HELSINKI 11/21
Well, the day of our live DVD shoot in Helsinki couldn’t have started much better. No rain, good breakfast, plenty of sleep, a brief chat with Radio Helsinki. We had lots of down time in the afternoon, as the set up for the cameras and audio truck took a lot longer than the normal set up. I think around 5pm we did our soundcheck and ran thru a good portion of the set. There was a good dinner, and a pleasant interview with a local paper. With more than 700 tickets sold, the merch booth did big business long before the show; I sold out of Posies shirts right away and sold a bunch of KS and Posies CDs during the Latebirds set.
Ok, we took the stage, cameras noting our nervous pre-show joshing around, and then we went right into the set, rocking hard, sounding good…after ‘That Don’t Fly’ Jon said his guitar wasn’t working and none of what we had just done would be usable. What to do? We could only do the filming once (it’s VERY expensive to do this sort of thing--making a backup shoot the next day in Tampere, my idea, impossible to afford). So we decided to cover our bets, and played the songs in question again—not as good tho’. Broken strings, false starts, etc. Oh well. It looked like we would have to take more drastic measures later. Overdub? We moved on. The energy finally had a chance to recover, we had a chance to have fun, and thank god the audience was there for us every step of the way. By the end of the show, we were thoroughly wrung out; we hard-squeezed every drop of available energy in doing the 20+ songs for the evening. We finally called it a night…headed back to sell merch, and then…with great trepidation, headed to the audio truck. As it turned out, the songs with Jon’s guitar sounding bizarre were not bad at all. Just a few stray noises that could easily be hidden in the mix. And when we went to the video truck we saw some footage and it looked like a million bucks had been spent (tho to be fair, it was a significant portion of that). So, the day was not wasted, the DVD will be awesome, and all is well. We went to a late night bistro and celebrated with friends, champagne, and escargot! Many thanks to the audience members—a few of whom wrote in emails complaining of the awkwardness of the DVD-shoot-related delays and retakes. What can I say? We had to get it right. We knew we would be asking a lot of the audience, and we picked Helsinki as we knew it would be the best attended show, with the best audience, and hopefully they would tolerate the unusual circumstances in light of the fact that they would be taking part of a unique night in the Posies’ history and catalogue…
Further thanks will be in the DVD credits but we can’t ignore the audio and video crew, our TM and sound engineer Jan Visser, and our publicist, Jessica Ricci, who essentially produced the thing…it will probably see the light of day in spring of 2006.
TAMPERE 11/22
You have no idea how sore I was when I woke up the next day. I had really given it the serious 110%. I felt it worst in my ass, which felt like I had taken an entire regiment’s worth of gamma globulin shots in the same spot. Sleeping in didn’t cure it all the way. So, we limped to the tiny town of Tampere, to the Klubi, where White Flag played in 2002. Great little place…very wide stage, which makes things sound a little funny, like, far away, but—it didn’t seem to stop us. We blasted out a roaring show, and played ad infinitum plus ultra. A completely fucked up ‘Jungle’ at the end that carried the usual shitstorm of destruction with it. Somebody stole the footswitch that I use with my keyboard—I want it back!
Excellent set from the Latebirds, I was able to watch them comfortably from the merch table.
After the show, much fun at a local bar until quite late—with friends, the odd drinky-drinky journalist (who left his wallet at the table, for me to find and return via the ever-honest Tomi Palsa) etc.
TURKU 11/23
Not the best stage or sound in the world—stuffed into a vortex at the end of the room (you should have seen the picket fence barricade they tried to foist on us!). But, I have to say, this show was unbelievable. We played a really hard set, and then came back for encores of some 10 songs all told—including a striptease-enhanced ‘Flood of Sunshine’ with the amazing Kasperi, who stole the show at my solo Helsinki show last year, on guitar; a basically nude ‘Jungle’ too. We were quite drunk by the end, and this made for perhaps the most disorganized merch table ever…
Jon & I also got to get our Nick Lowe on by singing ‘What’s So Funny Bout Peace Love & Understanding’ with the Latebirds.
Also…as we ask for a bottle of champagne on our rider…inexplicably, they gave us a bottle of 1996 Dom Perignon…no doubt we drank it as soon as we got there…
STOCKHOLM 11/24
Thanksgiving day. Slept off the 6am wake up call on the boat, til 2.30 Swedish time. Thanksgiving dinner was on board…which included an appetizer buffet of Scandinavian, Italian, and Japanese selections. I had some of each and a main course. When we arrived in Stockholm that evening, Jon & I met our label rep, Nusse, and proceeded directly to the Berns Hotel for the Sonic Magazine 5 year Anniversary Party. Berns Hotel is REM’s address of choice in Stockholm, so I’m familiar with the place. Being built in the 1860s, it has a fabulous ballroom and dining room. REM dined in the ballroom on one of our visits…one of those gilded and mural-encrusted affairs. Fabulous! Well, this was the site of the party. Jon and I got acquainted with the DJ station, plugging in my laptop etc. We also ran thru our live song for the evening’s concert bill of fare. A step back—the live music this evening was a program put together the very talented keyboard player for Soundtrack of our Lives, accompanying on piano various popular and beloved Swedish artists for one or two songs each. The band also included a small drum kit, a stand up bass, and trumpet. Some singers were just accompanied by the piano, but most of the evening had the little house band in use. Most of the singers would not be known to, say, American ears, except for the TSOOL singer and Screamin’ Pelle from the Hives. Oddly, and I think a mark of great respect, Jon & I were the only non-Swedish artists invited to perform (we did a splendid version of ‘King Midas in Reverse’ by the Hollies, with the full house band. An honor! Plus we were the only DJs for the evening (we didn’t know that til we got there, I had only planned a 2 hour set, so I had to do lots of improv, fun—the final 2 hours I handed to Jon and he seemed ever so pleased to be rid of me and have the booth to himself!). A great night—there were over a thousand people there, I really felt like a fly on the Swedish wall watching people freak out to these artists that I had mostly never heard of. It was quite cool. Hakan Hellstrom is a major Swedish artist, he did several songs that had people screaming and singing along—and he also did Big Star’s ‘13’ in Swedish!
Got a super discount on rooms at Berns…thanks Sonic for having us…it was an honor…
MALMO 11/25
Flew down to Malmo the next morning and I checked into the hotel and got the room ready for Dom’s arrival. And as always, nervously awaited her arrival with great excitement! Her train from Copenhagen airport was late so we headed to the KB Hall (site of at least 4 previous visits by the Posies) to set up. As it turns out, Dom’s cab and our van arrived simultaneously.
We had a great crowd tonight, and, as always, inspired by Dom’s presence, I went at the show with all my muscles. Lots of leaping, bending, and generally kicking ze ass. The crowd was so drunk that even before we played, when I was selling what turned out to be the most merch for one evening on the tour so far, people in line had a hard time standing up. One guy lost his knees’ ability to lock while holding some red drink right by the box of white t-shirts…all the while inviting me to the bathroom for…? Free drugs? He fell to the side and managed to not spill the drink on our stuff, thank god.
The set was superb, we went back for a great encore, and then I thought we should stop but was convinced by the others to continue. Jon was also on the fence, but Matt and Darius insisted. Well...as it turns out, I was right (I think) ‘Beautiful One’ was TERRIBLE, out of tune and sloppy. I heard several requests for ‘Precious Moments’ so I redeemed myself with a really good performance of that one, but could see that further time on that stage would be a waste of the good memories we had created in the previous hour and a half…off I went to the dressing room!
OSLO 11/26
Back at the hotel, I counted the formidable pile of merch money, ate some foie gras and had a glass of wine, and then went to bed at about 2.30. At 5.30 the alarm went off. Ugh. Got ready and we got downstairs at about 6.30. I paid for the wine and bread we ordered to enjoy with the foie gras (Dom went into a panic and said it was off and needed to be refrigerated…she didn’t want to poison me the night before I had a TV performance. I said it only needed to be kept cold after the seal was broken. I was right! It was fine. It tasted fine! What do the French know?) and the taxi to the hotel from the airport…a long one. We were told the train station was a 5-10 minute walk from the hotel. Well, it’s a bit more than that, and you have to cross a canal and all this shit, and lucky we bought tix at the hotel…we were told the wrong track by the first person I asked…we found the right track and double checked with the conductor by the door-is this the train going to Copenhagen airport in two minutes? And she replied, “no, it’s the train to Copenhagen Airport leaving in 30 seconds”. On we went. 20 minutes or so later, we were at the airport, and there are big escalator ramps up to the check in area—nothing like the shitty conveyance or lack thereof from the TGV station up to check in at Charles de Gaulle—plan on an hour to get to the desk and good luck if you have a lot of luggage. Well, our timely arrival meant nothing—we spent the next hour in line and missed the flight. 2 desks to help over 150 passengers…what were they thinking? We were rebooked on a flight an hour later. No worries. Coordinated with Briskeby and all was well. Our flight was late on top of that so it was after 11 when we landed in Oslo. There was someone to pick us up and we headed straight to the Oslo Spectrum, where REM played earlier this year. This was a concert celebrating the 100th anniversary of Norway’s independence from Sweden, and was a diverse program of contemporary, classic and traditional Swedish and Norwegian artists. I think there was money going to charity, and the royal families of both countries in attendance. I was to perform with Briskeby on ‘Joe Dallesandro’ to the 5,000 in the audience, plus, it was to be broadcast the next day on TV, to a potential audience of like, a million or something! We rehearsed once—and I went back for a nap with Dom. Came back at show time, and it wasn’t long before it was time to go. And, it went like a house on fire! Totally fun. Dom said it looked good on the monitors—if anybody reading saw the show on TV, please write in and let me know how it sounded and looked! OK, party time. I met a fellow named Jordan, manager for artists like Motley Crue, Hanson, etc. who turns out to be a Posies fan…we all watched the Cardigans do their new single, which sounded very good…and then Briskeby and myself headed to the Bristol Hotel, where they were performing a private event for a phone company. We were fed dinner, given sparkling stuff to drink, and I did my song again…lots of fun. After the show, Claus and Lise from Briskeby, Dom, and myself drank and tried snuss til the room started to spin and it was time to go home! Lise was kind enough to walk us to the hotel. No hangover the next day tho’…but my throat was kinda sore. I don’t think a guy like me with shitty weak gums, should start a snuss habit at age 37…but, I’ll try anything twice (I also tried the Skoal-bandit style version in Stockholm, which was fun—didn’t kick my butt quite as hard as the loose stuff).
On that note…
Love
KS
Gent BELGIUM
