Ken Stringfellow dot calm

7.28.2007

THIS MIZNESS OF BUSIC

All this week I've been in the studio producing an album for Mateo at the studio Question De Son, which is just a pleasant 15 minute walk from my place. I've been really pleased with the rich, old-school kind of tones we've been getting. In fact, when I tried to get a really modern drum sound tonight, it seems I forgot how!! hahah. I'll figure it out. But really, that's consumed my hours completely, and that's no complaint. My assistant engineer Fred is superb, and the musicians playing with Mat are really good, so this has been an easy project, we can take things quite far--evidently it was easy til I tried to get that drum sound tonight!!

Sunday night I was hanging at Le Motel with Flairs and another American living in Paris, Scott Greiner. We saw a great band called the Yolks. Kind of funky twee in a belle and sebastian way, with really hokey costumes. They play about every 10 minutes in Paris, have a look!

That afternoon I went to matinee of the film "Half Nelson" which has a terrible title but was quite good (slightly long however). The film centers on a high school teacher who is nursing a major drug habit. The scenes of superficial, inarticulate, stuttering conversations on coke are so realistically rendered that I was immediately embarrassed for every rambling, porky-pig inflected monologue I have ever delivered shortly after emerging from a locking stall.

I have been un-suffering as of late from a number of good habits--I haven't had a drink since my Barcelona show (I thought taking a pause from alcohol would be useful and going out on a Robert Parker 99-point rated Rioja was a good place to leave things) and haven't been near drugs in ages. A little healthier eating habits and pilates have really added up to a state of clarity and contentment and self-worth. I have been experiencing real happiness and excitement and giddiness. It's amazing what you see when you stop the blinding forces of self absorption, self deception, and denial. I really like what I see in front of me now. And I'm more excited about the future than I have been in a long while...my myspace photos says it all: I'm OK with being goofy, outrageously happy, and fun. And I'll even lift equipment (sometimes).

Love
KS
Paris

7.21.2007

I AM A LAZY, HAPPY BASTARD

OK, I'm not lazy, I just haven't put the photos up this month. I really plan to get on that tonight, but people (thanks, Henrik!) keep sending me great stuff, and I've been busy. I am jumping these days between my life in France and the incredible stuff happening in London, and all the new friends I've made there. I can't be in two places at once, but, I think I've proven that I can be in two places in rapid succession! So, I have a feeling London will see more and more of me. I of course love Paris and my life here, but London is unbeatable for being close to the beating, icky heart of rock and roll...progress is being made in France, but...progress already came and went in London, it lives in a shiny little place called the future...both countries also of course have awful commercial tendencies...so does every place; that's not the argument. Anyway...you prob. won't notice a difference as I'm already jumping from place to place on the map.

It's been so cold and stormy in Paris (in London, too) the leaves are confused and falling from the trees, in mid July.

True to my last word last week, I supported (not like a support act, but, in a 'bring out the peeps' way) Shaolin at their two London shows. The Monday night show at the Social was part of a night of French music hosted by Resonance FM's 'Rockfort' French music program. The band, Dom & I had a very strange dinner at the restaurant next door to the Social, I never did catch the name of the place. It's decorated in a kind of glass mosiac everything-goes style...anyway, our dinner was strange cuz we were the only customers in this huge restaurant. And the staff were all French. And it wasn't a French restaurant, except demographically speaking.

After dinner we came back in time to see a bit of Miniscule Hey, who were one of the better 'backed by a laptop' bands (not to be confused with the 'touched by an angel' bands). Then my friends and I (Henrik, Caroline, Mira) rocked out to Shaolin and went our separate ways in to the night.

Tuesday I had lunch with Shaolin and Dom at the invitation of Shaolin's London relatives (the two vocalists in Shaolin are brothers). They family is Vietnamese/French, and when they left Vietnam in the 70s, some went to London and some to France. Hence, Shaolin were essentially meeting their aunt & uncle for the first time, as far as I could tell--they had trouble understanding each other unless they spoke in simple English. Anyway, the result was we had an incredible lunch at a Chinese restuarant in London's Chinatown, near Leicester Square, and were fed within an inch of our lives. Thanks!

In the evening Shaolin played at the Fly, they played first so by 9 we were free and we went in search of food. We stumbled eventually on the Bay of Bengal Indian restaurant on Greek Street. I found the place a bit pushy and not super friendly, so I can't recommend it. I can't say anything about the food, as we had to leave--there was a suspicious vehicle that the police had become concerned about and the entire area was evacuated! We ended up at the kebab place by the Astoria...

LONDON 7/18

During the day Dom & I went shopping in Carnaby St. and I managed to avoid buying anything--Top Man was promising but too busy to be fun. Sometime in the afternoon I set out on my quest to get the Duloks' equipment; first, I took the tube from central London to the northwest part, to Maida Vale, where Mar Dulok works for the BBC, and got her keys. Then I took the tube all the way to east London to her flat, and Mira ordered a cab to pick me up. I loaded it up with their gear--the frame of the electronic drum kit, a suitcase with all the drums stuff in it, the Casio 1000 keyboard, the keyboard stand, and the drum stool. I managed to find a spot for the cab to stop across the street from the Fly, as New Oxford Str. is too busy for a cab to stop on, and in two crossings I ran the gear into the club across two lanes of traffic.

If you look at the photos of me with the Duloks from this weekend, you'll see that I'm having a great time--it's such a great combination of things: the Duloks themselves are outstanding, lovely people; they have really nice friends; the show is comprised of many many stupid jokes; and the fact that there aren't loud drums all the time is such a relief! This show was only half an hour and I didn't want it to end.

Thursday Dom & I headed back to Paris, and I more or less immediately set out to see Tarwater, from Germany, who are (as they will play again tonight) performing as part of the "Quartier d'Ete" series of free arts events in outdoor venues in Paris. This show was in a park down from the Place D'Italie, it was so lovely to hear their moody, atmospheric rantings while supine in the grass.

Friday I was in, listening to death metal, and announcing the Posies October tour of Spain on various sites.

Today I was in an ass-kicking pilates class, and spent a few hours doing preproduction rehearsals with Mateo and band. And listening to Death Metal. And watching a Harry Potter film, but in English for a change.

Recommended: I'm reading Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic novel about life in Scotland a hundred years ago, Sunset Song. Incredible depth and breadth is brought to make these characters and their environment come alive.

The Presets, who play the Quartier d'Ete on the 30th. This Australian duo plays hard, danceable, sexy electronic music but with live drums...really, you won't believe this drummer; all in all it's one of the best live shows around.

Goodnight!
Love
KS
Paris

7.16.2007

COME SEE KS & THE DULOKS AT THE FLY IN LONDON 7/18!!!!

Another huge week. Another green world.

This has been, even by my standards, an incredibly diverse week, full of adventures in a few different places.

I’m pretty much breathless (and…speechless? NO. But I am saving my breaths and speechths for the 3D world…you need a lot of hot, gabby, air to keep your thought balloons afloat in the atmosphere of London, and I have a few more days left here, so I have save some mojo) from the majesty of the Duloks set at Latitude festival – we slayed ‘em with the triple threat of short & sharp songs, hummingbird-wing-quick comedy, and lots of FOG. More on that in a minute.

Last Sunday I went up to the 18eme to see Konono No. 1 play in a rather odd park that has been installed along some unused land adjacent to all the tracks running into Gare du Nord…I was late, according to the posted start time, and had to figure out my way to this place, which I never been to before, but it wasn’t long from the metro stop before I could just follow the music in the air. If you aren’t familiar with K. No. 1’s music, they are from Zaire, and have been a band for at least since the mid 1970s. An album of their music released more or less worldwide a couple of years ago, called “Congotronics” was very popular and brought the band in contact with a very wide audience. The record is a very accurate representation of their live show, based on what I saw this day. In the 7-piece band, there are three people playing thumb pianos, thru guitar (and in one case, a bass) amplifiers. The notes are limited to a pentatonic scale in just an octave or two, but the three instruments playing against each other rhythmically plus all the percussion makes for a danceable, complex jumble of noise that is oddly frantic and hypnotic at the same time. The thumb piano playing thru the bass amp sounds remarkably like a bass guitar, with a deep booming resonance; the higher ones you could compare almost to steel drums but with the amp distortion it’s more a more intense sound. The ‘bass’ player also toasts and sings, and there’s a female singer, who makes infrequent affirmative shouts, and then in the back there’s a guy playing drums much like conga drums, but with thinner shells and no tapering at the bottom, plus he blows a whistle (this guy is working hard, there’s not one second that he can let up, to keep the groove going); a drummer who simply plays fills on a snare drum and occasionally hits a super trashy cymbal made out of squarish piece of scrap with huge rivets in it; and guy playing agogo bells. The stage was small, and the sloping land behind the stage was cut into steps so you could sit down behind the group, or stand in front. I did both, and walked around, it was really cool to pick out the separate elements individually as I made a circle around them. They also have their own lo-tech PA set up alongside the normal PA. I couldn’t tell what was coming out of it (this would look really odd, coming up to the stage and cramming your ear in each speaker one at a time). It started to rain soon after I got there, but nobody seemed to mind…there were about 300 or so people there. KN1’s songs are all fairly similar rhythmic jams, lasting for 15-20 minutes or so. When I got too wet I finally left, stopping for a café at one of the many rather rough looking joints around the Stalingrad metro.

At home I listened to the Wimbledon Men’s final on internet radio…it’s not shown on regular broadcast TV in France and we don’t have cable…I hope I can actually see a video of this match…it sounded great and that’s hard to pull off, describing tennis in words. Maybe the announcer was even better than the match…but I have a feeling it was pretty good.

Monday—this was a SUPER productive day, as I learned (or so I thought!) the Duloks’ set in its entirety. I was going to play tennis but it rained for the exact hour that Remi & I had the court reserved! So I had no choice but to hunker down and get Dulok-ular!

On Tuesday I was up at 5am!! and in the cool morning’s dim light (I love Paris when the streets are empty—like at the end of August when everyone’s on vacation…it’s the best time to be there) I walked to Gare de Lyon to catch a train to the other side of France, and then a bus up into the Alps. I was going to a ski resort called Les Arcs—there are actually several clusters of chalets and services on the same mountain, all called Les Arcs followed by the elevation—I as at Les Arcs 1600, which has a pretty large hotel, and a few shops, all clustered together. What was I doing there? I was there to work on preproduction for an album I’m producing this summer for a French artist named Mateo. I met Mateo when I was playing bass for Olivia Baum; Mateo is her guitar player. He and his band, who are Parisians but do a residency at the bar at Les Arcs each summer as a kind of getaway (with free room and board, no less). So they brought me over so during the daytime we could run thru their assembled songs and see if they could benefit from any changes in arrangement etc. and also dither down the number of songs from the 20 or so contenders to the 12 we have a reasonable enough time to record. We did some great work, some of the demos that I really liked that they weren’t sure about came to life, and the songs they were confident with grew as well, it was really….uh, productive! We worked all day Tuesday and Wednesday, and then on Thursday until I got on the train in the afternoon. On Tuesday night they played their show, and I hung out – there are not many people in the resort so mostly hanging out in the bar are some of the staff and a few kinda biker looking guys. Eh, fun!

The way back was done by funicular (funicular? I hardly knew her!) down the mountain, and then two trains back to Paris, and then walking home from Gare de Lyon. So…the next day

I went to London, on Friday the 13th in the morning! I have been here so much I felt totally at home upon arrival. I met up with Mira Dulok, and a lamb tikka and drove across almost all of London to the Tent Street house to have a Duloks rehearsal…and try on outfits! Duloks rehearsal is mostly gossip and talking about Canadian indie rock (Mar Dulok is a homey from Vancouver!!) and occasionally playing a minute and a half song about eating fish while claiming to be Mick Jagger. So it took like 3 hours to do the 30 minute set. Ready!!

SOUTHWOLD 7/14

Saturday we were on the road at the crack of 9, and drove BACK to Tent Street (SheBu to East London), picked up the gear (easiest band in the world to load—one suitcase, one casio, a keyboard stand, and an electronic drum kit frame that weighs less than a paper bicycle). Then we worked our way to Suffolk, which means going up to Ipswich and then heading for the sea. But not quite getting there. Latitude Festival is held in a big pasture (of course) that is watched over by a really lovely arch-shaped house. We rolled in, and I started to run into friends left and right (Carina who put on the Disciplines’ Borderline show; Gilbert, who tour managed a big portion of the Frosting on the Beater tours for the Posies!), always a good sign. We had catering for lunch, got the lay of the land, and set up our gear. Then Radio 1 interviewed all three of us in a boat on the lake! It was very sweet of Huw and the crew to treat me like a real Dulok. So, we were relaxed and confident by our 4.30 show time…I can only say…Viva Duloks! We slayed ‘em! Mira and I have a great comedic rapport in daily life, so, it was easy to project that onto the audience, and spray them with rubber bullets of funnies, jabs, and double entendres! Mira really had her thing together, stomping and screaming and ruling the stage (and the ground—I reminded her just in time not to jump off the stage with her broken toe!) and Mar looked super cool (I saw photos right after) and pounded away. I was awful of course but it was really fun…Mira and I rehearsed in the trailer and we forgot to go over “Best Mistake” which you’d think I’d know but I am just the lead singer of the D-plines so I totally went blank when we played it onstage and just made up the chords…awful! It’s STILL the Duloks’ best song, tho! Hahaha!

Well, after the set Mira was so thrashed she barfed, but I felt great, people really loved it and laughed at all the jokes and we were ROCK STARS par excellence. Once we were done, it was our duty to hang, schmooze, run around in our underwear in the backstage, watch some bands—we were too satisfied by our own majesty of song to really appreciate much…I had wanted to see Rickie Lee Jones as I really like her new rec. but her live show was ill suited to a tent on summer day with the sun still up. It wasn’t happenin’…a lot of wailing but the band wasn’t that together…there were no drums so it was kind of hard to lift the mood to match her singing, which was really intense and wailing. We also watched CSS who are so hyped at this point…it’s kind of hard to go YAY! when you’ve been beaten over the head with how great they are. They are pretty good…but let’s get this clear: THEY ARE NO…ME!! If you have a lead singer, you really need that person to step up and do split kicks and crazy shit. This was not happening. I’m From Barcelona! was really fun…hmmm. Then we had to drive back in the middle of the night and load the equipment…aiyee.

Sunday Mira and I met somewhere in the hall and we each came to the conclusion that the downstairs toilet was not working…and we had each pee’d in it on separate occasions…eew. Well. We drove up to the north of London, I wanted to see St. Etienne at the Rise Up Against Racism show in Finsbury Park. The traffic was awful, and parking…forget it! Thousands and thousands of people had converged on the park, and now, you can’t park. But we…er * I * had the brilliant idea to ask one of the little hotels if we could park in their lot and they let us, for only 5 quid! We hobbled on into the park (remember, Mira still has a broken toe) and watched a bit of St. Etienne, and then went backstage—we had passes, which enabled us to have VIP access and free barbecue! As we crossed the VIP area, which wasn’t crowded yet, we ran into the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone! Mira marched right up and introduced herself and myself! Then, since it was kind of a non-rock festival, and it was 2pm on a Sunday, there were no typical scenesters around—meaning we could walk right up onstage and watch St. Etienne from like, right behind the drum kit! After they were done, we helped ourselves to le fleisch grillé, had some water, said hi to St. Etienne, and started to walk back to the car…BOOM, the sky opened up on us right as we were the absolute furthest from shelter possible, in the middle of the park. We were drenched to the bone, really, like, wringing wet. Haha, my thin, pilates-toned body looked really good with a wet shirt clinging to it! Mira actually took her jeans off in the parking lot and drove home in her top and skivvies. Good thing she looks like a dude.

Tonight I’m hanging at the Social, it’s a night of French music and one of Dom’s bands, Shaolin, are playing—thus, yay, Dom is here!! The DJ for the band (it’s a hip hop act) bought his plane ticket online and used his stage name, so he was turned away at the airport this morning—and he can probably assume he’s on a terrorist watch list by now! Several hundred Euros later, he arrived by Eurostar last minute. Le d’oh!!

Hope to see you all at the Duloks show at 10pm on Wednesday the 18th!! I’ll be playing!!

Love
KS
London

7.08.2007

BARCELONA 7/5

Certainly by the time I had consumed TWO gastronomique meals plus wine I was in a fairly dreamy place when I started to play at 11.30-ish. The people were all around, on the ground, on big couches, on chairs. So I had to really move to get to them all…I had a wireless mic tho! And my long guitar cables so I was able to focus in on many tables. I did my songs, old and new; a coupla Posies songs. All in all I was allowed to play til something like 1am, and people were digging it. The Steinway’s action was a little clunkier than average, so I had to press harder to play, which made my piano playing a bit more basic, but I am SURE no one noticed. After the show, I talked to folks and drank the rest of my wine (wine was not on the house, at least not the caliber I was drinking, so at the end of the night I handed my fee right back to the restaurant!). Eventually I was so tired that I went back to Nacho’s to lay down for an hour, and then got in a cab to the airport at about 4…feeling like total shit as you can imagine. Check-in line was pretty short but the security line at 5am was inexplicably huge. I had a café, and a croissant and a bottle of water…got on the plane. Arriving to CDG, there was the usual problem with the guitar—the oversize stuff won’t go on the belt, and it’s up to somebody to bring it up by hand to the baggage claim…and no one ever feels like doing that, so I had to wait an hour for my guitar. All I wanted to do was sleep and the rich food and wine was unable to digest without sleep...oof

I only took a short nap that day and that night I went to see Smokey Robinson at L’Olympia. I had purchased a cheap ticket at an online ticket service, one that was way at the back. I didn’t mind. But, when I arrived to the venue to pick it up, I was in the 11th row…as it turns out, nobody wanted to pay for the expensive seats up front and in general the show hadn’t sold well, so they scooched everyone up. In essence I got my seat for half price. Let me say that Smokey’s voice, at 67, is incredible. He sounds exactly the same. He had a huge band—drums (for the rock set, electronic tho, pretty dumb sounding –and the drummer was a great player, so what a waste), bass, two guitar players (one was a kind of Johnny Cash looking white guy who played all the leads and the other was a cool-as-fuck old black dude who barely moved and wore shades, and when you could pick out what he was playing on his black Les Paul, it was just beautiful and subtle) keyboard, a guy playing sax and flute, 3 backup vocalists, and a pianist/conductor who led the 10 piece string section. The strings were actually kind of hard to hear…oh yeah, there were two dancers who appeared now and then, which in my mind was totally embarrassing, cute as they were. He did two sets—the hits, with the full production; then the lights dropped and the PA played a pre-recorded message introducing the second set which is based on his new album of standards. A small kit is brought out in front (the drummer sounds fantastic on a real kit), the bass player switches to standup (no, not like Seinfeld), and the guitar players stick around—the white guy moves to the front and the black dude just stays exactly where he was, sort of sitting on the front of the drum riser, no lights on him. In fact, I am certain Smokey never introduced him. Werid. The hits Smokey sang were generally incredible—and he did ‘em all. The standards were hit and miss. “Fly Me To the Moon” is a little bit of a head banger to apply to Smokey’s soft as silk sound. But “Night and Day” was incredible, really—and he sang part of it in French.

Saturday I was just…home. I recovered at last from being up all night Thursday night.
It happens!

Love
KS
Paris

7.05.2007

I can’t even put a headline on this last week; it was a huge one. I haven’t really had a chance to consider writing it all down. Suffice to say, it was super fun, exhilarating, even (says Snaggle Puss).

I spent most of the week in London, where the Disciplines performed two shows. More details on that in a minute. Leading up to that week, I have been eating light, and going to an ass kicking (and bending, and stretching) Pilates class in my neighborhood. The class is a five-minute walk from my flat. I had always been curious about Pilates, and in my previous vision, you get strapped to something that looks like a loom, do basically nothing for an hour and come out looking like Baryshnikov. That’s not * necessarily * the case. In our class, we basically use the body’s own dynamics to stretch and elongate and strengthen itself. Your stomach has to be able to lift your legs and upper body, your legs have to be able to hold themselves up and out and straight, and there’s only one way to be able to do it, which is…build the muscles until they can hold themselves.

I was never the athletic type growing up. Being a little shy and interested more in science and reading I didn’t really like the atmosphere and pressure of team sports. I played a little soccer in school, a little baseball—but man, the drive to win put on the shoulders of little kids is immense. Then I discovered rock & roll, in which there are only winners, cuz just getting up and doing stupid/beautiful/brilliant stuff is the name of the game, being yourself and not being afraid of being laughed at or loved (you’d be surprised).

I was kind of pudgy as a pre teen and then I shot up to 6 feet and I was thin. In my late 20s and early 30s I was absurdly thin…and then in the early part of this century I rediscovered meat protein after years of vegetarian living, started to get deeply into fine wine, and ultimately, my metabolism started to mellow out. I had spent years hunched over a computer or a guitar (or the odd starlet, but that’s another story…oops) and I had as a result a really weird body: long, strong legs; super thin arms; strong lungs; tiny shoulders and a thin upper body; and a soft squishy middle. With the above hunching over I was turning into something shaped like the basin of a spoon. I wasn’t happy looking at photos of myself and I thought I have to do something. Even the exercise I * do * undertake—I go up and down my 3 flights of stairs many times a day and walk all over Paris, play tennis when I can and ride my bike when I’m at our summer place, and rock like a mutherfucker when I play in bands—wasn’t efficient. The essential center was not getting stronger. When you’re thin naturally you don’t necessarily learn good habits (haha I have spent enough time in bars and in the studio with Mira Dulok to marvel at how someone who does everything wrong from a nutritional point of view can remain so slim, but once was I thus) and I just did what I pleased and that worked until, well, the last coupla years. So, guitar damage—my spine is a bit bent, and that compresses everything around my stomach, and singing also pushes those muscles out, and the result is the pear shape so undesired. So, I have taken action. The Pilates is already getting results: I have strengthened and smoothed my stomach and straightened my back and lowered my shoulders below my ears. I have incredible energy, like I haven’t had in years. And I have also been eating much more carefully, and much less, and I only drink wine when it’s the occasion to do so (and only the good stuff)…I know that we artists are supposed to maintain our mystique and just appear before your eyes these unexplained phenomena of beauty and health, but screw that. Everybody should feel good and invest in themselves, if they spend most of the time feeling bad about their body. And I think almost everybody feels weird about some facet of their physique at some point. So, yay, Pilates, miso soup and “Taille de Guepe” tea.

I got on the Eurostar to London on last Monday afternoon. After working together and finding we have lots of jokes and musical ref’s in common, I have been hanging with Mira Dulok for most of my London visits. It’s cool to have a good female friend in close range, I used to have some good female friends in Seattle and things are different in Paris, it’s a little (OK, a LOT) more old fashioned with regards to the mingling of the sexes (by the way, when Dom & I go to a nice restaurant, her menu doesn’t show the prices, and mine does). But Mira’s just over La Manche and is more like an American in her she-galitarianism. She knows the score with regards to my wife and child (an essential element) and has a great deal of respect for me as a musician. So, anyway, she has set up her room as a crash pad for me, and she stays upstairs in the always-empty room of one of her flatmates. Cool friend! Falling in line with the great London crash pads of yore (Biller…Su Perior, etc). Mira is working in some abstract way for a label in the states, and one of their artists was DJing at 93 Feet East so we slogged to Brick Lane, and, in an incredibly lame fashion, found out we weren’t on the list so we had to pay the five quid. Turns out that on Monday night in Brick Lane, you should probably let people in for free. There weren’t many people around. They should know what they missed—the most insane, ‘what the f’ bands I have seen in a long time, Trash Fashion. Terrible name, but what a fucking show. There’s a shirtless guitar player, who is short but completely muscled up, like beyond Rollins and into the realm of the muscleman toy as seen in “Toy Story”, but with Iggy’s blond Johnny Ramone haircut from the early 70s, playing full on metal leads, including Van Halen-style finger tapping. There’s a singer, also shirtless and kinda buff in a River’s Edge kind of way, with shaggy hair and an absentminded biker braid off on one side, foaming obscenities and playing squirty, horrific synth noises on one of those tiny Korg microsynths. There’s a bass player, who has an almost new romantic version of a skater boy look…pink polo shirt, vans, bleached bits in the hair…but like if you took him and his clothes and dragged them behind a truck for a month and washed them on the “deteriorate” setting. And a drummer who I couldn’t see well but relentlessly played the four on the floor techno beat with appropriate abandon. For the first couple of minutes I could not for the life of me figure out what was happening musically, and after a bit it coalesced into songs. Do not miss this band live—I think they are in fact playing with the Duloks soon (I am on a plane writing this bit so cannot verify). Once that was done, I didn’t really need anything else…then Mira and I headed to the Crobar, where nothing good could possibly ever happen, unless you happened to be there when my old pal Ian ‘Jonno’ Johnsen was there (and we were, Great Zeus’ Beard!).

Tuesday was an intense day, another one of those dream come true moments--I had passes to Wimbledon! Once I found out I was coming to London, I asked a friend who is in the tennis world, whose anonymity I will maintain but will identify only the fact he’s certainly up there in the pantheon of S.G.’s if he could help—I figured if I didn’t at least try to pull some strings I would kick myself forever, and he in fact passed me onto another friend who was able to come thru (thanks J. and C.!). Most of my friends were working during the day or just not picking up the phone, so I ended up going on my own (I didn’t know I had the tix til I got back to my computer at the end of the night), but, I was so into being there and watching every second of tennis I could that I think it was better I wasn’t dragging someone else along. First, I took the tube in the direction of Wimbledon, which is at the end of a branch of the District line. I had no idea where I was going, really, and it turns out you don’t get off at Wimbledon, you get off a couple of stops before, and then…you just have to figure it out. The tennis center is a mile or so from the tube. They had black cabs doing a shuttle there from near the tube, £2.50 a head, and they crammed people together to make every cab full. Once I was dropped off I looked for the ticket pickup, and got my creds, and headed in. I was there just as action was starting on Court 1, where I had seats. So, I had a bit of time to play with. The site is huge and the signage is not always clear, so it took me a bit to get my bearings. There are a number of cafes that are exclusively for staff, or elite members of the tennis association, or sponsors, so in looking for a bite to eat to tide me over I ended up looking in a lot of windows but falling far short of putting anything in my body that would sustain me. Mind you, the weather has been cold and gloom both in Paris and in London the last month, and all thru the morning I was assuming that a deluge was minutes away. I just remembered that as I was preparing to leave (which, since I only brought the clothes I was going to wear onstage, consisted of borrowing an umbrella) the Duloks had all assembled at Mira’s with a small video crew to shoot part of an episode of the Duloks’ own web TV show, which you can see here.Anyway, there’s really only one place I found to get food, consisting of your typical UK triangular sandwiches and tea. Unbeliveable. Oh, as an alternative you can have strawberries and cream. I loaded up on a triangle, tea and a bottle of water (don’t ask me how I also managed an umbrella, the tickets and a newspaper as well—cuz I’d have to tell you I left Mira’s umbrella by the condiments, but managed to backtrack and retrieve it later) and finally arrived at my seats and watched James Blake beat Igor Andreev. And Leighton Hewitt beat the wild card Richard Bloomfield who had some great game to provide. I got to hear the giving-birth screech of Maria Sharapova. And, perhaps my favorite part, after parking my ass in the hard plastic seats for some 5+ hours, freezing my bits off (the sun barely acknowledged the crowd in its brief drive-by) I decided to stay on, and walked down to the open courts and found myself right at courtside, eventually scoring a seat in the wooden benches right up against the fence, to watch a knock-down drag-out between the formidable Nikolay Davydenko and another intense Russian, Evgeny Korolev. These guys play for keeps, it’s all about speed and power, in fact I often had trouble following the ball. Evidently, so did Davydenko, who complained that the light conditions were too deteriorated to be fair. It was about 9pm on an overcast evening when Korolev finally succumbed. I loved every minute of it. I walked out of the gates all the way back to the tube, which took about 20 minutes, and by the time I was back in London, I was ready to crash. Unfortunately the roulette of ‘which branch of the District line am I on, and which one do I need to be on’ made the journey home the final, fatal zap to my energy.

LONDON 6/27

I took my time getting ready. Spent the day coordinating last-minute details online, and getting info to my bandmates, and finally I packed up my stuff and got on the tube to North Greenwich. The Millennium Dome, cleverly renamed the 02 Arena by its cell phone ‘provider’ sponsor (I put ‘provider’ in quotes because, guess what? You can’t get a cell phone signal inside! Way to go, 02) is Britain’s vision of its future. Evidently it’s an acknowledgement of global warming, because their vision of the U.K. A.D. 2020 is looking a lot like a California Mall circa 1998. The requisite Starbucks, the requisite Thai restaurant, the requisite architectural blandness. Oh well. I found my way to the Starbucks, being led on the curving pathway from the tube stop, and found more modern efficiency—I ordered a salad and a café and a bottle of water. Of course, the café takes a few minutes to make, there was a long line ahead of me waiting to receive the drinks they’d ordered, so I sat down at a table put my bags around, and ate my lunch and sipped from my 1.5 L of H20. After 10 minutes of watching for a macchiato-sized beverage to appear (no—a macchiato, like you drink in Italy, where espresso comes from—NOT a caramel confection more suited to a Dairy Queen menu than an espresso house), I decided to investigate. They still weren’t to my drink yet. And while my back was turned, SWISH, my table was cleared—with my jacket draped over the seat, and ¾ bottle of water there, it seems a little overzealous. So, I waited another 5 min. for my café, and told the guy at the register I was taking another bottle. No resistance.

My bandmates arrived, and it was time to find our way in, I called Snow Patrol’s tour manager and he came out to meet us, after we finally determined which gate to go in. the place is still technically under construction, so it’s pure chaos in the loading area, pallets of beverages and piles of construction materials, and people with all kinds of credentials (hopefully, anyway) running around. We came in to the backstage, which was all calm and different shades of office grey, and I met the production people with whom I'd been on the phone. We were using Snow Patrol’s extra guitar amp, drums provided by Gretsch, and one of Snow Patrol’s bass cabs. I had spent several of the preceding days arranging the rental of a bass amp, and the payment for the rental. And it was still in chaos when I was on the phone with the rental place and they realized they had forgotten to deliver it. Well, Snow Patrol let use theirs cuz they’re good like that, so we saved about fifty quid. Thank you boys!

Snow Patrol had a long soundcheck that day as it was their first day of their full production set up (with visuals directed by my pal Jon Shrimpton, who was a cameraman on the REM tour). So we had time to chill, organize the guest list, and watch Federer and Del Porto’s match on TV, until the rain called it. We had time for a kind of band meeting but there was so much to organize just for the day it was hard to really plan beyond the tasks right in front of us. We did our soundcheck and it sounded great onstage, we played pretty close together so we were not doing much different than we would at a tiny club.

After soundcheck, we had dinner, and finally were able to say hello to the SP guys, who are delightful. They were in a huddle with their manager, Peter “I manage Metallica, what the fuck do * you * do?” Mensch. The tablecloths in the catering area were extremely familiar, and then I realized the catering company were the same as who REM have been using in Europe since I’ve worked with them, Eat Your Hearts Out. It wasn’t the same team, tho, which would have been really crazy. Ah, fine tour catering. How quickly you get used to that! I just had a nibble of niçoise and asked if I could eat after the gig. Next it was time to get ready. Which means, have a café and make sure you pee and poo like 500 hundred times (which accomplishes nothing, as you have to pee anyway right before you go onstage). Our friends started to arrive and of course there were inevitable guest list SNAFUs, as it was a new venue, a special show, with almost 1,000 people on the guest list on one way or another. The tickets were only sold to residents of Greenwich and Snow Patrol fanclub members, plus all the staff and workers on the Dome were given tix. So, since the show was sold 5,000 under capacity, the band(s) could invite whoever the f they wanted to. Which was great for us, we had about 40 friends come down. Lise from Briskeby flew in for the show; all the Duloks came, and tons of music biz friends and fans. Showtime. Let’s just say that 7 years of watching the back of Michael Stipe wasn’t lost on this boy: I have learned a lot from JMS’ incredible ability to harness a large venue. I’m no Michael Stipe, to be sure, but I wasn’t the least bit timid, I ran hither and yon, jumped into the pit (with a game plan of when to time my climb * out * of the pit). I screamed and screeched and sweat like a feverish wild boar, and once again—no one knows our songs, and I think we got a great response. I told the crowd that anyone who emailed our myspace by 3pm the next day could be on the guest list for our club show, and we got a ton of responses (that venue had been kind enough to give us an unlimited guest list also). Mostly underage responses tho! Oh well. For our part, I think we nailed it. As usual, after a Disciplines show, I was too shattered to do anything afterwards, for awhile at least. But a ton of friends came backstage and I played host as best as I could. But I disappeared and rekindled my spirit with a delicious steak in catering. After Snow Patrol was done, there was a curious after show where no one from Snow Patrol was there—just some of the crew, and mostly my friends, having chips and dips and beers in a tiny conference room backstage. Weird! Later we found out that Gary, SP’s singer, was actually thrown out for not having his pass on at the right time! He went home, defeated. To give you a snapshot of the staff’s attitude, when I came out looking for one friend to make sure they could get back, the crowd was already ushered out of the venue, the lights were on and there was nothing in the venue but a see of smashed plastic cups. I asked the security guy in a chummy way “where is everybody”? And he replied, all bitter and serious, “home in bed where they belong”. Okayyyy. It was like 10.30! I backed away slowly. Well, eventually the fluorescent lights and peanuts lost their charm (there was a ping pong table backstage which provided some amusement!) and we all dispersed.

LONDON 6/28

Cut to 4a.m. A knock on my door. It’s Mira. Uhhh… “hey.” She said. Gave me minute to come to. “Remember when I stumbled on the escalator getting on the tube to come back?” No. Mira falls down about as often as I make bad jokes. “I think I broke my toe.” “Shut up, that’s ridiculous.” “No, I’m serious, have a look.” I told her to give me a minute to get dressed and came and had a look. Yep. It was broken. It was purple and turning black and bent unnaturally. Mira called a cab and we went to the hospital. I went back to sleep on some horrible plastic chairs and Mira got treated—there’s not much to do with a broken toe, just straighten it out and tie it to its neighbor and wrap the two up. Evidently this takes 4 hours, cuz we left the hospital at 8am. I went back to sleep until I couldn’t avoid responsibility any more. Good soldier that Mira is, she came to our show. That show pales in comparison to the magnificence of the Millennium Dome show, but everybody says we played way better than at 93 Feet East. Remember, we’re talking about our 6th show here! So, we’re getting there. The stress and exertion of the previous night, plus my adventure in the British health care system thru most of the time that I should have been sleeping, really took some of the wind out of my sails...and I didn’t have a big stage to run around on and I found myself missing it! But prob. it was pretty good! Afterwards we were shattered.

I didn’t have to hurry the next day. Weird weather—before I got in the shower there was monsoon and tree-bending winds outside; when I emerged 15 minutes later, it was full sun and no breeze. I went home. And that night, I actually went out to La Fleche D’or, to hang out with lots of friends, and see a bit of Momus, which was a skinny man dressed in awful, like, post-yoga clothing, with a blonde wig and an eyepatch, singing along to prerecorded tracks on his laptop. How very inspiring.

The next night I went to see my old friends WaFlash, from Senegal (check the EP with did together on Itunes). It was great to see them again, and hang a bit, and they sounded as great as ever. I stayed for their first set, which went from 1 to 2am!

PARIS 7/1

Sunday I played at a party with Liquid Architecture. The venue is a circular salon (that has a circular cinema upstairs for private screening events) near Champs Elysees. The event was the 10th anniversary for MODEM, a kind of trade journal for the fashion industry. Open bar, meaning, I had like 80 glasses of champagne. But our show was really good—I was really into it, playing the songs really well (a couple of times when the band fucked up the arrangements of the songs I managed to hold it together and sort it out with eye contact between myself and the drummer). There was a giant cube of computer-generated imagery that pulsed in time to the music. Later, there was a bar placed onstage, and in front of the bar a screen was made by cascading rivulets of water all lined up next to each other, that you can project images onto…beautiful! Liquid always plays in conjunction with the images of Fabien Verschaere.

Suddenly I found myself heading for Spain. I had a late night flight on Monday that because of some booking SNAFU that inexplicably made me move into the first row (fine by me) left even later, so it was about 1am when I got to my friend’s place.

ALTAFULLA 7/3

This was less like a show and more like a visit, but what a place. First off, I spent the day in a small village outside of Barcelona, at what was more or less the Arola Restaurant employee picnic. We got off on a rocky start, getting on the wrong train, going back, getting on a train that broke down! But finally we worked our way up into the hills, and I found myself swimming in my brand new, made-possible-by-pilates board shorts, and doing the water slides. Then we all decamped into the restaurant that was at the summit of this complex, and I was strapped down for the carnaça, a feast I’d like to call the ‘river of meat’. It was a mixed grill, with delicious white butifara sausage, rabbit, quail, pork, lamb…and part of the ritual is drinking wine from a kind of decanter that has spout on the side that enable you to pour a stream directly in your mouth…if you’ve grown up doing that all your life. Otherwise, you just spray yourself in the face…I actually did pretty well, cuz my turn was towards the last and watched the others, but even I couldn’t resist the automatic closing of the mouth as you stop tilting your head when you’re almost done. Don’t untilt your head…untilt the decanter…and keep your mouth open…this is the way!

Naturally after that I fell asleep on the grass and as the sun started to get low Nacho and I went back to the city, and I grabbed all my gear and got on another train, going south this time, towards Tarragona. I disembarked at Altafulla, a lovely seaside village with two seemingly unrelated castles, that are connected by a tunnel that must be a mile or so long. Now, in BCN I hang with Nacho, who’s brother owns the restaurant I will play tomorrow; Nacho’s band Poet In Process is very good and has just released their first album; PIP’s singer, Lynne is also a friend and her family owns the Faristol, the coolest little bar/restaurant/tiny stage/tiny hotel I’ve been in in a long time. Unf. their website doesn’t really show the place, and it’s a shame, it’s a lovely 300-year-old mansion that was in ruins when the family rescued it almost 30 years ago. They resuscitated it, but kept so much of its original features, its really in a magical state of decay that’s really pleasant and not at all decrepit. It’s just showing you it’s an old place, and kind of magical. My room has beautiful hand-painted decorations on the walls and ceiling. All the furniture looks like it’s been here forever, but it’s again all creating the same old and lovely effect but it’s all functional. The family live upstairs and the whole town comes to sit out on the terrace to have drinks or eat the wonderful food they serve for dinner (I love grilled pig’s feet—and they do them incredibly well—I ate them both nights I was here!). My show here was more or less me singing for my supper to a handful of slightly bewildered locals—it was loose and fun. There was a presumably lesbian couple who requested several Led Zeppelin songs, and who were indulged! At one point a guy went behind the bar and poured himself about 6 shots…it got weird…I packed up my stuff! And moved on to DJing in the corner…and then went to bed.

I slept in til about 11 and then Lynne took me to the beach. I can’t tell you where it is, it’s a locals only kind of place. You walk thru about 250 yards of scrub pine, and emerge on a perfect little bay with a flawless stretch of sand. No garbage. No clothing! It’s clothing optional heavily in favor of the option that doesn’t involve clothing. Anyway, there were only half a dozen people around, so everyone was spread out (hee hee) enough to sort have their own private beach. The water…mmm! Bath temperature and so clear…I walked out about 100m and was standing up to my neck and could clearly see when a small fish chugged by. But all the way out, it’s just sand. No stones. No icky seaweed. I swam and swam. I was afraid to pee cuz I was scared that there might be candirú about. Finally I let go. And then fried myself in the sun. I didn’t mind. And I didn’t want to go back to the city. I had invitations to go to big fashion week parties for Diesel, Playboy Español, etc., and all I wanted to do was catch up on mail, take a long bath, eat some grilled trotters, and rest. I knew I had to have it together for the show tonight. The only bummer was I had to get up at 7.30, and you just can’t prepare for that. I walked down to the train station in Altafulla—I let myself out of the Faristol, just left the key by the door and sauntered out into the morning. It wasn’t hot yet but it was still and blazing blue above. I bought a croissant at a tiny bakery, and slugged down a café cortado within view of the station. The train was late. And crowded! Oh boy. I barely could cram myself up there with my guitar and bags. So, I stood all the way back, about 50 minutes, with the car getting hotter and hotter. Finally jumped out and was ignored by several cabbies until finally one guy stopped, thinking that a guy with that many bags was going to the airport. He grumbled all the way to the radio station in the old part of the city. I buzzed in to Scanner FM, and the DJ came out, and let me in…and then he was like, “woah, it’s Ken Stringfellow! I wasn’t expecting you!” which is never a good sign, but actually he was expecting me, but next Thursday. But this guy, Alfred, was so quick he pulled up the Disciplines’ myspace, while I loaded up an Mp3 of “Best Mistake” with the engineer, did a bit of reading, got the skinny on the show from Nacho, and proceeded to lead a drive all the way to the end zone, in 3 languages no less. Smooth! I was really impressed. We had fun, The ‘Dizz’ as my band calls itself had their Spanish radio debut (as did the Duloks), and we plugged the show and plugged Poet in Process to boot. Everybody got a piece!

After that, Nacho and Carol and I joined Nacho’s brother Sergi, the restaurateur, at his place…where in fact I’m playing tonight! Sergi installed us in a back room and we talked music and travel and had lovely food and wine. I am starting to feel FAR too at home at Arola, they are such great people there.

I will review tonight’s show this weekend!
Soundcheck in a few minutes.

Love
KS
Barcelona SPAIN

The latest release by Ken Stringfellow is a split EP with Spain's Muy Fellini, featuring never-heard-before music incl. Ken's take on Bob Dylan, released by
King of Patio records
in Spain on Oct 8, 2009.

Order it directly from Muy Fellini here www.myspace.com/muyfellini
10" VINYL ONLY!!!