SLO BLO
I got home to Paris Wed. morning from Seattle, in time to take Aden to the crèche; and then have lunch, get my hair cut and colored, rehearse with Liquid Architecture, have dinner with Dom, have a drink at Le Motel (actually, two: I met a musician I know via myspace, and had a drink 'til I was nodding out from jet lag--I excused myself and left, but as I entered our building Dom was coming down the stairs and made me turn around and go back for another!), unpack and pack.
MILANO, 5/17
For once I *didn't* have to get up at the crack of dawn for some musical errand. I was up at the relatively luxurious hour of 9, to allow Dom & I to leave the house at 10.15 to walk up to Bastille, the nearest cabstand to our place. We met up with the woman who booked Liquid Architecture for this show at the cabstand, and headed to Orly, arriving to the check-in just in time to jump the queue and join the rest of the band and crew who were being helped at that exact moment. The assembled personages for Liquid Architecture is wonderful freak congress: Jerome Sans, who is a very well known museum curator for contemporary art, sings and plays keyboards; Audrey M. is really the main singer, is also a fashion pre-cog, straight outta Philip K Dick—she designs a magazine that publishes images and graphic ideas for trends for the year ahead and includes music that is bubbling under as well--fashion psychic abilities are strong, but also we know that designers are always working on the collection for 6-12 months in the future; Manu C. plays guitar, he’s playing with quite a few Parisian artists; Jerome “La Perruque” is the drummer, one in the same with the Jerome that tour manages Olivia Baum, is also a hipster around town (complete with a white belt!!); Flairs is the bass player, he’s another well-regarded Parisian groover who plays his own music, and with others, and he and La Perruque and Jerome S. all DJ in Paris. I guess I do too, as I will be DJing at Le Motel in late summer. That’s the band, and coming along we had Dominique, who is Liquid’s manager; the live sound engineer; the aforementioned liaison between Liquid and this event, which was the “Uovo” arts festival; and Fabien Verschaere, the visual artist that is collaborating with Liquid on much of their visual presentation. We flew on Volare, which is an Italian budget airline with deep blue planes with deep blue interiors. Our afternoon arrival coincided with the worst period for post-USA jet lag: I am alert in the mornings and late at night but between 1 and 5p.m. I am woozy as if drugged. We made our way to the hotel. Dom had a been a last minute addition to the traveling party, she wasn’t sure if she would need to stay in Paris and work but then this day was a bank holiday anyway, and she figured she should come along. So, we didn’t have her on the hotel reservation, which should be no big deal, but in Italy, it’s a big deal. They had no space for her. The hotel was full. I said, anyway, she’s my wife, even if the room is small we can share it, it’s no problem. The guy was furious. A single room is a single room. We offered to pay extra, but no. At this point I lost it. The guy and I were screaming at each other. I told him to shut his mouth; no one talks to me that way. We got a double room. The hotel, Palazzo delle Stelline, is generally nice, but this guy makes it a no go. Stay somewhere else when in Milano.
With that episode over, it was more or less soundcheck time. We caravanned over to the Rainbow Club, which a dark cavern with the concrete floor emitting projections in the shape of benches and tables, all of concrete, covered in thick globs of black paint (although it’s chipped in many places, showing that the interior was once sky blue, and once inferno red—a rainbow indeed). My position at extreme stage left (determined after moving the backline around a few times) was in front of a huge screen that would be projected with the images, static and moving, that Fabien had created. In other words, I had a bright light in my face all night but I guess it looked great.
Also Italian: the promoter came to dinner and refused to pay for it, as there were two unexpected guests (Dom, and Manu’s girlfriend Marie, who is an editor at French Vogue for fuck’s sake). So, we each had to shell out 20 Euros…meaning, that the promoter was too cheap to pay 200 Euros for a dinner for the band, which is a normal promoter obligation. This, at a state-sponsored arts festival with a budget of millions of Euros. What a shit. It’s not the 40 Euros (ever the gentleman, I paid Dom’s tab), it’s the cheapness of the promoter…I mean, we’re talking art contemporain here, where pieces are sold for hundreds of thousands of Euros. OK OK. You get the message.
Well. We went to the club, and Jerome and Audrey went to the supermarket next door to buy some fruit, champagne and wine. That’s good people. Then it was Showtime, and being our first show, I thought it was amazing. We had never even rehearsed with Jerome, as he now lives in Newcastle as he is the curator of the contemporary art museum there, and everything went off without a hitch. For my part I had the best seat in the house, as having black and white art projected onto my black outfit and black guitar evidently looked amazing. The crowd was not a rock & roll crowd but an art crowd, lots of guys in jodhpurs using their let hand to hold their right elbow and their right hand to hold up their chin, looking intrigued and thoughtful. It’s not known if you should clap at the end of each song, or it the show is a ‘piece’ being presented. Hilarious!
After the show we drank champagne in the tiny backstage, and Dom & I ran off to the hotel soon.
I woke up at 4.30. Wide awake. And with daylight savings in effect, it was getting light. Finally I left the bed at 5.45 when my wake up call came. I asked Dom if she wouldn’t mind taking my guitar home; she had no luggage of her own and I was flying on Ryanair, who can be really expensive to fly if you bring unusual luggage. More on this later. She agreed. She was also asleep! I headed down to the lobby, hoping my nemesis wasn’t working that early. He wasn’t. They called me a cab, and I made my way to the Milano’s Central Train Station. The cab driver was really friendly and we talked music the whole way. Again, with the jet lag, the sunny morning was crystal clear and I was wide awake. The train station in Milan is a Mussolini legacy, of course—he was, after all, the guy who famously made the trains run on time. It’s a massive grey stone edifice, with the Fascisti’s Roman-revival imagery all around. Lots of menacing eagles, etc. I was deposited off to one side of the building (it’s important for the taxi driver to know what you are doing exactly in the train station—taking a bus, and to where, or a local train, etc.—as the station is several city blocks in size and being deposited on the wrong end could cost you 20 minutes of walking in search of the right area. I had been clear so I was right there, and found my prepaid bus to Bergamo airport. This trip takes about an hour (it’s quite a bargain at 7 Euros prepaid, the promoter had provided my ticket). I read the whole way (I finished Louis Jones’ hilarious novel “Particles and Luck” this weekend). At Bergamo airport’s check in, I found that Liquid had prepaid for me to take my guitar, so I felt bad as that’s about 20 Euros. But, it helped me out in that I was given priority boarding in exchange so I was the first person on the plane—this is important on Ryanair as there are no assigned seats. I went thru security and had an espresso and a brioche. We boarded, and I was aisle seat, 7th row (the first 6 rows were off limits for distributing the weight of an undersold flight towards the back). Finally I crashed, and fell asleep for most of the flight. I dreamt heavily, mostly about my bandmates in the Disciplines—in my dream they joined me on the flight for a band meeting. I could barely open my eyes when we arrived at Torp/Sandefjord, and the scene was very different—grey and drizzly and lashed by arctic winds. I grabbed a sandwich and water to have on the 2-hour bus ride to Oslo. As soon as we settled in on the bus, I had my sandwich and fell asleep, hard. I could hardly see when I got off the bus; I practically walked right into Bjorn, my guitar player, who met me at the station. I got my bag and we walked to the rehearsal place. I went * back * to sleep on the couch! I had some time to kill as Claus was working so we wouldn’t rehearse 'til that evening. The other guys arrived and I was starting to wake up. We grabbed a light dinner at Tosca, the Italian café near our rehearsal place, with very friendly staff. The guy working that evening was very jealous I had just been in the sun in Milano. I was a little trepidatious at the visual potency of the macchiato he brought me. But I needed it. We went over to the Tiger of Sweden boutique to pick out clothes for our video and photo shoots, they have been generously sponsoring the Disciplines and they have lots of great, trendy stuff-stovepipe jeans and tight shirts and 80s-retro cuts. I got some great stuff; they even gave me the silver tie I was hoping for. We went back to the rehearsal place and ran through our set a few times, and I was truly looking forward to laying out on Claus’ sofa and resting up for the days ahead. We went to pick up our photographer,
Mathieu Zazzo, who flew in from Paris, and dropped him off with Baard at Baard's place. Claus & I went to his wonderful home. A friend who was recovering from Claus and Nanna’s National Day party occupied the guest room, so I had the sofa, which was no problem. At 11.30 I was pulling the blanket over me. Ah, but I had to pee. Ah, but there were some lights on in the kitchen. Ah, but I had too many pillows. Ah, I should…you get the picture. I tossed and turned. I picked up my computer to send an email about something on my mind. I finished reading my book. I pee’d again. And again. The sun started to come out. By perhaps 7a.m. I finally got to sleep, but I had to be up at 9.
OSLO, 5/19
Oh well. My alarm went off at 9, I don’t even remember falling asleep but I remember looking at my phone to check the time at 6.30. I showered and dressed in my new stuff (including pointy white shoes—Look Sharp!) and Claus and I went to Mokka, the beloved bakery near Claus’ old flat (they moved into their house late last year, so my first few Disciplines-oriented visits were at the old flat, which was also wonderful). We got to the rehearsal place and eventually were joined by all, including Mathieu, our stage tech, and a film crew. The film crew shot our rehearsals and show, plus casual shots before and after the show/rehearsal etc., for a video, with a documentary feel, for “Best Mistake”. So, we played the song a bunch of times in rehearsal. Mathieu shot stills all day too. Then they loaded up—as a lead singer, I felt it would be breaking tradition to help load equipment! And we dropped our stuff at Café Mono, the great little club in the heart of downtown Oslo, where I played with Jim Protector late last year. They’ve remodeled since then, the big couches in the back room are gone, and there are little tables and stools set up with a more minimal style than the kind of thrift-store furniture vibe it had in the past. After we dropped the gear Claus and I went back to his place and got ready while the others went and scouted locations for the next day’s photo shoot.
We all met downtown for dinner at about 6, and then walked to Mono. There was a daytime all ages show going on with a kind of slo-core band from Iceland, kind of a bar band, really. When they finished (they were using our backline) we put our stuff in place and did a soundcheck. We used the house guy—our sound guy had a migraine—I couldn’t help suspect he was the victim of another National Day party! Claus and I went out for yet another café and quick glass of wine at the same place as where we had dinner, which is called…uh, it’s the Norwegian word for “lighthouse” which bears similarity to “phare”, French word for lighthouse. It’s up in the Italian style arches that line the main square of central Oslo, and serves a kind of Danish cuisine, plus some pâté, which is what I dined on. They make wonderful espressos, I have to say. Ah, yes, Claus & I also taped an interview for broadcast that night on Norway’s P3 national radio.
Back at the show, people started to arrive. We had a really good crowd for the show—there were some confusing things about it—for one thing, our show was booked originally for Sunday night. We moved it to Saturday about 3 weeks ago. This is the other confusing thing—Mono normally doesn’t do live music on Saturday’s, so people wouldn’t expect us to be playing there. But Mono felt confident that we would draw just as well as their DJ nights, and that the National Day weekend created some exceptional circumstances. While not sold out, we had plenty of people there, and anyway Mono is tiny so once you have more than 50 people there it feels busy. Really, this was our first club show, and the first show we played that showed our real aesthetic. The show we played in Larvik last year had a set list of songs that we don’t play anymore—we’ve written more, better songs since then and now our set has no slow songs, only upbeat rock tunes. I don’t play keyboards anymore, I just sing, so no more mic-stand-as-crutch stuff, I have to shake it like a Polaroid. With Tiger of Sweden’s help, we have a unified, sexy, tight-black style, very rock & roll. So, you could call the Larvik show our .5th show and this our first show. Playing to a Saturday night crowd at Mono means there are lots of people who are just out for a Saturday night; we don’t really have fans of our own yet per se. So, to put people thru 10 songs they’ve never heard is asking a lot, and by this token we were very well received. I know we played a dynamite gig, I felt great about it. No encore, but lots of applause and people clapping along etc. We had a few friends there, and a pleasant surprise to see Johnny Quinn, the drummer of Snow Patrol, afterwards. He has a Norwegian g.f. so he is spending lots of time there, tho’ they also live in London. Other musician friends were there, and Lise, from Briskeby came too—to see me sing with her band. Lise has been really good to me/D-plines; it’s generous of her to be so supportive. One of the Icelandic dudes asked me if I knew where to get coke! I don’t. In Norway, anyway!
Jet lag finally brought me down and I woke up the next morning in time to run to a stylist and get my hair all nice for the photos. Claus and Nanna were hosting a huge family party that afternoon, a brunch etc. at their house as Nanna’s nephew was baptized. This meant that a presumably hung over Claus had to spend 2 hours in church that morning. I only drink wine these days, so I am never hung over (even when I used to drink hard liquor, I was virtually immune to hangovers). I will say that jet lag and 2 hours of sleep make me a cheap date. I think I had 4 glasses of wine in 2 hours after the show, and that was enough to make me too tired to be there anymore. Eventually we assembled at the rehearsal studio and started to shoot photos. The first shots were against a concrete wall outside in the same complex as the studio—with a wicked wind blowing that pretty much undid my hairstyle in about ten seconds. We shot in the street behind the studio, and in a parking garage under the studio. Then we went to an empty warehouse and shot around there, the challenge of the day was to squeeze into these sections of the wall inside and hold bizarre poses by pushing your hands against protruding beams…it was a total yoga move. Most of the day, as spent as we were from the show (I find that the two Disciplines shows were the most physically challenging shows I have done), we pretty much had enough energy to stand around and look cool. But, that’s sort of the point. We shot photos at a couple of locations in Oslo’s harbor, one standing in a field of mustard flowers next to a garbage dump, and one against some generic old warehouse (I told Mathieu about rockandrollconfidential.com which catalogues awful band promo shots, an overwhelming number of which are taken in front of brick walls or along railroad tracks—the ultimate being by a brick wall that still shows some railroad tracks in the shot). We also went into the woods outside Oslo and stood amongst dead trees, moss and nettles for the last batch of shots—and then we were done. It was easy, and I have total confidence in Mathieu. As he doesn’t shoot any digital, we won’t see any results 'til later this week.
After the shoot we went our separate ways, Claus and I grabbed some take away food and went home. I was incredibly tired. I ate my food and checked emails. Claus put on the film “Amelie” and I was crying every 20 seconds so I went to bed. I wrote the first two lines of this blog and couldn’t keep my eyes open. It was 11p.m. I woke up at 1p.m. this afternoon! Just in time to shower, pack and walk up to the metro station near Claus and Nanna’s house, and get to the airport train that leaves from Oslo’s Central station. I met Mathieu there. Oddly, tho’ I booked our tickets in totally separate sessions online, Mathieu and I ended up sitting together. We didn’t check in together, either, so I can only guess it put us together since I booked them both logged in to my Norwegian.no account. So, as I write, Mats is asleep and I am wrapping up this blog. I think the 14 hours of sleep cured my jet lag, however! I feel pretty good, but sore from the show.
Love
KS
FlyNordic flight to Paris
