Like I have often thought, musicians, who are accused of being unemployable layabouts, have the double bind of being having to get up the earliest while also working the latest. It seems I’m always getting up at some ungodly hour to catch a plane, but on the morning after working 'til 3a.m. in a studio or having played a club or whatever. This Monday I was up at 7.45 so that I could meet Xavier “Axe” Boyer at our metro stop by 9. We went to Strasbourg-St. Denis, famously the red light district, where Benoit “’s Symphonic Orchestra” Rault has a studio…in a 7th floor walk up! No need to stay, I didn’t investigate. We loaded up my things, Xav’s things, and Ben’s things into Ben’s car, which left a little room for the three of us, and drove out to Microbe studios, which is far from the middle of nowhere—it’s in the suburbs of nowhere. Therein we rehearsed a cover of the Zombies’ “Care of Cell 44” together, and I ran thru “Tell Me Why” for Axe’s benefit (I just thought the phrase ‘dooblaveh axelle rrrose’ in my head. At 12.30 Audrey from Liquid Architecture picked me up and drove me across Paris for another rehearsal, which went into the night. By the time it was done…I was done!
MILAN 4/24
The next morning I was…yep, up early. I headed to Orly, hurrying at a decent clip, and arrived at 9am for my flight to Milan. Ah, but, my flight wasn’t 'til 11. I had convinced myself it was at 10. OK. I had a bad coffee and read the IHT and also got myself checked in as part of Boarding Group A. Which meant I sat in my preferred front area of the plane. Once in Milan I headed to the tacky hotel by the venue, hotel Rex, which has several competing old empire fabric designs going at once in every room. I loved it. I took a nap, and pretty much stayed in the hotel checking email etc. as there was nothing around in the neighborhood. I didn’t have any times for the schedule of the day, so I just went over to the venue on foot when I felt like it, sometime around 6.30. I ran into Roberto, who runs the place, out front; he was on his way to have a coffee. Things just fell into place without even having to speak towards a consensus. A sound check happened, the piano ended up by the front of the stage, an amp came out from underneath the stage, a guitar stand was found under some junk backstage…my support act, Marco Icampo, turned out to be a Big Star fan…and as an even more unexpected bonus, Alfredo, the sound guy, was a wicked bass player who had his bass plugged into a DI at the mixing board—so we worked up “Tell Me Why” and “Thirteen” as a three piece—it sounded so cool, all of a sudden to have groovy bass coming out of nowhere! I think it was the best part of the night, really—playing with new energy input from good musicians. Thanks to my awesome Italian friends who brought the present for Aden!
PARIS 4/25
I didn’t have to leave that early for my flight but that did mean that when I got to Paris, I basically had just enough time to get to my flat, and head to sound check at La Fleche D’or. Luckily, things were running a bit behind, so I could chill a bit. The biggest pain of playing in Paris is lugging my keyboard down 3 flights of stairs (and up again later). I have to hope that Laurent and his lengthy car are always available when I play in Paris! I soundchecked with Axe Riverboy and band, and did my own sound check. Dom wandered down and other friends came in—including my bandmates in Liquid Architecture, Jerome and Flairs (Flairs is Symphonic Ben’s brother!!); and Olivia Baum and her guitarist; it was a regular ice cream social. Champagne was free—they wouldn't even take my drink tickets! And my show was really fun. Short and to le point! Axe/Xav joined me for some ace harmonies on “Tell Me Why”, and I did my Zombie bit. Also on hand was Fugu, to play my piano on an Axe axiom. I stuck around ‘til the end of the night, when Xavaxe was doing some killer DJ-ing, and loaded in my stuff at like 1.30 a.m.
ROMA 4/26
…and was up at 5. 5!! It can’t be real. The airport shuttle came at fucking 5.50. And I wasn’t too early. I was on Air One, a regional Italian airline, with a very short layover in Torino. Naturally, I slept thru both flights. Torino airport is pretty small, but you do have to go thru security to get to connecting flights, and we were a bit late so I think I had like 20 minutes to get from plane to plane—but there were quite a few people on the same itinerary, so they wouldn't have left without us (would they??). I got to Rome’s big airport, Fiumicino, on time—it took a long time for the luggage to come; and even then I had to get someone to retrieve my guitar, which was just sitting in the ‘backstage' of the baggage claim, like the little dressed-in-black rockstar that it is. I came out and couldn’t find anyone waiting for me, but after a few text messages, I found my ride—she had been waiting in the international arrivals area, thinking I was coming from Paris. She and another driver for this little festival were there to pick up me and the band Just Head from Boston. Of course they had two tiny cars, but we managed. They took us to the hotel, which was out in the middle of nowhere—this is apparently normal for playing club shows in Rome, as the clubs are * also * in the middle of nowhere. Along the freeway I was shocked by the number of prostitutes just standing on the shoulder of the road, in the middle of the day, in bras and g-strings. Not that it’s the safest or healthiest profession to begin with, but this has got to make it downright dangerous. Obviously we were going at freeway speed, but I could see that at least some of them were probably 15 years old. This made me feel quite badly for them all.
I had a quick lunch at the hotel, and we ran off to rehearse. The band playing tonight was Chariot, which was originally comprised of myself, Brian Young when he was the Posies’ drummer, Pat Fear of White Flag, and Javier Escovedo of the Zeros. We made a one-off album in 1997, recorded over the weekend between the recording and mixing of the Posies’ “Success” album, on the same gear set up at the studio. The album was only released in Spain, and we did a short (but fun) tour there in 1998, with I believe Dave Nazworthy from Chemical People on drums. Another Chariot tour happened in Europe in 1999 with Jon Auer in my stead but with Brian on the throne. The album is a weirdo mix of garage, country and 60s covers with some truly bizarre original songs. It’s actually a really fun album. Out of print, but you can probably find it on Ebay for nothing.
If you contact the
White Flag myspace, there are some vinyl LPs thhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifat Pat would be happy to sell you.
Anyway, we were going to play—Pat, myself and Javier--with Baba, the Zeros’ drummer, but he was having wrist pain, and even the Zeros’ set was in jeopardy. So, a local drummer was found,
Alessandro from the band (among others) called the Illuminati. How can you say no? He did a great job, too. We ended up going on last—not a ton of people turned up—this little punk festival had a bigger name on a better night (meaning the next night’s Zeros show), and I guess people were a bit hesitant to make the trek into the industrial zone of Rome’s prison neighborhood for us and Paul Collins Beat, and saved their energy for the other nights (by all accounts the Zeros show was quite full). Paul Collins sort of figured things out quicklike, and asked if we would mind going on after him. We didn’t--what else did I have to do that night? So, I don’t even remember what time we went on, but I’m sure we were on ‘til about 2. I had fun, anyway—and people dug it. After the show, Alessandro gave me a ride home—we were going to have a nightcap but all the bars were closed and we settled on grabbing a to-go bottle of wine from an all night café (no tables and bright lights, so not a good hangout) and hanging out in the hotel parking lot! Eventually I ran out of steam and went back to my room, quietly slipping into one of three beds—I was rooming with Pat Fear and Robert ‘El Vez’ Lopez. I slept in pretty late and casually made my way to the airport, which was FCO’s little brother, Ciampino, after having lunch and shooting a bit of video footage for a White Flag video at the hotel.
I got to Oslo, direct on Sterling, a Danish-based budget airline…that, incredibly, showed a film on the flight (I didn’t watch it tho’). I was pretty wrung out from 4 flights, 3 shows, plenty of early mornings and late nights etc. and was in the mood for some rest. However, my bandmates were headed to a birthday party for a friend, which was large in scale—an entire restaurant had been commandeered, in fact. I lasted about 1.2 glasses of wine, and could take no more. Claus gave me his keys and I went home and crashed.
Our Disciplines work was really effective tho'—we wrote and demo’d three new songs this weekend, and rehearsed for our upcoming shows…that would be a good week for most musicians, even without all the shows. As it is, rehearsing our set 2 times is like playing 2 live shows, so I’m one burnt piece of toast. So…goodnight!
Speaking of the Disciplines, we moved our show at Café Mono to a rare Saturday night show there, so we will be playing on May 19 now. More shows to be announced soon.
Love
KS
Oslo, NORWAY
