THE HAGUE, 4/29
We slept in. That was good. Yes. Fred brought croissants and made coffees, and we got our acts together, went record shopping with Fred (he bought CDs, we didn’t) and then he dropped us at the train station. We had time to have yet another sandwich lunch (I wonder how many sandwiches I have eaten in the last year in train stations/airports/on trains/on planes?). We boarded our train, already on the platform, and settled in. I read the IHT, and after about 15 minutes, we pulled out. It was a lovely ride through green crevices cut into the hills of the Ardennes. Hardly anyone on the train, too. That is, until we started to get close to Brussels—for the last half an hour, the train was quite full. As we stopped at each of Brussels’ stations, we made our way towards our pile of luggage standing by the doors. We weren’t sure which side of the train the platform would be, but, thankfully, it was the one we were closer too (the foyer of the train car was filling up with people anticipating disembarking). We had just 7 minutes to make our connection—and the platform for the second train couldn’t be found online, nor could the ticketpeople in Luxembourg tell us. So, we got off at Bruxelles Nord, and I checked to see if just by chance the other side of the platform was our train. Nope. We grabbed our stuff and went down into the passageway leading to the other platforms, found a monitor. It tells you the ultimate destination of the various trains, departure time, and track number. There was an Amsterdam train with the same departure time as what we had on our itinerary. That seemed like the one. Unf. they don’t give you train numbers anywhere—not on the platform’s sign showing the next train, either. Seems like that would be helpful. We hauled our gear up to the Amsterdam platform—then by reading the printed timetable up on the platform, a massive list showing the departures for all the trains serving the station, found our train number, and yes it was an Amsterdam train, stopping at various places including Den Haag.
The train arrived, and we fought our way on board—and found ourselves on a train so crowded—every seat, every aisle, all the foyers, packed to the point where we were all unable to move even one step, true Tokyo commuter sardine style. Two hours of this, eh? I practiced deep breathing. Occasionally we stopped and exchanged basically the same amounts of people with each town. Sometimes people would manage to barge their way thru the crowd, thinking there was a better place to be—but there wasn’t. They got to where Jon & I were and found the train just as crowded as where they had come from (well, it was one person more crowded, wasn’t it?).
I counted each minute til we were at the Hague, and we got in a cab at the taxi queue, to be informed that with a flag drop of €7.50 (normal in Holland) and €3/bag (not normal, but not told to us until we had loaded it all in) our 5-minute cab ride would be €20. Oh, but it was a small price to pay to not be on that train anymore. We found our hotel, the
‘T Centrum, to be a groovy joint, very stylish. Unf. we were confronted with another Dutch tiny staircase, but, after climbing it, we were greeted by a stunning, spacious room with a very sleek and modern look. One side was glass, with a small balcony—and the view was of other rooftops, didn’t seem like there were too many windows looking back in at us. So, it was private, but exposed. Most pleasant!
Free computers in the lobby allowed me to catch up on email, and soon we headed to the venue—courtesy of a van the festival organizers sent to pick us up.
I had been joking that “Queen’s Night”, the holiday that provided the occasion for the festival, was the night when all the worker males of Holland were expected to mate with Queen, following which she was to lay several thousand eggs which would thereby guarantee the survival of the Netherlands. Actually, it’s the eve of Queen’s Day, which is NOT the Queen’s birthday (sounds like a holiday devised by Monty Python). The last Queen had her birthday on this particular day in April, and the current Queen (occasionally listed as Europe’s richest woman, at least before Harry Potter books started showing up in bookstores) decided her winter birthday would not make a very nice holiday for people to go out and get drunk in the streets in. So, Queen’s Day stayed in spring, as the first occasion for non-football fans to be drunk outside in the calendar year. And they were doing their royal duty as we drove to the gig at about 9pm. Many dressed in Orange, the Dutch national color, which of course ISN’T represented on the Dutch flag. Bands were set up all over the city (The Hague, being the nation’s capital, generally hosts the most vibrant celebration on Queen’s night, but there are outdoor concerts and events all around the country), each providing their own little pool of noise. We were playing in a regal little theatre, which itself was divided into 4 parts—the city’s premier cinema, which I imagined wasn’t doing much business, and the 3 venue of the ‘Binnenach’, or ‘Inside Night’, which is a thoughtful attempt to counterbalance the drunken hordes and their evil rock and roll with some highbrow singer/songwriter music. Incredibly, a handful of people actually attend this event.
We arrived, met the crew, were shown to our shared dressing room, and then went to have some dinner—the only reason we were showing up 3 hours before showtime was to get in some free vittles. After dinner I went for a stroll thru the battlefield—it was pure chaos on the streets. I was in search of espresso, which seemed to be unobtainable in the theatre. Across the street at the Mercure hotel, it was obtainable at the bar. The hotel was crawling with rockers and wannabees and all kinds of weirdos. Meaning, businessmen of course. I had my coffee and went back into the fray. There was a band flailing away in the square next to the hotel, I thought they looked a bit familiar so I paused as orange-clad stumbledrunks boinged off each other (not dancing, but just in their attempts to navigate), and the orange-jumpsuit-wearing trio onstage happened to be Voicst, who supported our 2005 UK tour.
Back safely inside, I checked out
Dirtmusic, with Chris Eckman, whom I know from Seattle, where he played in the Walkabouts; the band is a trio of –you guessed it—singer/songwriters, in a nice, atmospheric setting. There’s also Chris Brokaw from the band Come, and Australian crooner Hugo Race who was in the Bad Seeds. They were in the big room, which is seated. People still drifted in and out like they would at any festival. I slumped in a chair and shot dirty looks at the sound guy when I couldn’t hear the vocals. Which was too often for my liking! After the set I chatted with Chris, hoping he might send some buzz around about my upcoming show in his adopted town of Ljubljana. We checked out
Johnny Dowd, who is a kind of whacked-out jazz/gospel/freak of nature with a fantastic band, with a zoned out version of Chloe Sevigny’s mom on occasional, 1000-yard stare accompanied, vocals. Oh yeah!
Eventually the chatting, with the other bands, with fans, with the crew, with Dom on a phone I found backstage, with record label owners dropping by for Disciplines handouts, with our emcee from the National Radio/TV, whom had interviewed us many times in the past, etc., it was at last time to play. Jon & I had been moved to our own dressing room when one became available; we’d been paid. Then at 12.30, it was time for music. Now, given all I had described taking place—free, loud rock and jazz shows all over town, hours of country bumpkins and intelli-folk music, you’d think the LAST thing people wanted was to hear more music (I didn’t see it, but the blind pianist who had been playing in the foyer, a kind of lounge music for the actual lounge, chasing Jon around backstage singing ‘Dream All Day’ in a crooner voice. He is kind of autistic, I think. I mean, the piano guy) but many of the people who attended the event, not numerous to begin with, stayed. And they were very into our show, as were we—another great, effortless occasion. I was really going for elaborate runs on the guitar, and pulling them off with no runs, no drips, no errors as the paint commercial says. And then it was done—we had just an hour allotted, and it was 1.30 after all. They allowed us one encore, and then they wanted everyone out of there. Fine with me really—tour done! We said our goodbyes to the crew (fantastic backstage/stage crew this night) and headed to the hotel. The lobby was closed, and anyway, access to our room was thru a door down the street, so we hauled our guitars up the tiny stairs, cracked a bottle of wine to celebrate, and were asleep in like two minutes.
Up in the morning, I took my time to navigate down the tiny stairs and into the lobby with all my belongings, had breakfast, checked us out, and wrangled us a taxi (no more trains after yesterday’s experience). We earned a few minutes in the back of a Mercedes with our hard work. We were dropped off at the Schiphol, which evidently means ‘place where ships founder’ back from the days when it was underwater. As usual, our taxi driver wanted to talk about the Rolling Stones. Fair enough. He was quite jovial. He told us that the drummer from Golden Earring lives right around the corner from where our hotel was.
I saw Jon off, and then checked in for my flight to Belgrade, on the airline that bears Jugoslavia’s name, and dates from the days of that particular union. JAT they are currently known as, and have planes with colorful dots on the tail; a zoomed-in version of the SN Brussels logo. The flight was indeed packed, and I did some sleeping. It was such a relief not to wear contact lenses for a change. Ah. AH. AHHHH!
Touched down in Belgrade, retrieved my bags, not even a glance from Serbian customs, and met my hosts, from the studio I would be recording in the next days. We first headed to the hotel Slavia, taking the same road I had driven into Belgrade on the last visit, which parades you past enormous apartment buildings and convention centers, built apparently to look friendly for an invading Martian army that they expect to billet there. They seem to serve no actual current function. One of the apartment buildings is covered the length of its broad side by a hanging advertisement, upon which is a design made to look like a smaller design in amongst windows that are in fact printed on the hanging sheet. So, I guess about 75 apartments that would normally have views just see the inside of this sign. How awful is that?
The hotel Slavia is another one of those time capsule wonders you find in Serbia and other places in the liberated east-- rotary dial phone in the room, brown and green furniture. Personally, I love it, it’s like being in a museum. I also love old school hotels that have their own self contained world with way too many employees within—this hotel had a bank, a dentist office, a travel agency, a net café (not working). They didn’t seem to have a gift shop. And they definitely wouldn’t let me have access to an iron. I had to surrender my shirt to the staff for pressing. It’s one way to make a buck. They pull this stunt in Italy too—‘ah, it’s against the law, it’s a fire hazard’. SO, why aren’t all the other hotels in the world that allow me to iron my own clothes burning to ground as we speak, then? In fact, the last hotel I saw that had burnt nearly completely was in—ta ta ta: Serbia. A huge hotel in Novi Sad that was torched by a sore loser from the casino within who stormed out and returned with a Molotov cocktail, killing at least one person.
We walked down to the studio, and I met the band (some of which I had met before).
Veliki Prezir, which is an untranslatable pun in Serbian. They play a wonderful kind of psychedelic, playful rock. A sort of mix between the Kinks and Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ album. Great! I was there primarily to play keyboards, and I immediately got to work. I hadn’t heard the songs before, so with each of the 8 or so songs I played on, I would listen, come up with ideas, play along very badly for one or two takes, listen again and take a few notes, then go in for the final take and make a part for keeps. They had some fantastic instruments for me to play—a ridiculously cool Farfisa console organ, for starters. You know console organs—the kind that film directors use when they want to show how cheesy a character’s aunt is, they sit her down and have her wail along, with a beat on the ‘foxtrot’ setting. These machines are made of plastic simulating wood. They have built in drum machines and weirdo effects, and when you touch the keys on the lower end of the lower keyboard it fakes a kind of bass line, so you accompany yourself, and play the melodies on your right hand on the upper keyboard. Perhaps you play some more bass notes with the pedals at your feet. Unfortunately these machines are pretty much dinosaurs now, everyone uses keyboards like Aden’s Delson CK49. Ah, but this Farfisa is such a wonderful beast! I used it on almost every song. It had its own speakers, which gave it a big, heavy bass output. They also had a MemoryMoog, and a Rhodes, both of which were used extensively.
I was able to work on about 4 songs that afternoon and evening, and we had time to pause for lunch and dinner, at the same restaurant (for dinner I had spicy, cheese covered tripe). They brought in lots of nice wine, and proceeded to pretty much drink it all! I think I had a glass with dinner…maybe one in the studio…maybe not. Anyway, at the end of the night, I walked back to the Slavia, and was amazed that right in the lobby, I was asked “you want girl?” by a very kind eyed old gas cooker slightly past the sell by date. I guess the hotel actually pimps them out? I mean, she was asking me immediately after I retrieved my key from the desk.
The next morning, after she left my room (kidding), I had breakfast, and set out in the brilliant sunshine to meet the band at a café on the corner by the studio. The streets were gloriously empty; it was May Day, the International Worker’s Day, when all the workers of the world do something other than work. The Yugoslavian Communist Party HQ was on my way to the studio (when I told the guys this they assured me such a thing didn’t exist). Out front there was a guy holding the hammer and sickle flag, being photographed in front of his Yugo. I felt like the two guys might have been the only ones showing up for the rally. I felt sympathy for them, in fact. I was at that point a communist sympathizer.
The café was open, but almost empty. The café by the studio is part of a cinema, and there’s also a wonderful, crammed little bookstore there, which unf. I didn’t have time to explore, but mysteriously was still open at like 10pm that evening, on a holiday. Like, you couldn’t buy a toothbrush that day but you could get a translation of Nietzsche in Serbian. A country with such priorities can only be a place worth hanging out in.
We were very productive—I had played keyboards on all the songs they had recorded, plus one that Kole and I did as a live duet, acoustic guitar/vocals and Farfisa. So, I volunteered to do some singing in Serbian, and they taught me some lines, so I was able to harmonize with Kole on some tunes. I was able to do most of them, but there was one line I just couldn’t do, and my version of it had the entire room rolling on the floor with laughter—“you sound Japanese!” So, at which point I was done, I guess! It was, however, 1am. Oh, it should be said that Boris, the bass player, produces the sessions and is an excellent engineer.
STAVERN, 5/2
Oof. Up at 5. The sun comes up early in Serbia, so I never had trouble getting up. But still…why I am I, the musician who is supposed to be sleeping in til 3 in the afternoon every day, always getting up at 5? When I checked out, breakfast wasn’t fully served. I had a dry turnover of some sort and had the desk call me a cab. A little tiny car pulled up, and an enormous bear of a driver emerged, tattoos on his fingers. He stuffed my gear into whatever crevices were left allowing for himself, me, and his LPG tank. I had been given 1000 Dinars, about €12, by the band, and was told this would be more than enough. When we pulled up to the airport, the meter red 1140, and I gave him the 1000 note and a 500 note—he said, oh, don’t worry, no change, so I just take 1000. I gave him the coins I had, and he was more than happy. Very friendly!
I checked in, and took advantage of the fact that no one was going thru security—they were waiting in cafes outside security to linger with their non-traveling loved ones—to take care of that unpleasant business. Once inside I found a café and had my morning macchiato and my daily dietary tea. There was no Herald Tribune to be had. I had entered Serbia with a handful of dinars left over from the Novi Sad show, but I hadn’t been allowed to pay for anything during my stay, the band took care of my every food and drink need. So, after paying 200 for my shirt to be pressed, paying for my cab, paying for my café, I had 860 left in notes (they have notes of 10, and coins of ten and more than ten, oddly. 10 dinars is 12 Euro cents.) I walked up to someone at the gate for my flight and asked if they were Serbian. Yes, they replied. Would you be willing to trade me 860 dinars for 10 euros? Well…actually I live in Toronto, he said. I don’t really need dinars, but…ah, what the hell. He gave me €10, it was a good deal for him if he was spending the dinars soon. But, I think it was just the Serbian tendency for extremely good hospitality in effect.
Crammed into a little Austrian Air regional jet, the kind with no usable storage bins overhead, so I had my computer bag at my feet. Quick change at Vienna, but I still managed to get my IHT. I arrived to Oslo, and boarded a train for a three hour ride to Larvik. It took two hours to travel to Oslo from Vienna! Three hours on a train seemed like another punishment. But I was asleep for most of it.
At the station in Larvik I was met by Gunder—it was at Gunder’s home in the village of Stavern that Dom, myself, and my bandmates and more greeted 2008. It was probably Gunder who had bullied the local tavern into paying us an enormous sum to play what is essentially a pirate/biker bar. And there are not that many people—let alone enough bikers or pirates—in Stavern. The band was already set up when I arrived, but a vocal mic hadn’t arrived yet. I gave Claus shit about his ridiculous purple pants (what kind of yoga class are you teaching?) and gave hugs to all. Finally a mic arrived and we started to run thru songs only to find the high end speaker on one side of the PA was actually broken. Soundcheck over! The local sound tech agreed to replace it while we went off and got ready for the show.
I was taken back up to Larvik – OK, Larvik is where my bandmates are from, it’s a medium size town with a big ferry terminal. I have often compared it to Bellingham but it’s smaller as far as I know. I think nearby Sandefjord is more Bellingham sized. Stavern is like…Alder? There can’t be more than 2000 people in the village. I would say, less. More like 1000. I was checked into the Grand Hotel Larvik. It’s so Grand that they are tearing it down. I spent the evening on the phone with Dom, and checking email in the lobby. Now this is great—my computer, ever since I had the power cable repaired, has had problems receiving wifi signal. When most people have a full set of four black bars in their wifi icon, I may have one—or it may not receive anything at all. Usually I have to be so close to the wifi device as to render the distance comically similar to the length of the average Ethernet cable. So, I was barely able to get wifi in the lobby. Their lobby computer was down, but they allowed me to disconnect the cable from the back and use it for my rig. There was a small, nearly uninhabited bar by the front desk—the front desk person would go around and serve the two customers drinks and then return to waiting for people to check in. The in house music played for ambience was a dreadful RHCP album, I guess one of the last two. The unbelievable chorus: “hey-oh…this is what I say-oh”. I mean, Anthony, were you waiting for the tallyman to tally your banana or what?
Alternating this was a soundcheck in progress in what was normally the breakfast room—a band was rehearsing. It sounded familiar, and then I realized—it was ALL CHICAGO COVERS. Played with maniacally faithful expertise but sung by a guy with decidedly less vocal altitude than Peter Cetera. Yes, it was THAT era of Chicago. No Saturday in the Park, just “You’re the Inspiration”. I was turning in my as-yet-undug-grave.
Bjorn’s mom came by and picked me up, dropping Bjorn and I at the tavern at about 9.30. We weren’t due to play for another two hours. So, we walked up to Gunder and Kaja’s house—and it was Kaja’s birthday party. Claus, in his sales expertise had told me ‘there will be all kinds of tapas there, it’s gonna be great’. And it was great—but no tapas. I hadn’t eaten dinner—you might remember I had eaten a lone, dry turnover at 6, and then had been served a little bit of food on each flight—a single slice each of ham and cheese on the first flight; a tiny square dish of pasta on the second. I was ravenous. There *was* a tureen of very good soup, and couple of pieces of meat – small, coin sized pieces of a kind of cevapcici. I mean, two pieces, each the size of a €2 coin. I had some wine. Hmmm…would this be enough to get me thru a Disciplines acrobatics hour? I was worried.
I needn’t have been. Despite the fact that we hadn’t played together since February, we were on fire. On FIRE. I was everywhere—one minute I was outside the building, screaming at the huddled smokers; one minute, ON the sound desk; one minute, writing around the ankles of various men and women; one minute an inch from Claus’ face. There are some great photos from the local newspaper
here. It was a storming set. STORMING. As usual, the minute it was over, I just wanted to play another one. And they had 200 people show up—20% of the town! They said they had NEVER had the place so full. They actually made money on the deal and they paid us a LOT. So, they were happy. I was exceedingly happy—I also found that the vocal exercises and training, plus the fantastic regimen that is a two-hour Posies set every night—meant that even tho I was singing hard and loud, my voice wasn’t the least bit thrashed, which didn’t used to be the case. We sold tons of vinyls, including one smart aleck (named Gunder) who paid for two with a ripped in half NOK100 note.
After show party was at Gunder’s…I crashed completely. I was awakened and sent back to Larvik in a taxi van, the only taxi in town. It’s a share taxi, driven by a very friendly guy who of course in the course of his work knows everyone’s problems. We stopped at one house and a young girl came out, after like 10 minutes. She got in the cab, we went one block, she got out.
I finally made it ‘home’.
DRAMMEN, 5/3
Up for breakfast? Of course. Not loading the equipment we left at the venue overnight? Of course not. Baard and Bjorn came by and picked me up just after noon. I was veeeeeery sore. I had bruises on my hands, feet, abdomen. But, I was happy and ready for more. We weren’t driving for 15 minutes before we heard ‘Oslo’ on the radio. It sounded so good! Right at the end we went into a tunnel but we came out in time to hearing the DJs question why I didn’t pronounce it “ooshlu” like a Norwegian. I can answer this—the song is sung from the point of view of a visitor, not a local. That’s the whole deal.
Anyway, Drammen. Drammen is the but of many, many jokes—it’s the Cleveland of Norway. It’s not a bad little town, you know? But it has the unfortunate position of being within earshot of big bad Oslo. Drammen used to be a mill town. So, you get the idea of some snooty class distinctions being made between the workers of Drammen and the owners of Oslo. And in their guilt, the owners degrade the workers by painting them as hapless rubes, unworthy of sympathy.
Well, the sure got a purty venue down there in Drammen. The
Union Scene—named after the long-gone workers of said mill. The mill is now a glass-covered architectural wonder, housing music venue, a music school, a theatre company, and more. The glass covering unites what were once separate buildings into one big complex. The buildings inside are wonderful old brick lofts. Outside, the river that once powered the mill and transported the timber and processed paper rushes by. Thomas, from local band the Jessica Fletchers, helps run the place, and was our guide. The event was their spring fling, called—in the spirit of the ‘Union’ theme—Working Class Hero. It lasts for two days, and there are bands playing in the big room (cap. 1000) and in the small room (cap. 300). In the foyer in between a DJ spins 70s rock. Sadly, with all this beautiful infrastructure, and all the assembled talent, it wasn’t enough to draw the conservative people of Drammen out of whatever cover band hell they inhabit on the average weekend—and no self-respecting Oslowegian would ever deem to descend to Drammen and waste a perfectly good weekend out. Even friends of the band who called and asked to be on the list didn’t show. So, I guess there were about 300 people there. Which was great for us—we were the headliners in the small room. But the big room was looking kinda lonely. And once an audience becomes aware they are all that’s gonna show up, they start to get real shy. So, I had my work cut out for me. The bands on the two stages were staggered in theory—but Magnet was running pretty long—however, he was urging everyone to hurry over to see us as soon as he was done.
Dinner in this case WAS actually tapas. I mostly ate the jamon…and then, around 10pm (showtime of midnight) the whole building had run out of bottled water. Oops. And I wasn’t into lubricating my instrument with Yellowtail shiraz, TYVM.
During the day—in addition to an interview with the local TV, I had plenty of time to work online; plenty of time to watch the excellent interview/documentary “Fellini: I’m a Born Liar”, which gives incredible insights into the mind of the filmmaker. I had time to do my vocal exercises, with a piano, which is rare.
So, we went on, and people were trickling in. I had to really work on them to get them comfortable. I think I sang into the eyes of every man, woman and child in the room. And it worked! By the end, people were going absolutely insane. We were supposed to finish and get out of the way for the headliners in the main room. On this assumption, Baard and Claus ran in the direction of the cheap Shiraz. But the people were howling for more. So, I got onstage and said thanks…urged people to join me at the merch table—they weren’t havin’ it. Ok. Well, I picked up Bjorn’s guitar—his strap had broken during the last song (we rock that hard). I started to strum on his out of tune strings, and I played a solo version of “Shadow of Your Doubt”—the whole room was clapping the beat—it definitely was a ‘moment’. Bjorn came back in and gave the assist—he started to play bass, and I put down the guitar, and just sang along with him. Everybody was happy! They wanted more, which is just how it should be. I crawled on top of the merch table and hawked our vinyl wares, successfully. One guy, a very nice, kind of conservative looking fella—short hair, denim jacket, non-fashionable jeans—came up and said the greatest compliment—he said that he was a real AC/DC fan, and I was as good a frontman as Bon Scott. And that, furthermore, that was only made possible because of the dynamite band backing me up. I thought that was incredibly cool.
We loaded up the van, and Claus and I drove back to Oslo, and unloaded it. He dropped me at my hotel—the festival paid for two nights of hotel for me, mercifully in Oslo! No offense to Drammen, but it’s good to be in the town I know best. I had asked the festival, just that day, to book me a third night that I would pay for—I was supposed to have been staying at Claus’ house, but it’s not done yet (having visited the site yesterday, I told him to consider moving his housewarming party from June to, say, mid 2014). Unfortunately, there was a big convention of some kind in town, and the hotel, in fact, all the affordable hotel rooms in town, were booked solid. Sigh.
Sunday—I took the time to linger over breakfast, to linger over café at Tim Wendelboe’s. Running into the singer of the Lionheart Brothers in the park, I walked with them across Oslo, (running into Claus and Nanna having lunch along the way!) and parked myself, gloriously alone, in the third row of the Colosseum Theatre, to take in “Shine A Light”. Being a lead singer myself, I watched Mick with a totally new kind of…ahahah sympathy for the old devil. He is superb. He comes off as a real prick in the Uncut interview (the ‘bonka bonka’ issue) but he is ‘the ultimate driving machine’. Charlie Watts, flawless. Snare has sounded exactly the same for 30 years. Perfect. Keith is acting more and more like Johnny Depp. Weird. But, loveable. He always looks surprised in a weird kind of way—like he is amazed to be enjoying his unique position for yet another day. Ronnie comes off as a bit of a burnout when he speaks, but his playing is magnificent. The sound quality is excellent. I’m not sure what Blondie Chaplin is doing up there, but hey, hats off to a good gig for the bloke.
Claus met me at the theatre, we had dinner al fresco, and headed to the
Living Room studio, a veritable fortress situated behind more doors than seen in the intro to ‘Get Smart’, right above Café Mono dead smack downtown Oslo. It was here that I first recorded with Briskeby for the ‘Joe Dallesandro’ single; and it was here that I mixed half of the Jim Protector album (which just came out on vinyl, BTW). It’s also perhaps the most used mastering studio in Norway (?), with Briskeby’s producer Espen Berg at the helm. We had already mastered the album for Norway—it’s in the factory now—but here we were mastering different tracks and versions for the international release. We dropped in the new extra guitar for ‘Falling Knives’ that I had recorded the day before the Posies show last month; I added an extra ‘f’ to a word in ‘Shadow of Your Doubt’. Everything sounds marvelous. Made a few other adjustments and B’sYU. Espen dropped me at the hotel, now one bag of 50 KS Covers EPs heavier; Andre from the Sellout had dropped them by.
Monday was a press day. I spent the morning either online, on the phone as manager, or at Tim Wendelboe’s. I met up with Lasse, our live sound engineer, and paid him for his work this weekend. And headed up to the Grand Hotel’s rooftop bar for an interview and photo session with one of the biggest dailies in Norway. Norway has three national newspapers—VG, Dagbladet, and Aftenposten. We did lengthy, in depth interviews for all of them this day. Our label who work with bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys for Norway, say this is unprecedented. Also, moving from B list to A list on the national radio is equally unprecedented—and all this we have done.
I was really grateful for all the interviews this day, they were really interested, and the conversations were intelligent and fun. Most of the journos had just gotten the album that morning—last week was mostly a holiday, and the label was holding out sending advance copies, hoping the artwork copies would come back from the factory, but no such luck. But, they already loved the album on first listen. So, they were on our side.
We also dropped in on the national radio for an interview. When we entered the studio, they were playing ‘Best Mistake’. Since they had made the demo version a hit last year, I assumed it was the demo, and was thinking, ‘oh man, it sounds so much better than the album version. But…wait a minute…I didn’t do that vocal harmony on the demo…hey, this *is* the album version…and it rocks!’ It was really weird to see how into it the DJs were, they were rocking out to it, and not, I believe, for our benefit. They were sincerely into the music. We spoke, they played ‘Oslo’ and ‘No Vacancy’ and we were done. Claus and I had time to drive around and listen to the new masters, make critiques etc. We dined, and then met our designer Joakim for a meeting on ideas for merchandise, our new backdrop, the international version artworks, and our website/myspace redesign coming soon. Finally it was time for the last interview, on the terrace of a bar next to the Sentrum Scene, the first place I ever played in Oslo. The journalist from VG had had to postpone the interview until 10.30 as he was meeting deadlines for the week (Monday is the journalist’s worst day—so I was very grateful that the three most prominent journos in Norway had each agreed to take an hour out of a day that has none to spare, for us). I thought we’d be burnt but we perked right up, and had a great chat for over an hour.
Claus dropped me at my former hotel, and I got my bags out of storage, and cabbed over to Ole and Sarah, from Revolver Bar, ‘s new flat, very close to the Disciplines’ studio. They have a magnificent rooftop terrace. I thought about sleeping up there, under the stars—it was actually warm enough—but, they had brought their extra bed out of storage and set it up in their tiny main room. So, I used that one!
I was up at 4! Taxi at 5. €110 later, at the airport. I had two many bags, and too early a flight to f*** with taxi to train to etc. I boarded the relatively empty SN Brussels flight to…Brussels, sort of in the opposite direction of my destination, Vienna. It was the cheap flight, although, one could argue that a more expensive flight at a later time might have actually saved the band money since I could have taken the train instead of cab to airport. But, I think it was about the same, really. The long layover has allowed me to catch up on this overdue blog. So…all is well. On to the KS tour.
Love
KS
BRU Terminal A
