GOD JUL
Maybe it's the post xmas-party hangover, or maybe it's just 'how it is' this time of year. I never get much of the expected cheer...but, then again, I don't take vacations either. I am pretty much treating the days of the year with equal weight...although I have to admit, I miss August quite a bit right now! I have been so cold, the days have been clear and the cold knifelike, penetrating and seemingly lethal. Last night it clouded over and there was fresh snow today, so that actually translates into warmer weather. In other words, I can feel my hands again.
Good news, bad news…I’m not sure which is which. However, it is significant, that I won’t be a part of REM’s upcoming tour. I spoke with Mike Mills, it was his birthday last week and I gave him a call. During the call we spoke about the tour, and confirmed what I had already pretty much figured out—the band was moving in a purely guitar-based direction, same as the new record, and they didn’t really need my bleeps and blops for this new direction. Also, I estimated recently on my own that between salary, 5 star hotels, flights, etc., it costs the band about half a million dollars to keep me on tour for a year. And, if I’m going to be sitting on my hands for the 8 or 9 new songs they plan on playing each night…well…I am sure they did the math already! I can’t say what the future holds, but I will surely miss the guys and all the good stuff that they bring with them: music, an uplifting spirit, and a generous dash of joie de vivre.
However, the fact is that I was stressing a little as I would have to face a big choice here: between promoting the Discipilnes album, or being part of REM’s tour. The fact is, the choice was made for me, and I am more than OK with it. If I am going to have my own band, esp. a bright and shiny youthful one, the time is now—putting it back a year would be perhaps something we wouldn’t recover from—everybody would prob. get that much deeper into their lives, and a middle-age drift (as opposed to middle age spread, which is kind of like the freshman fifteen) would surely settle in, and pry the four members into the realm of just a Christmas card each year with ever taller kids and fatter dogs. Which is not a bad thing, but, it’s essentially retirement, and retirement from fun, thus opening up your schedule for years of unabating toil. Not for me, but the others, maybe! And for me, it would be back to solo KS, or an unending search for sideman gigs. Solo KS, I can live with that…but this band, the Disciplines, is so much fun, and the people are so fine, that I really would hate to lose it before giving it a real go. And go we will.
We’ve been working on our album this week, making steady progress, the songs going from concrete pits to piles of blurry scaffolding to some things that almost look like houses. And then the lights will get switched on. And then we’ll mix. I don’t know what mixing is in the house building analogy. Maybe it’s interior decorating? It’s the same house, but a bit…fuller looking? Maybe it’s a fresh coat of exterior latex (no, not the kind the gimp is wearing!).
So, to recount: it was time for me to leave the comfortable and fun nest that REM provided me for the better part of the last decade, and fly. And if I fall flat on my face, or the Disciplines emerge to an astoundingly not-loud ‘who cares?’, it’s really OK. Life is about the doing, and the trying, and the solving, and the making, and not about the one result that’s going to be OK. It’s ALL Ok.
So, in the last week, my computer almost died. I had no laptop for 5 days or so, and it didn’t look like it was coming back. I even scoped out prices for a new one, and suddenly, one day, Mac Frank, the band’s computer-savvy friend, walked in with my living, breathing iBook G4, and said Merry Christmas, no charge. When the shops open again, I am getting him something smoky and single-malt derived!
My flat was the scene of a few raging parties; I stayed up late the other night participating in one, which was fun; last night I went to bed before everybody else came home, and woke up now and then as people were going completely NUTS. But in the morning, all the revelers were gone, and things were sort of back to normal, like nothing had happened. But, I am SURE it did. Cuz I wasn’t dreaming it—my dreams were, in fact, much, much weirder. Conspiracy theories and more. I always fall asleep with a space heater on, and it eventually gets my room really warm, and that stimulates some pretty lysergic…REM phases! Hahaha.
Also during the week, the TV show Lydverket was in studio filming us, and following me around, showing how I take the tram like a good Oslowegian, and stopping off for my caffeine and magnesium fix (I have been eating almost one bar of 70% cacao chocolate—the highest I could find—for energy in these dark winter days). That and the Tullamore Dew I drink before each vocal take, should be bad for me in theory but in fact I have lost weight being here, and feel pretty much on top of the world at any moment. OK, yesterday I had a headache when I woke up. I am not really drinking in the classical sense, so when I do join the festivities, I pretty much stink at it, and after two white wines I am ready for bed, and I wake up with a headache anyway. But my relationship with nutrition has been perfect—some smoked salmon, some Wasa bread, and some yoghurt. I live exactly on that.
Hmmm. I got paid for the Disciplines show that we did back in May. It seems that Claus made the deal over the phone with a guy that doesn’t work at the club anymore, and then FORGOT to get paid. This was before I realized that I and only I could tour manage this band. I thought I could let them conduct transactions in Norwegian. NO! So, when we played the same club in October, Claus mentioned, ‘oh yeah, I’ve never been paid for the show in May. I simply forgot’ Cue Steve Martin: ‘I simply FORGOT that speeding was against the law’. So, then, I had to reconstruct the whole deal, and convince the club that it was a great idea to give me several hundred euros based on the testimony of a MUSICIAN. It was a hard sell, but I managed to get it done.
Other than that, we have been just doing the job of making a great record, hanging out on the beat up couches of the studio, and offering healthy critiques/encouragement to the guy in the hot seat. I think we are making the record exactly as we envisioned it: based on our live show, with a minimum of overdubs…for most of the songs, there’s only ONE guitar going, not doubled, or tricked up. Check Van Halen’s first album for how that’s supposed to sound. Really, we sound much, much more like AC/DC than I ever imagined we would, and with our kind of ABBA melodies on top, I think it’s a stunning combo.
For singing, we tried a couple of different mics, settling on the new Neumann TLM49, their widest, fattest mic. Now, I’ve sung thru many a mic in my time (no, they are not giving it to me for free in exchange for this testimonial) but I had the impression to be hearing pure me back in the speakers, as opposed to the mic itself lend its characteristics like an effects pedal. It’s photo realistic reproduction, and I love it. I want one! I think they’re about $1200.
I tried to go Christmas shopping one day. Screw that. Me and 50,000 Norwegians all fighting over what was left—most places didn’t have the simple things I was looking for, and the line to ask a question or check out was 50 people deep. You know, there’s got to be a better way. I am going to divide up the calendar so everybody has Christmas on different days. Oh, yeah, that’s called your birthday. Now, Dec. 25, the one guy whose birthday it is doesn’t even get a present. It’s a retail cult, and I find it very alienating and unfun. Please don’t get me anything! I just want to see my girls, and I cannot. It’s a long story, but I think Dominique can at last come for New Year’s. That’s * if * she can get here—the French airport workers are on strike, and OSL is fogged in—no one is taking off, so there’s no room for incoming traffic either! We’ll see. I’ll be home in a couple of weeks, all else fails.
Next question: people, where are we mixing?
I guess I could have written a more heartwarming treatise on the nature of Christmas and the spirit of giving, but the papers will be full of them, and you don’t come to read this to hear things you could hear anywhere else, right? That’s why it’s a blog, and not an editorial. I do encourage that you give money to those who need it the most, and to not add to the global pile of half-functioning espresso machines. Send money to victims of disasters and wars (including our own). Drop some coins in the cup. It’s cold outside.
Love
KS
Oslo, NORWAY –well, Larvik now as I edit this!
