FUNK BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY
In one of those it rains it pours kind of turnarounds, found myself with more opportunities to play music this week than I could possibly accept, but I did accept them all and so far it’s working out pretty well…I was given three sets of music to learn this week for three different bands (and three instruments mind you!). Plus I am faced with doing better mixes of my demos now that I’m home, plus I offered to do a bit of mastering for the Cosmopolitants, and I wanted to fool around with a mix or two for Cheap Star of the stuff we worked on a few years ago (that isn’t released yet but could be soon). Well. First off, my ProTools crashed for a night. I had tried to mount Cheap Star’s hard drive, and it wouldn’t show up on my desktop. I installed a driver that was included and it didn’t get the drive to mount. OK. I gave up, and put my hard drive on and was about to do some work, but ProTools was now not working—it tried to load, but crashed and gave me an error message to “Call Apple for a secret decoder ring”. What the? Is that a joke? A virus? I emailed around, and Googled, and searched Apple and Digidesign forums. Nothing on a “secret decoder ring”. I was really panicking. And then, in the morning, everything worked fine…I still don’t know what happened…if anyone has ever heard of this phenomenon, please email me.
Wednesday night I went to see Deerhoof at the Point Ephemere, the ultra cool club down below street level along a canal. The show was sold out, but I managed…to work a little magic (merci Benoit). Deerhoof are pretty incredible…wicked drummer who plays a kind of emo jazz; a guitar player who utilized alternate tunings to play a kind of Sonic Youth’d John McGlaughlin, and a bass player/singer who squeaks cryptic poetry, and plays a violin bass. And points at things the audience can’t see. Brilliant. The Blow opened, a one-woman show with kind of charming-heroic synth and drum machine backing, wherein the heroine tells you her triumphs, fears and fantasies, and does wicked hand gestures and dance moves. Approved!
I spent two days rehearsing with two different bands, one is art-contemporain crossover duo Liquid Architecture; the other is the group of singer Olivia Baum. Totally different, each one. Oddly, the tour manager for Olivia is the drummer for Liquid. There’s not much I can say about rehearsals. They are not entertaining, by any means.
Friday was Dominique’s birthday. I won’t tell you which number. I had rehearsals with Olivia Baum that afternoon, but I managed to get some flowers and clean our flat while Dom was at work and before I had to get on the metro to Main D’oeuvre, the rehearsal place way up on the north side of Paris. I came back from rehearsal around 7, and in 30 minutes I was back on the metro heading to the center of Paris where I met Dom for dinner. We were debating whether to go out of town for the weekend up until the last minute, so I found myself booking a place for a dinner on a Friday night in Paris the day before. But we found a place, and it turned out to be lovely—the Mori Venice Bar, next to the ‘Bourse’, the stock exchange in Paris’ center. In fact, the place was relatively quiet until Dom and I were on our way out. So, we had a quiet place with an attentive staff. We had called in advance to see if they would be willing to do corkage, and they couldn’t really give us an answer—and in fact, they were completely thrown by the concept. I had brought from my cave a bottle of Ermitage, Le Pavillon 2003 by
Michel Chapoutier. Robert Parker gave the wine a perfect score of 100, and it absolutely merits the score. It was massive, with huge vanilla and berry/cherry flavors. It didn’t have a super long finish, but the front end of this wine was like getting a punch and a caress at the same time—the flavor was shocking, complex, and intense. It was about as early in this wine’s life as one should drink it, it will be amazing in about 15 years. I have another bottle of Ermitage Chapoutier, Le Meal 2003, that I’m not opening 'til the next decade. A bonus note: the restaurant staff was too surprised by our BYOB action that they didn’t charge us a corkage fee. After the dinner Dom & I had a drink at Le Motel, but somehow we found ourselves more or less done with the night before midnight. It was enjoyable enough that the night felt long and full, and I guess it was…we were out for almost 4 hours, but it was one of those occasions where time stands still…in a *good* way.
NANTES, 4/21
I spent an afternoon running thru the five song set of
Olivia Baum at home, and on Friday afternoon, Olivia, myself and the guitarist (who also does amazing backing vocals) Mateo got together for a couple of hours and ran thru the set a couple of times. A good sign was that I didn’t need to refer to my notes during the rehearsal; I had more or less memorized the music and arrangements, and what I didn’t know, they were able to teach me quite easily.
On Saturday morning I got up and packed and kissed everyone goodbye and headed to Montparnasse station. As had been true at rehearsal, I was the first on the scene. Jerome ‘La Perruque’, in tour manager mode, arrived soon after and the rest of the band fell in. Lawrence Clais, the drummer, hadn’t been able to come to rehearsal so I met him for the first time as we boarded the train. I made friends quickly by sharing the excellent (and you can say that like Bill and/or Ted) Led Zeppelin rehearsal and studio outtakes I have on my Itunes.
We got to Nantes and checked in to the hotel. It was fairly sweltering (Paris today is supposed to be about 25C/77F) and Jerome and my room was pretty small so we went walking around, took a little snack on a terrace, etc. Olivia was the support act for Chiméne Badi, a very popular French singer, who sings very pop French music, and sells millions of albums…it’s mainstream, to be sure. She does have an excellent voice (and her vocals sound amazing, enough that I noted the microphone she uses and may get one for my live shows in the future). The venue was Le Zénith of Nantes. Every big French town has a Zénith; they are state owned centers for sports, music, even political rallies. Le Zénith in Paris is not really used for sports, as there are several other large venues in Paris, but in Nantes the Zénith is a one-size-fits-all events center. I think it must hold 5,000-7,000 depending on the configuration. Olivia’s set was just the 5 songs we learned the day before, with acoustic guitar, bass, vocals and one of those South American boxes that you sit on and slap with your hands. Laurence, the drummer, originally from Martinique, has played with many artists, including a tour as the drummer in Phoenix. He was wearing a t-shirt from the Southgate House in Kentucky when we boarded the train, a venue I played with the Long Winters in 2002.
The bass player in whose place I was playing is the musical director of the band, and one of those virtuoso, 5-string bass kind of players. I play in a more laid back, more old school soul style, but managed to make it fit. The show was actually really good, and I managed to play without any significant errors, and with plenty of feel and ‘good groove’ as Olivia said. Only five songs meant that by the last song I was really starting to feel relaxed and enjoy myself and loosen up. And then it was done—everybody happy.
After the show, we attempted to make merry with the band and crew of Chiméne, in a positively awful (to my tastes, but they were having a great time) nightclub—, but it just wasn’t rubbing off, and I really don’t need to hear “It’s Raining Men” EVER again…and it was packed, and it smelled like poo from the toilets (the woman at the coat check, who has to work down in that basement all night, had the biggest can of air freshener I have ever seen—and even *it* didn’t help!). So I went back and got my groove on with my Itunes (I am preparing for a DJ set this summer at Le Motel).
Love
KS
on the TGV between Nantes and Paris
