THE CAPTAIN'S TRUE PARADISE
SEE THE DISCIPLINES THIS WEEKEND IN
BERGEN AND
STAVANGER, NORWAY...
I was just watching the acclaimed 1950's comedy '
The Captain's Paradise' starring Sir Alec Guinness. He plays the captain of a ferry shuttling between Gibraltar and Morocco--and in each town he has a wife. Hilarity ensues? It's more...psycho...he creates and abandons two disposable sons to keep his British wife occupied lest she think of accompanying him on his travels; he more or less has two disposable wives, neither of whose needs interest him in the least; he not only fakes his own death, but actually has someone killed in the process. I guess the inhabitants of 1950s Britain were of a stranger mindset than I imagined...but perhaps the whole nation was experiencing PTSD post war.
I have spent the last few days in the studio producing Mateo, a project I started this summer (meaning that it's autumn now--but only as of today. The 23rd is the autumnal equinox--Libran balance indeed). Studio days are really consuming, I'm taking care of little things in the morning and night, and sleeping--and the other half of the day, literally, I'm in front of a computer assembling music, editing vocals, directing players, etc.
Dom & I traveled back to Paris on Sunday last, we never saw our host again, we had a morning train so we were up much too early for the rockers of London. Monday I appeared on a TV program called 'Direct 8', playing piano for Olivia Baum. It went quite well, and it was quite funny to run into Repi Rep from
Housse de Racket, having just played together two nights before in another country. It wasn't expected. I ran into him in the hall at the soundcheck. He was playing with someone, but when I asked who, he said he didn't know--but he knew the songs. I didn't have time to delve into the mystery any further. As it turns out he was playing air guitar for two artists who were doing their songs to playback and needed a band to mime along. Hilarious.
PARIS, 9/19
This was the Olivia Baum show at L'Europeen, wherein I had to learn all those difficult keyboard parts. Dom and I arrived at 10.30 to the venue, to start the setup. Soundcheck, and I had some keyboard programming to do (on the Kurzweil, everything has many many steps). Then I went back home, and returned as the second soudcheck (more like a rehearsal) with a round-base mic stand for Olivia to use.
As it turns out, the show was quite good--I actually played my parts really well. Dom tells me that I looked way too serious during the show but honestly it was all I could do to not fuck up. I actually made two mistakes but they were not wrong note choices, just playing parts sort of in the wrong places but they still fit. The really hard stuff worked out really well--of course, I had worked on it the hardest.
I got a lot of compliments after the show on my playing and its physicality--and I directed everyone to look up NRBQ on YouTube to see where I got all my moves. I'd sort of forgotten the debt I owe Terry Adams for my onstage persona as seen by millions of REM fans til Scott McCaughey sent me the link for
this.
I have to get up in 5 and half hours and fire the ProTools back up.
Love
KS
Paris
