GENT 11/28
The Vooruit is a many-chambered beast originally built as a Socialist Party HQ and meeting hall. And bar. And lord knows what else. In other words, about 100 years worth of The Man-baiting. Now it’s a center of culture for the People, and evidently, the People have spoken and they want their Posies and their Bloodhound Gang, preferably all at once. And they got it! BH filled up the larger auditorium downstairs, while we took the freight elevator to a lovely old wooden salon up top, and set up on the very bouncy stage. By 9pm this wooden shoebox was crammed with folks…hundreds of ‘em. Two packed shows in one town on a Monday night. Amazing! We delivered the goods, for sure, and my mic bounced around like a…Ken Stringfellow, sort of. By the time I was packed up (meaning the merch was done for the night and put away) it was suddenly time to go, so I gave hugs and kisses to a few friends and Dom and I repaired to a mediocre hotel, that, on the floor our room was on, reeked of pot. And it was a chain, too. Hmmm.
PARIS 11/29
How bizarre to be back on the home turf, I hadn’t been to Paris since I flew home to start the US tour Sept. 1, and that was only a visit to CDG, arriving by train from our summer place. Before that, it was for the Posies show in mid July, and before that, it was the REM show in February. So this year, assuming we stay in Paris for the holidays, instead of going to Dom’s hometown (Tours), I will have spent a total of 19 nights in Paris, 12 of them yet to come! I ‘live’ there.
OK, the van pulled up to the Maroquinerie, and we stumbled out and Dom & I went home for a bit, then I zipped back for a brief soundcheck, and then I went back home in time to pick Aden up from the crèche. As usual, she didn’t know what to do with herself upon my arrival, she squeaked and kicked her legs up in the air while lying on her back. We spent a little time at home, and then headed to the gig. Oddly enough, that night I had about 18 friends playing competing gigs around town—WaFlash, my friends and collaborators from Senegal, were at the Batofar, and Tahiti 80, my neighbors and sometimes drinking buddies, were playing and DJing at yet another venue. What the?? Of course, being that I had my own show, and my family, and one day to spend at home, there was no way I could get to their shows as much as I would have loved to—having WaFlash in town, which is a rare occasion indeed, was especially heartbreaking. Our show was a good one, we played a long time, got the Parisians to ‘get down’ etc. Remi from Cheap Star celebrated his 30th birthday that night, and we made him dance onstage for some song I can’t remember which, but he did manage to fall down on his ass. Poor Remi—I can’t go into detail, but his night ended very badly, and we send him lots of love. I myself drank WAY too much—two bottles of champagne (minus glasses I poured for friends) and the whiskey bottle’s final 20%. Probably some other things I don’t remember. I know that I danced on a table, and had drawings on me the next day. Oof!
EVREUX 11/30
So, I woke up with some kind of plastic truck parked on my chest, and got myself cleaned up, taking a bath while the girls came in and out of the room to visit. I sheepishly lunched on cassoulet, apologizing to Dom’s parents for what surely must have been a noisy arrival at an unpleasant hour; all was forgiven. I kissed the girls goodbye and hopped the metro to St. Lazare and then boarded a very brown train to Evreux. I had a first class seat, which honestly on SNCF doesn’t mean much. Especially on a little spur like the Paris--obscure-bits-of-Normandy line, with its vintage 1955 train cars. A lotta Gauloises met their untimely demise in the ashtrays of this rustbucket.
It was freezing when I arrived at the station, and I waited some time for a taxi…I got to the gig and soundcheck was already done. I did my arrival things and checked email, and had dinner. This show had a pretty small audience so we decided to conserve our energy and play a compact, no nonsense set. About 14 songs with encore, and we took maybe an hour to do it—and it was great, actually. We barely spoke and we pumped out the songs with great intensity. Everybody was happy! I stayed at the venue answering emails until about 2am, and then spent another hour writing them back at the hotel!
ANGOULEME 12/1
My how the little La Nef has grown. An old stone abattoir, turned into a rock club with very good production, it used to sit in a field with nothing around for a good 200 yards in any direction. Now it not only boasts a massive new structure on one side housing offices and music studios and a new kitchen/dining hall, but there are shops all around. Like, the equivalent of the places in the US where you have a Best Buy, Home Depot etc.
Our hotel couldn’t have been further away and still be in the same state, so with the miserable traffic that seems to be a byproduct of the massive growth of this small town, it took the better part of an hour to get to the venue.
La Nef was the site of two very good Posies shows—one in the summer of 1994 and one in the spring of 1996. As it turns out, we’re 3 for 3 as of this last visit. The girls were in attendance—at one point, a song came to a dead stop and before the audience knew it was time to applause, Aden was heard singing the last note a capella –got a good laugh from the crowd. Other laugh-worthy bits were Dom, Aden and I fighting over the bits of magret de canard, and me doing everything I could to get people to visit the merch stand, including hanging from a coat rack upside down and drawing the price list on my chest!
The support band, Headcases, who really sound like a Sub Pop band circa Rein Sanction/Sprinkler era, and are very good, learned Grant Hart, and I came out and lead the charge and sang it with them—and then of course the Posies did it as well. Thank you Angouleme for another great night.
BILBAO 12/3
Too bad, but our Bordeaux show was cancelled. The venue was capacity 650, quite a stretch of the imagination for the Posies in France, and as of that week we had sold a whopping 7 tickets. Don’t cry for us—Darius said Preston School of Industry played there for a dozen people and Matt had been there with Oranger or Overwhelming Colorfast and played to similar numbers. I remember when we were supporting the Teenage Fanclub tour in 1993, to packed houses everywhere –UK, France, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, Benelux—they cancelled their show in Milan as ticket sales were…you guessed it, 7, as of the week before the show. So, it happens o the best of ‘em. We took the night off in Bordeaux and I was able to spend an evening with the girls not working for a change, and the van got to spend some time alone being broken into—loss: one window, one video camera (Darius had to learn the hard way—no vehicle is ever really secure!).
I put the girls on the train the next afternoon and we drove to Spain. The clouds literally disappeared as we crossed the border—and there had been a massive storm overnight in France. One poor person and their bicycle were sucked into a whirlpool of muck as a temporary flood receded into the storm sewers and drowned in sewage. Anyway, as we rolled into Bilbao, spirits dampened by the absence of a few objects (many thanks to Carglass in Bordeaux who traded us a temporary window--it will take us some searching to find the right part for our van--and a thorough vacuuming of safety glass chunks for one copy of EKOL.) were lifted by a pink sunset, glittering jewel lights on hillsides, and just tons of plain old folks out on the streets. And it was 61 F at 7pm.
How to describe a great Posies show in Spain? Hmmm. Like, low presales (70 as of the day of show) but suddenly the place is packed to the rafters, the place being the old cinema Café Antxokia, where we played in 2001 as well; glasses and beer bottles breaking, people yelling out songs even while you’re playing another one, ‘Posies’ chants between multiple encores, and being so into it we add songs in the middle of the set to be able to play longer. This last night was one of the classic Posies nights…spit, sweat, whiskey and joy.
And we get 8 more nights of this! And then Italy…and Switzerland…and Christmas in France--I’m a lucky, lucky boy.
Love
KS
On the highway to Oviedo, SPAIN, alongside the sea.
