To my extreme delight, the bad weather forecast for Ile de Re at the beginning of last week never came. In fact, it was blazing hot Monday and Tuesday and I took full advantage, spending hours on the beach, swimming with Aden, and digging holes in the sand. I played hooky from email for three whole days. Three days! Dom joined me Tuesday night late and we flew to London the next morning. The day we flew was without question a day that would be better spent at a beach than under the permanent overcast conditions of the UK, but, it was too late to reprogram history at that point. We walked out in the pure apricot-colored sunshine on the tarmac at the amusingly small Aeroport La Rochelle-Ile de Re, and sat in the front row of our EasyJet flight to Gatwick. At present, LRH is only served by RyanAir (flying to Stansted and Dublin), EasyJet (flying to Gatwick and Bristol), Flybe (flying to Manchester) and the unimaginatively named Airlinair (flying to Lyon). In theory RyanAir or EasyJet also flies to Glasgow but I can’t find any evidence of that—anyway, last year, when I traveled to Glasgow, I had to do it in two steps: RyanAir to Stansted, and then on to GLA with EasyJet.
Boring, eh? I am an unabashed planespotter. After the safety demonstration on board, our captain seemed to take great delight in describing the pea soup summer-in-quotes conditions awaiting us on Blighty. At length. You could hear the groans up and down the aisle.
We descended thru the very opacity described by our skipper and adjusted to the midafternoon gloom. Formalities were taken care of, luggage claimed, and we boarded the train to Victoria. Really, looking at London’s grimmest architecture, the oppressive clouds…we were in shock.
We checked in to the K West hotel, the hipster watering hole that also happens to house bands on a regular basis. True, it is extremely good if you are playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire, which, well…we were! But, for a hotel that stakes its career on catering to preening little bitches (rock musicians), it sure left a few things to be desired. However, it is a spa hotel with 24 hour room service, and the beds are good, the products are Aveda, and the bathrup is nice n’ long (hotels in the UK are universally good at least at getting the bathtub done right—long and deep). There was functioning Ethernet in the room—I think in a decent hotel this should be standard—guests shouldn’t have to be subject to positioning around the wifi hub, and in dense, serpentine hotel buildings, wifi is never evenly distributed—Murphy vs. World, 1806, set the legal precedent with the modern result that the more time you have to finally catch up on mail, the less reliable the system will be; the one place you will be able to get wifi will be guaranteed to be isolated from any power outlets, etc. But here at K West, although a bit spendy at 15 quid a day, the net worked very well.
I had called ahead to check our res. was Ok, and check in went smoothly. I was the first to arrive, so I could make sure everyone would have no problems accessing their rooms (the first leg of Jody’s flight had been delayed as to make getting his second leg impossible, so the airline put him on the next day’s flight—which meant, he would be arriving at 9am on the day of the show. His office had called to cancel his room for tonight, but I reinstated the res., knowing that if he arrived at, say, 11, there would be little chance of him having anywhere to go. It turned out to be a very good TM move on my part!). When I had checked the res. over the phone, I asked if there were ironing boards and irons in the rooms (very important for us dandy rockers). I asked again when I checked in. Yes, of course, they said, each time. But there wasn’t one in mine. The sad truth is, my room also smelled of mold when you entered—but I was so busy and needed to jump online and not be off that I didn’t want to go thru changing rooms. I just sent Dom out to get incense! Next started the ordeal of getting an ironing board and iron delivered. Calls were placed. Nothing was delivered. Eventually we had to go.
I met Tim Hole, who is a manager etc., for a café in the lobby, and we proceeded over to a rehearsal studio just around the corner from Shepherd’s Bush Empire. And here, I did a 4.5 hour preproduction session with a great band called The Boy The Girl And All The World, avg. age about 20, who Tim works with. Basically, I went thru and helped arrange and tighten up two tracks for a potential single. I had heard a half dozen of their songs and loved the band; in the end, we worked on two new songs that they played for me, songs I heard for the first time right then and there. The band are incredibly talented, have a great work ethic, and were extremely cool for letting basically a complete stranger come in and rearrange their music. After we were done, I was pretty burnt, but I managed one last drink at the K West, and then crashed.
LONDON, 8/28
Our rate for the hotel, booked online, was really quite good, and included ‘FEB’. This is the Full English Breakfast, which is more than I really need, but, not knowing the continental was available in the bar, we did our duty and sat in the restaurant.
One funny bit: K West has a deal with Starbucks to serve their coffee. Your take away coffees from the bar will come in a Starbucks takeaway cup. However, at least in the drip coffeemaker, I saw the bartender (all bar staff at K West is required to be extremely thin, good looking – i.e., er, not likely to be from England ahahaa—females, preferably with accents like Sophia Loren or Zsa Zsa Gabor) loading in Nescafe to the machine.
I spent the day getting things like the guest list together for the show. AND as tour manager (eerily similar to my iron dilemma) I get to solve crises like this: despite the check and double check on the phone, when my backliner went to pick up the gear, the rental company had given us the wrong cymbals, something for a light jazz set rather than the heavy stuff Jody needs. Nothing else in house. I had to call around to rental companies to find the right stuff, at extra cost and wasting an hour of time, making the set up tensed and rushed, and I will DEFINITELY be posting on this blog to see how the rental company deals with this.
The Ting Tings: this is absolute, Kylie Minogue vs. Toni & Guy advert BOLLOCKS. If you have been hearing about them, and it’s being presented to you like it’s art rock, DO NOT BE FOOLED. This is major label b.s., another dose of drab pabulum, that happens, for the next 18 seconds, to be vaguely stylish. Fucked art, left to dance.
Eventually cymbals were sorted, gear was loaded in, band members either walked or were driven to Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
What an incredible venue. I had been here to see the magnificent recital of Oddessey and Oracle by the surviving Zombies earlier this year, and was thinking quite often “holy crap, this will be amazing when we play here”. And I wasn’t disappointed. This was a brilliant and inspiring venue. And run with great efficiency and thoughtfulness. We got our backline up, and commenced to soundcheck, me trying to put my fingers back in Big Star mode. Alex produced some sheet music, and proudly announced he had arranged Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance #4’ for us to play—I told him I’d need to run thru it on my own a few times.
As we were running a bit late, and we needed to let Robyn Hitchcock get set up, we ran thru a couple more things and then it was time to clear off—up until we went on I was totally going full speed: sorting the guest list, fielding calls from guests who weren’t sorted to the level they thought they should be (or that jet-lagged Jody had written down the wrong last name!), running thru the Elgar piece, trying to be friendly to people who stopped by the dressing room even tho I was totally stressing, and actually meeting with a colleague in all of this. Unfortunately, I had to miss most of Robyn’s set, and really only spoke to him for a few moments, despite the fact he’s one of my favorite people ever. I was genuinely nervous for this show—really, it was because I knew I hadn’t been able to properly prepare and I would be winging it during the show.
But, as soon as we walked out onstage (Alex unconvinced by the stage manager’s request to wait for the house lights to go down) and I saw those tiers of 1500 fans, I was OK and the music just happened, found its way out of my memory and on to the neck of my bass, and all was well. It was a magical show, IMHO. Alex was funny and charming. Jody was barely hanging on with exhaustion, but he played superbly well. Even ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ was eventually majestic, after the first go ‘round. For an encore we did ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’ and that was it…I went up to the dressing room and popped the champagne. It was truly surreal to have played to over a thousand strangers, and have them be so into it, and not owe them a thing afterwards.
We finished off the night with a couple of drinks at K West, with a few friends—and some fans from the show. One guy introduced himself and was so coked up he was holding on to me like he was being blown by a hurricane and I was the only tree in sight! I managed to avoid temptation, TYVM!
CLAPHAM, 8/29
Slept in. I happened to go for a walk and came across our van, parked by a gas station in the neighborhood, and scared the shit out of Tim our tech who was dazing off into the distance when I put my face on the window and made some noise! Haha.
We hit the road, and stopped 40 yards later, as I forgot something in my room!
Then it was almost 3 hours of winding our way out of London, past some of the worst zoning on earth—I mean, London apartment blocks are depressing enough, but there are those that face the busy London road that leads to the M1. And the greyness…argh. Eventually we passed thru the maze that is Bedford, and found our way to Twinwood. Twinwood was an air base in WWII, and served, among other things, as the point of arrival and departure for USO performers, as the BBC had been moved out to Bedfordshire. They held concerts in the amphitheatre there—Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Bob Hope, and…Glenn Miller, who was last seen taking off from Twinwood. Many of the base’s buildings are still there, and the whole area, also a farm, is owned privately by a family who use the amphitheatre to hold things like the Rhythm Festival. Essentially an oldies show, really, for the locals. We were preceeded onstage by Memphis legend Steve Cropper being backed by the Animals (one day they woke to find themselves Burdon-less), which was weird and cool. Steve plays a Peavey guitar!!
This show was a bit odd—we were the headliner, but after Stevanimal’s set, most of the crowd went off to see Chas and Dave on the small stage. Most folks didn’t seem to know who we were, even the ones remaining. I mean, we played fine, but it was kind of anticlimactic after playing to the enraptured London crowd. The highlight was the soul revue goodbye during ‘Mine Exclusively’ when everyone took solos…
this is YouTubed and it is awesome!
VIENNA, 8/31
We were dropped back in London late that night after the show—somehow there was a massive traffic jam going back to London at 1am. Harsh. I was up at 7, and had arranged an unlicensed cab to take me to Heathrow (only £29!). My driver was from Montenegro, we chatted about Balkan politics for the ride, which was only about 35 minutes. You’ve all heard the nightmares about Terminal 5, but they have worked out the bugs and in fact I found it very pleasant, not too crowded and quite friendly. I think British are working hard on their customers. The in-flight service was top notch, and we were even served a meal, on a two-hour flight to Vienna. Impressive! And the flight was something like $300, not bad for a major carrier, really. Also, my suitcase made it, if you were wondering.
A huge Merc picked me up, and ushered me to the
Schloss Wilhelminenberg, an 18th-century hunting estate that is now a luxury hotel with an incredible view of Vienna, sitting as it does on a hill quite high, but directly adjacent to the modern city.
I checked in, and immediately got to work booking flights for a just-booked Disciplines show for the end of this months (tba soon).
What was the gig? Not your typical show, but the wedding of Doris and Bernhard, a lovely couple that happen to be KS fans. Doris has her degree in mathematics, and now computes risks related things for an insurance co; Bernhard is an
ENT doc—a good guy to know! His family, believe it or not, vacations each year at La Rochelle, having bought a flat there. So, we are summer neighbors, and I will hope to see them there in the future!
Now, playing a wedding is a special thing. And in the context of such a thing, my songs can be quite, well, intensely apropos, really! When I finally did play my set, after the dinner, and after the band had played awhile (friends of the couple happen to have a cover band, it was great fun to dance to everything from Elvis to Robbie Williams covers), I found it overwhelming, and was of course barely able to play between sobs! Haha! It was wonderful, really, a very nice feeling. The hotel was hosting two big weddings that day, in fact, and the other wedding involved a massive fireworks display that we all rushed out to watch, and then we resumed for more sobs! My voice wavered like a grandma’s, but it was all in good spirit, and the audience was with me, not a dry eye in the house I think. After that, I was exhausted, but wanted to stay and enjoy the party, stuff my face with petits-fours, and dance to the band. Finally we all wore down, and I was able to get some decent sleep in my castle suite.
Next day I watched the somewhat ludicrous Billy Wilder film ‘Ace in the Hole’…tried to resist eating the doggie box of petits-fours the couple had given me. Many of us from the wedding had breakfast on the terrace looking over the city, and as I went to the airport, I really had the impression summer was giving it’s grand goodbye, it was a glorious day.
One delayed flight later, and I was back home in Paris, and have ever since been sword-fighting thru millions of emails, hotel bookings, rececipts, phone calls, and what not.
Next up: REM tour!
Love
KS
Paris
