NEW PHOTOS IN THE PHOTOS SECTION--PLUS, I PROPERLY CAPTIONED ALL THE "OLDER PHOTOS"...YOU'LL SEE WHEN YOU GO TO THE PHOTOS PAGE ON THIS SITE...
SANTANDER 1/5
I flew into Bilbao the night before the show, and was picked up by David, local good egg, musician of note, and helpful guy. It takes about an hour to drive from BIO to Santander. Santander *does* have an airport, but it's served by a very number of significantly more expensive flights, and nothing direct from Paris that I could find.
Santander, which has been a small but important port city since Roman times, has been burned twice--in 1893 a ship carrying TNT exploded in the harbor, killing 500 people; and in 1941 a fire burned almost the entire center (but incredibly only killing one person, a firefighter). Thus, the medieval center has long been lost. Nowadays, Santander is long strip of city which runs along an industrial port. at one end, a strip land lay across it, making a 'T'. The outside of the 'T' is a beautiful beach, the Sardinero, and out on the edge of the 'T' there is the king's summer palace, and more beaches. In the center of Santander there is a very steep hill, I mean this rises up directly in the center, cutting an already narrow city in half for quite a ways. To make navigation easy there is a tunnel for cars and pedestrians going thru--it makes a slight 'S' curve inside, for a total length of about 100 meters. The city's vibe is that of a typical small city in Spain, which is very enjoyable--social life is centered around tiny bars, where you can take a coffee, a beer, and/or tiny sandwiches or plates of food. It's cheap, too--I asked the bartender if he was sure he was charging the correct price after I had a glass of wine and a coffee for less than 2 Euros.
My show was put on by the government of Cantabria (the region of Spain of which Santander is the main city), it's a cycle of shows for young people (in name only--the concerts are of course open to all--they are free, in fact). Mine was put on in a lecture hall in a building operated by Cantabria University downtown. No support act, so I could set up the stage to my liking and leave it in place. Good equipment, good lights, it was put together in a highly professional manner by the promoters--Mara and Natxo, who put on all the tasty shows in the region (they are bringing the Supersuckers to town later this year). Again, like David, they are just superbly kind people trying to bring things of the highest quality to their town.
I spent the day walking around town, window shopping, and the aforementioned visit to a tiny bar. My show was at 10.30, and I received a pretty encouraging round of applause from the 200-300 people there. I couldn't help but smile, with a mix of gratitude and embarrassment. Folks were totally respectful and quiet, enough so that I could hear that about 45% of them had coughs! I have been fighting the cold that's been going around Paris (Dom and Aden have both been sick), successfully so far. I can feel it trying to get its greasy fingers on my lungs, tho.
The show went by like it was 30 minutes in length, tho it was almost two hours; afterwards I flopped my suitcase open, which contained CDs/7" singles of KS, Posies, Chariot and Twin Princess. People had been asking at lots of shows about vinyl records so I had some sent from Seattle and did indeed sell a few. Sold lots of CDs, and went out a for a drink with the promoters and a few fans, but before I was even done with my glass of wine I was falling asleep and went back to the hotel--by then it was already 3am tho--it was after 1am by the time I was done selling CDs, and then I had to sort the money, and it was 2 by the time we got to the bar.
The next morning David, bless his heart, brought me a piece of the cake that goes with the holiday--the night of the 3 kings, which commemorates the arrival of the magi. They look a lot like Santa Claus, and they parade thru Spanish towns on camels, bearing gifts for children. You can see that the workaholic WASPs compacted all the holidays around that time into as short a time as possible...time to get back to work.
I flew back to Paris and that night (last night) Dominique and I went to see Christian Vander, a jazz drummer, and his trio in a pakced jazz cellar in the center of Paris. Vander looks like an ogre, with big fat hairy arms (he was wearing a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, I couldn't help but notice) and he looks like he's being attacked by someone from the film "Scanners" while he plays, but he and his trio are great, playing a chord-heavy kind of post-bop that has strains of Coltrane and Mingus.
Recommended listening this week:
Asha Ali--from Sweden, playing what seems like very pure and sweet music, but it far more subversive than it initially lets on.
The Holland/Dozier/Holland story -- you sing one of their songs in your head every day.
Antibalas "Who Is This America" -- they're from Brooklyn, but they sound *exactly* like Fela Kuti. Best band name in a long while--it means "bulletproof" in Spanish.
Field Music -- myspace buddies from the UK.
The Lyrebird "Blood Diamonds" -- I produced this one man band from Michigan in 2004. I was just revisiting it the other day, and you know, it's really good mix of songs. This is just an EP, which are easy to have slip thru the cracks, but it's worth checking out. Darius from the Posies plays drums on it; Scott McCaughey adds some blues harp; and I add guitar, bass, keys, backing vocals, drum programming and some sort-of drumming to the proceedings. You can get it on Itunes or get a CD at
The Best of the Runaways -- "Born to Be Bad" is an amazing arrangement, what a killer song.
Love
KS
Paris
