EL PUERTO DE SANTA MARIA, 7/20
Having stuffed my face at the house of Miguel, we slowly made our way into a couple of cars and headed towards the extreme southwest of Spain. Along the way, we stopped at Bolonya, (I can’t make a tilde in Blogger), a beach town where as it happens Dani Llamas’ family was renting a house. So we put in a bit of beach time, cleaned up, and pulled into El Puerto at about 8.30. El Puerto is part of a conglomeration of communities scattered about the spits and peninsulae at the mouth of the San Pedro. Cadiz (said to be the oldest city in Europe, continuously inhabited since the Phoenicians settled there, assuming it was the end of the world), San Fernando, Jerez, and El Puerto are among the communities that straddle the waterways here.
El Puerto is part Arizona strip mall, part dusty backwater. It doesn’t look like much, and thus the unpaved road leading to Paco Loco’s home/studio/etc complex was quite unpromising. As we pulled up, parking was difficult, as a number of cars lined the tiny road. Vacant lots with ungraded terrain all around. We parked and entered a gate and found ourselves in a lovely little garden, the residence of Paco and Muni. Paco Loco is a legend in the Spanish music scene, having been part of various bands and a producer of countless albums. Over a decade ago, he met his wife Muni (Moony Loco??), when he produced her band, and eventually they found their current home and established a formidable musical base there. Paco has his studio in one building, crammed with vintage audio gear and instruments. There’s the residence, a one level, flat roofed ranch house shaped like an ‘L’, with plenty of room for the two of them to live and have office and chill out space. The roof of the building is in fact a terrace, although there’s not much to see from up there and they have so much terrace space in the garden it hardly seems worth the effort to climb stairs. In between the house and the studio there’s a small apartment for bands to sleep in. These buildings and a hedgerow out back enclose a small swimming pool, a garden, fruit trees and grass. Let it be said that Paco and Muni are incredibly kind and accommodating people.
So, what Paco had done is set up a Sunday night garden party, with drinks, food, torches stuck in the lawn, a small stage, 30 or so friends, and me, playing! I can only describe the setting and the vibe as magical. Bats flitted over my head and en enormous orange moon rose over the hedge. Darkness fell, and I entertained for some 2 hours. I paused in the middle to help adjudicate a contest determining which guest had made the best Spanish tortilla, the egg/onion/potato omelet this is like a small cake, hence the name. One guest, being a huge Posies fan, jumped up to expertly play the guitar solo in Solar Sister, and Muni herself materialized at my side to join me on ‘Tell Me Why’.
A fantastic evening, and no need to say, I fell into a profound sleep in the pitch blackness of the band apartment.
The next day Miguel and his brother and another friend and I drove a couple of hours to Montilla, for a grand tour of the Perez Barquero winery. We were greeted by Jose Ruz, who gave us a wonderful tour and explained how Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso, Pedro Ximenez (my personal favorite, and I have had none better than the Perez Barquero 1905 Solera Fundacional) and their brandies are made. We had time for a tasting and a bit of shopping before I had to run to Sevilla airport and catch my flight back to Paris.
Back in Paris I mixed two songs for A Life A Song A Cigarette, saw my doctor to get back on track after my cold, took a pilates class, played tennis, unpacked and packed. Headed to Orly with PLENTY of time on Wednesday.
MADRID, 7.23
My flight ended up being delayed a couple of hours, no big deal as I was flying in one day in advance of the official Disciplines show. This night was a ‘just for fun’ night of cover songs, taking place in a basement nightclub called the Honky Tonk, with the band the
Super Ratones, from Buenos Aires, appearing as the Super Agentes. I had gotten to know the SR’s via internet and phone, and over the last months had gotten them to sing and play on the Disciplines album, via the sending of audio files back and forth, and I sing on two songs on their soon to be released album. The SR’s also contributed an excellent rendition of ‘Going Going Gone’ for the Posies tribute. They are absolutely fine people, lovely guys all. I already felt I was meeting old friends by the time they picked me up at the airport this evening, even tho we were meeting for the first time in person.
About half a million Argentines are living in Spain at any one time, and the SR’s have an extensive network to draw upon for things like crash pads, so Lisandro, the manager; Mario, the singer (who spent some of his childhood in Champaign IL, so speaks in absolutely accentless American English) and I had access to the gayest crash pad ever; meaning it was a delightful place to stay with the latest design elements and as neat as a pin. I had deemed it metrosexual to the point of bending the definition; they cheerfully confirmed ‘twas, a far, far, gayer thing, this lovely little flat in the suburbs. NTTAWWT!
So, we stopped by and picked up the rest of the band and crew at the band’s official crash pad, the tiny flat they have rented for the month, and we all trucked down to the Honky Tonk, which backs into (natch) an Argentine restaurant, which made sure we were more pear-shaped going out than coming in, and slipped in the back door to the basement confines of the club itself, where the ‘Super Agentes’ blasted out covers of 60s tunes and more to the rather preppy clientele. I joined them for either backup or lead duties on such diverse items as ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’…I was called up for duty on several Hollies songs, the common assumption being that a member of the Posies knows the Hollies’ work by heart, when in fact, after the intro riff of Long Tall Woman in a Black Dress and the chorus of Air that I Breathe I am rather useless. But it was great fun.
MADRID, 7.24
Madrid, the city that shouldn’t be. No port, no great river to straddle, no strategic mountain redoubt; Madrid was just lucky to be equidistant from the frontiers, and give no home field advantage to, the unified fiefdoms that agreed at some point to be Spain. Its name comes from the Arabic conquerors who founded it, and was originally called ‘Mayrit’, or ‘land of many springs’. Er, ‘wind-blasted dustbowl’ should have at least been considered as a runner up. Maybe to a group of warriors straight off the Rub-al-Khali this area looked lush by comparison, but to my eyes the steel and glass bank HQs of Madrid serve as the world’s costliest tumbleweed deflectors.
However, it is home to one of the friendliest musical environments I know of, Moby Dick. The Moby Dick club has seen now nine Ken Stringfellow performances—with Chariot in 1998; with the Posies in 1998, 2000 and 2005; with Saltine in 1999; solo in 2001 and 2004; and a White Flag/solo combo in 2003; and now the Disciplines. It should be mentioned my 2004 show there was an absolute career highlight, a packed house saw impromptu jams with Scott McCaughey and Mike Mills. The owner, Pepe Corral, has always been encouraging and cool.
The club itself, yes it looks, inside and out, like a kind of ship. There’s a wooden skeletal whale and the curve of a section of lighthouse framing the stage.
This show, in many ways, was pre-empted by the season. Even my appearance on the national radio was pre-empted by reports from the Tour de France (which a Spaniard ended up winning, of course). I knew that playing a club in Madrid in the middle of summer was a risky proposition—Madrid empties out at this time of year and many of my friends and colleagues were on vacation elsewhere--so I wasn’t as disappointed as you might think when in fact about 30-40 people were there to see us. After all, we were the support act, so bore no responsibility for the outcome! However, we more than rose to the occasion to deliver a bombastic, full on show. I even attempted to scale the dinghy that houses the soundboard. Other highlights included me singing in duet with a blind gentleman who managed to fake his way thru the words very convincingly; the Super Ratones singer Mario and drummer ‘Person’ joining us to recreate their harmonies on ‘Like So Many Times Before’—you haven’t heard this yet as it’s not on the Norwegian version of the album. We decided to go easy on the special guest stars and use the simpler mixes of the songs on this one. But no doubt the Spanish version will feature the SR guys. We’re working on making that release a reality soon.
Anyway, we tore the paint off the walls, we rocked so hard, to tell you the honest to dog’s truth (and there was a seeing eye dog there, that * didn’t * belong to the blind man). A clear indication of the warmth of our reception was that we sold over 20 CDs, some two thirds of the paying audience became converts right on the spot.
And the fun continued from there—the Super Ratones did their set, during which I joined them for the two songs on their album I contributed vocals (and even lyrics) to. So, I had to read a cheat sheet to remember all the Spanish bits but I held on! We also did ‘Going Going Gone’ together, and for the grand finale, the Disciplines and Super Ratones merged for the last encore (oh, I almost forgot the first encore, when I had to fake my way thru another Hollies song!) for an epic version of ‘Shadow of Your Doubt’.
This was a great, warm, night, and the people that were there got more than their money’s worth to be sure. And, I was extremely pleased to get to know the Super Ratones, they are top class people to a man, and I am hoping we get the chance to play with them in Argentina next year—we’re working on it, let’s put it that way!
BARCELONA, 7.25
We had no problems getting up and getting ourselves to the train station on time; I had booked a hotel for us for convenient access to Atocha. The train was packed, but it was comfortable; I recognized the spacious toilets with the futuristic sliding door from the trains I took in Germany with White Flag this year. We rolled into Barcelona Sants and were quickly met by Gemma, our publicity street team commander, and a film crew who would be shooting us non stop while we were in the city. We wrangled some cabs, who took as near to the hotel as they could, and we wound our way into the neighborhood off La Rambla where the club and hotel were situated.
Remember how sick I was last week? Well, my guys had all gotten ill before coming to Spain. But the July sun was good for their spirits, and they seemed to be getting better after a night of rest in Madrid (it was neither a late show nor an early morning).
So thru Gemma’s assistance and our dead reckoning, we chose the correct brances of the spiderweb of streets and spilled out on to the Placa Reial, home of Sidecar (which I have chronicled here with my great solo show there in 2004 and the amazing Posies show there last year). When we stumbled upon La Placa I had no idea which side we were on, but by following the edge we came upon the club and went into the basement. It was great to see the staff, all very friendly guys, and soon Mono (the Spanish, not the UK or Japanese Mono’s) arrived and we helped drag their gear down the steps. Many friends stopped by the soundcheck to say hi, and we were definitely on form already—the soundcheck had a small audience, and we rocked it. We then had a long and amusing interview for H Magazine, and then we had some time to chill. I say chill, but actually we went with the film crew to stuff our faces with tapas. Great guys (who became fans during the show).
Back to the club, we were very pleased to find it nice and full—Sidecar is tiny, so a little goes a long way, but we had nearly 100 people there. Mono was in progress, and they of course played too long, but people seemed to enjoy it, and their manager, who happens to be a very good looking woman, and I think hears the word ‘no’ about once a year max, was absolutely resolute in hear reassuring me that them playing too long, and us going on late, was no big deal. Well, in fact, she was right, in the end. But still, we hurried to get their stuff off the stage (at least the stuff we weren’t using!) and get going about 15 minutes later. We had a number of things work to our advantage. We were rested, but not cold—we’d played the night before. We were sober, but not TOO sober; we had a glass of wine or two before the show at dinner, but cut the edge with café afterwards. We had friends in the audience (Carlotta and Olivia from H Magazine, who are absolute loves; Julien, the drummer I’ve worked with on sessions in Paris was there; and more). And, there was a gang of Norwegian students, all cute teenage girls brimming with energy, who went apeshit from note one. All of this added up to a very, very, easy audience to win over, and we were prepared to the highest possible level. And the tiny stage at Sidecar (so comfortable as to feel to me like home field advantage) was a great lens for focusing our freak.
The show was shit hot, an explosion, an audience-jumping, ‘where the fuck did he pull that confetti from?’, sing-along, two-encore MOTHERF***ER of a show. And it’s all on video! The poor guys from Mono, they were trying to be positive, but you could see they felt like the queso grande before the show, and were pretty much humbled by the mighty gladiadores from Noruega. It was fucking huge, this one.
After this show, I felt so good, I didn’t want to fuck it up, so I did the smart thing and ordered a beer, because I loathe beer. It meant I could barely choke down a third of it, and then I had to get out of there. My bandmates were already drunk! I told them not to forget the gear, and when we had to leave the hotel the next morning. I said bye to my friends and walked back to the hotel; watched a bit of the Rogers cup (Murray vs. Djankovic), watched the terrifying film ‘American Blackout’ about the manipulation of, well, the disenfranchisement/disqualification of, potentially millions of black voters/votes in the last two presidential elections, and the witch hunt of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Please watch this film NOW, and help work towards free and fair elections in our country—we have spent billions trying to bring them to Iraq, and after watching this film, you will likely conclude that our elections stink. We are setting a piss poor example, to put it bluntly. Tho I should feel shame, I felt more of a cold knot of fear watching this film. We survived a coup d’etat…and it’s not over yet.
PALMA, 7.26
I had so much fun NOT feeling like shit this morning. I missed out on nothing more than Bjorn and Claus getting in a fight over who would carry which piece of equipment back to the hotel, which culminated in Claus jumping on Bjorn’s guitar case, Bjorn kicking Claus’ snare case, and Claus dragging his metal cymbal case thru the streets of Barcelona at 4am.
I poured these sorry assholes into a van and got us to the airport; then, expert tour manager that I am, got us in the VIP lounge.
We arrived, after a flight delay, in the late afternoon, to the enormous Palma de Mallorca airport. Perhaps the largest airport I have been in? Well, evidently Hong Kong is bigger, but for the size of city that PMI serves, it seems MUCH bigger than is warranted. You walk for miles to the gates (99 of them).
After gathering our stuff, we were greeted by the very tall and thin (think a hipster Spanish Abe Lincoln, as a vegan) Fede, from the free events guide Youthing magazine, who were the organizers of this nights ‘veredena’, which is a village fete, usually held in the main square of a smaller village (like the veredena the Posies played in Sa Pobla on Mallorca in 1998). We went in a van with some hippies and a dog to the site, and dropped off our gear. The site of the show was at the far end of the very long Parc de la Mar, which runs along between the old part of the city and the waterfront, although the main road out of town cuts the park off from the seawall. But, going into the park towards the historic center of Palma, you would come against the massive fortifications around the cathedral, and eventually spill out into the old city.
We then headed into town, and were dropped as near as we could drive to the Hostal we were staying in; here we met Dominique, who had flown in late the night before. The Hostal Brondo is a winding, rickety old collection of rooms, that must have been a super cool apartment when it was made. Now, it’s a sweet and friendly no frills pensione, shared bath on each floor, no phones or TVs in the rooms, kind of place. In literally 5 minutes Baard had managed to lock himself out while taking a shower! Next we needed to eat—Claus, being diabetic, had to actually eat before we ate! But when we did eat, we ate well. Fede, being vegan, had a hard time advising us, or actually a hard time watching us…and in the place we settled on, Claus and I ate a 500g steak! Oh, but it was heaven.
Now, after a steak like that, the main thing is…must…not…sleep…we did our soundcheck, and then we had some time to kill. So Dom and I wandered, and found a little café to chat and gossip and catch up.
We came back to the parc and the opening band was just going on, I knew one of the guys from Los Valendas, and this band was mysteriously called ‘Sitdownpussy’. I think it was a political reference, that a cop said that to a reveler celebrating the death of Franco, goes the anecdote. But, still…anyway, they did Wilco covers and such. They were so laid back they seemed in danger of wandering off in between songs. But it was good the sound team had them to experiment on!
By the time we were going on about 400-500 people were in the parc, enjoying drinks, watching bats flit overhead. Of course, even tho we were subject of great promotion before the show, they had no real idea of what we were about, and when we went on…woah, Nellie, they were scared shitless. Being a free show, you had the token drunk annoying guy who wanted all the attention for himself, but I am good at gently deflecting these types. I gathered the crowd in, and of course went mobile. I was on the DJ platform behind the crowd; I dumped the entire bar over at one point—most patrons were away but a few drinks were spilled so I ran back and gave everyone drink tickets! I danced, I crawled, I got the people jumping—a LOT! Shirt came off, a girl was fanning me with her oriental fan while screaming at the same time! We did encores, including ‘Flavor of the Month’ ‘Shadow of Your Doubt’ ‘Oslo’ ‘Hand of God’ and more. It was an AMAZING show, with a superb crowd. Neither side will forget the other for some time, methinks.
I was so tired when it ended, I had to go to bed straight away. I reminded the guys of the golden rule of touring—never leave the venue! You will always suffer if you do. They didn’t listen, and gave up halfway (maybe) thru a 10km hike to some shitty disco or other.
The next day was spent in Deia, a little community hugging a cove and ravine on the steep side of the island; Baard has a cousin living there; she and her husband and two lovely kids spent the day with us at the beach there. The guys flew back to Oslo that night; Dom and I spent the next couple of days checking out the fantastic restaurants in the city—namely,
Bar.co, out on one end of the bay of Palma; and the gastronomic highlight,
the Refectori, a gorgeous setting in an old convent, no turned zen garden. Incredible food and a stunning setting. The rest of the building is a very discreet hotel with an emphasis on modern design, but not in a cold way. We felt guilty in a sense as we had the place to ourselves that night—not one other patron was dining. A waste, but the effect for us was magical.
We had each night the same wine, a 2004 Pago de Maria, produced on the island, largely comprising of the ‘mantonegra’ grape. I haven’t been able to find much about it online, so I have to suggest that you search this bottle out if you are on Mallorca. Extremely well balanced, with a rich, dark liquorous fruit; it’s a dense and decadent red that might remind you of some of the burlier Napa Syrahs and Cabs. If you have more info on this wine, please write me! ken@kenstringfellow.com
Of course we visited the beaches too; the last day we were there we headed to the Nixe Palace hotel, with the intention of lunching in their gourmet restaurant; it wasn’t open for lunch. So, we had crappy bar food in the poolside lounge, and then went to spend the day at the stretch of beach in front of the hotel. The king has a small residence overlooking the same beach.
When it was getting near to departure time, we headed back up to the pool, showered there, dried in the sun, and changed in the bathroom. Ready to go, for the price of a cheap (sort of) lunch, the rental of two chaise lounges (€9,50) and two cortados we had the use of a five-star hotel for an entire day.
Being that this was yet *another* honeymoon for us, I was so sad to leave Dom, but I was able to see her off at the gate, since my flight to Oslo was just leaving a few gates down. I was in the first row of my SAS flight, which meant extra perks, like the drunk Norwegian holiday goers could spill their empty beer cans on me. Lightning was tearing huge rents in the sky as I took my €190 cab ride to Claus’ (the aiport express train had stopped running by that time).
Book of the year: as sad as I was to say farewell to Mason & Dixon, I have been eagerly devouring the late Tristan Egolf’s “Lord of the Barnyard” which is an absolutely gleeful teardown of the fat underbelly of America, anyone who even briefly suffered at the hands of hillbilly hellraisers or thought their evolutionary line of rational thinkers was in danger of being snuffed by devoluted cannibals with gun racks will feel a modicum of gratification here, and certainly will laugh outloud at the many zingers and inventive slurs thrown about here. Highly recommended.
That the man lived only two produce three books…the mind reels. I feel like I could have known him, being that he was also a musician, lived in Paris…well, that’s not much to go on but I sure would have *liked* to know him.
Love
KS
Oslo
