IN FACT IT’S A GAS
Another relatively quiet week, no travel to speak of, which enabled me to be truly caught up on the many tiny projects that were causing the sides of my inbox to distend.
I finished up my mixes for ‘The Purringtones’, and went into adding backing vocals—in Spanish—to two tracks for Argentina’s
The Super Ratones (who contributed vocals and other things to the Disciplines’ album). I always thought of Spanish as it’s spoken, in, say Spain, or Mexico, as being fairly phonetic—if you can read it, you know how to pronounce it—vowels are consistent, consonants too. None of the fake letters that hang around in English or French, with rules changing from word to word. However, Spanish as it’s spoken in Argentina seems to have some very French kind of ‘bridges’ between words, and unimportant consonants. In that sense, I could relate—and reading the lyrics and listening to the guide vocals it all made sense…and I *think* I did a pretty good job—the band seems happy, anyway!
With that completed, and files shipped off to South America via yousendit.com, I didn’t really have much to do…so I could spend time trolling for exotic recording gear on Ebay (I also went out to
Funky Junk France, and spent an afternoon auditioning gear), and also in hot pursuit of a 1905
Pedro Ximenez. REM’s caterers, specifically Steve and Kate, turned me on to PX on the 2005 tour, and I haven’t been the same since. The good people at the Spanish Table in Seattle actually delivered a lovely organic PX to me when Jon Auer & I played the Triple Door last year; they are part of the team that’s trying to source me a bottle of the
1905 Perez Barquero.
I think it was Wednesday (the calendar on this computer is missing some entries—my iBook was in the shop for a week, getting its power connection replaced) that we al as family went to the Nouveau Casino, the Parisian rock venue where Dom works (no, she can’t book your band). The Posies kicked off the Every Kind of Light tour here in 2005, and I’ve seen tons of shows here over the years—Fiery Furnaces, Gossip, Asian Dub Foundation, The Singles, The Waxwings, etc etc. This night we went to cheer on
Laytitia, who occasionally babysits Aden...she has an album coming out on Universal this year, and she was performing her first real live show, supporting I Am Kloot. Just her and her acoustic guitar, and amazingly, her sound guy, who is also her producer, was able to slide beats in, at tempo. She did a great job—she’s a tiny thing, looks like she’s 15, and has a squeaky little voice, and it’s great. Aden was up in the balcony behind the sound desk, shaking her teddy bear and yelling ‘Laytitia!’ like it was a stadium gig! The kind of stadium gig where you bring your nounours.
After the show, I chatted with Laytitia, her team, her family…and some local musicians that Dom had introduced her to as a potential band. And Laytitia’s A&R, who is an old old friend of Dom’s, was there too—he slipped me a copy of the new Rolling Stones’ live album, which is our Sunday morning music—until the inevitable re-screening of ‘Garfield 2—a Tale of Two Kitties’ thanks to Aden…
Dom & Aden went to have
frites at the café next door, and I stayed to watch 5 songs of I Am Kloot—they’re great, if quite mellow—they were all sitting down. These guys look like 100 miles of bad road, tho'—they make Keith Richards look like Denise Richards.
On Friday I went to the Transmusicales Festival’s party at La Maroquinerie (also a stop on the Posies 2005 tour), to see Tunng and drink free champagne. Tunng are super shaggy, electrofolk, really good they are. They are a breed of hippie that I would normally think wouldn’t accomplish much beyond acquiring too many dogs and not enough bath products (including the ultimate bath product—the bath itself), but lest ye continue to judge books by their covers (or their originals, for that matter), see the evidence presented, and you will find Tunng to be very clever, very peasant--I mean, pleasant, and very charming.
Last night I tried to go see DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist at Le Grand Rex, a venue I had never been to before. It’s just few stops down the Metro from my place. I had tried to buy advance tix online, tried to buy them at FNAC, tried to get in for free. No avail. So, I was hardly surprised that when I emerged from the Metro, there were signs in front of the door saying the concert was canceled for ‘technical reasons’. Yeah, like, technically, it was impossible to buy tickets for, so I guess nobody did.
Also this week the Disciplines album went to mastering—we spent a lot of time in deep discussion over philosophical principles of why this obscure detail was more important than that obscure detail. One last minute track list change and we went to master. I had CDs UPS’d overnight to my place, and made comments, we’re very close now…very close indeed…
Yesterday when Aden and Dom went to the park, they discovered on the way home that a family was giving away a Barbie Castle. Yep, taller than Aden and bulkier than my home studio, it came home with them, and honestly it’s so fun to see Aden freaking out over her new…well, you can hardly call something that big a toy, but it is one, technically. Funny that Aden keeps cleaning it, too…
After many weeks of enjoyment, I finished reading Pynchon’s Against the Day, which was, honestly, one of the most enjoyable, stimulating books I’ve spent time with, ever. I was so sad to see it come to an end!
However, the completion allowed me to start the extraordinary Ludlow, a novel written in verse, by friend of the family David Mason. This is vital, accessible, and simply beautiful work. Set in 1910s Colorado mining country (like huge and important swaths of Against the Day, so it was oddly familiar ground—some of the same historical figures /archetypes and landscapes). The fact that it’s set in verse doesn’t make it lofty or academic. In fact, it reads very much like the novels you know, but structure of verse grounds it, and gives it a passionate, human rhythm. I couldn’t recommend both books more strongly. Great review in the Washington Post
here. You can read more and order it
here.
OK, I am going to try and shake off the ass-kicking that losing one of my favorite hours of sleep last night—with Europe moving their clocks forward—combined with yesterday’s Cheap Star-Posies tennis Davis Cup dealt me, and pursue my homebound Sunday’s delight.
Love
KS
Paris
