11.22.2004
IT'S GREAT TO BE HERE AGAIN
REM is in midswing thru Seattle, which I haven't visited since my 10 hours of suitcase emptying in August. As usual, I am confused as restaurants and landmarks come and go, stuff gets torn down, built over, etc. Someday I will come to my address and find a monorail station has replaced my residence of the last 7 years...
I have about a week here in Seattle all told, during which every minute is spoken for, with REM, KS and Posies activity...the Posies are today mastering our upcoming album, with the formidable lab-coat-wearers Rick Fisher and Ed Brooks...tomorrow (23rd) will find the us presenting ourselves in the best possible lights at Neumo's in Seattle and the following night in Tacoma.
REM played two nights at the McCaw Hall, the refurbished opera house, the first night being moody...the second more on the exuberant side. Hometown gigs (which is now true in a sense when REM plays Seattle, LA, New York, Atlanta or Paris!) are hard to master...it's easier to reinvent yourself, which is what an artist does, to strangers than those who know you well enough to get weird if you appear with a handlebar moustache and a boa constrictor on your arm. Hence, Calgary was one of the best REM shows of recent memory, and Seattle was a push me pull me of moods, ultimately we rose to the occasion, but it wasn't as effortless as usual. Vancouver was, continuing the evidence to support my theory, a piece of cake (in a wedding cake of a theatre, the Orpheum).
Universal Music is releasing the collaboration I did with Senegalese musicians WaFlash (in Dakar last year) tomorrow as part of their new download-only label experiment...should be available thru Itunes and the usual outlets--but no CDs will be pressed. Really, it's all so new that I will have to wait til tomorrow to be able to tell you what to do--but, the curious can head to Itunes tomorrow and search for Ken Stringfellow and see what you get.
Looking ahead with resolute glee to tomorrow night's rock show, even with a treacherous hometown crowd to navigate. Thankfully, the Posies have rarely had anything but high times with the King County CompatRiots...
Love
KS
Seattle WA
11.14.2004
ELEVATED ALERT = STANDING ON A LADDER ON TWO SUDAFED
Short week this week. However, I am alert. I am on the look out. Let me say that I truly love Canada. I had some very large nights in Toronto and Montreal, with a number of helpful locals (thanks Patrick…!). In Montreal virtually every person I met was a DJ, musician, hot looking electropunk, and/or multitasking student. I’m moving! With my family, of course...On another, equally pleasant note I enjoyed an excellent dinner in Montreal last night and a short flight to Thunder Bay watching the northern lights…and here we are. I am the only person on the tour who has played in Thunder Bay more than once (Posies/Treble Charger at Crocks N’ Rolls, 1995)…rock on andmoreagain.
Love
KS
Thunder Bay, ONT
11.09.2004
POUR ME ANOTHER, CANADIAN BARTENDER
I am in one London, not the one you'd expect, but a nice one...snow covered branches...free form art noise jams...all the good stuff. Last night we had a free night and we lived up to its promise, joining forces with the legendary NIHILISTIC SPASM BAND who play every Monday in a basement bar in downtown London (Ontario). All grabbed a grasp and a 3 1/2 string bass or what have you and let it wail.
Over the weekend, on a day off in Pittsburgh, I recorded two cover songs for use on the Japanese edition of Soft Commands, to be released next month by Rykodisc. They are surprises, but of course, you'll know soon.
New York was lived to the fullest, and thus, I have been sleeping 12 hours a night...saw a lot of old favorites there, not that they're looking older, but by the end of it, I was. I have heard that fish is brain food, I will try and eat some this week...
Love
KS
London CANADA
11.01.2004
UNDERNEATH THE DEBUNKER ON ELECTION EVE
It’s just crossed over into November as I write. I am in my hotel room in Washington DC, Dominique is asleep with a book on her chest. I just finished doing some late night business with my intrepid manager Barbara Mitchell—going over travel arrangements for the upcoming KS European tour, scheduling interviews, studio time etc (all of which must be surgically inserted into free time on the REM tour). I had the day off in the nation’s capital today, Dom & I strolled in and out of various shops and museums, past assorted monuments and the functionaire sweatshops that loom here and there, many of which (Justice Dept. et al) would not look out of place as DeMille or Fritz Lang set pieces. Oct. 31 was an eerily gorgeous day—I say that, not because it’s Halloween, but because it has become reasonable to expect the sky to crack at any moment in these times. Sept. 11, 2001 dawned almost everywhere in this country one of the sunniest, laziest days imaginable—until your phone started ringing with people telling you to turn on the TV, unable to convey what was being shown.
Today in Washington, I walked out of the Nat’l Air and Space museum, affected most deeply not by the glories of Yeager, Glenn etc. but by the cold, symmetric simplicity of the V2, and the shredded humanity it created. The sun was igniting the backdrop to the Washington Monument with gold and pink, bouncing off the Capitol dome. Leaves were glorious, ridiculous: food-coloring- red and manila-envelope-yellow, and disintegrating under boots, smelling wonderful. We saw an albino squirrel, and a woman in a sari photographing it with a disposable camera. Bats (on cue for the E’en) managed to zip through solely in one’s peripheral vision. At 6pm it was about 75 degrees.
There was no orchestral upswelling scoring my thoughts in those moments. The amber wave stuff seems finished for now. I have been experiencing fear for the future, while trying to maintain optimism.
Understand that if John Kerry wins on Tuesday (which is what I do hope will happen), all is not well. It’s merely a postponement of a confrontation, or series of confrontations, that still lay ahead—where we will look at ourselves as individuals, as neighbors, and as humans and not be able to shrug. Sept. 11 was horrible, but certainly an opportunity to introspect and macro-spect. One wonders what the next nudge will be (if that was a nudge, what does a push look like?)
I am rambling out of my element. But, I will say, the techniques I have seen employed by the right (even with all the safeguards in place to restrain them) to create meaningless media outlets for opinion-only based news, to give lazy people an easy target to cast their aggressions onto, to equate discourse with defeatism, to bark the victory growl as the explosive din gets louder—these give me pause to consider: the willingness of the people to believe in the most convenient truth. A nation feels victimized after a military defeat, and becomes the nation that builds the V2.
I can’t say that everything begins or ends on Nov. 2. I cast my vote, I hope you all cast yours, and that’s where I’ve left it. But I’m not pulling the protest songs off the in-progress Posies album yet, no matter what the outcome.
On a lighter note: thanks to Dominique, REM/Crew, Angela McCluskey and band, and the rock-steady people gathered in Atlantic City Saturday night for pummeling me with joy on my 36th birthday…even as I went over the top…of my keyboard…and accidentally derailed it from its moorings (I coulda lost it and my right foot). Michael sang Bonne Anniversaire, cake was mashed on my face, and I was absolutely embarrassed and wouldn’t have changed one thing. A thousand apologies to Bob Weber!!!! I'll see you on the other side of the rest of history.
Love
KS
Washington DC
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