteriously was still open at like 10pm that evening, on a holiday. Like, you couldn’t buy a toothbrush that day but you could get a translation of Nietzsche in Serbian. A country with such priorities can only be a place worth hanging out in.
We were very productive—I had played keyboards on all the songs they had recorded, plus one that Kole and I did as a live duet, acoustic guitar/vocals and Farfisa. So, I volunteered to do some singing in Serbian, and they taught me some lines, so I was able to harmonize with Kole on some tunes. I was able to do most of them, but there was one line I just couldn’t do, and my version of it had the entire room rolling on the floor with laughter—“you sound Japanese!” So, at which point I was done, I guess! It was, however, 1am. Oh, it should be said that Boris, the bass player, produces the sessions and is an excellent engineer.
STAVERN, 5/2
Oof. Up at 5. The sun comes up early in Serbia, so I never had trouble getting up. But still…why I am I, the musician who is supposed to be sleeping in til 3 in the afternoon every day, always getting up at 5? When I checked out, breakfast wasn’t fully served. I had a dry turnover of some sort and had the desk call me a cab. A little tiny car pulled up, and an enormous bear of a driver emerged, tattoos on his fingers. He stuffed my gear into whatever crevices were left allowing for himself, me, and his LPG tank. I had been given 1000 Dinars, about €12, by the band, and was told this would be more than enough. When we pulled up to the airport, the meter red 1140, and I gave him the 1000 note and a 500 note—he said, oh, don’t worry, no change, so I just take 1000. I gave him the coins I had, and he was more than happy. Very friendly!
I checked in, and took advantage of the fact that no one was going thru security—they were waiting in cafes outside security to linger with their non-traveling loved ones—to take care of that unpleasant business. Once inside I found a café and had my morning macchiato and my daily dietary tea. There was no Herald Tribune to be had. I had entered Serbia with a handful of dinars left over from the Novi Sad show, but I hadn’t been allowed to pay for anything during my stay, the band took care of my every food and drink need. So, after paying 200 for my shirt to be pressed, paying for my cab, paying for my café, I had 860 left in notes (they have notes of 10, and coins of ten and more than ten, oddly. 10 dinars is 12 Euro cents.) I walked up to someone at the gate for my flight and asked if they were Serbian. Yes, they replied. Would you be willing to trade me 860 dinars for 10 euros? Well…actually I live in Toronto, he said. I don’t really need dinars, but…ah, what the hell. He gave me €10, it was a good deal for him if he was spending the dinars soon. But, I think it was just the Serbian tendency for extremely good hospitality in effect.
Crammed into a little Austrian Air regional jet, the kind with no usable storage bins overhead, so I had my computer bag at my feet. Quick change at Vienna, but I still managed to get my IHT. I arrived to Oslo, and boarded a train for a three hour ride to Larvik. It took two hours to travel to Oslo from Vienna! Three hours on a train seemed like another punishment. But I was asleep for most of it.
At the station in Larvik I was met by Gunder—it was at Gunder’s home in the village of Stavern that Dom, myself, and my bandmates and more greeted 2008. It was probably Gunder who had bullied the local tavern into paying us an enormous sum to play what is essentially a pirate/biker bar. And there are not that many people—let alone enough bikers or pirates—in Stavern. The band was already set up when I arrived, but a vocal mic hadn’t arrived yet. I gave Claus shit about his ridiculous purple pants (what kind of yoga class are you teaching?) and gave hugs to all. Finally a mic arrived and we started to run thru songs only to find the high end speaker on one side of the PA was actually broken. Soundcheck over! The local sound tech agreed to replace it while we went off and got ready for the show.
I was taken back up to Larvik – OK, Larvik is where my bandmates are from, it’s a medium size town with a big ferry terminal. I have often compared it to Bellingham but it’s smaller as far as I know. I think nearby Sandefjord is more Bellingham sized. Stavern is like…Alder? There can’t be more than 2000 people in the village. I would say, less. More like 1000. I was checked into the Grand Hotel Larvik. It’s so Grand that they are tearing it down. I spent the evening on the phone with Dom, and checking email in the lobby. Now this is great—my computer, ever since I had the power cable repaired, has had problems receiving wifi signal. When most people have a full set of four black bars in their wifi icon, I may have one—or it may not receive anything at all. Usually I have to be so close to the wifi device as to render the distance comically similar to the length of the average Ethernet cable. So, I was barely able to get wifi in the lobby. Their lobby computer was down, but they allowed me to disconnect the cable from the back and use it for my rig. There was a small, nearly uninhabited bar by the front desk—the front desk person would go around and serve the two customers drinks and then return to waiting for people to check in. The in house music played for ambience was a dreadful RHCP album, I guess one of the last two. The unbelievable chorus: “hey-oh…this is what I say-oh”. I mean, Anthony, were you waiting for the tallyman to tally your banana or what?
Alternating this was a soundcheck in progress in what was normally the breakfast room—a band was rehearsing. It sounded familiar, and then I realized—it was ALL CHICAGO COVERS. Played with maniacally faithful expertise but sung by a guy with decidedly less vocal altitude than Peter Cetera. Yes, it was THAT era of Chicago. No Saturday in the Park, just “You’re the Inspiration”. I was turning in my as-yet-undug-grave.
Bjorn’s mom came by and picked me up, dropping Bjorn and I at the tavern at about 9.30. We weren’t due to play for another two hours. So, we walked up to Gunder and Kaja’s house—and it was Kaja’s birthday party. Claus, in his sales expertise had told me ‘there will be all kinds of tapas there, it’s gonna be great’. And it was great—but no tapas. I hadn’t eaten dinner—you might remember I had eaten a lone, dry turnover at 6, and then had been served a little bit of food on each flight—a single slice each of ham and cheese on the first flight; a tiny square dish of pasta on the second. I was ravenous. There *was* a tureen of very good soup, and couple of pieces of meat – small, coin sized pieces of a kind of cevapcici. I mean, two pieces, each the size of a €2 coin. I had some wine. Hmmm…would this be enough to get me thru a Disciplines acrobatics hour? I was worried.
I needn’t have been. Despite the fact that we hadn’t played together since February, we were on fire. On FIRE. I was everywhere—one minute I was outside the building, screaming at the huddled smokers; one minute, ON the sound desk; one minute, writing around the ankles of various men and women; one minute an inch from Claus’ face. There are some great photos from the local newspaper here. It was a storming set. STORMING. As usual, the minute it was over, I just wanted to play another one. And they had 200 people show up—20% of the town! They said they had NEVER had the place so full. They actually made money on the deal and they paid us a LOT. So, they were happy. I was exceedingly happy—I also found that the vocal exercises and training, plus the fantastic regimen that is a two-hour Posies set every night—meant that even tho I was singing hard and loud, my voice wasn’t the least bit thrashed, which didn’t used to be the case. We sold tons of vinyls, including one smart aleck (named Gunder) who paid for two with a ripped in half NOK100 note.
After show party was at Gunder’s…I crashed completely. I was awakened and sent back to Larvik in a taxi van, the only taxi in town. It’s a share taxi, driven by a very friendly guy who of course in the course of his work knows everyone’s problems. We stopped at one house and a young girl came out, after like 10 minutes. She got in the cab, we went one block, she got out.
I finally made it ‘home’.
DRAMMEN, 5/3
Up for breakfast? Of course. Not loading the equipment we left at the venue overnight? Of course not. Baard and Bjorn came by and picked me up just after noon. I was veeeeeery sore. I had bruises on my hands, feet, abdomen. But, I was happy and ready for more. We weren’t driving for 15 minutes before we heard ‘Oslo’ on the radio. It sounded so good! Right at the end we went into a tunnel but we came out in time to hearing the DJs question why I didn’t pronounce it “ooshlu” like a Norwegian. I can answer this—the song is sung from the point of view of a visitor, not a local. That’s the whole deal.
Anyway, Drammen. Drammen is the but of many, many jokes—it’s the Cleveland of Norway. It’s not a bad little town, you know? But it has the unfortunate position of being within earshot of big bad Oslo. Drammen used to be a mill town. So, you get the idea of some snooty class distinctions being made between the workers of Drammen and the owners of Oslo. And in their guilt, the owners degrade the workers by painting them as hapless rubes, unworthy of sympathy.
Well, the sure got a purty venue down there in Drammen. The Union Scene—named after the long-gone workers of said mill. The mill is now a glass-covered architectural wonder, housing music venue, a music school, a theatre company, and more. The glass covering unites what were once separate buildings into one big complex. The buildings inside are wonderful old brick lofts. Outside, the river that once powered the mill and transported the timber and processed paper rushes by. Thomas, from local band the Jessica Fletchers, helps run the place, and was our guide. The event was their spring fling, called—in the spirit of the ‘Union’ theme—Working Class Hero. It lasts for two days, and there are bands playing in the big room (cap. 1000) and in the small room (cap. 300). In the foyer in between a DJ spins 70s rock. Sadly, with all this beautiful infrastructure, and all the assembled talent, it wasn’t enough to draw the conservative people of Drammen out of whatever cover band hell they inhabit on the average weekend—and no self-respecting Oslowegian would ever deem to descend to Drammen and waste a perfectly good weekend out. Even friends of the band who called and asked to be on the list didn’t show. So, I guess there were about 300 people there. Which was great for us—we were the headliners in the small room. But the big room was looking kinda lonely. And once an audience becomes aware they are all that’s gonna show up, they start to get real shy. So, I had my work cut out for me. The bands on the two stages were staggered in theory—but Magnet was running pretty long—however, he was urging everyone to hurry over to see us as soon as he was done.
Dinner in this case WAS actually tapas. I mostly ate the jamon…and then, around 10pm (showtime of midnight) the whole building had run out of bottled water. Oops. And I wasn’t into lubricating my instrument with Yellowtail shiraz, TYVM.
During the day—in addition to an interview with the local TV, I had plenty of time to work online; plenty of time to watch the excellent interview/documentary “Fellini: I’m a Born Liar”, which gives incredible insights into the mind of the filmmaker. I had time to do my vocal exercises, with a piano, which is rare.
So, we went on, and people were trickling in. I had to really work on them to get them comfortable. I think I sang into the eyes of every man, woman and child in the room. And it worked! By the end, people were going absolutely insane. We were supposed to finish and get out of the way for the headliners in the main room. On this assumption, Baard and Claus ran in the direction of the cheap Shiraz. But the people were howling for more. So, I got onstage and said thanks…urged people to join me at the merch table—they weren’t havin’ it. Ok. Well, I picked up Bjorn’s guitar—his strap had broken during the last song (we rock that hard). I started to strum on his out of tune strings, and I played a solo version of “Shadow of Your Doubt”—the whole room was clapping the beat—it definitely was a ‘moment’. Bjorn came back in and gave the assist—he started to play bass, and I put down the guitar, and just sang along with him. Everybody was happy! They wanted more, which is just how it should be. I crawled on top of the merch table and hawked our vinyl wares, successfully. One guy, a very nice, kind of conservative looking fella—short hair, denim jacket, non-fashionable jeans—came up and said the greatest compliment—he said that he was a real AC/DC fan, and I was as good a frontman as Bon Scott. And that, furthermore, that was only made possible because of the dynamite band backing me up. I thought that was incredibly cool.
We loaded up the van, and Claus and I drove back to Oslo, and unloaded it. He dropped me at my hotel—the festival paid for two nights of hotel for me, mercifully in Oslo! No offense to Drammen, but it’s good to be in the town I know best. I had asked the festival, just that day, to book me a third night that I would pay for—I was supposed to have been staying at Claus’ house, but it’s not done yet (having visited the site yesterday, I told him to consider moving his housewarming party from June to, say, mid 2014). Unfortunately, there was a big convention of some kind in town, and the hotel, in fact, all the affordable hotel rooms in town, were booked solid. Sigh.
Sunday—I took the time to linger over breakfast, to linger over café at Tim Wendelboe’s. Running into the singer of the Lionheart Brothers in the park, I walked with them across Oslo, (running into Claus and Nanna having lunch along the way!) and parked myself, gloriously alone, in the third row of the Colosseum Theatre, to take in “Shine A Light”. Being a lead singer myself, I watched Mick with a totally new kind of…ahahah sympathy for the old devil. He is superb. He comes off as a real prick in the Uncut interview (the ‘bonka bonka’ issue) but he is ‘the ultimate driving machine’. Charlie Watts, flawless. Snare has sounded exactly the same for 30 years. Perfect. Keith is acting more and more like Johnny Depp. Weird. But, loveable. He always looks surprised in a weird kind of way—like he is amazed to be enjoying his unique position for yet another day. Ronnie comes off as a bit of a burnout when he speaks, but his playing is magnificent. The sound quality is excellent. I’m not sure what Blondie Chaplin is doing up there, but hey, hats off to a good gig for the bloke.
Claus met me at the theatre, we had dinner al fresco, and headed to the Living Room studio, a veritable fortress situated behind more doors than seen in the intro to ‘Get Smart’, right above Café Mono dead smack downtown Oslo. It was here that I first recorded with Briskeby for the ‘Joe Dallesandro’ single; and it was here that I mixed half of the Jim Protector album (which just came out on vinyl, BTW). It’s also perhaps the most used mastering studio in Norway (?), with Briskeby’s producer Espen Berg at the helm. We had already mastered the album for Norway—it’s in the factory now—but here we were mastering different tracks and versions for the international release. We dropped in the new extra guitar for ‘Falling Knives’ that I had recorded the day before the Posies show last month; I added an extra ‘f’ to a word in ‘Shadow of Your Doubt’. Everything sounds marvelous. Made a few other adjustments and B’sYU. Espen dropped me at the hotel, now one bag of 50 KS Covers EPs heavier; Andre from the Sellout had dropped them by.
Monday was a press day. I spent the morning either online, on the phone as manager, or at Tim Wendelboe’s. I met up with Lasse, our live sound engineer, and paid him for his work this weekend. And headed up to the Grand Hotel’s rooftop bar for an interview and photo session with one of the biggest dailies in Norway. Norway has three national newspapers—VG, Dagbladet, and Aftenposten. We did lengthy, in depth interviews for all of them this day. Our label who work with bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys for Norway, say this is unprecedented. Also, moving from B list to A list on the national radio is equally unprecedented—and all this we have done. I was really grateful for all the interviews this day, they were really interested, and the conversations were intelligent and fun. Most of the journos had just gotten the album that morning—last week was mostly a holiday, and the label was holding out sending advance copies, hoping the artwork copies would come back from the factory, but no such luck. But, they already loved the album on first listen. So, they were on our side.
We also dropped in on the national radio for an interview. When we entered the studio, they were playing ‘Best Mistake’. Since they had made the demo version a hit last year, I assumed it was the demo, and was thinking, ‘oh man, it sounds so much better than the album version. But…wait a minute…I didn’t do that vocal harmony on the demo…hey, this *is* the album version…and it rocks!’ It was really weird to see how into it the DJs were, they were rocking out to it, and not, I believe, for our benefit. They were sincerely into the music. We spoke, they played ‘Oslo’ and ‘No Vacancy’ and we were done. Claus and I had time to drive around and listen to the new masters, make critiques etc. We dined, and then met our designer Joakim for a meeting on ideas for merchandise, our new backdrop, the international version artworks, and our website/myspace redesign coming soon. Finally it was time for the last interview, on the terrace of a bar next to the Sentrum Scene, the first place I ever played in Oslo. The journalist from VG had had to postpone the interview until 10.30 as he was meeting deadlines for the week (Monday is the journalist’s worst day—so I was very grateful that the three most prominent journos in Norway had each agreed to take an hour out of a day that has none to spare, for us). I thought we’d be burnt but we perked right up, and had a great chat for over an hour.
Claus dropped me at my former hotel, and I got my bags out of storage, and cabbed over to Ole and Sarah, from Revolver Bar, ‘s new flat, very close to the Disciplines’ studio. They have a magnificent rooftop terrace. I thought about sleeping up there, under the stars—it was actually warm enough—but, they had brought their extra bed out of storage and set it up in their tiny main room. So, I used that one!
I was up at 4! Taxi at 5. €110 later, at the airport. I had two many bags, and too early a flight to f*** with taxi to train to etc. I boarded the relatively empty SN Brussels flight to…Brussels, sort of in the opposite direction of my destination, Vienna. It was the cheap flight, although, one could argue that a more expensive flight at a later time might have actually saved the band money since I could have taken the train instead of cab to airport. But, I think it was about the same, really. The long layover has allowed me to catch up on this overdue blog. So…all is well. On to the KS tour.
Love KS BRU Terminal A
4.28.2008
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE BONKA BONKAS
UTRECHT, 4/20 Dom’s birthday…
Outstanding show. The stage bathed in only cool blue light, we faced a rapturous crowd, who supported us…the feeling is like when you are crowd surfing, where you are confident that you won’t be allowed to fall. And we surely did not. We played two encores, at least—and would have played more had we not been told repeatedly that there was a strict curfew on sound at 23h, due to an agreement with the neighbors. But, to our surprise, the DJ spun records on til 1am. I asked the staff…”surely, this music being played thru the system is louder than two guys gently playing guitars?” “oh no, the monitors are much deeper than the thumping bass drum of this Franz Ferdinand record being played at full blast”. Bollocks.
The next day, the incredible was upon us: no show, no travel. No doubt we slept in late, just ‘cuz. We didn’t have to leave Roel’s house, as we had brought home enough food and drink from the hospitality rider at the Ekko to supply us for quite some time. Eventually I went for a walk, to do shopping for typical tour things—a phone charger to replace the one I lost at some point; a phone card to call Dom and other with; a newspaper; allergy med’s, which I can’t tour without in spring; and a decent coffee. Sending a Disciplines promo in the post. Almost all of this I accomplished at the train station, about a 20-minute walk straight down the road that goes by the end of Roel’s block.
In the evening, Jon made a fabulous caprese salad, I supplemented that with yet another sandwich compiled from last night’s deli tray, and I set off in search of a small cinema downtown. I got a little lost (like a fool, I left without my GPS, which would have saved me some mis-turns). But I got to the tiny cinema/café/bar that is right behind the Hotel Karel V—the hotel where I spent more than a week with REM when we rehearsed at the Tivoli in 2003. I had eyed this charming little art house kino at that time, but never went in. So, myself and half a dozen others late on Monday night took in ‘I’m Not There’, the bizarre kaleidoscope based on a kind, or many kinds of Bob Dylans. Like any movie made by non-musicians about rock music, it has its overdramatic, cornball elements, and for all the riffs that point you down the barrel of some alternate universe, the most compelling parts of the film are the re-creations of swinging London and Cate Blanchett’s drugged out Bob, the most ‘realistic’ parts of the film. IMHO.
During the day I had been leafing thru an issue of Uncut, with the Stones on the cover, and came across this quote from Keith, when asked if Mick ever asks him to join him in his fitness regime:
“I think a lot of Mick’s frenzy about physical stuff is actually mental. That’s the way he is. For me, doing a Rolling Stones show for two hours a night, that’s enough f**king exercise, you know? Then I’ve got to go to bed with the old lady, bonka bonka. You know?“
Oh I certainly do know, Keef. Needles, I mean needless to say, bonka bonka became the theme of the tour, mentioned inappropriately in many a Posies/Gas. Bro’s lyric, etc. It got to the point where inexplicably in the middle of a Posies song, Jon & I would cut into the GB’s “We are made of stardust” riff and lyrics, but just sing “bonka bonka BONka!!”…this could happen anytime in the show.
BRUSSELS, 4/22
GPS mounted, we set off for Belgium in the afternoon, and stopped by our odd by very pleasant modern hotel in a bit of industrial sprawl outside the city—there was a ‘seafood convention’ in Brussels that absorbed up all the available rooms in the city—and then wound our way into central Brussels, getting a little lost because Brussels shuttles much of its traffic thru tunnels under the city, and you can get lost in a GPS-deprived wormhole pretty quick. But, we found the Belle Vue club, which inside an old brewery along a canal. I learned that ‘brasserie’, which we Parisians associate with generally tacky restaurants for businesspeople to spend trade in their ‘cheques dejeuners’, is simply the French word for ‘brewery’, and the restaurants that bear the name now originally were like a kind of ancient Gordon Biersch that started to serve a bit of food along with their tankards.
First question I asked was: since when has a brewery gone out of business in Belgium? But, it hadn’t, it had just moved to a more modern facility, and before this building was to be turned into ‘artist lofts’ that no artist other than Jeff Koons could afford, they were allowed to put on art happenings, like our show e.g. The only downside being that since it was not a venue in regular use, most people in Brussels had no idea where it was, so there were many conspicuous absences this night. But, the showroom is incredibly tiny, and when we took to the 8x8 stage, the room was packed. And we played very well. Playing Posies shows, esp. without the full band, is a kind of vocal workout, but the kind of workout that strengthens my voice, not like the Disciplines workout, which usually leaves me worn out the next day. But, my voice has been really strong on this tour, and its grown since the first shows. Feels great! After the show we were given a box of incredible gourmet chocolates from a couple who happen to have a Belgian chocolate factory—it’s good to have fans who aren’t in bands for a change! I chatted with the friendly guy whose band Milk the Bishop covered ‘Flavor of the Month’ on their album back in the day, and his Serbian girlfriend who was amazed we had just played in her hometown of Novi Sad. We are everywhere, I assured her!
Back at the hotel, we all crowded into Jon & my room—that is, the Posies and the Gasoline Brothers—and watched the pitiful Ben Affleck vehicle ‘Reindeer Games’, drank wine, and ate an entire box of chocolates. Rockers gone wild.
OSTEND, 4/23
With such short drives between shows in Benelux, we could afford to sleep in til noon, take lunch at the hotel restaurant, and leisurely make our way to the coastal city of Ostend (which houses an absurd convention of mathematicians, and an attempted murder via planned industrial sabotage of a mayonnaise factory in Pynchon’s Against the Day) or Oostende depending on who you speak too. It has an enormous slice of beach, but you don’t notice it—high-rise hotels and a casino block the view. We checked into the art deco Hotel du Parc, and immediately went around the corner to drop the gear at the venue, Manuscript. Manuscript is a tiny bar with an old wooden stage in the corner, covered with tables during the day. It lists a capacity of 100 but I can’t imagine more than 60 people being in there and being happy about it. I guess we had about that many that night…maybe more, but they still seemed happy! Ostend is a funny town, because it’s no metropolis, and usually these kinds of vacation/beach towns are really un rock & roll, but this particular venue has been going out of its way to bring quality music to the town since the early 90s. We in fact played there once before, in 1994—but in my memory I had confused this venue with another one (we played half a dozen medium-to-small towns in Belgium on that particular tour), so when I walked in the place on this day, there was absolutely zero déjà vu. I had been picturing the snack bar in Kortrijk we played on that tour. Well. And Ostend itself I had no memory of either, despite the fact that Manuscript is right in the center.
So, the crowd was quite rowdy that night—definitely some real fans, but one of those peculiar situations where fans are enjoying the show, and making comments to each other, but really loudly, and right in the front row, as if Jon & I can’t hear them, but in fact…anyway, I can’t get mad at people who are having a good time, and they were roaring for an encore by the end. After the show, I really wanted to hang out—we had made a bet that if we could get Roel, the vegetarian Gasoline Brother, to eat meat, that the next drive between cities would be undertaken by Mathijs—naked. I thought if we could get Roel drunk enough…so, I had the audience working on buying him drinks, and he was good and hammered by the time I left, but I was so tired…the hotel was just two blocks away…mmmm.
ANTWERP, 4/24
Having gone to bed relatively early and quite sober, I woke up at 8, and found the sun was out (Ostend’s default setting is drizzle). I headed down to breakfast, and then went for a walk on the beach. The tide was out, enlarging the already generous stretch of sand that the town greedily hoards with a huge wall of typical seaside resort hotels. No stones at all, just shells, millions of them. Small clams, and razor clams. There was a crew of people picking up litter, a few strollers, and a guy fishing in the surf. These kinds of moments can be an instant ‘reset’ button on tour. I headed back to the center, bought a newspaper and had a coffee at the hotel’s very fine café. They serve drip coffee, but it percolates in a little dripping contraption made of aluminum, that fits perfectly into the top of the glass cup. So, you wait a bit while it brews, and then dig in.
After checking out, we had lunch in the café—I had pig’s tongue in Madeira sauce. Then Mathijs went to fetch the car, since the hotel’s garage was quite far from the actual hotel; we met at the club, which was just opening up for cleaning, the owner Vanessa (I think?) made me a café and we loaded up the car and drove to Antwerp.
Antwerp is a major port, and quite industrial. I’ve never found it to be very beautiful, even in the old center…I remember R.E.M. having a day off here, and Dom came up to visit, and after staying night after night in palatial hotels, we were in what was essentially a 2.5 star dump, with stains on the carpet. Sigh.
Our hotel was in an industrial park, natch. But it was essentially more appealing than the place mentioned above. A little ways down the ring road was Trix, the venue. Trix is a large, multipurpose cultural center-there are venues, a café, a kind of media laboratory, rehearsal places. It appears to be a modified insurance company HQ—the architecture is quite hideous, but no worse than it’s neighbors. And inside it’s SO new that it could use some piss and barf stains to make it a bit more homey, but all in good time. Certainly the show was good, and very well attended. The audience was extremely mellow compared to the football hooligan vibe of Manuscript, but we played quite well.
After the show, we tried to have another wine and chocolate binge with bad TV in the hotel with the Gas. Bro’s, but the TV and the wine were SO bad we gave up after watching a Discovery channel show on tae kwon doe after 15 minutes and crashed.
DORDRECHT, 4/25
Since we had no hotel to go to in Dordrecht, and they weren’t expecting us until 5pm, we had negotiated a 2 pm check out at our hotel, so I went back to bed after breakfast, and got up in time to have lunch before the restaurant closed. We hit some shitty traffic on the way out of Antwerp and again at the Dutch border, but we still made it to Dordrecht basically on time. We were trying to call the promoter but it wasn’t going thru. The GPS had led us to a street that isn’t open all day (like the streets leading to the center of St. Martin on Ile de Re, metal posts come out of the ground at certain times of the day, and you need to punch in a code to take your car into the center—locals only). We navigated as close as we could—the alternate street leading towards the club is *also* blocked, but permanently, by metal posts at the mid point of the block. We had to call our booking agent to get an alternate number for the club, and someone popped out of a doorway just past the posts, and we loaded in the stuff.
The Bibelot. Planet Bibelot as I will call it. This club definitely exists in an alternate universe standing in absolute contrast to the usual professionalism of clubs you encounter in Holland. It’s the same principle as many places—funded by state money, run by a combination of paid staff and volunteers, many of whom get educational credit for their work there, while they learn how to run sound, or what have you. The place I’m in now, Effenaar, is like that. And the shit here is so tight that no detail is overlooked.
At Bibelot, they pretty much had it wrong all down the line. It’s not that they weren’t nice—the volunteers were very friendly, and doing their best…my theory is the booker, who is paid, is not very good at passing the info down to the volunteers. But, let’s go down the list, shall we?
1) “We didn’t receive the rider”. Ah. So, the technical rider and hospitality rider weren’t there. Now, the thing is EVERY other club received the rider, and several weeks before the show, those that hadn’t emailed me—I was in email contact with every single venue we played on this tour—it’s part of my job as tour manager. So, did they ask me for it at any point? No. And, they told me they had “called and called” Mojo, our local agency in Holland, which was denied by Mojo when I met them last night in Amsterdam. So—they were set up for a full band, mics all over the stage, drum riser, tons of monitor wedges. But, they had no catering backstage—no deli tray, nothing. Now, me, I would have looked at the budget that Mojo gave me, and I would have improvised, put some bread, cheese and the like in the dressing room—pretty much what every band gets, so without having explicit instructions, aka the hospitality rider, you can easily fake it. So, we had to re set up the stage, ok, no big. Just a few mic stands and a few wedges. Nothing to snack on, but we had had lunch in Antwerp, so we were OK. Dinner came, with meat and veg options, so that was good (there was so much of it tho, since they were expecting a full band, that we took home a kilo of leftovers).
During the show, the weirdness intensified.
2) Now, each week, the venues all report in their advance ticket sales to the agency. So I get a spreadsheet every week with updated sales. And, like all the other clubs, who ended up having accurate counts, I watched Bibelot’s counts steadily mount over the weeks to advance sales of about 110, consistent with the other venues in Holland we were playing. While the Gasoline Brothers were playing their set, replete with Bonka Bonkas strewn throughout, the stage manager came in and apologized for the lack of turnout. Ah, I should mention that Bibelot is a former church, so quite spacious—perfect for our music, in fact. I replied, “well, 110, that’s pretty good for us, really. I’m happy”. She looked puzzled…well, in the end there were about 75 people there, so they had been sending a fictional number to our agent…but a steadily increasing fictional number. No explanation.
3) Being a subsidized venue, they can afford to have quite a bit more staff then they really need. Every show, no matter how big or small, probably has the same staff—several technicians, bar staff, security, office staff. So there were about 20-25 people working there that night. Many of which had nothing to do—so they drank at the bar, and talked. Nay, screamed. Like, shrieking, outrageous laughter, even during our quietest songs. I was getting pretty pissed off so I pulled the stage manager over and told her to do something about it, which she did, but still…
4) I had told the lighting technician my usual speech about no fog or hazing machines are to be in use during our set. They are too noisy, and I don’t like the fog/haze stuff, it’s not nice to breathe, no matter what the lighting people will try and tell you. She respected my request, but when the show was over and we were selling our merch off the stage like we always do, she blasted us with tons of fog, just out of spite, I guess.
5) They had no record of the fact that they were supposed to pay the Gasoline Brothers their fee. And yet they knew our fee…of course they didn’t get the copies of Jon & my passports I emailed EVERYONE before the tour (each club needs to retain a copy for tax reasons) either.
6) When it was time to load out, long after a disco had started, suddenly the 25 staff members milling around were NOWHERE to be found.
7) The club booker had given me his cell number incorrectly, that’s why I couldn’t reach him.
8) I’m sure there’s more but you get the idea.
It sure sounds nice in that big old church, tho, and people loved the show. Our fan Dirk, who videos many of our shows, had bought some Chariot, Jon Auer and other oddities at a used record store that was going out of business, so we had more merch to sell! Thanks Dirk!
After the show we drove back to Utrecht, scratching our heads at this bizarre place—it could be so great, with minimal effort. And with so many great venues in Holland, I would think they would be trying harder—I told Mojo not to send any more shows there, and I’m sure I’m not the first.
Note: Dordrecht is a beautiful little town; I had a lovely stroll after dinner in the twilight, crossing canals, and discovering the larger body of water the town observes from different places.
AMSTERDAM, 4/26
Well, you couldn’t get a greater contrast. The Melkweg is run as tightly as a venue can be run. The loaders jump up when you arrive, and your stuff is onstage and set up in 5 minutes. More on this.
That morning I got up early, and took a train up to Alkmaar, north of Amsterdam, to meet with Sonic Rendezvous, a big distributor who also have a label. I am always meeting with folks about the Disciplines record, looking for labels outside of Norway for its release. William from the label was kind enough to meet me on a Saturday, and we headed down to the warehouse to have a look around, chat a bit. His 5-year-old son played video games on one of the computers. After the meeting, I trained down to Amsterdam, and this time I had my GPS with me, so I could navigate to the Melkweg with no guesswork.
The Melkweg is a serious institution in the Amsterdam music…uh, universe—now considerably expanded and modernized since we first visited the place in 1993 (Big Star rented the place for a rehearsal on our first ever visit to Europe), it has two music venues for 700 and 1500 people respectively, a cinema, a theatre, two art galleries, a café and restaurant. It’s continually in motion. And like I said, it’s professional at the highest level. I spent the afternoon here checking email, and the rest of the guys showed up at 5pm, right on time, and we were all done soundchecking both bands by like 5.40. Our friend Alfredo, now living in Amsterdam after leaving Italy, was there, and did a short interview for the film he’s making on us.
Ok, so this show was excellent—packed house, exuberant crowd, we did three encores, sold all our remaining merch, and so on! Loaders were there to help us even after we had an hour’s worth of after show beers with our local friends, and the two head cheeses from our Dutch promoter, Mojo. We drove back to Utrecht and drank wine and listened to Pavement til it was crashie crashie time.
EINDHOVEN, 4/27
Such a friendly face to see, greeting us at the loading dock at Effenaar—our old tour manager, from the Amazing Disgrace and Success tours, Menko Leeuw. Looking and acting just the same—big laugh, still big bunch of blonde hair in a long ponytail. Great that he was stage manager for this show, so we got to hang out and catch up. The Effenaar is €12 million complex right next to the Eindhoven train station. Two concert halls, a restaurant, etc. We were in the small room, same place we played in 2005 (the Effenaar used to be in a much smaller facility, an old fire station, and we played there several times in the 90s/beginning of this decade). In the big room tonight was reggae legend Gregory Isaacs; his bus was pulling up just as our little car was. Unf. we were on almost exactly at the same time, so I only managed to see the first 5 minutes of his set, but it sounded amazing, what I could hear. He’s a dapper gent, short hair, no beard—not the dready/beardy typical Rasta look, but the real deal nonetheless.
Before the show I made calls and checked emails (and started to write this blog) from the production office on the 4th floor—big windows looked out on the comings and goings of the trains in the station; there’s a pond and a small park right next to the Effenaar’s parking lot, with ducks commuting in and out as well.
This show might be my favorite of the tour—I can’t tell you how good it felt, it’s indescribable. So relaxed, and so…accurate. I was trying things on the fly, and they were all working out, in perfect synch with Jon. The place ended up being pretty full, so we had a great crowd, and they indeed called us back for two encores. So good! We had a few drinks after upstairs, and then the Gasoline Bro’s drove Jon & I to our hotel. A runner had already checked us in and delivered the key to us at the venue. We were sad to say goodbye Roel and Mathijs, who were kind enough to help us up the tiny stairs, all four flights, to our tiny (not en suite) room.
Now, the Benno Hotel seems to be haunted. That’s my theory. The gleaming red sign on top is meant to be friendly, a landmark, an invitiation—but its red glare comes off more like a warning. BATES MOTEL. You have to understand how good Jon & I felt when we went to bed—and how awful we felt when we woke up—each of us plagued by horrific dreams. In my dreams, hands were emerging from the mattress of my bed, as if I was in the hotel room in real life, and grabbing me. This is not good. They would evolve into children—evil, tormented…truly a vision of horror. Later, when freed from the hotel location in my dreams, I wandered in another landscape, and another child was horribly injured, I had to remove shards of glass from its eye. I woke up at 6, having to pee (no toilet) and some workers were noisily unloading what sounded like scaffolding outside somewhere. When my alarm went off at 8.30, I was exhausted. And drained by the presence of energy in that room. Oddly enough, my cell phone was drained of battery, too, and I had just charged it—and I don’t use my cell that much. I had a mediocre shower, and had breakfast. The front desk (we let ourselves in with a key, there was no one working late at night) is also a bar, so I asked the desk clerk for some hot water (I bring my own special tea on the road with me). I asked him if there was anything strange about room 12, but he was just a young dude working there, he didn’t know anything. I guess they probably wouldn’t tell me. In my dream I met the owner of the hotel, and was asking her repeatedly “What happened in room 12?” Any Eindhovenes can tell me something?
LUXEMBOURG, 4/28
To add to the mood, a streak of what had been gorgeous weather during our visit to Holland was broken by an absolute pissdown outside. Ugh. I hauled my stuff down the tiny, typical Dutch stairs, and had them call me us a taxi, and we went to the station.
The club in Luxembourg had bought and mailed me the train tickets. They were open—we could take any train to Luxembourg we wanted to. There aren’t any direct trains from Eindhoven, so I had selected a 10.30 itinerary with a change in Maastricht and a change in Liege, the least changes you can have to Luxembourg. A bit early, a bit hard, but, doable. We boarded the train to Maastricht, and settled in. It stopped at a few little cow towns along the way, and came to rest in a town called Heerlen. End of the line, they said. Uh, what about Maastricht? Oh, Maastricht? You would have had to change in klakdlakkfjaadsf. Er, it doesn’t say so on my itinerary. Ah, you were in the wrong part of the train. At sflksdlaalkfknnfd it splits, and only part of the train goes to Maastricht. So, we had to hop a train to Maastricht, then go to Liege, then go to a little town called Namur, and then we got to Luxembourg, tired as hell. Note that each change of train involves moving two suitcases, two guitars, and two computer bags off and on a train—plus whatever change of platform might be called upon. The first change was from the same; the second had elevators to get to the different platforms; the third had escalators; the last, good old fashioned escaliers.
The last stop before Luxembourg Gare is a little town in Luxembourg, and on our train at this time we had about 800 chattering school kids get on, nap time was over for the poor old Posies.
But, we arrived, and Fred from the D:Qliq was there at the platform, and we were soon up in the band apartment, happily checking email. I got a text that ‘Oslo’ by the Disciplines has been A-listed by radio P3 in Norway—in other words, it’s a hit. We better get that up on our myspace!
Fred ordered in some delicious risotto, cracked a bottle of Portuguese red. I’m coming back!
A few nightmares associated with my last, insane visit…not musical ones, but D:qliq has some rather heavy associations with a period ‘perdido’ –the dissolute/libertine (baby)shambles that was my life a year ago.
However, we redeemed the place with our show--turnsout, Luxembourgish people are shy, and so are we...so it was a bit of an awkward first meeting, but sweet nonetheless. I feel bad, but Jon & I felt beat to shit by the weird night and hard travel, so we played a little more compact set, and are planning on sleeping a bit longer (and better) tonight.
Love KS Luxembourg
4.20.2008
STOCKHOLM, 4/13
The hotel in Stavanger was so comfortable, that I slept right thru my alarm, and had to hurry to get ready—I kept our driver waiting while I shoveled down some breakfast. Anyway, we had plenty of time. We checked in, and flew to Oslo, and I had time there to check in for our next flight, have lunch, check email, and pick up a new book—one of my favorite activities. I chose carefully, literally (ahahaha) consulting every single English-language title at the main bookstore in OSL. I settled for Pynchon’s faux-18th-century travelogue/tall tale Mason and Dixon.
We flew to Stockholm; our flight had been delayed by almost an hour and had switched gates about 5 times, so we headed straight to the venue. The Sodra Teatern is a lovely establishment, crowning a prominent hill in Stockholm’s trendy Sodermalm neighborhood. The elegant and stately structure has 4 venues inside—the main theatre, a mini-opera house where Jon & I held court for 3 hours in 2000; the Kagelbanen (bowling alley), where Big Star played in 2006; there’s a small bar that has live music; and the Cafeteatern, the other end of the former bowling alley, which is more or less a mirror image of the Kagelbanen, but with a tinier stage. We set up, and soon found that Jon’s amp wasn’t working well. They were going to get another one, but not during soundcheck, so we struggled thru and then walked to the hotel. I pretty much turned around and walked back, wanting to spend some time burning advance copies of the Disciplines’ album. Presales were strong, but in fact the venue was truly packed when we went on, and we slid into a simply flawless performance—I can say that objectively, that from any angle I would want to analyze this show from—Jon’s and my level of comfort, number of mistakes made, audience reaction, audience respectful silence, sound quality—I can find not one single detraction from rating this show absolutely note-perfect. In fact, we went on to do extra encores, and just generally surprised ourselves with how well we were received and how effortlessly we relaxed into rising to the occasion. I saw friends old and new there—including my dear old friend Melinda, from the Pusjkins (band I produced in 1997). She’s plenty pregnant, so I was impressed she had the energy to stand and watch our two-hour show!
GOTHENBURG, 4/14
Another pleasant surprise, really—in the Pusterviksbaren, the second floor music venue that is attached to a larger theatre (which is only used for the dramatic arts, as far as I know). This venue has seen Posies shows in 1998 & 2000; KS solo shows in 2001 and 2004. I would say we know it well, except that now the stage has been moved to a logical part of the room, i.e., the closest end of the room to the backstage, and the stage is now a conventional rectangle shape, not the odd inverted triangle cutting across a corner of the room, making the audience choose which projected ray they want to align themselves with. We all remarked how the now-sensible setup meant that it wasn’t quite as funky/fun as the old days—but by showtime that seemed to matter not at all. Another decently full house (and this on a Monday, no less), and another reception full of enthusiasm. And more old friends—Kent from Sator, the ageless wonder that he is, slowly and steadily decimated our beers.
After the show I had the chance to watch Iraq in Fragments, James Longley’s documentary made while living among Iraqis for two years, before Iraq was too dangerous for an American to travel freely. The film is a result of his extraordinary patience as a filmmaker: he worked his way into the local populations—including a Kurdish agricultural/brickmaking family, and the h.q. of the followers of Moktada al-Sadr—and became as invisible as you could imagine an American with a video camera could be; the result is that you truly feel as immersed as he would have been in the moments depicted—which could be someone telling you about their thoughts and dreams, or it could simply be images of the chaotic streets, or perhaps just roiling smoke erupting from a brick kiln. It’s life like we see it—our eyes jump from place to place, and rest upon the daily activities of men and women, and occasionally we focus on a conversation—one already in progress, or one we instigated. It’s fascinating, and, as you might expect, harrowing, depressing, and in my mind, suggested a conclusion then that has since been proven, but is still true now: the worst is yet to come.
MALMO, 4/15
Another oft-frequented by Posies venue—this was our 6th show at the KulturBolaget (known to all as KB Halle). The golden rule of tour: the nicer the hotel, the shorter the stay. I remember the one day off I had with REM where Dominique could come visit, after a string of 9-star hotels with enormous green marble bathtubs and such, was spent in Antwerp in what barely passed as a moldy Holiday Inn. Smelling of paint. Here, with a 6.20 lobby call looming, we checked into the Radisson SAS, and I had a huge room, with functioning wifi, a full length tub, and bed that surely warranted its own post code. I took a good look, as I wasn’t going to have much time to linger over this particular oasis.
Soon, we were heading to the venue, itself being rather like a bowling alley in size, shape and vibe. As usual, we rearranged the setup that awaited us to get us closer to the audience, and then knocked off a quick soundcheck. Dinner was immediately served afterwards, and following that I went for a stroll around the neighborhood, taking a café, reading home décor and design magazines.
KB’s a big place, and this show was oddly underpopulated this night—our 2005 show here was among the best-attended shows of the tour. Still, we played extremely well, and, I believe, warranted two encores. Magnus Tingsek was in attendance, and we would have loved to have his local guidance as we sampled the local alehouses, but, alas, we had an early morning departure, and I can’t afford the slightest hint of grog-gy feeling when I have to get us from points A to points B.
I was up at 5.45, making tea and making sure my bags were as compact as possible, and we were in a cab at 6.20—before breakfast in the hotel was even laid out. We were deposited on the steps of the train station, and I eventually figured out how to buy a ticket to Copenhagen airport and which track it was leaving on—in five minutes. We hustled, and got on the train. Note to Swedish national rail: not only is your website heard to navigate, but why not have a ‘Copenhagen Airport’ button for one stop shopping? There are all kinds of confusing buttons, and in one route, you’ll see ‘Kastrup’ nestled amongst the names of stops along the way. Well, we made it, anyway—it’s just that our train didn’t. At some point, we came to a halt on the tracks. Our train was fine—but another train had broken down, and we were effectively blocked from accessing the airport. Oh, sh*t. The minutes, which would normally be crawling in this situation, got up and ran—our flight time was getting closer and closer. A solution was enacted—we would bypass the airport, and go to another stop, where a train would pick us up and take us back the other direction a short bit, and we would make it to the airport. The only bummer in this solution is that Jon & I travel with slightly more objects than we have arms, but, we managed. The train that arrived to rescue us all was unfortunately half the size of the train we originally boarded, so far too many people were crammed on, SRO front to back (which makes moving luggage and guitars even more awkward). Incredibly, we arrived at CPH at 7.35, exactly one hour before our flight was due to take off. The check-in didn’t take too long, the airline didn’t charge us too much for our bulging suitcases, and we headed off to…an absolutely huge security line. I mean, there were easily 500-1000 people, in two converging lines 4 wide, being sorted to the various metal detectors. It was 8, and soon 8.15. 8.35 was wheels up—so finally I asked if we could jump the queue, and we did just that…at last, running the 200 meters to the gate, having thrown belts and wallets into whatever bag we had with us…only to find that we didn’t even start boarding until 5 minutes after the flight was supposed to have left. Ah ha…
So, breakfast in Sweden (there was an ‘early bird’ spread in the bar when we left); plane caught in Denmark; lunch in Germany; dinner in Austria, and ended the night in Hungary. Lunch in Germany was expensive--€13 for two pieces of bread with some salmon on top, €4 for a double espresso—but it was good to be back in the Eurozone again, and to have some Euros in pocket to spend there. In Vienna, we cabbed into an address near the Westbahnhof, a café colled Ronahi, recommended by our host in Wien, Phil. He came and met us, in fact—we passed the afternoon/early evening dining, having wine/café (the French speedball), checking emails, shooting the proverbial Scheiße. Phil was very kind to come and hang out with us, playing the host even tho’ we weren’t actually staying with him until 3 days later. He walked us to the station, helping us lug the gear, and got us to the correct platform for our train to Novi Sad. You might recall, it was Phil who helped me buy the tickets, which was done in German on the phone to the OBB, and then helped me pick them up at the Sudbhf, all when I was in town to play his birthday party in March.
The wagon-lits was at the end of the train, and thus, the first car we encountered on the platform. We found our compartment, and found it to be great—like a little Japanese hotel room! A bunk for each of us, and plenty of space to arrange the grear. Jon had bought a bottle of wine—no need to say that, after two airplanes, the stress of our morning travel, a belly full of adana kebab and a glass of wine, and the gently shuddering train, I was asleep ten minutes after we left. My head was propped up on a pillow, and there was a large window at my feet, so I watched the beautiful purples and greens of the verdant dusk—we hadn’t seen any leaves during our time in Scandinavia, so Austria was looking tropical by comparison—rolling by, adding to the hypnosis, and ultimately knocking me out cold.
We were woken up by the conductor at about 2 for a passport check on the Hungarian border, and then at 5 in advance of our arrival in Novi Sad. Jon & I stumbled around and hauled our stuff to the door, for a quick departure—although, staying on til Bucharest didn’t sound like an altogether disagreeable plan B.
NOVI SAD, 4/17
We hopped off the train, the predawn temperature was much warmer than we were accustomed to, so we were feeling a bit sweaty as we hauled our stuff into the main hall of Novi Sad’s station. After a short wait, Igor, one of the organizers of our show, arrived, bless him, and we crammed into his little car, and he drove us to the hotel—Jon had asked about getting two separate rooms, after such a brutal travel—the modest budget of the show meant that they were able to offer us a double room for our stay—Jon offered to pay the difference. As it turns out, a huge agricultural convention had booked up all the rooms in town. No worries, we said. But, when we arrived at the hotel, only one room had been vacated and cleaned at this hour—and it was the ‘apartment’, which had two separate bedrooms, and a large common room, plus a second level with a twin bedroom. It was up three flights of stairs, but, it was quiet, and very comfortable. Perfect—as Jon called it, it was the reward for our travel karma. We went back to bed and recovered from the journey.
Sometime after midday, I got up and cleaned myself up. I sent a text to Misha, the other organizer of the show, who came and met me at the hotel. My first request, having missed breakfast, and thus having gone 18 hours without food, was for a burek, the filo dough pastries that come filled with meat or sour cheese, and happen to be among the greasiest, and tastiest, things on earth. This accomplished, we headed out in Misha’s car for a short drive into the next small town, passing thru Novi Sad’s old city on the other side of the Danube, which lives in the shadow of the massive fortress and its miles of earthworks and ramparts. In ten minutes we were in Sremski Karlovci, a pleasant town, too big to be called a village. We paid a visit to an old family friend of Misha’s, one Radmilo Dimitrvijevic, known as ‘Rosha’. He is, like many people in this town, a garagiste, buying grapes from the Frushka Gora vineyards, and fermenting various kinds of wine, much of it from a pinot grigiot-like grape called neoplanta. Red is made as well. The white is made into a dessert wine as well as a dry table wine; and via various family recipes the white is transformed into a red concoction called ‘bermet’, which appears to utilize cloves, thyme, and some two dozen other herbs to make a spicy red mixture, bearing a direct similarity, with the use of cloves, to mulled wine as you might find it in Germany, e.g., but…they don’t seem to add sugar, or very much of it. It’s more intense and less obvious than gluhwein.
Rosha was happy to let us taste a few different things, and I observed all the small details, trying to ‘taste’ this tranquil and unexpected moment of slow living, and make notes for its recollection later. I watched him as he told stories to my friends, he had an everyday kind of look to him—his hair had thinned to a sparse white fuzz on top, his face was vital and energetic, too youthful to look like a granddad, but, he had all the ease and authority of a man who has been practicing his skills for decades. He was jovial, but not giggly. As I watched, his head was framed against a green door, that lead to one of the rooms in their small compound that contained tanks or barrels. Wine is sold in corked bottles or in two liter plastic ones. The place itself has a patina of exposure to the elements, to the point of fusing with them somewhat—a tree grows in the compound, moss eats into the stones that make up the driveway, spiders do their business amongst our feet. The scene felt timeless, but truly—meaning, when Rosha made a quick call on his cell phone, it wasn’t breaking the mood. Very kindly Misha gave me a bottle of bermet, which, due to traveling conditions, I knew I would have to enjoy that evening.
We stopped by Misha’s café, Graffiti, which I had visited on my first trip to Novi Sad, and treated me to a macchiato. We stopped by Misha’s art gallery, next to the café, where he was showing lithographs from the late 60s, by art professor Milan Stanojev. Misha is himself a visual artist, and shows artists from around the world at his space—but this being a homegrown product was especially interesting. The colorful lithographs show scenes of daily life in 1960s Yugoslavia, but not without a subtext of commentary on class difference under the Tito regime (party members vs. non party members), the explosion of ideas and imagery of the 1960s, etc. There is a portrait of Tito himself, looking rotund and Mao-like, his hand curled into a fist, as photographers clamor around him. The artist was forced to chose between never displaying his work publicly or going to jail, after his first and only exhibition at that time.
Dinner was had in a small family run place on a leafy street that hardly looked like it would support restaurants or other businesses. I had a goulash of tender veal—plus the veal soup that was required tasting as a starter. By dinner’s end I was a bit bent over in trying to carry my bursting stomach, but another café at Misha’s helped, and by soundcheck I was feeling quite good. CK13, the Black House, is an alternative cultural center, usually putting on punk shows, but open to anything. Anti-capitalist posters adorn almost every wall. I hoped they were OK with us selling CDs!
The place was completely empty at 9, still so at 9.30, but by 10.30 the tiny room was full with about 75 attendees. Just before we went on, a local TV news presenter came in and asked about interviewing the band. She was tall, blonde, and in midriff-baring costume. When she found out we weren’t a local band, and there would have to be English translation involved, she couldn’t be bothered.
This being our first and only Serbian show, folks came from Belgrade and other places further afield, and the reception was definitely extremely warm, from the get go; one guy in particular sang along with almost every word. In the audience this night was young guy, who looked a bit like an unshaven version of Kip, the engineer I often work with in Seattle. Turns out he was the very guy that wrote to the Posies from Novi Sad, more than 15 years ago. I had sent him records and a Tshirt, which he wore to the show. In a way, our show was for him—he had been unable to attend my solo show last year, but he was there in the front tonight, and it was great to bring such a thing full circle.
ZAGREB, 4/18
Oh, the morning came all too soon. They always do, at this point on the tour. I was up at 7.45 and by 8.30 was winding my way thru the passageways in the center of Novi Sad towards a bakery that supposedly had the finest bureks in town. They are almost always sold out by the time place closes at 10am. For a Euro or two I came away with one meat and one cheese burek, since I was told that our bus travel to Zagreb might not involve a food stop. In fact, it did, but I’m glad we had the bureks…read on.
Igor took us to the bus station, which is really an extension of the train station, and we entered the boarding area. We were early, so we watched buses pulling into the other bays, loading up, and heading out. Some were city buses on local routes, others were heading to Macedonia, Slovenia. Each arriving vehicle brought speculation that we might be boarding such luxury liners as were arriving, but it was not to be…our bus was the one that drew ‘oh no’s when it pulled into the station—it was the short bus! A stunted creature, it was booked solid. After placing suitcases and guitars below, we took our personal items and Jon & I were crammed into tiny seats for our 6-hour passage to Zagreb. By the time we reached the border and underwent our formalities, I already had to pee—I asked about a ‘toilet stop’ and the driver indicated thirty minutes by flashing his open hands three times.
But, noon arrived and Jon & I were starving. Enter the bureks, which we managed to divide and eat, using our tray tables, managing to avoid the copious amounts of oil that had soaked the wrapping paper completely. Shortly after our repast, we pulled into a gas station that had a small café, selling substandard bureks and the usual gas station style factory made sandwiches. Plus, it was in Croatia, and we had dinars. Maybe they would have taken them, but we had no need to find out.
Some ass-cramping hours later, we pulled into Zagreb’s bus station. Our promoter arrived on his mountain bike, while I was navigating the mall-like interior of the station in search of a bureau de change. He gave us some money to get us to the hotel, and we were taken by a Rolling Stones loving, road rules ignoring cabbie who drove 80 miles an hour in full charge towards stopped traffic, swerving into the least populated lanes at the last minute to avoid slowing—all while looking over his shoulder at us and telling us about his brother in Chicago. Some tense moments later we arrived at the Hotel Laguna, the only hotel I’ve stayed at in Zagreb, and we checked in—and in about 15 minutes, we were leaving again, picked up by a guy from the student radio who is a dead ringer for The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn. We climbed up the stairs to the radio station, with borrowed acoustic guitars, and upon entering the studio found a TV crew poking its apparatus at us—they were doing a report on the student radio itself, we in a sense were just extras. They stayed in the room with us thru our interview and performances.
After that, we headed to the Student Center Theater, where I had a wonderful solo concert last year. You might recall it's a circular room painted deepest black, built alongside another circular theater, a gift from the government of France sometime in the 20th century, that is on the point of collapse.
Soundcheck completed, I had a glass of wine and we sat in the courtyard, watching a hapless male turtle dove trying to present his mate with one last twig to complete the nest they had made on a light fixture. In an endless loop, he selected a twig, approached the nest, which seemed way too small to accommodate anything other than the female, let alone any of her eggs, found no purchase on which to land, then waited on a beam nearby, looking at the situation, then flew up on the roof nearby, dropped his twig, descended, reshaped it a bit, tried again. No luck. Another twig sought, and repeat the above sequence. They said he had been at it for days.
Again, at say half an hour before showtime, the place was nearly empty. The adjacent bar, which is solely staffed by a friendly 50-something guy, same as my last two visits, had a dozen or so people in it, some of which were theatergoers in for the play in the other hall. But, when we went on, the room was full, perhaps 100 in attendance. At first it seemed like nobody knew exactly who we were, and were there out of curiosity. But, as we warmed up, the requests started coming, and in fact, by the end of the night, we weren’t allowed to go—three encores later, and we were eating into any hope of getting some sleep before another brutal early morning departure. As it was, we stayed for a drink or two and got back to the hotel around 1. And, we were up at 5.45. Argh.
VIENNA, 4/19
We had been given a choice by our promoter in Zagreb as to which train we wanted to be on—the 7.30 direct train, or the 9.30 train with two changes. With the amount of stuff we had along with us, the multi change train seemed like the greater of two hassles. At 6.45 we loaded our stuff into a cab, and headed to the train station, and found to our delight that our train was on ‘Platform 5 track 1’ which doesn’t make sense to me. Why not just call each side of a platform a number that corresponds to the track number, like everywhere else does? We were too tired to sort thru that logic, but we found our compartment, and according to the little slips clipped to the wall outside, we had it all to ourselves, which proved to be true for 80% of the way.
We were so tired that we couldn’t sleep…you’d have to be a hardcore traveler to understand this concept, but trust me, it’s real. And thank god—as this was one of the most scenic train journeys I’ve been on. The show started with a torrential downpour, that commenced immediately after we boarded (a little luck on our side there). Lightning slashed the sky in every direction, but in an hour or so, we were looking at the little farms in the valleys coming to life. This wasn’t the boring agribusiness landscape like you find in central Germany or Iowa—these Croatian and Slovenian hills were little Alpine paradises, complete with frolicking goat kids, tidy chalets, outrageously vibrant cherry blossoms, and spacious orchards. It hardly seemed like any agriculture was going on at all, except that which happened by the default fecundity of the land itself.
The train had a bona fide dining car, in which we were able to spend the last of our Kuna, on excellent coffee, a cheese and prosciutto platter, a watery (but not altogether unpleasant) Croatian red, and warm apple cake. I read Pynchon and stretched out for hour-long naps. We had our passports examined, and were given multiple opportunities to confess to customs violations, which we chose not to accept. Eventually, in Austria, the train started to take on more passengers, and also increased in speed dramatically. We had stopped at every little hamlet along the way in the Balkans, but in Austria we stopped at just the border, then Graz, then Wiener Neustadt, and then Wien itself. OK, maybe one suburb as well. We had a new companion with each stop in Austria, trading them out at each next station. There was a woman, who had lived in Vancouver, and her dog; a shy guy with one crutch; a friendly man with his chatty daughter on his lap.
We arrived and threw our stuff on some carts, always a rarity at train stations, and used the moving belt ramps, the latter of which I basically skied down, hoping Jon would be off the ramp before I skidded into him.
We had a short and amusing cab ride to Phil’s place, and it wasn’t long before Stephan and Philipp from A Life A Song A Cigarette were picking us up in a tiny car, already loaded up with the two guitar amps they were lending us for the evening! The boys were looking a little green, evidently the open bar at the Amadeus music awards was still with them, more than twelve hours later. I basically had to sit in Stephan’s lap, with my guitar clamping us down like a rollercoaster safety bar, on the way to the Flex. The Flex is a complex of metal shacks on the quai of the Donaukanal, you might remember my solo show in the café two years ago for Eva Umbauer’s birthday, and a handful of you might recall Jon & my show there in 2000. Not likely, tho’.
We set up our gear, wolfed down the massive spread, and had a quick and efficient soundcheck. Eva appeared, and she, the ALASAC guys and I went walking in the quiet sunny evening, and had a ‘café mélange’, which is the closest thing you can get to a macchiato in a proper Austrian café (in Austria a macchiato ends up being more like what we would call a cappuccino).
Presales for this show were a bit slow, I was surprised, since my solo shows have done so well here, but it seems I’ve cultivated a new audience that has not much to do with my Posie past. There were quite a few people that I spoke with after the show that were there because they had been to my shows, and were essentially novices to the Posies material. Flex can hold 500 people, so it seemed pretty empty when we went on, but people filtered in from the corners, and from sunning themselves by the canal, and actually, the crowd looked pretty health by the end of the first song. This show was one of my favorites; my expectations had been low, and it turned into a real sleeper—two encores, excellent sound and a great light show—including slowly swirling images coordinated across a bank of old TVs. Again, it’s these relaxed shows that I love the best, where playing with Jon feels like putting on your favorite old leather jacket, and effort is minimal for maximum effect. And for sure people loved it. We had great praise after the show from Daniel from Nada Surf, who was home between tours.
After the show, Phil and his friends, Jon & I hopped the underground home to his place. He had pulled some movies to watch from his collection of some 2,000 DVDS, opened some wine and filled an air mattress for one of us to crash on. That was the party killer—after I called Dom to wish her a happy birthday at the stroke of midnight, I had half a glass of wine and was out like a light.
I woke up when my alarm went off at 3.30, and showered, and, bless him, Phil was there to see us off, into the cab that he ordered for us at 4.30 to take us to VIE. On the flight, I dreamt as if I was awake and on the flight, but sitting with old girlfriends, famous people.
We arrived, claimed luggage and soon Mathijs from the Gasoline Brothers, our support band and hosts for the next few shows, picked us up, and drove us to Utrecht—we were laughing, as for once we * didn’t * have an 8 hour drive to the next show. We arrived at Roel from the GB’s place, to find comfortable couches, functioning internet, and Lars Von Trier DVDs. A piano. Recording equipment! Now commencing: the easy days.
Love KS Utrecht, NETHERLANDS
4.12.2008
NEW KEN STRINGFELLOW RECORD! THE SELLOUT COVERS EP! READ ON HERE.
I couldn't sleep. I woke up at 5; eyes not shutting again, fully alert. So, I was able to take my time as I prepared to depart. By the time I headed down to my taxi, Aden and Dom were still asleep. I was at the airport early, which ended up being useful--not just in the sense I wasn't in a hurry, but I needed room to maneuver--when they sent me to put my bag on the odd size belt, there was no one there to receive it. I waited. I went to the 'Paul' just a few yards away and had my croissant and cafe. I waited some more. Finally, I went back to the Norwegian air check in, and told then to send somebody. In the 5 minutes my guitar was abandoned at the odd size belt, it was surrounded by soldiers, on the possibility it was a suspicious device with reason to arouse it. When I jogged back with the attendant from Norwegian, the soldiers were laughing. But, another 5 minutes and it would have been shitcanned.
I hit the ground running in Oslo--straight up to Tiger of Sweden to get some shoes, and then to the Disciplines' studio to do a guitar overdub with Bjorn. And, then, a photo shoot in our studio. It was relentless, and I was hungry. What good fortune had I, as at about 7.15 that evening, I was picked up by a taxi and taken to the home of Jens, the chef from the very fine Arakataka restaurant in Oslo; this where my friend Matthias is sommelier. Jens had offered to cook for us at his flat, and it was wonderful. He seared some king crab, among many other delicacies. And, naturally, wine was paired with every bite. And, naturally, after a full on day of work, having been up since 5, I fell asleep right after the cheese. A happy man, however. Jens let me watch over his shoulder, and it was fantastic to see how simple the actions were, but they were guided by experience, so his timing was perfect.
OSLO, 4/8
I was hurting a bit--having mixed red, white, sparkling and sweet wines over the course of the dinner. Fair enough--a worthy cause! Jon & I spent the morning doing TV and newspaper interviews. I had a meeting with the Disciplines' label, and with the folks at Tiger of Sweden. PLUS we had a show. And what a show it was--oh, except, also, I had an instore performance at the record store, Big Dipper, that occupies part of the same building as John Dee, the venue we were playing that night. At first, when I walked in the door, it looked like a tumbleweed racetrack. But, people filed in and I played, well, covers--it was promotion for my covers EP after all!
John Dee was full of friends that night--my booking agents, UK and Norway; some of my Revolver Bar crew; some of my flatmates from the recording period in December/January. There were a lot of people at this show, actually, and they were heavily into it; it was inspiring! I think we were held up for at least a couple of encores...and lots of merch sales afterwards!
TRONDHEIM, 4/9
Early train--that hurt, and for some reason, the train didn't seem as luxurious as when we did the same trip in 2005. It was more crowded, more threadbare...it seemed to stop every 2 minutes along the way. We arrived in Trondheim, day two of the tour, already a bit tired. And, we suffered only from the best hospitality--the promoter here gave us a table at the excellent Credo restaurant (which also has shows in its upstairs bar--Jon has played here). Once again, the wine and delicious food, prepared with great care and skill, was applied and took its customary toll. We weren't drunk per se when we played, but we were a bit slow on the uptake...anyway, the point of this show was that we had switched venues not long before, having been booked originally at a club that was *already* booked. So, in the resulting confusion, not as many people made it to our show as might normally. No harm done. We played just fine, but, Oslo was, technically, better.
TROMSO, 4/10
A beautiful flight. Flawless skies gave us an uninterrupted view of the whimsical meringue that is the landscape of extreme northwestern Norway. On the way up, the plane stopped in Bodo (blogger doesn't recognize non-American letters like the 'o' with a slash thru it that occurs frequently in Norwegian, e.g.) to drop off and take on passengers. Bodo was established originally as an airbase in the Second World War, and is still one today. On this day, Norwegian jets were on maneuver, circling the airfield--a free show for us.
We arrived to Tromso, and had some down time--I went book shopping, and took in some sun (despite the temperature around 0 deg. C.).
We walked, taking care not to slip on the still-frozen streets, to Driv, which is an old fish processing house in the harbor. Remarkably, this old wooden barn of certainly more than a century in age doesn't smell like fish in the least! It's just a nice sounding, rattly old music hall, with several levels and stages, but all built from huge and ancient wooden beams. Our show here was great--turnout was decent, boosted by an enormous article in the local press. There was the requisite really drunk guy, who, when I was saying goodnight, suddenly tackled and dove on one of his friends. haha! I got the hell out.
The big revelation of the day was that we received word from Richard Kern that we could use his photo...unwittingly placed on the Disciplines' album cover by our designer. There's the photo of a horse that was clipped from an issue of Vice, and we all loved it as part of the cover collage. So, when we found it was Richard Kern's, we all congratulated ourselves on our good taste, and then the task fell to me to investigate it. Luckily, we have a mutual friend in Lydia Lunch, and he liked the music.
I mean, the *other* big revelation. It seems the Disciplines will be supporting R.E.M. for their stadium shows in Scandinavia in September! Read on.
BERGEN, 4/11
We flew on to Bergen, and were soon at soundcheck in familiar surroundings--I've played at the Garage on 3 previous visits. There's Trygve, the Posies' promoter in Norway, and Dennis, the manager of the venue, who is a kind of RiffRaff biker guy, really funny and enthusiastic. So, it was old home week. And Bjorn from the Disciplines is a Bergen-ite, so he was at soundcheck as well. After s.c., Bjorn and I joined the Lerche family at their favorite table, at a nice eatery off the beaten path in Bergen (Ok, the whole town is off the beaten path, technically. We did experience our first Bergen traffic jam in on the way from the airport, so I guess the place is growing). Sondre Lerche and his clan of brothers and sisters--Jon & I know his sister Bianca--were dining, and Bjorn and I joined them and two more friends. One of the friends, fully Norwegian, related a story about being on a date in New York with an American female, and trying to say a toast, along the lines of 'Bottoms Up'...but he ended up saying 'Up yours' instead...and immediately knew that couldn't be right. No need to say, 'Up yours' became the theme of the night!
The Bergen show was quite busy, and tons of people were singing along with almost every song...no complaints from me! Some girls that kind of looked like Lita Ford hogged the front row, but, what the hey. They were into it, so, I can't really criticize.
STAVANGER, 4/12
Jon & I dragged our carcasses down to the harbor and got on what I can only described as the 'Greyhound of the Norwegian coast', a small ferry boat heading in the general direction of Stavanger. Turns out we had to change at about the half way point, so, we had to be on our toes even if we desperately wanted to sleep more. Nobody seemed interested in my E-ticket receipt. I kept trying to show it at every embark-/disembark -ation, and no one was interested.
We changed boats, on to a bigger, catamaran ferry for the final leg. Again, my offer to show the ticket were brushed off. So, as we came into the harbor, I tossed the ticket receipt, thinking the journey was basically over. And, basically, it was. Except, on the way off, they were checking tickets all of a sudden. No problem--I went to retrieve the receipt from the wastebasket near where I had been stretched out on a banquette. Uh, the wastebaskets had been emptied already. Well, surely they'd understand--but, as it turns out, they didn't. The ferry employee told me I would simply have to locate the ticket. How? Well, there were two huge, black garbage bags by the door. I said...'you know what this means, right?' and he wouldn't relent, so I dumped the contents of the bags on the deck. And began to look for the ticket. I was told the boat wasn't leaving for two hours, so I had plenty of time. Why, thanks! I found *another* ticket, but not ours. And then, the guy actually found the info I threw away--but in another part of the ship! So, we were free to go--and then he told us he could have looked up the res. online. Hmm....so you *wanted** to humiliate us. Thanks!
At least the show was fantastic! Quite a bit better turnout than the last Posies show in Stavanger...people were into it too. We actually did a *second* encore, here, I felt like it was the least I could do. Jon & I copped a buzz from the Burgundy provided backstage, and headed back to enjoy the high speed net and the big bed in each of our rooms. These things matter...
Love KS Stavanger, NORWAY
4.06.2008
AMBITIONS, THWARTED
I've added some new photos to the photos section, here.
I was mostly defeated in my ambitions towards concert-going this week—disasters all around. There was the aborted attempt at seeing DJ Shadow last weekend (evidently, during soundcheck, a tech up in the rigging dislodged/dropped a metal object that hit DJ Shadow in the head and sent him to hospital!) and on Friday, I left the house at midnight to head up to Le Bataclan for a clubbing night, the 10th Anniversary Party for Ninja Tunes, featuring among other DJs, Herbaliser. I had an advance ticket, but found that did me little good—the line, when I arrived at 12.20, had yet to start moving, and was a thousand people long, all the way down to the end of the block. After 20 minutes we had moved about 20 feet. The line included a mix of ticket holders and hopefuls, and I thought…is this * really * worth it? Answer: no. So, I sold my ticket to someone possessing more patience for long lines than me, and walked home.
Dom & I did take in the early set of Benny Green at the Duc des Lombards, a once musty jazz café that’s been updated to a kind of high tech jazz ‘experience’ (their own words), in the center of Paris. What that translates to is that there are video screens in every corner, giving you multiple perspectives of the action onstage. The crowd was fairly small for this show, about 30 or so people, which meant we had a great view of the keyboard as Mr. Green (who looks a bit like the singer of I Am Kloot, were he more sartorially attuned and attending AA meetings), who is incredibly deft—his best moments are parallel runs in octaves, shockingly precise and swift. The PA is an invisible partner in the act, barely amplifying the sound—the trio is allowed to play at the dynamic level of their own choosing, which is refreshing, esp. if you more typically find yourself in a rock club on a given night.
The highlight of my week was an ultra jetset outing to London midweek—I rose predawn and met Mateo at Gare Du Nord, boarding the Eurosta