2.28.2006
OOPERATTORRR EERRRRRRRR We lost a couple shows along with my suitcase on the way here...I can't blame Thai Airways Int'l for all but suffice to say, and I hate to say, we will not be appearing tonight in Brisbane nor will we be appearing tomorrow in Gold Coast. However, bright side of things: Friday at the Metro in Sydney, Saturday at the Hi Fi Bar in Melbourne, and Sunday at 4.30pm at the Laneway Festival in Sydney, ARE ALL **ON** and that ain't gonna change...err....let me say that I don't like to cancel shows, in fact I wouldn't have if it were up to me, and that's the truth. It was beyond my control and I apologize to our fans and friends in Queensland. Next time... Love KS Sydney AUSTRALIA
2.26.2006
GAMERA OBSCURA For real complete-ists, trainspotters and what have you the tour CD for the White Flag Italian tour earlier this month, "Piangi Con Me + 3 [Expanded]" has a couple of singing bits by me...or someone who looks like me. You'll hear familiar strains in verions of 'Butcher's Tale' orig. by the Zombies and 'Tomorrow Never Knows', the Fabs tune. It's a burned CD we sold at our shows, there are also several original tunes. There's a 10" vinyl version but my songs didn't make that, it's just 4 songs as far as I know. Anyway, drop a line to susmotta@gmail.com and see what happens... UTRECHT 2/21 I eventually got over what ever was trying to turn me inside out; I slept it off and woke up pretty much fine. I was feeling pretty gun shy about food, tho. I finally got brave enough to venture out and look for some lunch, and ran into my friend Carsten who was in town to see the show—I tortured him dragging him up and down the Oudegracht looking for a restaurant that didn’t offend my post-trauma stomach. We settled into a crowded place and I plied it with fizzy water, diet coke, tea, and a very mild pasta. It stayed down, so I was in the clear. Turns out Jon had eaten something nasty too and he had been sick all day yesterday and Alex didn’t feel well the night we got into Utrecht either. The Tivoli-Oudegracht holds plenty of fine memories for me as does the town of Utrecht itself; the Posies had a couple of great rock shows at the Tivoli in the 90s and REM spent a week rehearsing there three years ago, and capped the week off with a show for 1200 lucky folks. During REM’s visit we adopted a bar called De Witte Ballons, forgive my estimation of the Dutch spelling, but it would be called The White Balloons in English. Turned out to be a very friendly place, open pretty late, not too crowded and not too empty. I did come back after the Big Star show and pay my respects: I would have paid for a few drinks but nobody let me As for the show itself, it was damn fine. I really felt like I was getting the hang of it, little did I know that in Gent things would really click—imagine what we could do if our tour was more than three days long! GENT 2/22 I had no idea what was waiting for me here. What it was was one of the best venues in Europe. De Handelsbeurs. A beurs, like the French bourse, is an exchange, a commodities market I suppose in this case. They told me this building had been the first such thing in Europe, probably an exaggeration but it was as lovely an adaptation of an 18th century mercantile building put to cultural use as I have ever seen, that’s for sure. Some of the highlights include: an adjustable stage configuration, with two settings—the club setting, like what was in place for Big Star, with a level floor and a meter-high stage; and a theatre setting, with a sloping floor leading down to the stage—any piece of the room can move down 15 feet. I was shown the mechanics of it all, huge metal stabilizers that looked like the ‘2001’ monolith broken in half; dozens of collapsing/telescoping aluminum tubes which served as brakes; and the lifting devices themselves, huge crossed bars of iron along the edges of each moving piece. Down in the wings there’s a big ol’ Steinway, which I poked at a bit. The theatre setting is used for chamber recitals so the pianos lay waiting to be rolled out on to the sunken stage. Next highlight is the public men’s room. Adjacent to the venue is a very large reception hall with a bar; beyond that is small (very good) restaurant. Out big glass doors from either one is a very small lobby and off that the toilets are accessed. You head down some stairs and there they are. The men’s room has a playful design—most of the room is long and narrow and lined with backlit panels; the urinals are in their own little cave. The room where the urinals stand was probably furbished; i.e. prior to being re-furbished, in the early 20th century. All the walls and original urinals, fixtures etc. are intact but fully enclosed on all sides by glass; the modern, small urinals are in front of the glass. So as you do your business you essentially look into a diorama of the building’s past. Show: best of the three; we settled into what we call a ‘groove’. Stage sound was excellent—we lowered our volume as there is a serious sound limit on the place, but I had a different bass amp than usual and it had a little more grind to it even at the lower volume. We rounded out the evening with ‘In Space’ ‘s old school rocker ‘Whole New Thing’ (‘baby I gotta go…’) and left everyone up, way up. I myself was down physically in a quiet sort of way afterwards—spent by my gastro disaster, and knowing I had to be up at 5.30 to catch the train home, I walked back to the hotel in solitude. I was up on time, and had a bit of a scare when the cab the hotel called took forever to come—at that hour, there were no others around. I had just 5 minutes to get from the cab drop off to the platform—no easy feat with a very heavy suitcase, a computer bag and a guitar (by the way, the guitar had been repaired by Big Star’s low country boy, Matthijs—thanks for re-pegging me!) But I got on the thing, which thankfully was delayed just a minute, or two as an entire school’s worth of kids were boarding at once. I never really slept well as I stayed in a folding seat by my bags, but I was OK once I got home. Things I did this week at home: saw Depeche Mode (and met 2 of the 3 REM colleagues that I knew were working on the tour, namely, Spidey and Shrimpy!) who were largely excellent—I didn’t quite get on board for the piano ballads, but that’s just my humble opinion (I would have loved to hear People Are People, World Full of Nothing, Princess Di is Wearing A New Dress etc.); saw Kelly Di Martino, about whom I knew nothing beforehand, another yank in the Parisian wilds, perform at a lively (and cover-free) venue called the Fleche D’or; and tonight I made one of my rare but treasured visits to a cinema to see Walk the Line, which was superb. I gathered lots of inspiration and couldn’t help but see familiar themes from my own life, albeit in a very different context, up there; I came home thoughtful and took inventory of all that was important to me, and renewed my intention to continue ever forward. Love KS Paris
2.21.2006
OSLO 2/17 This night was triumph piled on triumph. I don’t mean a Rottweiler puppet either. The day started well—I got up early and went to a student radio station, in the same building as the venue Betong, and performed live on the air (no mistakes this time). On the way back to Claus’ I picked up the Dagbladet, one of the main dailies in Norway, which had a good half a page on yours truly and a badass looking photo. The stage at Gloria Flames, the venue being on the second floor, is a grid of metal supporting a sheet of what I believe is hard plastic, not clear, but opaque. When you look at your feet you see a bunch of little squares lit by the natural light—coming in thru the windows downstairs. In other words, you hope the thing is made well and you tend not to bring an SVT…anyway, we set up all our stuff (the Briskeby lads and I) and soundchecked and dined and I was back at the club after dinner, at about 8.30. I was supposed to play at 9, I begged them to let me play at 9.15, and they hesitatingly agreed—as long as I was definitely done by 10.45. You know, Friday night, DJs, blah fucking blah. DJs, meaning, the guys that make it impossible to talk to anyone in the bar. People are always so worried about getting their fucking DJs on on time even though it takes people a long time to get loose enough to dance, until that point they are at worst a major annoyance, at best, a jukebox that takes your money but doesn’t play the songs you want unless you get lucky. Exceptions: Andi from Weekender, me, and some DJs in bars in Spain. I think the main worry was that no one was coming to see the show but it was sold out by 10, and when I went on at 9.20, with Claus accompanying me on drums, very quietly, it was so packed the last stragglers had to watch from a lounge area behind and to my left, standing on chairs. And I wasn’t allowed to leave the stage—the club relented and let me play until sometime after 11. I played basically the whole night with Claus, I think I played ‘You Avoid Parties’ in the encore w/o drums but everything else he jammed along with—original songs, a nice double shot of drink songs (‘Little Ole Wine Drinker’, a hit for Dino and Robert Mitchum, and ‘Scotch & Soda’ the Kingston Trio’s number that certainly got them laid). I did a re-imagined version of ‘Flavor of the Month’ that sounded like the Cars. I had rehearsed several songs with Claus but also threw many a curveball; they all came back saucy and with lots of spin. STOCKHOLM 2/19 I had a day off to get to Stockholm, so I bade farewell to my excellent hosts Claus and Nanna, and taxi’d to OSL (the cab ride to airport cost more than my flight. We live in strange times). Upon arrival to the glorious Berns Hotel, I met up with Jon, Jody Stephens, and Nusse our promotion buddy, and we had a very dinner, I was getting my homesick vibe on with some steak tartare, frites, fines de claires, and a bottle of Cote de Beaune. Back at the hotel I visited the bar and had a few drinks with our booking agent, James; on the way we stopped at the Rival Hotel, owned by Benny from Abba. Trendoid place but quite friendly. The next day Jon, Jody and I headed to the Södra Teatern, where Jon & I played in 2000. We played in the seated theatre, which is a gorgeous venue, a mini-opera house in fact. The Big Star gig was in a kind of club venue that as it turns out is one of my favorite places to play in terms of sound and stage, certainly it takes top honors for me for rock clubs in Stockholm. Anyway, Alex’s flight didn’t get in til the day of the show due to some delays so he wasn’t ready to join us at soundcheck, he rested and would meet us for dinner, he said. So the three of us ran thru some songs on our own, songs from last year’s new album ‘In Space’. We hadn’t played any of these songs in any fashion since we wrote them, which was when they were recorded, 2 years ago now. In 2004 we played ‘Mine Exclusively’ a cover song that’s on the album, but none of the original songs had been rehearsed, let alone played live. So, by showtime, we played things a little rough in some spots, but I myself feel like I pretty much nailed the gig from start to finish. The place was completely packed, and I think people really dug it. The audience wasn’t wild (there was like, the lone drunk guy yelling, and I said to the audience…’(Q) how many drunk Swedish guys does it take to change a light bulb? …(A) hey…I think there’s a light bulb that needs changing about 10 kilometers from here…’) but they were really respectful and geeking out very politely. And that’s the gigs for the week. 2 thumbs up, twice. And I am spending my day off here in Holland with a lovely case of food poisoning, which of course gives me something to do. Every ten minutes. Love KS Utrecht NETHERLANDS
2.16.2006
CANCEL & REGRET-EL I´m sorry to say that tonight´s Briskeby show in Grimstad, Norway, has been cancelled due to illness in two of the band members. So, my support slot is also cancelled. My headlining show at Gloria Flames in Oslo tomorrow will happen as scheduled--ain´t no stoppin´this boy from pop pop poppin. Chezzie!! Love KS Oslo NORWAY
2.15.2006
HE KNOWS CHANGES AREN’T PERMANENT, BUT CHANGE IS. The venue for Big Star’s show in Stockholm this coming Sunday the 19th has been moved to the Södra Teatern. Also, I wasn’t able to get to a computer yesterday to post this but unfortunately due to two very sick band members, Briskeby, and thus I too, had to cancel their show last night in Haugesund, Norway; of course I will definitely be up for my headlining show, 9pm on Friday the 17th at Gloria Flames in Oslo. LIVORNO 2/7 Every now and then the recalibration of the delicate instruments of one’s beliefs, perceptions, and awareness is in order. A tune-up of that with which we tune in. Toning and tuning the intuition. Making sure your soul-nar is still detecting objects and actions around you. As it turns out, I’m not a communist. At least not in the way that’s practiced by human beings. All that leveling out of culture stuff makes me incredibly sad. I am reading The Lost Heart of Asia by Colin Thubron, an early 1990s travelogue thru the former Soviet Central Asian Republics, what were then the newly-emerged nations of Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan (by the way, Microsoft Word only recognizes 3 of the 5 names of these countries, and I double-checked the spelling of each). Of course, the suppression of language, of poetry, of religion (however much I may lament the sources of conflict religion provides), the suppression of history and myth and architecture and place names; it’s a cliché of anti-Soviet rhetoric, from those years that ended about when the Posies began, to point out the numbing sameness of Soviet street names, ‘brand’ names, etc. Dominique’s grandparents were communists, and escaped Italy to escape fascism. Fascism, imperialism, kingly and queenly indulgence, serfdom, such things were in full swing in the late 19th early 20th century, and communism certainly provided an interesting intellectual counterweight, and in theory still does the job of pushing the arguments of the right towards the center, and keeping the socialists from getting too soft and cozy. But, as put into practice by large and diverse nations—yikes. Genocide, total repression, and lots of ugly grey apartment blocks. Vietnamese people seem kind of happy, hmm. Maybe in tinier nations, more homogenous than humongous, the dogma can be adapted to the local flora and fauna and everyone gets to keep speaking Spanish or what have you. OK, I’m a capitalist, I like the idea of working hard, creating something, and then getting a reward for that. I know the ugly side of capitalism is quite ugly, but it’s always those corrupt and fascist elements that don’t have to be there—same thing with communism. Just nasty old human nature mucking up a good thing. But at least in the world as I know it, the portfolio is diversified; the good apples and bad are there to be picked thru. Big-country communism means that if you have a kleptocratic apple in your batch, your state is one big Enron, and you can’t take your business elsewhere. Again, I like the theory, but the practice has been pretty catastrophic. Which is why I sort of wonder about International Noise Conspiracy—are they just bullshitting those kids or what? I think I already wrote about this a couple of years ago, but I went to see them, and I love their sincerity, I love their energy, but I think that they are messing with jargon and sloganeering in a way that is unfair to the more impressionable end of the spectrum of their audience. Again, I really don’t think they get home from tour and split the proceeds with their crew. Then again, in the avg. rock tour, they may not make any money at all and the crew are the only people getting paid. In which case, they are not hypocrites at least. Dominique’s grandfather, her late father’s father, was the aforementioned refugee of fascism. Unf. he landed rather firmly in the fire when the Germans arrived in his newly adopted France. Note about Germany: it occurred to me the other day that Germany is called everything by most of its neighbors except what it calls itself; Allemania, Tyskland, Germany—maybe only the Dutch call them Deutsch. Weird, huh? Anyway, Grandpa Sassi spent his later years yelling anti-Catholic rants at nuns (a bit harsh, but anyone who visits the Vatican and has a sense of perspective will probably look at the amount of undistributed wealth the CC has and wonder where the charitable distribution and contribution is being Enron’d away to) and picking the flowers from the garden of the Hotel de Ville (as, in his mind, they belonged to him. And I back him up on this one too). So, when we arrived in Livorno, I was unwittingly walking right into the bear’s den of the Italian left. I don’t know where the Sassis were from originally, at least the modern Sassis (Sassi appears as a surname in Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, France and so on)—somewhere in Emilia-Romagna. Livorno is a port in Tuscany, the region immediately to the south. We boarded a train in Rome and Livorno came a few hours later, about 40 minutes after we started seeing nice beaches and coves. There was some confusion when we arrived about what to do—we had about 2 hours until the scheduled soundcheck. Two vehicles were there to transport us and our gear, but that still wasn’t enough to move us all. So no decision appeared to be in the process of being made, and I stepped up and made rather strong suggestions—we go to the hotel, in a cab with the gear following (the other car had to go to the club). The guy from the club who was going there said we should move soundcheck up to 6.30, instead of 7, and I said sure, as long as everything is ready to go, monitors are rung out, backline is set up, etc. He was offended, but tried to hide it, and said, “I am a kind of famous tour manager throughout Italy, so everything is very professional at our club”. OK, buddy, you just set up my expectations: don’t let me down. The hotel. There were all kinds of arguments about the hotel and club being too far away from each other for it to be feasible to visit both before showtime. I finally pried it out of the promoter that they were about 7 miles apart. Off we went, in a taxi, the gear and luggage following, and pulled up to a lovely old villa at the end of a long drive. The villa and the approach looked oddly almost exactly like the place I stayed when I played Mallorca in 2003. Hmmm. We thought we were in for a great B&B experience; as it turns out, the villa, whose name I didn’t even retain, was an unusual hotel, and we had rooms in the basement. 7 people, in two rooms, with bunk beds. And one shared bath outside of each. No iron/ironing board on the premises. And their internet connection had a gone dead! Zut alors! Well, there wasn’t much for me to do. I did notice the restaurant (I guess there were some 20 other rooms around, and all were booked by temporary workers for the same company/project; they were up as early as we were the next day in fact). There was a restaurant serving dinner, Italian dinner cooked by a very skinny Japanese chef named Koji. But we weren’t staying that long. The gear had gone ahead to the club, and we got in a taxi van and went the 7 miles to the club, which, like so many Italian venues, is in an industrial park—there were apartments in the building next door, tho-…I really wondered who lived there and what it must be like. So, we did our soundcheck. And they did have an amazing Vox Corinthian organ for me. Great! The club was just a big bar, no backstage, kind of spare but new, clean and very good from a technical point of view. The Cage Club. No cage in sight. By the time soundcheck was done it was probably almost 9pm which means I hadn’t eaten in 8 hours, and that had been a small panini at the train station. There was nothing to snack on at the club, or the hotel for that matter. So I was starving. Susana had smoked a spliff so her drive to spur anyone into action was somewhat diminished. We were standing in the parking lot, waiting for someone (remember, many of the discussions around us are not in English so often we don’t have a clue what’s going on) to tell us the next step and simply nothing happened. We stood out there in the cold thinking that any second we would be taken to dinner (I had requested that dinner follow soundcheck promptly—this is normal, and, in light of the fact we were starving, necessary). Time passed. Nothing. I asked Susana what was going on, and got no answer. I went in the club and the only guy there, not the famous tour manager, said we had to wait for the other band to finish soundchecking. I said we were hungry and tried and cold. I asked if it was far. He said 5 minutes. Couldn’t he call us a cab? Anyway, I was basically getting the idea that more waiting was to be done. The band played 3-4 songs, and then we finally got into cars and were taken to the restaurant. It was very good, I will admit. In WF our party was 7 people, 5 wine drinkers, so we finished two bottles of wine. And after dinner the opening band suggested I have puncho, a mix of coffee and…was it rum, I think? I had one, and then we went to the club. About 40 people came to the show. I drank a little too much, they had some nice Havana Club Añejo, that being a weakness of mine—I only had one glass but that combo of those diverse beverages made me a little light headed. Incongruously, ‘Spaceballs’ was being projected on the wall of the club all night. We got on stage and did our best to entertain the dwindling Tuesday night crowd. Who wants to spend a freezing Tuesday night in a club in an industrial park, wherein there is one pit toilet and one toilet with no seat? Seeing WF? About 37 people, that’s who. Well, we went a bit wild. I periodically jumped offstage and chased people with the mic in my hand, not threatening them or anything, just trying to bring the show to them, since they were a bit shy and I guess our antics were too much for them (wasn’t this a kind of punk club?). I did stand on the bass drum and rock out, not unusual, I had just watched the bass player in the Avengers do it…I broke a string and the guitar player from the opening band gave me his guitar to use. I sort of forgot I wasn’t playing mine and at one point I did a Jon Auer and poked it into the soft ceiling (one of those suspended ceilings like you find in an office building where soft tiles of asbestos-like material are suspended in an aluminum grid) putting a dent in one. Well, that was it. They shut down the PA **and** the lights!! Show over. And then the drummer (female) came up and chewed me out for jumping on her drums (untrue, but I did stand on them). I told her I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do to my own gear and that it was perfectly safe. Anyway, I apologized but she was furious. She told me ‘maybe it’s OK for people like you who have all this money” but it wasn’t acceptable for her. Hey—is this a capitalist/communist thing again? Weren’t we all supposed to share? And what kind of money am I making playing for 36 people (€20, it turns out). We left and went back to our subdivided mansion where we weren’t served. I found out (by doing it) that I could break into the kitchen and wine cellar but I don’t have the desire to steal so I came back empty handed. And went to bed for about 3 hours. I will add that the band was ecstatic—they had never had both the sound and light lights pulled on them, so we all agreed we out punked the place. COSENZA 2/8 Up at 6. We had to be ready to go at 7. Ouch. I slept OK, but not for very long. I was second in line for the shower in the one bathroom on our floor. Big disappointment—there was only enough hot water for **one** shower. So I at least put on clean clothes but felt nasty. There was breakfast being served for us and the itinerant workers—coffee, cereal for those who wanted it (I don’t eat it myself) and sort of industrial, individually shrinkwrapped croissants with a nutella-like goo inside. The front desk guy was serving. He also made espresso drinks at the bar. We got in a taxi and found we had grossly overestimated the amount of time we would need to get to the station, plus our train was delayed, so we had like an hour of waiting in the freezing cold station. I bought a Herald Tribune and read. Then we got on the train, and I slept a bit. Got to Roma, and since our train had been late we had to run with all our luggage and gear (in luggage carts, mostly, but I was rolling my suitcase) about 200 yards full speed to the complete opposite end of the station to catch the train to Da Vinci airport. We got on, and checked in, and got on the plane, and got to Lamezia. Once there we had a rented van, and a friend of Susana’s, Simone, was volunteering to be driver for the rest of the tour (this was to be my last date but the band went on to play another show near Cosenza, two shows in Sicily, and another show in Roma). It was an hour drive from Lamezia airport to Cosenza. We went by the club and met up with the various people involved in putting the show on, and then went to the hotel for showers etc. Cosenza is actually two towns, one an ancient village clinging to a mountain, with narrow stairways serving as the streets of the town—there are only a few navigable roads, the rest you have to walk to get around. There are niches with candles and plastic saints everywhere. The other is the modern town with high rises and sprawl that inhabits a flat piece of land adjacent to the hill. The venue, B Side, is a small restaurant/bar on the main floor and then downstairs are two big rooms, one is a venue/bar and one is a kind of beer hall with long tables, bright lighting, and a TV hanging in a corner, for watching football etc. On Wednesday nights there is no cover to get in, they always have a band, and then DJs playing rock & punk til 3am. And cheap beers. So the place is jammed with like 300 kids. And the people running these shows are very cool and friendly. The venue is in the new part of town, it's the ground floor and basement level of an apartment block, actually—I guess it’s a residence for heavy sleepers. The hotel was in the old village, a car drove ahead of us to guide us there, or as close as we could get. We parked in an unbelievably tight space and dragged our stuff up a winding passageway of stairs. Then we came to a door, which opened to more stairs. We emerged on the second floor and entered what must have been an incredible residence when it was built in the 18th century. Dark wood and a winding staircase to the upper and lower floors. Now a kind of hostel/hotel. One bedroom with a bunch of bunk beds again, and a room with two beds, I grabbed the small bed in the small room. Upstairs there 3 bathrooms all next to each other, I finally got cleaned up. The place was freezing, tho—I got the feeling that Calabria was like Granada in Spain: it’s mostly warm and sunny, so when there is a cold snap, there’s no defense for it. The buildings aren’t insulated for cold weather and there are only inefficient electric heaters in some rooms. Soon we headed for soundcheck, and dinner immediately followed, for a change! Some nice wine was had, and then it was really showtime soon after. This show was really fun, well played. It was short—about 50 minutes before they told us it was time for the DJ sets to start, but the place was jammed and the patrons were very happy. We stayed on, I chatted with locals and tried not to drink too much, just one Havana Club and a glass of wine or two. We had to pry Susana out of there, and actually we didn’t get out of there until two, the place was starting to slow down. Susana was hammered. She actually fell out of the van while pantomiming a kind of sex act on Doug, the bass player, as her boyfriend Stefano looked on! She threw the only portion of the merch money she could find in Pat Fear’s face. This was all before we could start driving to the hotel. Finally she got in and just said ‘fuck you’ over and over. I guess that was her way of showing her affection! Once we got to the hotel, Simone and one of the promoters—who had incredibly offered to drive me the hour-long drive (so two hours to get there and back) to Lamezia for my flight—went to have breakfast at a bar that serves it all night. I went to sleep for about an hour, then got up, and was so cold that I knew it would be impossible to shower and survive the experience of getting out to dry off, so I slept for another 45 minutes. My driving companions came back, and we worked our way down the indoor and outdoor steps to get to the van, and started to head to Lamezia at about 5am. My flight was at 6.50, and I got there in time to check in and have a croissant and macchiato. I of course slept all the way to Roma, but that was only an hour. As I walked out onto the tarmac in Lamezia I was so tired, everything was shimmering. I had been successful in not drinking very much so felt fine, just in need of a place to lay down. In Roma I had a 5 hour layover so I parked myself on a bench and slept for 3 of those hours. I got up and checked in for my other flights and had lunch. Flew to Copenhagen (slept all the way). Short layover and flight to Oslo (slept thru that one too). Got the train into the city and Claus picked me up. I was hungry by then (it was like 9pm) so we stopped for some dinner and then I went home and went to bed. TROMSO 2/10 And got up at freaking 6 again! We had to be at the airport at 8.20 and it takes at least 45 minutes to get there, plus we had to load up gear and merch. Destination: Tromso, above the Arctic Circle (Tromso is sometimes called the ‘Paris of the North’). Though it’s further north than Iceland it’s not nearly as cold as it could be. There’s snow on the ground but rather than looking like Ice Station Zebra it pretty much looks like a small Norwegian city. Briskeby and I were playing a special concert as part of the ByLarm music festival/showcase, a kind of SXSW that’s NXN. Almost 200 bands play over the course of 3 days. We played in a big hall to about 1000 people, just 30 minutes each. I had a very good response to my 3 songs, and I played 3 songs with the band and nailed them, and of course, Briskeby brought down the house. After the show while selling CDs in the lobby I met the Artist known as Fugu—I am a fan, but we had never met. He is French and lives between Paris and Nancy. We exchanged contacts and CDs (my neighbor Xavier from Tahiti 80 coproduced the new Fugu release). Unf. Fugu’s show was the next day and we were leaving. Also, I ran into Beezewax, we were on the same flights to and from Tromso, but unf. we were playing at different venues at the same time that night. Anyway, as you can see I have less to say when the shows go smoothly than when they have some unfortunate quirks but I will declare Tromso a success. Since I arrived back in Oslo I have spent 4 days mixing some songs for the Trondheim-based band Jim Protector—whom I met in Trondheim when the Posies played there last year. While I was there I played and sang on a song of theirs and they asked me to mix that song and some others, so, it happened. I think the stuff sounds great…I also performed two songs on Monday on P2, the most sophisticated of Norway’s state broadcast services. I played ‘Death of A City’ and ‘Je Vous En Prie’ on a lovely old Steinway—the broadcast was live, and I actually made a mistake entering the first chorus of ‘Death of A City’ and had to go back and start the song over! I was mortified; so nervous my vision was swimming and I thought I would faint but it made the performance of both songs very intense. Everybody seemed to love it and thus I am ok with it. Also, for those of you that read Norwegian, I did an interview and photo shoot yesterday for Dagbladet, a big Norwegian daily, that will run on Friday. I watched two excellent films today—‘Brokeback Mountain’, which I saw in the theatre; and I watched a DVD of ‘Me & You & Everyone We Know’, which was incredibly touching and inspiring. I have been an admirer of Miranda July for some time, and she really has made an affecting story come to life here. Also, the score is wonderful—I am going to pick up the soundtrack as soon as I can. On Valentine’s Day my 20 month old daughter said ‘je t’aime’ to me for the first time. And now…to bed…for an hour or so…since working noon-to-5am in the studio I can't sleep anymore! It’s 5.22am, and I have an interview on the phone with an Australian music magazine at 7. Love KS Oslo, NORWAY
2.06.2006
I CAN FLY And I often do…ere I left Paris I checked out ‘Live from the Morning Alternative’ a compilation of live tracks recorded at the studios of the End, FM 107.7 in Seattle, featuring performances by Harvey Danger, the Supersuckers, the Divorce and really a great cross section of younger artists from our humble burg (I really dig the Schoolyard Heroes track). Incidentally: there is a very nice version of ‘Conversations’ done live in the studio, acoustic guitars, voice, and tambourine; and, even better, proceeds from the sale go towards the Vera Project, which promotes all ages music and cultural events. www.1077theend.com is the station’s site, and I think you can find it by googling ‘vera project compilation' and find the direct link on the End’s site. KONGSBERG 2/2 First show with Briskeby—and a mini set featuring Bjorn, Baard, and Claus of Briskeby, with yours truly on guitar and voice. I open the shows solo, then the 3 b´s and I play full band versions of ‘Find Yourself Alone’, ‘Don’t Die’ and ‘Lover’s Hymn’; then Briskeby seamlessly starts their set—during which I pop onstage and duet with Lise for ‘Joe Dallesandro’. The club here, Energimolla, is fairly small, the audience fairly close—I managed to win them over, a few folks talked and did the ‘Lise’ chant but I shut ‘em down—and got an ovation. The Disciplines 3 song set was very well received; and of course, after ‘ Joe’ when I jumped into the crowd (there was no backstage so nowhere else to go) I was grabbed and kissed like a pop star—yow! That morning before we left Oslo I did interviews at Briskeby’s management’s office for our Australian tour. On the way I grabbed a coffee and a croissant, and was happily trotting down the street when, without sound, struggle, or warning, I was on my back—coffee and croissant bag went out of my hands, glasses flew off my face; I had hit the one patch of ice that hadn’t been sand sprinkled for safety, and went down without so much as a whiffing sound. Boom. My ass only stopped hurting today… The good news is that Claus and Baard from Briskeby are tennis players…I played Claus the night we rehearsed, and he beat the stuffing out of me (I was wearing borrowed shoes too small, using a sucky racquet and I hadn’t played in 5 months). OSLO 2/3 Ok, this one was quite a bit harder—this was in a venue, Rockefeller, a big place (where the Posies headlined last summer during the Oya festival) where the audience was further away, and more at my feet than looking at my eyes like the night before...plus there were balconies etc. So, I couldn’t quite grab and hold everyone’s attention during my solo set. Even with the full band stuff I had to work pretty hard (with…you might say). Of course when Briskeby’s complete lineup went on, people went mad—I managed, before Joe D., to shower, dry off, and change clothes so I came back to sing in a completely different outfit, and despite my uncertainty about the reception for what I was doing, a) Joe D. was great, and I sang my part brilliantly, and b) after the show I had lots of praise from local musicians and friends of the B’s. so I think it (me, band, etc), was better received than I could detect above the general din of anticipation. Afterwards, we decamped to a kind of bar/disco around the corner, and I was dancing in a PVC nurse costume (complete with hat) that was made for a tiny girl (a Briskeby fan brought it for Lise to wear, she didn’t go for it, but, I did of course). And then, I regained my composure, sobered up completely, and taxi’d to the Oslo airport to check in at 5am for my 6am flight to Rome… I got in, after changing in Copenhagen, at 11am, and promoter Susanna Motta picked me up and took me to the hotel, where the rest of White Flag had already arrived. This time around inductees include the usual Pat Fear and Doug Graves, a certain El Swe (aka Chips from Sator) and the drummer V for Victor. And me. Instead of catching up on sleep, I caught up on 30 or so WF songs in rehearsal, and then went to dinner, where a couple of very drunk guys invited themselves to our table, ridiculed my fashion sense (I looked, and still look, fantastic), and scoffed that someone like Pat couldn’t possibly know anything about their favorite band, Rancid (of course he knows Tim—he’s on the last WF album). They were drunk, and insulting me, so I gave them a bunch of shit and made them apologize, which they did. When I saw them later at the show (night one of a two night punk festival that we play tonight-I am writing this before the show on Sunday) they were still giving me shit, but laughing, offering me beer, and hugging me. Other highlights of the night: I met Penelope Houston of the Avengers, who was incredibly kind and interesting; I ran into Luis from Pansy Division who is playing for the Avengers; I met Paul Collins who, as it turns out is a Posies fan; and his band, who are mostly Spanish, who are all Posies fans. Now that’s a friendly crowd… On to the show! Will report more lately... ROMA 2/5 I can say without hesitation that the Avengers were superb. While I can’t say the same for White Flag, I had fun, and that counts for something. The venue tonight was the Circolo Degli Artisti, where in fact the Posies had just played at the end of last year. Last night’s Paul Collins Beat et al show was also supposed to be there, too, but at the last minute the venue gave them the boot so Mattafix could play at the C.D.A.—how rude! Also, they were going to show the Afropunk documentary that’s just out, and that I want to see, but I have a feeling WF’s soundcheck length killed that. Here’s what I know about White Flag’s set—people came from all over the country to see it (WF has been making highly individualistic takes on the concept of punk, etc. since 1982, so, word gets around) and, in fact enjoyed it. There were 3 guitars blazing away most of the time, which is pretty cool, and when we were in tune, and when we knew the songs, it was prob. pretty fun. When it was out of tune, or one of us got lost (I actually held my part of the stage down pretty well), it was, well, frankly, I thought it was horrible in those moments and when we were done I couldn’t tell which category won out. But, like I said, I had fun. There was a clown who was geared up in his punk costume, who evidently loved it, and was so old school by numbers (he was probably 20 years old) that he spit at us—well, don’t mess with the camel, you will get the damn humps—I conjured up a weapon and fired away, and nailed him right in the hair with a spit blob. Later, on stage, Penelope H. said, “OK, let’s talk about the spitting thing—White Flag—who, incidentally are the only band that seems to rehearse less than the Avengers—are into the spitting thing. If I want to swap spit with anybody here, I’ll let ya know after the show”. There’s a double ouch in there—and she wasn’t being bitchy—there was a smile on her face, but still…oof! My bad. After the show, I walked back to the hotel just in time to watch the Super Bowl on Italia 1, which many friends said was happening. I bought a bottle of wine (Nero D’Avola for €4 at a convenience store/call center—I am in the epicenter of call centers in this neighborhood) and went to my room. Let’s mention that the 2 star Hotel Amico is interesting—you enter on the ground floor, and take an elevator up to the top (7th) floor to get to reception. Somehow you are discouraged from getting out on any other floor—our rooms are on the 6th, so we have to walk down the hall, and then down stairs to get to it—the elevator has emergency exit doors that are alarmed etc. on the 6th floor. I don’t know how far down the hotel part of the building goes. It’s not all 7 floors. On Italia 1 was a damn home shopping show—so I went back to reception, knowing that the reception and reception only had a satellite receiver. After much negotiation, the woman at the front desk allowed me to change the channel, and I found “NFL Seattle vs. Pittsburgh”, selected it, and saw I was in fact getting a Rolling Stones concert. I was hoping it was a new take on the halftime show, where they fill the whole playing field with spectators, but, it sure didn’t look like the normal halftime show—it just looked like a straight concert. I felt embarrassed, but then it was over and in fact it had been the halftime show, and eventually the game resumed. The 3rd quarter was great football, both sides making incredible plays; the 4th quarter was one-sided, Seattle was broken somehow and were just unable to hold their own against a brilliant Pittsburg offense. The various bands playing at the festival came back and I went to the room where a few folks had gathered, donated the rest of my wine bottle, and made merry, but not too merry. Then bed. Love KS Roma ITALY
2.01.2006
CALLING ALL ITALIAN FANS…KS SEEKS PLACE TO WATCH THE SUPER BOWL IN ROME ON FEB. 5 AFTER THE WHITE FLAG SHOW… EINDHOVEN 1/30 Slept in with no need for an alarm, as I mentioned before…bliss. The Effenaar has been a rock institution for some years, and the town loved it so much they tore that old linen factory down and built a big scary concrete thingy with multiple venues, and big windows that look out from the 4th and 5th floor rooms over the town. The old Effenaar was a site of many Posies shows in the 1990s, and our 2000 acoustic tour in Europe kicked off there (where Jon, in his drunken state, fell backwards while peeing in the backstage toilet after the show, grabbed a pipe on the way down and caused the whole backstage to flood-they were remarkably cool about that). Our first visit to the new place was a merry one (read: a wifi-equipped band is a happy band). Great throngy crowd, lots of sweating and spitting from me. Being as I want to be alert and well rested when I get home, I decided that having the end of the tour party on that night would be better than doing it in Rotterdam (I have to catch a train at 7.30 in the morning after the last show). So, we gathered friends up to the dressing room, including Menko Leeuw, who was our tour manager and sound engineer from 1996 to 1998…we all got down and had tequila, champagne and what not. Festivities continued after the club closed at 4.30, and after the four of us walked back to the hotel (about 750 yards, with all our luggage, passing the very scary train station area, always the worst in any town—I think I was unsuccessfully pickpocketed, actually) in the freezing night air, and fired up the Itunes once we were safely in Matt and Darius’ room. I ended up sleeping on their floor! Hot. ROTTERDAM 1/29 So I slept in the van for the short ride to Delft, and woke up as we pulled up to Velvet Records, for an instore appearance. I was a bit cranky when I woke up in the van but everybody was so friendly at the store that I woke up and felt good (OK, a Red Bull helped too). The boys from the very fine band Cooper were on hand to lend guitars…we did some funny stuff, including “Saying Sorry to Myself’, which I can’t imagine the last time we played that…then back in the van and rolled up to the last date, Rotterdam, at the relatively new joint called Waterfront, which is canalside, on the docks. Beautiful light as we drove up the place, right at sunset. Tonight’s show we did exclusively the songs of Every Kind of Light, in an order appropriate for the flow of a live show. Then off, and back for 7 more Posie classics. I loved it—we did lots of insane jumping around, I gashed my hand in the first number, and gave Taylor lots of abuse. Poor dear, she was pretty hammered by the end of the night AND she twisted her ankle…we did the best we could to care for her, and released her to Evellyn and Carsten to get her to the airport safe… We really played those EKOL numbers with true authority. I think in ‘Jungle’ there was also an Eagles medley…oh well. After the show, no tears…but…I packed up the stuff I will need for the next month’s worth of shows, and also made my stuff as compact as possible for humping on to the train…in 5 hours…yow… There’s lots more stuff to come…I’ll update the tour page soon…but I will be with and without Posies in many, many different corners of the globe over the next months…so, next Sunday I’ll be blogging down another batch of shows…and hopefully watching the Super Bowl!! Love KS Rotterdam, NETHERLANDS
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The latest release by Ken Stringfellow is a split EP with Spain's Muy Fellini, featuring never-heard-before music incl. Ken's take on Bob Dylan, released by
King of Patio records
in Spain on Oct 8, 2009.
Order it directly from Muy Fellini here www.myspace.com/muyfellini
10" VINYL ONLY!!!
older news :
8/3/2003
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