ANDALSNES, 7/31
The night before, my bandmates cleared out the rehearsal place, as Briskeby is subletting it to the National Bank. My bandmates all stayed at Claus’ haus, which was fun. In the morning we all went shopping at Tiger of Sweden for new threads. I picked up some elf boots, and a sweet ensemble in grey for the next shows.
We trained thru the mountains, winding down ever narrower crevasses, taking steep grades that make hairpin turns inside mountains, crossing a raging river several times, and finally, after switching to a tiny two car train, arriving in the evening to Andalsnes, a small town sitting on a fjord, miles away from the open sea. A car came to pick up our gear, and we walked up to the Grand Hotel Bellevue, the tallest building in town, itself perched on a promontory with a commanding view of the fjord and the surrounding mountains. The landscape, with numerous cascades spilling out over impossibly high and steep rock faces, is very Tolkein-worthy, so it was to our great amusement that our host for the evening was named Frode (you pronounce the last ‘e’ as separate syllable, so, his name is said ‘fro-deh’). We checked in to the hotel, had a look at the theatre where we’d be playing, which was the lower floor of the hotel itself, and had dinner. I was pleased to discover, with my busted wifi antenna, that the wifi hub for our floor was actually *in * my room. We had a decent dinner in the hotel restaurant, and since it was a festival style show, we had nothing to do and no access to the stage til quite late. Email binge!
I came down to the backstage, thru a lobby full of Norwegian kids well into their drinking for the evening, at after midnight, when the preceding band was already done.
We quickly set up, and were on at 1am. As we began, the kids filtered back in from the lobby and the terrace and began filling up the room. They were into it from word go; the crowd was generally quite young, they were definitely quite drunk, and being mostly inhabitants of the surrounding area, they were up for it in a major way. So, we, being fresh and rested, were ready to deliver a full on ass whipping. It was great! We sounded like a million kroner, and the kids were losing it. Awesome! As soon as we were done, the venue was closing, which hampered CD sales a bit, but also kids had spent their allowance that week on frothy lagers, too. But it was great to meet the peeps, and folks were genuinely into the show, including some really young ones, there were kids as young as 10-12…great to have young fans, they should stick with us for awhile!
We did ‘Solar Sister’ in the encore…
After the show, I hurried to get to bed, of course the nicer the single hotel room the shorter the stay, that’s the rule of tour, and as I got to bed at about 3…
STORAAS, 8/1
…I was up at 6.15. I had warned my band about this leg of the journey, multiple times. So we were all prepared for the worst, most brutal trip ever. Nobody really drank after the show. And thus, when we were shuttled down to the train station (just 2 minutes drive from the hotel) to catch a bus to Molde at 7.30, we were actually in better shape than we should have been. I myself was feeling great, and it was a stunning morning. I sat up front as we headed to Molde for the next hour and a half, picking up and dropping passengers on the way. There was a short hop over a fjord on a ferry, and since the bus headed first up the fjord, then around the end of it, then worked its way west, we had a perfect panorama of the scenery, really for the first time—the train takes narrower breaks thru the mountains coming from the east, so you are looking straight up mountains and cliffs on either side—the bus heads west where the countryside starts to level, so you can look back at the mountains and marvel. We arrived to Molde with an hour and a half before the next bus was leaving for Storaas. The only source of food and coffee seemed to be this old diner above the bus station, but it dawned upon me to explore a fish shop nearby, and I bought some excellent smoked salmon and gravlax. I was able to spread this out and eat it when we had another short ferry ride across a fjord and I could leave the bus for awhile.
Eventually we were dropped off at the village of Storaas, site of the Storaasfestival. Spread around a gravelly quarry site, the festival entertains some 5000 people. We were the first band on the second stage, so, it wasn’t long after we arrived that we were setting up, and playing, to what seemed like zero people when we went onstage, but, people started trickling in and soon we had a marvelous crowd. In fact, this show was a fantastic one, full of all kinds of mischief. At one point someone put their toothbrush in my pocket! And I sang part of some song using the bristles as a kind of moustache…the facial hair theme continued when I crawled up under a guy’s big ZZ Top beard (someone told me he was a guy from the band Motorpsycho).
I can put this and Raumarock (Andalsnes) up there with the best of ‘em.
After our set, Sons and Daughters, from Glasgow, used our bass/guitar and pedals for their set, as their luggage was lost in their travels. Great band, and being Scottish, well, the default setting of a Scot is super kind and friendly.
STORAAS, 8/1 pt. 2
Eventually we went to our hotel, which was a collection of troll cottages very far away from the festival. After a short chat with the guys from Mudhoney, who were just checking in after arriving from the states, Bjorn and I got back in a van and headed back to the site, and I played ANOTHER show. Totally different, and believe me, after the Disciplines show, plus playing til 2 am the night before, plus getting up at 6 this morning, with my legs all bruised and beat to shit after slipping sliding crawling and jumping with the Discplines, I could easily have been in bed by 8pm. But, duty called, and I wandered over to the campfire stage with some trepidation. Would anyone be there? Would I even be audible above the din of 3 stages all blaring away around me? Well, I set up and people started trickling in and sitting around the fire. In fact, this show turned out to be wonderful. I played to about 150 people, just the right size, so I could go off mic (there was a pause in the festival program that allowed me not to have to compete with all the other stuff for most of my set). People were really into it, and in fact since my voice was edgy from two Disciplines shows and little sleep, it was very emotional sounding, I love when it’s like that. Wonderful show!
After the show Bjorn and I watched some of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, who I believe has the easiest job in show business—get a crack band to lay down the groove, and make some nursery rhyme shit up on top. But, that’s to say that it was highly enjoyable! He wheels a rolling suitcase onstage with him, and off when he goes…the tour money?
And, following that, we watched Propaghandi, the excellent Canadian punk band, who I’ve been a fan of for a decade or so. They don’t play festivals with corporate sponsors, so they are a rare sight on the Euro festival circuit. Sporting wicked riffs, at least one terrible moustache, and passionate convictions on subjects of freedom, (anti) nationalism, racism, etc. Very good! We were beat, and we had few opportunities to get back to the hotel, some 30 minutes away, so we took a van leaving at 1am, just as Blondie kicked off on the mainstage with ‘Hanging on the Telephone’.
ASKOY, 8/2
Not too early a departure, and perhaps more time in Trondheim airport than we really needed (flight was an hour late) but we arrived in Bergen, and settled into our hotel. Lots of down time, mmm!
In the evening, a van drove us to Askoy, about 30 minutes from Bergen, and dropped us off at the local yacht club. That was the HQ for the Lost Weekend Festival. Dinner was served on picnic tables (with a little patience I obtained some wonderful poached salmon). I chatted with Thom Hell and band, and Surferosa. Then we, and our gear, were loaded onto a boat, along with a crew of Dutch travelers who had sailed to Iceland and back…we worked our way into a tiny little inlet, and pulled up directly alongside the mainstage, where the Waterboys were in full swing. The festival site is spread on a little crag of stone and pine trees, lovely spot.
The Waterboys could be called the de facto headliners, they certainly had a the crowd’s attention, and they went on to do a two song encore. They did lose some points for covering Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. I asked aloud if there wasn’t a UN Mandate to ensure the non-proliferation of cover versions of that very song…
Ok, they were soon done, they sounded good, really…then we set up…it looked like a damn ghost town. I thought, ‘oh, no, big mistake that we were put on after them’. But, when we started, as will happen in festivals, people started to filter back and eventually we had a crowd. It was the late night crowd, so lots of drunk freaks, so the show had a weird edge to it. When I was out in the crowd a female security guard started pushing me, telling me I had to get back to the stage, and people could get hurt. Now, if I hadn’t done ten shows like this already, I would wonder, but having been a veteran of punk shows, with slam dancing, stage diving, and other potentially injurious behavior, I had a bit more faith in my audience than that. As much as they were drunk Norwegians, they weren’t turkeys doomed to drown by looking up in a rainstorm. In the old days, I would have just head butted her, and gone directly to jail. But, I was calm enough to say “this is my show, I make the rules, and you are overstepping your authority’ and refused to comply! KS 1, the (wo)Man, Null!
So, no one got hurt. I think I liked the first two shows better, since the audiences were just a bit less fucked up, and I was less tired, but, people loved this show. Our sound engineer, Lasse, said it was by far the best sound of the three. And the praise I got from the other bands! After our set, the DeLillos heaped praise upon us; the singer of local band Sagh (which means ‘Saw’, as in the tool), told me that he was just amazed and inspired; and the singer for the headliners, the very Alice In Chains-ish Audrey Horne (who were very good), came to say: “thank you for making my job the hardest job in show business! How am I supposed to follow that??”. So, I guess it was pretty good! I was very happy that it gave some inspiration to my peers!
After the show, we watched some Audrey Horne, then boated back to Askoy YC with some very drunken DeLillos (who? You ask—The DeLillos have been one of Norway’s biggest bands, for over 20 years. Singing in Norwegian, you won’t have heard of them if you’re not from there, but everybody knows them here), and then were shuttled into vans back to the hotel, by which time it was after 3am and time to sleep…at least for me!
Today, in the hotel a fire alarm went off at 7am, followed by message (in Norwegian) that it was a false alarm. I tried to call the front desk…no effect. So I got dressed and went down to the lobby. OK, found out we were not on fire. I couldn’t sleep, as tired as I thought I was…ANOTHER alarm went off but was quickly followed by an all clear. Evidently the toaster in the kitchen was acting up. I kid you not!
I had lunch with REM’s tour manager Bob Whittaker and his gal Val. He was on holiday as the tour has a break in it, and picked Bergen as a place that would be away from the summer heat and not too touristy. Except that Bergen IS full of tourists, but just around the fish market.
Now back in Oslo, ready for Oya, O ya!
Love
KS
Oslo
