WERE ALL WIND…
This week really turned on its/my/everyone’s head in a number of unexpected squirts from the seltzer bottle you didn’t know was pointed at your eyes…so to speak.
It all started in order, and I had to learn to embrace chaos, filth, disappointment—I had to adapt to the terrain like a downed airman behind the enemy’s front line. The opposing line being my own desire for order, it seems.
It started in a normal enough fashion. I caught my super early morning flight out of Oslo; the prices for a taxi to the airport have become so absurd (more than €100) that I braved taking a taxi to the National Theater station to catch one of the first Flytogets out; I always get a little nervous when check in time is 6am. But I made it, and boarded with complete ease. I don’t even really remember being in Copenhagen airport, but soon I was landing in Vienna, having absorbed a Herald Tribune already. It was here the chaos began. No suitcase. Well, I knew SAS would do right by me. We proceeded on to the studio—I was embarking on an album project with
A Life A Song A Cigarette, something I’d truly been looking forward to. The only sad thing was, my suitcase had several microphones in it that I wanted to make part of the session. But, I hoped they would arrive that night, as night number one was only a rehearsal. So, we drove straight to the studio. Almost, anyway—we were stuck in traffic for quite awhile. But we made it, and started to run thru the material. Most of the arrangement work had been done via email, with demos being sent and comments sent back and forth. The songs were sounding good, including a new one I hadn’t heard before. The studio is in a small town, about 40 minutes by car from Vienna, a town called Stockerau. It’s bigger than a village, but not by much. The studio itself boasts a fantastic vintage Neve desk, great outboard gear, lots of mics, and the latest Pro Tools setup. There’s even a tape machine, but we didn’t go there on this rec (we should have!).
Where we sleep is an apartment in a tiny village about 15 minutes’ drive out of Stockerau. A one road town, with one bar/restaurant (that always seems to be closed, at least the hours we’re in town) and a few houses. The town is surrounded by farms of some sort. Being a one-road town, the downside is that any big truck or clanky tractor passing thru is quite loud. But Stockerau is the same way—when we sit outside the cafe near the studio, big trucks and tractors are frequently passing thru.
The first day, before we really started to work, we went to have a cafe in the ‘only game in town’. Rotzer’s. They served something called a ‘hamburger’ on their very limited menu that was actually a piece of ham, some melted cheese, special sauce and I think a bit of shredded iceberg on a hamburger bun. Cue Morissey singing “I’ll never make that mistake again, no”. But, Ulli, the mysterious dark haired ageless server there is very kind, remembers that I prefer a Wiener melange, and…it’s the only game in town. Anyway, Monday midday, I’m starting to contemplate eating this odd ham-burger, when my phone rings. Turns out, we’ve been offered a huge show in Norway—the “VG Lista Topp 20 Live”. The newspaper VG’s top 20 chart is the Billboard standard for Norway.
VG is the most widely read newspaper in Norway…it looks a bit like the Sun, but there’s not (usually) a page 3 nudie shot. VG has been good the Disciplines and here they were inviting us to participate in a huge gala event, that happens every June—in cooperation with NRK, the national broadcast service, they put on an enormous free show in downtown Oslo—they claim an audience of 100,000 and I accept the claim tho I find it dubious (I accept it, because it looks good to say you’ve played for 100,000 people). The show is broadcast live on NRK 1 so it’s seen overall by at least 500,000 people. Most of the lineup are the biggest hitmakers in Norway (read: Idol winners) and a few curveballs. Well, of course, we had to say yes—there are perhaps no better opportunities for promotion in Norway. One problem: the show was the following Friday. We had a show that day, in Paris—and of course plane tickets to Paris. I happen to live in Paris, too—but, duty calls. I considered, and after consulting my family and getting their approval I said yes.
Then I had to make some harsh calls. To Caroline, promoting our show in Paris, to tell her we had to cancel and explain why. She was incredibly cool about it. Of course, whatever tickets that couldn’t be refunded we would pay for (I made this a condition with my record label as part of agreeing to do the show). Canceling Paris meant a few more things—I wouldn’t be seeing my family this weekend; I would be missing my daughter’s end of the school year fete (I was going to perform, and see her sing in the chorale). I had only packed enough clothes, herbal tea, shampoo whatever to get me to the end of the week.
In the end (read on) it was all worth it, I think—except I still don’t feel good about missing Aden’s party. But, right now, I feel like we are building something with the band that needs to take priority and I was certainly the one saying we needed more TV stuff.
So, adapting to that huge change in plan leant a stressful edge to my week—I tried to shut it off when I was working with ALASAC and I was fairly successful but the mornings were all about taking care of business. And it wasn’t easy. Normally I live on a steady diet of phone cards, using call centers, whatever. There was no land line to be found—the studio and the apartment were phone-free. Stockerau has two payphones, neither of them very close to the studio, and the phone card I bought at the post office is almost used up, and it didn’t take long. And some urgent matters just had to be dealt with. So, I had to use my US cell phone more than usual this week. All part of the cause, tho. My suitcase *did* eventually arrive, the mics inside were put to use, and by buying some herbal tea, socks and underwear I pretty much have what I need to soldier on until I get home in another week and a half.
So, the good news about Stockerau’s relative isolation is that it makes for productive recording. There’s nowhere to go after the studio, we know no one in town. It was kind of the point of choosing this place.
The band themselves are amazing. Great songs, and they’ve done their homework well. I have certainly in these (web)pages remarked about my enjoyment for the playing of cellist Lukas Lauerman, getting to work with him on this record is big thrill. The songs are great, and, now that we’re a week into it, we’ve got some great sounding basic tracks, with some guitar overdubs sounding wonderful. I played a little guitar on one song, but mostly I organized the recording of a 6-piece band live in the studio.
Stress factors: no internet at the apartment, so I have to sort of get everyone interested in going to the studio very early so I can catch up on email before the studio day. I think I will start sleeping at the studio (it has a shower and kitchen) so everyone can rest longer, and I can…work longer! Stress factor: I had never worked in this studio before, and all studios have their quirks—the owner was there for the setup, which helped, but I was hoping to have an assistant—for part of the time, at least, just someone who can be there for helping patch in the stuff—every studio has a different way to do the same things, and most of them come with variations peculiar to the owner—patch bays not correctly marked, odd channel/mic plate numbering systems—things that don’t work that you spend hours trying to figure out which part of the chain is malfunctioning, and you call the owner and he says “oh, yeah. I should have mentioned that if you use the EQ on that channel, the odd-numbered headphone mixes go out, unless you are standing by the door, in which case they start working again, but only in mono, and really quiet, and distorted.” Yes, you should have. My assistant was also there on the rehearsal day, but then he had a ‘family emergency and he couldn’t say what it was’ and he’s never been heard from since.
But, despite all the craziness, the recordings are going really well, and indeed, it’s a stress relief to record great songs and great musicians. The old Neve is super touchy, there’s always a channel going out when I’m trying to get the band going on a song—not the same channel everytime, mind you, but a random selection—but it sounds incredible. I got to try my Lauten Audio mics on the drums (specifically on the toms, and the Horizon LDC made the floor tom enormous! I would have used the other one on the rack but it was doing guitar duty). Stress factor: the bass player, Martin, had to leave on Thursday to take an economics exam. So, basic track recording was suspended, and we had to switch to overdub mode for the day (take mics off the drums, do completely different cue mixes)—he then returned (NOT having taken the exam—it was Wednesday!) and we went back to tracking, with the board being more touchy than ever. I was grousing quite a bit. The band was patient, as ever! My bandmates on Thursday assembled in Oslo to do a soundcheck for Friday’s show. Evidently Bjorn didn’t miss his med school final, nor the end of school year party—a party which ended up lasting two days! He turned up for his flight to Oslo, and ended up in police custody! Overkill, methinks, but, it makes for a good news item!
Oh, yes, at one point, an old woman came by to tell us our dumpster was on fire. Indeed, it was—REALLY on fire, with 6-foot flames coming out. I actually grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran out and did my best to extinguish it. I didn’t want an oozing pool of melting, burning plastic in our driveway, by any means. The flames stopped but it was still smoldering. The fire dept. came by and finished the job, sad that I had done the fun bit. Across the street from the studio there’s a large dormitory of some kind—when the fire truck pulled up every window in the 6 story building was crammed with kids having a look see.
OSLO, 6/20
Thursday night after the studio ALASAC’s drummer, Daniel, took me to his flat in Vienna for a couple hours sleep, then, god bless ‘im, drove me to the airport for my 7.20 flight. Incredible. I was wearing the same clothes I wore onstage in Haugesund, still crusty with Haugesund mud, but the dirt had faded enough to be believeable at this point. I was so nervous about getting to the show, let alone doing it, that barely slept on the planes, and I was oddly alert and not sleepy when I got up to start the day, at 4.50—having gone to sleep at 1.30. Weird. Well. I landed at Torp, that being the only Oslo flight from Vienna that was less than €1000 when purchased with 5 days’ notice. Normally, you hop on a bus and it takes you to the Oslo bus station, in about 2 hours. For some reason, there were no buses around. I *did* take a little extra time to get out to the kerb, having an extended chat with Norwegian customs on the way in. For a guy with no luggage to speak of, they wanted to know what I was all about. Must be the silver raincoat.
So, it dawned upon me that there was to be no bus for me, and I had already missed the buses going to the train station—thinking I wouldn’t need ‘em. So I hopped a cab and made the next train to Oslo. Hey, more stress! Cool!
Finally got to town, and checked into my hotel, right by the station (good for my arrival and departure) and could breathe for a few minutes.
The guys swung by in a cab and picked me up, and we went to the site, in front of the City Hall, basically. A huge, Glastonbury-worthy stage was erected, with a catwalk straight outta a Stones concert. We were shown backstage, and soon were mingling with various Norwegian music stars---all of which were happy to see my bandmates. Mira Craig, all the Idol singers, you name it—they are Briskeby pals. For my part I knew the singer in Surferosa, and the drummer in Howl! There were some record co/music biz peeps that I new, and of course the folks from P3. Anyway, I was happy and made schmoozing my goal. We were photographed for today’s issue of VG (a very nice shot!). We did a soundcheck, which was unexpected, but really helpful—I blocked out how to manage this gigantic stage and catwalk and all that…knowing that we were doing a slow song and I had to really think about this, it couldn’t just work on manic energy. I had a wireless mic! All new to me. Well, I felt a LOT better after the soundcheck, we actually ran thru the song twice. Plus, backstage we played it about 5 times too. So, I was prepared as I could be, for something so new. Then I had time to get nervous! Watching all the other bands/artists. The good news was that everyone was playback, except us, Kaizers Orch. and Katie Melua. We had to fight to our song live. But it really sounded incredible.
See for yourself!
Showtime. I was super nervous. You can see me kind of grinning at the start, that’s nervous laughter. But also, I was enjoying myself. It was so much fun! My trademark move was to get to the stairs that led to the catwalk, and NOT descend—people were screaming for me to come down! Finally I did, and that got ‘em. Later, I laid down on the catwalk. Shook some hands. Fun! It was over in like a blink.
The fact that it had gone so well was such a surprise—I was prepared for the worst—mic failure, forget the words, lose the melody, bad sound, audience indifference (let’s remember that we are pushing 40, playing to an audience of mostly 15 year old Pop Idol fans, with a *ballad* in the midst of lineup of hi-energy dance music and hip hop). But in reality, it went down INCREDIBLY WELL. It’s not often that I actually live up to a high expectation. I usually just try and do damage control. But here, we were way beyond just competence—we excelled. I was so high from the experience I talked to Dom on the phone afterwards speaking like the biggest coke fiend on earth, but it was all natural adrenalin (and coffee, I guess).
We went back onstage for the grand finale—as many of the artists as could be mustered were put on stage to dance behind a boppy little number with, yes, a guy from Idol singing.
I did my best to be the freak of the week—I thought Ida Maria and Marianne from Surferosa would be the wild children, but they were relatively reserved. On the
video, you see a few seconds of me crawling thru everyone’s legs, riding Claus’ shoulders, running thru everyone…unf. my crabwalk can-can isn’t visible…
So, I went to the afterparty, had a wonderful chat with the singer from Kaizers Orch., a great chat with Claus’ wife Nanna, and almost immediately ran out of adrenalin, and walked to my hotel. Being the 2nd longest night of the year, it was great to be walking home at about 2am and see the sky a just-post-sunset blue. Birds were chirping as the clubs were still banging.
I felt even better about the show when I woke up—always a good sign! I was able to take my time, have a cafe at Tim Wendelboe’s, as is tradition; meet with our Norwegian booking agent, and hop on the Flytoget.
I had a very boring layover in Stockholm—I didn’t want to spend money, really, and there wasn’t much to do with my 3 hours. The airport and my flight to Vienna was empty—everyone in Scandinavia is pretty much already in place for wherever they will pass the longest night of the year—they’re not going to spend it in an airport, or in a city that gets actually gets dark at night.
Daniel was there at VIE to pick me up—my luggage made it this time (oh, but, my hairbrush was broken in half on the way to Olso the day before!).
This week we face the music—there’s no where else to turn in Stockerau!
Love
KS
Vienna
