IF YOU BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER LOVE, READ ON
No, I actually don’t have any consoling tales of rebirth and regeneration after addiction, trauma--no inspirational anecdotes to guide you. So, you’ll have to get those from network TV. Me, I just write my tour diary, for the tour that never ends.
SYDNEY 3/3
We had a couple of shows fall thru (long story) so I found myself with a couple of days off in Sydney, including the night I arrived, I went out for a couple of beers with friends, sang a little karaoke, and beat the jet lag by staying up. Had nice dinners, rested in the hotel, swam, steamed, walked around, did interviews, visited radio stations, had snacks and wine up on the 34th floor of the Intercontinental Hotel with some of the folks from our promoter’s office. I spent time with lots of different friends, had plenty of time to take a meal with each of the dearest ones that were available, etc. Caught up on email. After a couple of days of that I was almost forgetting we had shows to do, but Friday arrived and we pulled into the Metro, where we had done our sole full-band electric show in 1996, in the afternoon. Fantastic sounding stage and great production at this venue. Probably a little big for the crowd we had, but in the end, it looked great in there with the folks that came, and we did have a nice crowd in the end. And it was GREAT to play a Posies show after having a month off: my body was limber and energetic. Of course I was sore as hell the next day, that’s for sure. But honestly I thought we played great and didn’t drop a beat even with the long time gone since we had performed together. And folks said the sound was great (except for one fan, oddly, who said it was muddy and said our HORRIBLE sounding show at Benicassim last year was fantastic sounding). Poor Hanayo, a fan of ours who flew in from Japan and spent an uneventful night in Brisbane where our show was cancelled, got to see this show, so not all was lost. After the show we hung at the lobby bar til they kicked us all out—I went to a party at the house where one of the dudes from the fine band 78 Saab (who named themselves after the car that they borrowed to drive to a Posies gig in the 90s, unbelievable but true!) and had a grand time! The house was next to a park/playground so we sipped beers and sat on some kind of rope net thing…and I saw a fanciful opossum run by, it’s like a very big cuddly looking squirrel (big bushy tail—the creature is 3 times bigger than a typical American grey squirrel and has a much cuter face), and fast, not like the American things that get hit by cars all the time.
MELBOURNE 3/4
We were all pretty tired (that party went kinda late and we had an early lobby call for our flight) so when we got to Melbourne and checked in to the trendy Marque Hotel (no I didn’t forget an ‘e’ it’s pronounced ‘Mark’—snooty, eh?) we all took naps. Got up for soundcheck, and all took naps in the dressing room while the gear was set up, then went back to the hotel and took more naps! So by showtime we felt really good and I myself had chugged a Red Bull and was ready for it. As we were driving to the gig we saw that Saturday night was ROCKING in downtown Melbs, every club had 50 people waiting to get in. And thus we benefited from this windfall of bodies too—our show had HUNDREDS of people at it, and they were more than ready for a big rock show. Perfect storm kind of shit—we bashed that room senseless with a furious to do. We did two encores, pretty long ones; I bled like a guy in a slasher flick on my guitar (even my shoes had blood on them) and life was fine; after the show Friendy, the man behind the ‘Puppetry of the Penis’ show, helped me sell merch! We tried to get in to Cherry Bar, owned by one of the Cosmic Psychos, but it was packed and we were a posse of about 20 folks. We found a home in bar hosted by Wally from Even/the Meanies, who had been at a wedding all evening, and showed up at his place, with perfect timing to get us all in, at about 2. And we stayed til the wee hours, and finished the evening at the home of Jo and Roger, Jo being a publicist who worked on the ‘Soft Commands’ tour last year, and Roger her very friendly and kind guy. Pretty soon it was time to head back and shower up for the flight back to Sydney!!
SYDNEY 3/5
We flew in and headed straight to the festival grounds, basically squeezed in between skyscrapers in downtown Sydney in and around a tiny park. Our backstage was shared with several bands, in a large conference room in a hotel adjacent to the festival site. I met the Hold Steady, who I saw play later that night and were excellent, and found the guitarist is the partner of an old friend of mine—funny stuff like that. Our show was in the late afternoon, on the second stage. We couldn’t really line check as there was a wedding happening in the hotel right before we were going on and the noise of us checking our gear would disturb it. It all worked out—presumably the wedding went off WITH a hitch and we got onstage and played by all accounts a ridiculously over the top rock show…sometimes having a smaller stage gives me more things to push and bounce off of than a big one where I feel too spread out from my bandmates—you’d think having more room would give one a sense of greater freedom but actually it’s often more like a lens that is pulled out of focus. In any case, this stage was pretty tiny but for some reason we all fit fine (ah…yes…there was no keyboard!) and I bounced, swung, crawled, swaggered, pranced—I verbed all over the damn shop like a sonuvagun. We ended with a foaming-at-the-mouth version of jungle—I ended up with no trousers (but everything else was on, including my shoes!). Received many compliments on our foolish behavior. Afterwards it was all gravy, drinking white wine and eating sausage at the VIP BBQ, watching the incredible Broken Social Scene, the aforementioned Hold Steady, and dropping by the Avalanches’ dance party. Brad Shepard, Hoodoo Gurus guitslinger and proud dad (like meself) came down to see our set and offered many compliments as well. I had purchased a bottle of a very unusual beverage, new to my senses, called Amontillado, I have to see how it’s made, but it’s an alcoholic substance made from grapes using something called the ‘flor yeast process’. I guess it’s related to Sherry but tastes nothing like any sherry I have experienced. I shared it with any interested parties, having grabbed a bunch of port glasses from the bar, and we all agreed it was unusual…softly bitter and nutty, the initial taste is quite diffuse but then the pecan-like finish comes on and stays with you for many seconds.
By the time the Avalanches wrapped up at 10, there was of course to be a big after party at the Basement club, but honestly I had been burning the candle from every direction, and I needed a good night’s rest. So, I went back with the van and gear to the hotel and was asleep by 11…up early and on the flight to Auckland.
AUCKLAND 3/7
New Zealand…mellow like a giant Seattle…maybe even a giant Bellingham! On our arrival night I dined with Phil, dad and co-manager of the excellent Checks; I’ve praised them at length in these (html) pages in the past. We found some good eats and wine by the hotel. Show day all four Posies cut an acoustic session on the national radio, and Jon & I limped thru a post-soundcheck interview at the student radio that was sponsoring our gig. The host was a fan (‘was’ being the applicable verb after our appearance) and kept wanting to play ‘Golden Blunders’ but honestly I felt like it was the new record we should be speaking about so I told him so. Jon and I also ran off dozens of known bands with names modified to accommodate the hip sobriquet formula that requires ‘wolf’ to be part of the name (Wolf Eyes, Wolfmother, Wolf & Cub et al) –like we came up with Wolfgang of Four, Justin Timberwolf, April Wolf, Frankie Goes to Hollywolf; hell we even hit upon the fact that now is the time for Steppenwolf to return to the epicenter of hipsterdom. Neil Young and Crazy Wolf.
Obviously, we needed a nap. And so I squeezed off an hour at the hotel, but it wasn’t enough. When we went to the gig I was still so tired I could barely function. I lay on the couch taking in the support acts’ very nice sounding sets, and peeled myself off the thing and downed a Red Bull; then it was rock time. And you know, it was a damn good show. Lots of musos, journos, and music devotees in the house. Not a ton of folks, but enough to keep us from feeling lonely, and everyone seemed to get their sockies rocked right off. As soon as it was done the house was empty tho’—this is NZ on a Tuesday, I was told. But we were invited to a party thrown by ‘Fort Minor’ a hip hop crew from NY that I hadn’t really heard of before but met one of the guys, very nice—they had played in Asia, Europe, etc. and this party was the end of tour party. I chatted with the Checks, and eventually stumbled across the street to the hotel.
OZ/NZ done, I say— success!
Love
KS
Auckland NEW ZEALAND
