KICK IT OFF, YO!!!!!
Firstly: recent news has come to me that Alex Chilton is now in Houston, and thus is no longer among the missing. Welcome back to the headcount, AC. Glad you're safe.
On a lighter note, we depart tomorrow for the Posies USA/Canada tour...bring your shiny, sweaty faces down to the rock shop sock hop in your town, and gets your rocks off.
Show-verview, number 1!
SEATTLE, 9/4
Thanks to KNDD for having us down to tape a couple of acousticy versions of EKOL songs and chat a bit--I believe all that will air this week. Knowing we were going to be broadcast a week later, which would be after the Bumbershoot show which at the time of the interview was two days away, I took a chance and said it had been the greatest performance in the history of music, live or recorded.
Damn if I wasn't right! I had spent the time between our Friday morning KNDD visit and the Bumbershoot show largely in bed. I came back from France with a pretty serious cold, and had to bow out of seeing Chris Stamey at Bumbershoot, Robyn Hitchcock at the Crocodile Cafe, and hanging out with most of my REM bandmates on Friday...damn if I didn't sleep 16 hours tho. Saturday I finally felt OK enough to sneak out to the Gorge and see Tom Petty (former Posies FOH Mark Newman was working for the Black Crowes). The drive and solitude and full blast music all helped. Listened to a really great demo someone sent me, a band from Jackson MS called Living Better Electrically....fine, fine music.
As I pulled my car in to the loading area for the Backyard Stage at Bumbershoot on Sunday, a few pellet-like rain blops fell on my windshield. Within 20 minutes, Monsoon City. It faded out and in over the course of the rest of the night. As I started to line check my gear, there were quite a few friendly faces at the front of the stage. By the time we played, the curious and the lost started to fill up the place. And, I have to say...considering how sick I'd been, and the fact that not playing for two weeks and playing a Posies show is like not walking for two weeks and trying to run the Boston Marathon, we blew the doors (off a place that was outdoors already). Fun, mayhem, near-nudity augemented by plastic ponchos...damn, martian! The crowd was everything you'd want from a hometown crowd...except for that guy I always see at our shows who was throwing grass at us this night. One guy who would have been able to remember the 1960s had he not lived thru them, spent the whole set with one hand clamped over his eyes, the other bobbing in front of him in our direction....'it's too heavy, man...you're blowing my mind!". Respect. I had a blast, in other words. Mike Musberger, Posies 1988-1994 and 1998-1999 drummer, was there with his twin boys...my family was there (OK, my mom left when it started to rain real hard)...everybody was friendly and nice...also, many thanks to Michael from Guitar Center who ran me over a new EBow....! Mine somehow never made it home from the European tour.
After the show, matt, Posies mgr. Larry Little (who has been working with us for 4 months but who I hadn't met until Friday!!)
and his lovely gal, plus local pals walked over to see Billy Preston play a few songs (incl. a killer Hammond jam on Amazing Grace) and then walked on and we jumped into Posies show #2 for the day...an instore performance at Easy Street Records. Down and dirty, we played a set of songs we called out as we went along, stuff we didn't play at the other show...including the first ever live version of 'Last Crawl'...by the late part of the set, I could hear Matt starting to get...funky...so, we called it a night...3 hours of music in one day! We signed some records, I played tunes from my laptop...we all gave John Roderick some crap about his Buggles shades, and...I went to bed...I love rock & roll!!
Now, the good shit starts going down...see you very soon at a theatre near yew.
Love
KS
Seattle
