10.26.2008 SUNDAY'S EXTRA HOUR The ultimate snooze button, the end of daylight savings time Crystal Pistol, Crystal Castles, Crystal Skulls--'crystal' is to indie bands in 2008 what 'wolf' (Wolf Eyes, Wolf Parade, Wolfmother) was to 2005! Don't think I'm not paying attention, ya'll. Let's get the jump for 2009, and pick a word we can all have fun with for next year's (danceable) indie onslaught. I find wolves scary--and crystals, too, having grown up in Bellingham with lots of new agers. How about the ultimate symbol of life? The Egg!! Egg Palace, I'm from Egg!, I Believe in the Egg and the Egg Believes in Me, Get Egg Wear Egg Poach. Etc. I got home on Monday and was pleased to find my daughter was feeling much better. Back to her old mischievous self. Thank you to everyone who sent in concerned mails. This week I have been deep in mixing the Minky record. Playing on some of the songs, and just tweaking digital things here and there sending files hither and yon. That's an all-consuming job--I was still working when the clocks went back this morning at 3. I slept til noon today and have decided to take the day off and enjoy a little ear refresher. I took time out to see two shows this week--on Wednesday I went to the rehearsal of the performance, part of a series of Serge Gainsbourg related events--in this case it was frequent Serge collaborator Jean-Claude Vannier directing an orchestra and choir to replicate the full sound of his own albums 'bis' and his music concrete (envisioned as a ballet) magnum opus 'L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches', plus a performance of Serge's album 'L'histoire de Melody Nelson', which was originally arranged magnificently by Vannier. Herbie Flowers was in the house to play his wicked bass line that underpins the album; Serge's words were performed by different vocalists for each song--Mathieu Amalric, who played the incredible lead role in the Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Brian Molko from Palcebo, Daniel D'arc, and so on; Jane Birkin didn't perform but her parts were done by another revolving cast--Martina Topley-Bird, the absolutely out-there Brigitte Fontaine, etc. Cool. 'L'Enfant...' features many found sounds--from a box for making gravelly footsteps sounds, like you find in a foley studio, to pots and pans played with an egg beater, etc. Last night I went to see the Rodney Graham Band, perform Rodney's wry songs (kind of David Byrne-like naivete/observations of the mundane for dry comic effect sort of thing) in the auditorium of the Louvre. This is a spacious theatre in the I.M. Pei designed main hall, lots of travertine and recessed squares etc. Rodney is of course well known for his work in art contemporain, and this show coincides with the FIAC. His backing band has the drummer from Copyright, plus Dave Carswell (who I know from early Posies shows with his old band the Smugglers) and John Collins--whom I didn't know personally but have admired his work with Dave, on Tegan and Sara e.g. I hooked the band up with a guitar tech for their Paris show, and after the show received a nice glass of Pommery as a reward, also chatted with Dave and John. At this backstage reception there were lots of art nerds, gallery owners and such, and Jarvis Cocker, who is looking rather gaunt and beardy--it's like the Robinson Crusoe version of the dandy from Pulp. I received in the post this week the album by A Life A Song A Cigarette that I produced, the album is called Black Air and will be released in the German speaking countries next month. It's in English tho! You can vote for their single 'Marie' to be single of the week on Austrian National Radio here...chime in! Love KS Paris 10.19.2008 Arriving home from Spain, I wasn't long in the door before I was firing up my MacBook Pro and doing some recording--I did a piano part for the Tater Totz upcoming split 7" with...The Beatles! Monday I was just too burnt from the tour to accomplish much. I think I went to bed at like 8pm. From then, I started mixing and adding tracks to the new album by Minky Starshine, whose album 'Hooray For L.A.' I worked on (I produced and mixed 5 songs) these new recordings sound amazing, it was a pleasure to get to mix and mess around with them. In fact, it appears I am mixing ex-Posie Mike Musburger's drums on these tracks. When inspired, I added some guitar, keyboards, vocals, percussion etc...more mixing to come when I get back to Paris tomorrow. MALTA, 10/17 I saw Dom and Aden off in the morning as they went to school, walking down the stairs with them, me carrying my guitar and bags, I stopped at the front door and waited for my airport shuttle. I just refuse to walk up to Bastille with all my stuff, and find there's no cabs at the cab stand, and have to panic each time I fly from Orly. Calling taxis is not that practical either--they tend to drive off if you're not down fast enough, and they run the meter from the time you call them, not from the time they pick you up. The shuttle is cool because it can be booked online. It might take a little longer (not today-I was the only pickup) and cost 5-7 Euros more than the average taxi trip, but it's much better for ye olde peace of mind. I boarded Air Malta's morning flight, the only daily flight, to Malta's Luqa airport. Air Malta has comfortable new Airbus planes, actually serves an inflight meal, was tolerant of my bags, was relatively cheap, and the staff is friendly. Big thumbs up. Now, I love to play music in and generally experience new places--I try and visit a few new places each year (last year I went to Bosnia and Luxembourg to perform, for example). Malta seems on the outside quite accessible--English is widely spoken, in the Euro zone, direct flight from Paris--but those small advantages don't betray the fact that Malta is unique microcivilization operating in its own rhythms and with its own priorities. But, a few web shots in the dark produced a result--the owners of the Lemon N Lime pub in Marsascala Bay wrote me back and said they'd be delighted to have me come and play. They offered to arrange my equipment and said they had a flat above the bar for me to stay in. Fantastic. My emails with Carmen, one of the owners, were friendly and they were excited about the show even before they knew much about me--the n they did their Googling and found a bit more about my background, but anyway, they were already into the idea, this just gave them some promotional help. They suggested that a local musician, Ray Mercieca, open the shows. As it turns out, Ray is rather a music legend, part of long time punk/ska bands the Rifffs and the Characters, and really a local hero--it was extremely generous of him to lend his support (and gear) for these shows. More on this later. Malta was overcast, so it wasn't visible until we were almost touching down. The dense honeycomb of buildings that covers much of the island (the world's most densely populated nation) is intense--a human coral reef, adhered to the scraggy rocks in a fractal matrix of endlessly repeated block forms, jumbled organically. Much of the island is a kind of sandstone that's quite easy to carve, and 4000+ years of inhabitatnts have left a jumble of wonderfully intricate passageways, staircases, bridges, and most of all, ramparts. The entire island is one massive fort, in many ways. At least from the vantage point of Valetta, the capital city, you get that impression. The complexity of the harbor's shape makes it, well, the perfect place to build a fort. For an island with not a ton of natural resources--left to its own devices, it would be mostly covered in cactus--I had to wonder why so many armies/navies have hacked, clubbed, stabbed, bombed, etc each other to bits over this little place--and then further thought: just like the celebrity who makes sure to be surrounded by huge bodyguards is almost *asking* to be hassled, maybe the fact that this island lends itself to well to fortification just made the suggestion undeniable to resident civilizations, which led the next would-be conquerors to think "well, if they are fortifying this place to heavily, they must have a reason--it must be worth something!". And so on--once having taken it at such great cost, it became an investment in effort to be retained at any cost! And the ramparts went up ever higher--in absurd shapes and sizes. The cities suggest part MC Escher, part Max Ernst. Looking at a strange abandoned tower that rose up alongside another huge citadel wall, then crossed over at the top--I could think of no reasonable explanation for this arrangement--I couldn't help but feel in a land of Dali design-reinforced by the sandy color of all the building material here. Looking down from the Upper Barrakka Gardens, or Hastings Gardens, at the jumble of the Three Cities or Silema, is to look down on the intricacy of human activity, but frozen and recorded as architecture. It is a density of detail that almost imparts a kind of madness--it's fascinating and overwhelming. A jigsaw puzzle where each piece is a bridge, a tower, an archway, a causeway, the wall of a citadel. It's a sight/site that is both a unique, alien kind of substance--but also an iteration, a culmination of European monument building but swollen on the scale of something that you thought could only be dreamt. In other words, it's made of familiar bits--pieces of Moroccan or Italian or Spanish influence--but assembled into something that could exist in Malta. As I stepped off the plane my phone started to vibrate. It was Dominique, telling me she had taken Aden to the hospital, she had been called to collect her from school as she was very sick. As it turns out, my daughter had viral meningitis. This is serious, but far less so and not to be confused with bacterial meningitis, which is often fatal. Viral meningitis is not treatable but the body can usually conquer it. Aden was put on a drip that was meant to boost her immune system, and since this was done the first day she had symptoms, she was already much better the next day, and is recovering. But, there was a tense period where we weren't sure if she didn't have something more serious. No need to say I felt terrible that this all went down just as I left for three days of what was more or less vacation. But, I tried to stay positive, and Carmen and Paddy, the owners of the place I was playing and my hosts, made their phones available for Dominique to reach me and so on. I hadn't much choice but to stay calm, stay in touch as best I could with home, and try to relax and enjoy the trip. But it did knock me off my game ever so slightly. It was Carmen who picked me up and drove me to Marsascala Bay, which is on Malta's more local/laid back 'south side'. The 'north side' seems to be a kind of St. Tropez; the south side is, well, more off the beaten path--even tho nothing on Malta is more than 20 miles from anywhere else on the island. I dropped my stuff at the flat I was given, a lovely little holiday flat with kitchenette, a balcony overlooking the harbor, and so on. I set up my computer, grabbed some wifi and started reading about meningitis. Then I headed downstairs and to the other side of the same block to the Lemon N Lime Pub, which faces the harbor and is directly below my flat, but my flat is accessed on the backstreet. Marina Road along the harbor is lined with cafes and pubs, and LnL fits into the landscape very well with its neighbors and is very popular with locals and just-passing-thru-ers. In Malta, you will find many many folks from Britain who have a) exploited Maltese family roots to come and live there b) stopped thru and married a local c) retired to a warm and sunny place with right hand drive. So much of the nightlife, food, etc. incorporates British sensibilities, much like Mallorca accomodates its huge numbers of German visitors and residents in what it offers. But, having said that, the pubs there aren't like British pubs--there's no carpet etc. But, you're sure to meet about as many British expats as you are Maltese born and bred, at least in Marsascala Bay and other places I gathered this impression. Once in the pub, and after having Dom call their phone and give me a reassuring update, I sipped the first of many macchiatos and met Ray. As I mentioned, Ray is really a local hero; he's half Maltese but began his life in London's east end, lived in Malta a bit as a kid, but mostly lived in London--tho he's also lived in the US and been around here and there playing music. He formed his band the Characters in London but found big success when the band moved to Malta--the songs are big, singalong rockers--anthemic to like the Oasis level. Good stuff! Now he fronts the Rifffs, yes with 3 f's, a super rocking Ska band. Anyway, in Malta, Ray's support and endorsement were a big help to generate interest in advance and during the night. The live music scene in Malta is pretty small, and in general people are more into cover bands or stadium-level music there. I had earnest talks with people more than a decade younger than me about their love of Genesis and Pink Floyd--which is cool, but in general, Malta does not do indie rock, at least not as far as I could detect. I was told in advance about this, and not to expect much. We met, and Ray is just a sincere, warm person--full of great stories, great enthusiasm and great generosity of spirit. It's pretty much impossible not to like him from the get go. We had look at the gear and set up, and Ray did a little soundcheck, with me giving feedback and tweaking the sound. I went off and had lovely dinner at Ximo, a tiny family restaurant up the road, with Carmen, Paddy and their preteen son Ryan. I was introduced to the lampuki, the young version of the dolphin fish, which begin their life around Malta before heading to the open sea and growing into enormous Mahi Mahi found around the world. Or so the lore reports in Malta! We came back to the LnL and began the show. Ray got up, and played a few songs, to the delight of everyone, and then I joined him for harmonies on a medley of "The One I Love"/"Eleanor Rigby", then I stayed on did my bit. This first night ended well, mostly with me playing up in the midst of the audience, doing my wandering bit, but, I was just a little out of practice--so my voice broke a coupla times, and it doesn't take much for me to get spooked. The audience was curious, but not knowing the material, they were getting restless and I didn't do much to ease them into it, I went off the mic pretty much straight away, etc.--too make matters worse, a bug in the keyboard's OS was causing it to snap up to a whole step higher than normal, so all my piano songs were in the wrong key and difficult to sing. By the end of the night I was more relaxed and doing better but, it was a curious night, and not exactly a triumph. But no disaster either. I also did a few more songs with Ray--we just did whatever came to mind, even Doors covers--!! and that was really fun. And, Ray and I had a great time talking after the show. He was really impressed by what I did, and very encouraging. He lamented the short attention span and narrow range of interest of typical Maltese audiences etc. MALTA, 10/18 The next day I spent on the rocks in Karkala, one of the 'three cities'--the fingers of land that make up part of the inlet that houses Valetta. All of these fingers are coated in battlements and ramparts galore. I was with a mix of British, Australian and Maltese friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to fish. An enormous cloud twisted in a tiny orbit overhead, occasionally the sun would be at full strength and I took these moments to jump in the water, hauling myself up on the rocks which were coated with velvety purple sea vegetation, which felt very much like 70s shag carpeting, oddly pleasant. Small black fish were clearly visible around me as I swam. I had a few pastizzi, or filo pies with either peas or cheese, and just chilled, listening to 70s rock hits ("I'm Not In Love", "Philadelphia Freedom" etc) on Maltese radio. Eventually, the fishers were discouraged enough to give up, and I went back to my flat to clean up, and went for a long rambling walk along the Marsascala harbor, to St. Thomas' Bay, with cliffs and grottoes and wild patterns of water sculpted rock. I dined at Ximo's again, taking in some lovely purple-red king prawns, and went to approach this show with a better idea of how to hold the Maltese attention. This show was absolutely successful--a real triumph in fact. We did the same Ray/REM duet/me segue, and I was in much better form, and didn't push the audience quite so hard. I relaxed, they relaxed and we all had a great time. Ray and I did tons of stuff together at the end, everything from Buddy Holly to ABBA, and we had fixed the piano problem this time, so I was able to jam and generally we--me, Ray, audience--had a HUGE night. We weren't allowed to stop--they just asked for more and more. I guess we played for like three hours. We did 'Love Hurts' TWICE. Is was that kind of night. And that's not to say I only did covers, but I found that doing a generous portion of covers and having a bit of fun with it kept the general attention span going and made people more receptive to my own stuff. I managed to do different songs each night, too. I probably played about 50 different songs between the two nights, all told. I was really glad I had this second night to get it together and all told, it was a marvelous, memorable experience, and I'm deeply indepted to Ray, Carmen and Paddy for taking a big chance on me and treating me so well. I wasn't allowed to pay for anything while I was on the island--this held true with other locals who took care of me--like Helen and Jason, my hosts on the Saturday in Karkala. Sunday I spent with Carmen, Paddy, Ryan and eventually Paddy's son John and his friends Tim and Melanie all joined. I was taken to Mdina, another fortified old city; we had lunch, drank Maltese Chardonnay, took a little typical Maltese skiff over to Valletta and explored, and finished with a cocktail--a liquor made from artichokes, yes, artichokes--mixed with the spicy local soft drink, Kinnie. I believe the artichoke beverage is the local variant of the Italian Cynar, or it may have been Cynar itself. I bade my hosts goodbye and goodnight, and am heading to bed after this posting, my flight leaves early tomorrow morning (well, it's after midnight now so really leaving in just a few hours). Love KS Marsascala, MALTA 10.12.2008 I got home to Paris and found copies of "Far Too Honest" by This is Benji; an album I produced for this Tulsa OK based artist. Hearing it back on CD made me feel great, it's an ambitious, lovely, dark album from this talented songwriter. Check out more at http://thisisbenji.com/ CADIZ, 10/8 Although we were pretty burnt, and you have to save gas at some points, we still rocked this one, in a kind of ragged glory sort of way. And lo and behold, we were taken to a lovely dinner at an actual restaurant—as opposed to being given €15 and fending for ourselves, which for me usually means eating the jamon in our dressing room—not a bad thing, but it’s a huge difference to sit down at a table with white linen, have a glass of wine that you’ve chosen, and order off a menu. The show, in the same university auditorium we played in 2001, was jam packed…we delivered, and I can say that even tho we were broken and tired, we gave 200% and made any band half our age look like slugs. Mr. and Ms. Paco Loco were in the house, which was a pleasure. This show was filmed for local TV, expect boots soon. I didn’t really have a chance to appreciate our hotel, Las Cortes de Cadiz, til the next morning. I awoke at 7.45 to a call from my daughter, before she went to school, which meant stumbling around in the dark trying tog et some clothes on, to run out to the central atrium of the place to get decent cell reception. Then it was time to get up, anyway. LLOSETA, 10/9 So, Las Cortes de Cadiz is a stately old building with a very dramatic central courtyard and elegant rooms. And delicious breakfast supplies: they pack a lot of quality into a small breakfast chamber. We exited and walked to where the van was waiting for us, and remarked on the crystal beauty of the morning. We had a long look at gorgeous Cadiz, a pile of ancient influences—sometimes Greek, sometimes Roman, sometimes Turkish…I had remarked on the way in the day before that Cadiz is a city whose identity crisis suits it very well. Sergio dropped us off at Seville airport and we flew to Palma, checking in amongst a hoard of preteens who had been part of some exchange program, they were all, about 40 of them, going thru teary goodbyes. It made for a strange scene. When we landed in Mallorca, it was actually raining, the first inclement weather we’d seen the whole trip…after our 6 mile hike to the baggage claim, our man Carlos picked us up and shuttled us to the hotel. True to tradition, the appearance of rain had produced bumper to bumper traffic—sometimes a little too literally for the comfort of certain drivers—we saw a four-car pile up; hard to arrange when everyone’s going 20 miles an hour, but somehow they managed. We had some chill time at the hotel, and then we were shuttled into the heart of Mallorca, to the small town of Lloseta, where pesetas had been scrimped to produce a rather stunning public theater of modern sleekness. Our show here had been sold out for over a week and the organizers were a bit nervous about how to accommodate all the will call tickets, etc. During the Cadiz show my trusty Gretsch had started to exhibit permanent fatal errors—actually they started to become apparent towards the end of the Madrid show, but by Cadiz it was starting to affect the whole deal—my neck had become somehow warped or out of whack, and being as I had no guitar chiropracticioner handy, I had to surrender to the inevitable and start calling for backup. So, in Lloseta I was provided with a black telecaster, and new strings, and Jon had an extra set of straplocks and an extra strap so I was sorted. Before the show I had complained about availability of food so they made sure to send Matt & I to the local grill, where I was served up a splayed rabbit, head and all, which suited me just fine…came back to the show, and there were 600 more people there than there were at soundcheck, and we got right down to business. A lot of people didn’t know who we were exactly, they just got swept up in the hype, but they were all fans by the end—we beat ‘em down with licks and fury. After the show, I made a sweeping gesture to clear the merch table of drinks, heheh I get a kind of enjoyment of that…just dump it right over and put our stuff on it. We sold tons of CDs, and I evaded some particularly bossy fans, or non fans, actually—when you find yourself popular, you start to attract weirdos. There’s a certain kind of ‘fan’ that loves you so much they seem to hate you. I can’t explain it, but if you’ve been in a band with any kind of popularity you know about this kind of oversensitive, attention-seeking type that complains about everything you didn’t and did do for them. It’s a drag. We drove back to Palma, rain softly pinging the windshield, and got a decent sleep. SAN SEBASTIAN, 10/10 Our first visit to San Sebastian, I was very excited. I had been long overdue to visit Spain’s capital of beauty, food and coolness. Our flight landed, we met up with Sergio, and we drove to the hotel, which was in a small town outside of Donostia—everything in SS had been booked up by the time the promoter sorted our accommodations out. No worries. One thing about the Basque country: it has its own font, a kind of whimsical, 1950s food product that is equal parts Swiss chalet and circus poster. It says rustic and fun in one go. Generally, it’s all caps except for the ‘i’ which you can take to mean whatever existential message you want to interpret from that. After a short (too short) rest, we wound our way into this lovely city, heading up the avenue that parallels the river, marveling at the perfect arrangement of stately buildings and overlapping trees. And we hadn’t even seen it’s famous crescent of sand, yet. We pulled up to the club, a massive multi-use cultural center that was outfitted a bit like an aircraft carrier inside, and Sergio ordered us not to do any work but go eat something, bless him. The promoter took us around the corner to a little bar, and we were blindsided by an absolutely fantastic meal—the highlight was a kind of chorizo brochette, placed over a ceramic trough (shaped like a pig in this case), just about 10 inches long, which is filled with a mixture of cognac and herbs and then lit by a match. The flames convert the already succulent sausage into meat candy, oh yes. This was accompanied by local cider (which is very light and refreshing), and we added a few other dishes, all delicious, including grilled prawns that were so juicy and broken down it made more sense to pop the head off and eat the things, shell and all, than to go thru the trouble of trying to clean them. Yes, I made sure to suck the brains out too. Best bits! No need to say, the promoter refused to let us pay for lunch. After we soundchecked, we went back to our little town of Lasarte and slept. We had been scheduled to make an appearance at the local FNAC, but I had only agreed to it on the condition it take place immediately after soundcheck—i.e., at 17h, and that someone come and meet us at the club, pick us up, take us there, and bring us back right away. No one came, and when we called the place they said we were to come at 7—which meant right in the middle of our rest period—knowing we had a 30 minute drive each way to our hotel. In other words, thanks but no thanks—we weren’t promoting anything new, it was to be a favor to the store, and they knew the deal and broke it. So, no deal. We went back to the hotel and slept. I know it sounds like we are all lazy dogs but I can tell you, these shows are incredibly demanding physically—and we do one everyday. Plus drive or fly for several hours each day. We are always up early, and always up late. So, we rest when we can, and a week into the tour, with no days off, we were pretty much in survival mode anytime we weren’t onstage (and sometimes even there, tho we didn’t let it show). In the evening, we met up for dinner at a local rock club/resto called Bukowski, cool trendy place; we ate with the boys from Half Foot Outside, who were supporting us that evening, and our friend Jose from Loreak Mendian clothing, who has given us a number of freebies over the years—you’ve seen me wear a lot of their stuff onstage, especially on the 2005 Posies tour. My Wikipedia portrait shows me in all LM gear. We walked back to the show, and the place had filled up, and after watching HFO (with Jon guesting on a few numbers) we set up and took the typically slouching Basque cool kids to task—we delivered a ripping, brutal set. People were loving it, we broke the Northern reserve quite handily. I had lots of fun with the little camera on a very long boom, pushing it out of my way like a nasty fly. Matt had been given the gift of Ballantine’s before the show, so he was a bloody mess—and kept standing on all my shit, but he still held it together enough to keep the show from flying off the track. We nailed it. No doubt! We had a lot of young fans here tonight, it was incredible really. I was very proud to make our first appearance in San Sebastian/Donostia one worthy of the history books, and we connected in a delightful way with the locals. And, then we abandoned Matt and drove back to Lasarte! BILBAO, 10/11 I actually woke up without artificial stimulus this morning. Not since Valencia…and I’m not even sure then. But it felt great. I went down to the bar for a pinxo and a chocolate croissant, and my tea and coffee, and slowly the troops assembled. We spent an hour checking email in the lobby and then drove into town for an epic lunch at a restaurant owned by the family of a friend of Sergio’s. Txoko is a modest looking place, bar on the ground floor and noisy dining room on the first floor, overlooking the harbor in San Sebastian. We had time to stroll around, check the beach, and mostly zone out on park benches like the fucked up old men we are, before heading up and being greeted at Txoko by the owner. And then we went to town. Incredible boquerones, or anchovies swimming in oil; about 40 bottles of Txakolin, the soft white wine of the Basque lands; perhaps the best monkfish I’ve ever come across, and so on. Dessert was mandatory, a slice of chestnut pudding with sorbet…oh my. I prayed for a five hour drive to the next show to sleep it off, but Bilbao was only an hour away. But when we arrived we were starting to recover, and a few minutes in our **** hotel chirped us up. The venue tonight: Bilborock, a massive church that is now a cinema/rock palace/dance capital, plus rehearsal rooms. We had a long a weary soundcheck, wondering why everything sounded so thin until we realized the promoter had to authorize a payment of 60 Euros for the club to turn the subwoofers on!! Arghh. Dinner was had in Bilbao’s most celebrated café, Iruna (there’s supposed to be a tilde on the N, but blogger doesn’t support that and many other unusual characters—you’d think that supporting weird characters was a bit of their raison d’etre, no?). A beautiful, colorful institution preserved in its 1903 glory, serving up delectable pinxos, old school style—it’s men’s men who work here, in black vests and bow ties, taking the job as seriously as if they were artillery spotters, and I happen to love this attitude. In the corner of the place, we find Ahmed, a young guy with a charcoal grill, who, for €2.20 per unit, grills about a billion and half lamb skewers with his special marinade. Usually the line just for his brochettes is going out the door. The beasties grill away on the wood flames, a fan pushing and an extractor pulling the fumes god knows where, and let me tell you, this stuff is magic. I called it ‘meat crack’. Despite the fact they were totally satisfying, the museum goer in me can’t resist when there are little displays of nature’s variety in edible form, so I attacked some pinxos as well. Pinxos are the original tapas, a piece of bread with something spread on it—could be a sardine, could be jamon. I had one that was some gooey mix of chopped jamon, oil and bacon fat. Oh god, you almost wish you had a hangover when a cure this good comes along. We recovered back at the stylish Hotel Abando, I watched Jon Stewart comfort a weary nation with his ruthless dissection of our P/VP candidates…feeling good that at least *someone * is seeing thru the industrial-strength chicanery of the McPalin campaign. Wish it were actual voters giving the hallelujah chorus rather than smug CNN Int’l viewers 10,000 miles safely outside the shitstorm. OK, back to the show. I wish I could say we ended on the highest note, but this show was a bit of an anticlimax for me—the Bilbaoans had their cool on. I had two strings and two batteries go down during the show, so I pretty much was trying to soar with clipped wings. The best moments for me were playing piano—Coming Right Along, Start A Life and my very impassioned election-time reading of That Don’t Fly’ were the personal highlights for me. We were all hurtin’ units but I think we did our best to rise above, but tonight’s crowd was not particularly buoyant. In fact, there were lots of drunk weirdos and hostile psycho girls and all kinds of shit that I just didn’t want to deal with. The nicest people in the room were The Mills’, having flown in from England; the Baldinis, who drove down from Toulouse; Jose from Loreak Mendian; Suz, who flew in from Rome; and a very nice couple from Asturias whose names I didn’t catch but they were very sweet. Some girl had a clown nose that I was happy to employ. I LOVE that someone thinks ahead to bring a clown nose to a rock show. After the show, we went backstage to a) ditch the psychos and b) split up the cash from thee tour—we all chipped in to give Sergio some extra dough, he earned it—we never would have performed at the level we did without his immense help. The after tour party was halfheartedly attended by Jon & myself—our friends, band and crew went to the Azkena bar, which is supposed to be a rock club but looks like a yuppie watering hole to me, and I stayed for exactly one drink, before going back to my posh digs and watching ‘Babel’ without subtitles. The morning after: breakfast at the hotel and BACK to bed. Lunch of pinxos at Iruna. Cab to the airport, not sure by how much my flight is delayed but the plane just pulled up to the gate 10 minutes before we’re supposed to leave. Might have to grab some sweet Basque wine before we get outta here. All in all, I have to say this was the best tour the Posies have EVER done. Thanks to the fans, friends, and business partners who made this possible. And my bandmates—well fucking done! Love KS BIO Gate 5 10.08.2008 SPAIN COMES THRU, WE DON'T F**K UP; HILARITY ENSUES Beginning of the week I spent working on some overdubs for the Red Jacket Mine album, dating back from sessions I did with the band in Seattle in May. I played some keyboards, did some singing, and the odd tambourine part, plus I built a truly odd percussion ensemble out of keyboard hand clap sounds played by hand, manipulated with different effects. I also mixed a song for the Brian Olson project that I’ve been working on here and there for the last few months. And then it was time to head out again—direction: Spain. Another Posies tour of Spain, we’ve played there each of the last 4 years. I flew to Valencia, and as arranged I met Matt at the airport and we cabbed to our hotel. Valencia has come into some serious money since I last played here 4 years ago—they’re building all kinds of futuristic stuff, especially out on the beach end, where our (brand new) hotel was. Our hotel was some modern structure attached to a mall—now, I guess the locals must love having a mall but to me a mall is very un-Spanish. In fact, the whole place was starting to have an Orlando vibe. Valencia has pulled in F1 racing and the America’s cup, all of which have dumped cash and dug in infrastructure. It’s exhilarating in one sense. Others could say overwhelming, and you’d wonder what they were really saying. I don’t have any really great old friends in Valencia, and as it had been a few years, I had to reach out to find some locals, so I asked my friends in other towns for some names of cool people, and a few came thru: Jordan, a local music promoter; Ximo, a local artist and inventor who builds custom robots and is working on flat screens that manipulate ions to produce three dimensional images (that you can interact with—they can also have touch screen effects); Ana, who has a burlesque act (hey, she’s Ximo’s friend, what can I say but our table represented diversity); and Marta, local journalist. They all agreed to meet us for dinner, and all agreed on the same place, and we had an evening of tapas and rather good wine, the house wine was more than drinkable. After dinner, the others went home but we continued on with Jordan for a couple of drinks at a local bar. I lost interest, as no bars serve wine, and I don’t like strong alcohol or beer. So, Jordan suggested a more interesting place, and we hung at his excellent flat and dug thru his enormous record collection. A night well spent. VALENCIA, 10/2 Now, the concept of this particular tour, to justify another run on Spain just one year after our last visit, with no new record, is as follows: to celebrate 20 years of Posies; 10 years of our friends, label/promoter Houston Party; and 15 years since the release of Frosting on the Beater—the show has us performing the entire album. There are a few songs that we haven’t played in years, haven’t thought about in years. Well, I gave ‘How She Lied By Living” a listen in the hotel before we left and hoped for the best. Heineken has been buying up venues all around the world, and in Valencia, their acquisition of an old factory and converting it into the very mod Greenspace fits right in with the kind of facelift Valencia has been getting since my last visit. They stripped it to the walls, cleaned out (hopefully) the poisons, and the different buildings are now different clubs, rehearsal spaces, etc. Inside the open spaces, subdivisions are made from shipping containers, painted—you guessed it—green. The club office is one, our dressing room another. The bar is covered up by two side panels from a container on hydraulics. Crazy. We had requested that we have the stage for 3-4 hours, so we soundchecked, and then the engineer left us on our own to rediscover our past. Lo and behold, Jon/Matt/Darius had done their homework so well, that it stimulated my memory. We played those old songs like they were regular set inclusions, only a few small details to quibble over and a few timings to get, but the general vibe was complete from the get go. We only ended up rehearsing for just over an hour. Now, the presale numbers for this tour weren’t impressive except for Madrid and Mallorca. We were touring Spain for the 4th time in 4 years, no new product, and throwing a bit of a Hail Mary by offering up our 1993 Minor Opus. After going back to the hotel to chill, we pulled up to the club, saw some folks milling around. OK, good. I hopped out and went across the street for my customary café solo, and the bar was full of Posies fans, all cheering when I entered. Hmm. Promising. I walked back to the club and encountered more Posies fans on the street. And the little crowd of folks by the entrance had grown. I went inside and…ooh. Ghostville. A coupla people at the bar, and not much else. Well, I guessed the 50 or so presales could all be accounted for in the above, and that was it. I went to our container and decided to be stoic, in line with the instructions I had given everyone before the tour. No support act, so our stuff had been set up since soundcheck (I *love * this). So, when it was time to go, we hopped up and suddenly found that the room was packed, and people were seriously up for it—from the get go, as I am fond of saying. Now, for this first show we had the idea to play FOTB in reverse order—build it up to the rocking climax of ‘Solar Sister’ and ‘Dream All Day’. Thus, the show started with Jon & I playing ‘Coming Right Along’, your humble servant on piano. Even with this slow build, people were super fired up and jumping as soon as we played anything with a beat. Very encouraging! We played the album, and came back to play a handful of non-Frosting classics, and honestly, people were losing it. The re-return of the Posies are back re-revisted indeed! After the show we hawked the treasure trove of Houston Party product we had Jaume unearth for us—our 2001 EP ‘Nice Cheekbones & A PhD’, which was partially recorded in Barcelona, on vinyl and CD; our 1998 album ‘Success’; our 1999 live album ‘Alive Before the Iceberg’, recorded in Barcelona in 1998; plus other related HP items like my last album; Saltine’s EP; and several of Jon’s releases. Greenspace is one of those places that doesn’t let you sell your own merch so it was a bit of a nightmare but we basically pushed the guy out of the way and did what we do so well—hawk that product! This being done, Matt & I went with Jordan to this insane bar on the harbor, it looks like a product launch party. The owner of the place slapped a bucket of champagne in front of me, and hey, how could I say no. However, when he dropped his pants and poured grappa on his exposed member, Matt & I thought it best to make an exit. Thanks for the champagne tho! One thing that is quite interesting is that, when it’s time to be in the Posies, it’s like all the other stuff I do never happened. I just focus on that completely and give myself fully to that endeavor. Same with a Disciplines show, or a solo show, or mixing. People always ask me if it’s weird to have such a schizo life—playing to 150,000 Glastonbury kids with REM one day, wailing sad and lonesome in the south of France to a handful of curious KS show attendees the next. And you know, it just doesn’t seem schizo to me. Maybe that’s a sign I truly AM schizo—I change gears so fluidly that I don’t even notice. But, that’s just how it is. I am me in all of these situations, but they do call for different attitudes and have their peculiar challenges. I guess I live for that, being able to constantly be flying by the seat of your April 77s, never getting so comfortable that you know what you’re going to do before you do it each time, but trusting that your body and fingers are gonna fall on the right places, and the words will come. ZARAGOZA, 10/3 Now, we instantly loved our tour manager for this tour, Sergio. Sergio drives the van, helps get the gear in the club, onstage, set up, tear down and back in the van, he handles all the details. Normally, it’s my job, and I loathe handing it over to amateurs (see: last year’s tour of Spain) but Sergio is not only a pro but he’s a great person, very positive and cool. And, we discovered a few days into the tour, he’s a huge fan of Oranger! Sergio is a Zaragoza boy, so we celebrated him from the stage this night with all the sincerity of the end of the tour thank you speeches. This was one of the shortest drives of the tour, but we found that the van assigned to us was too small for 5 persons, gear, luggage and merch. We dealt with it for the four-hour trip to Zaragoza, but we switched it out for the lovely Merc van we have now. This show had been booked at the Casa Del Loco, aptly named venue where we had a wild night in 2001; an interviewer asked me about ‘our show with the Backyard Babies’ when I was doing press for this tour, and that made me curious—seemed like a big show for Casa D.L. Thus, a week or so before the tour, we found out that we were actually playing Sala Oasis—fine with me, this venue is incredible. We had a fantastic Posies show here in 1998. Co-headlining with the BB’s. Big stage, and the BB’s agreed to set up in front of us (WE were the main attraction, thank you very much). They pared their backline down to one full stack per guitarist, etc. Again, when we came back after freshening up at the hotel, we pleasantly discovered the place was packed. PACKED. Over 500 Billy Bunters. The Babies were in their full, ‘we’re from Sweden but we wish we were LA Guns’ mode. I have to say, they have all the right poses, and everything is stadium-intended, but 30 seconds into our show we had already rocked more than their whole set. People were freaking OUT. It was a wild, wild show—I was full into my Neil deal, beating on my black guitar and making that beast suffer. Blood shooting out of my hand, all the good stuff. We pile drived those sons of bitches. Meanwhile, the B’s merch table—I mean, come on, they had, like 40 feet of merch—they had fucking socks and shit—had been packed up (sales a little slow, gents?) and our little table was left exposed and defenseless, so 500 drunk and coked up Zaragozans who didn’ want to buy shit descended upon Jon & I, I think three of our display copies were stolen. They had that jaw grinding hostility that only a fan can have. Like, sorry you loved my show so much you want to kill me for some reason. Scary. VIGO, 10/4 Oh, Vigo. We’ve had some HUGE shows and some HUGE nights in this town. Vigo, being a port, has the right combination of transient populace, cheap and uncut drugs, and rabid rock fans that make it one of the world’s truly great cities. This time we were playing the Mondo club, a recently opened disco that seemed very glad to have us there. Oh, I should mention that Sergio took the day off to play with his band in Zaragoza, leaving us in the hands of Ellie for the day. Ellie was a great guy, too—very professional and hard worker. Cool. Anyway, this show—we had even MORE people than we did in 2005, and the show was WILDER and more intense. Even taking into account that in 2005 at La Fabrica de Chocolate we shoved our guitars thru the ceiling panels and left them hanging there—this was photographed and is now a huge poster on the wall of the club. But this show was hardcore. So many damn people! And we nailed it, merch wise. We had that shit DOWN. Highlights included: a reggae/bob Dylan/audience member singing version of “Fight It”, and the climax of the show, a wicked White Stripes-esque jam on a made up song about Vigo…huge! After the show we all went to La Iguana, where we had fantastic shows in 1995 and 2001. The 2001 show was virtual blizzard of drug-induced insanity. I mean that in a good way! The owners were very happy to have us visit their club, they all went to the Mondo show. Now, this place rocks til 6am, which was a bigger investment than I wanted to make, and they don’t serve wine. So I had my beer, one, and talked with the owners and went home in the cool of the night—a night, which for some Vigoese, was just beginning. EL ASTILLERO, 10/5 One of those mystery shows. We had been booked to play the music conservatory of Santander. Then they thought better of it, probably saw some footage of us on YouTube and pulled the plug. So, we were moved to a little town outside of Santander, but to continue the High Art vibe this place is a cinema, seated. To my great satisfaction we were displacing that night’s showing of “Mamma Mia!”. Now, seated shows can be weird, but, it’s also quite cool, it’s so different—audience far away, you kind of get off on your own trip and we were well oiled enough to let it rip. Plus, it was like 9pm when we went on, so that was kind of a relief too. AND NO SUPPORT ACT. Mmm! In that sense, it was over quickly, and early too. We had a great crowd, and played incredibly well. The stage was a kind of polished concrete so I did get shin splints, and also I could moonwalk at will. After the show we checked into our groovy very 70s hotel, and I filled my bidet with ice and chilled two bottles of Albarino that a fan had given us in Vigo. We watched baseball on TV, ate horrible pizza, and passed out. BARCELONA, 10/6 It dawned pure and blue again. We’ve had nothing but glorious weather on this tour. I’ve been enjoying Spain’s topographical variety—sometimes looking like Mexico, sometimes steamy and lush, sometimes Kansas wheatfields. But a lot of it looks like the desert southwest of the US and much of Mexico—the missionairies who went there 500 years ago must have found it very familiar surroundings. We had low expectations of the Barcelona show—Monday night, last minutet add on to the tour…but let me tell you, this show was an outrageous success. The Apolo 2, packed to the gills with a lively crowd, who were really into it. We keep scratching out heads at the numbers and enthusiasm of each night’s audience on this tour. Really a miracle each night. This show was filmed for Bad Music TV, so I hope you get a chance to view it. Incredibly enough, tho I didn’t attend, the main room of the Apolo opened, on a Monday mind you, at midnight and rocked til 5. Evidently it was packed. At the Apolo it was great to see my usual friends—Nacho, the Cosmopolitants, etc. And I was proud they got to see us at our best. MADRID, 10/7 Sergio took us to his favorite lunch stop on the Madrid hiway (on the way to BCN he took us to the second busiest service stop in Europe—it was complete insanity—I had so much respect for the bartenders effortlessly delivering cafes, beers and sandwiches hot and cold, never missing a beat, never getting stressed, never forgetting what you were coming to pay for 5 minutes later. There were probably 500 customers going thru while we were there. Meanwhile, the quiet place on the way to Madrid looked absolutely dreary, like the place Anton Chigurh makes the proprietor do a coin toss, just a dusty little gas station in the middle of nowhere, but damn if Sergio wasn’t right again and they had great oreja and morcilla. Well, we knew Madrid was going to be good, we knew that we’d sold over 400 tix in advance, and at soundcheck the number went up to 550. What this night was, for me, one of the proudest moments in my 20 years as a Posie. We were delivered a perfect pitch and we managed to knock it into the cheap seats. This show was filmed too, presumably for Sala Heineken’s website, look for that soon. It was just a balls to the wall, perfectly executed (not too wild, and not too in the pocket) rock show, with fury and precision. And an unbelieveable crowd, maybe 700 people going shit crazy. I had dialed in a new guitar sound (I now use three distorion pedals to get the nastiest, meanest tone imaginable). We had good jokes (there was an interlude dedicated to Sergio’s incredible moustache, where we played “YMCA” but sung as Jaime CA, a reference to Jaime from Houston Party, who organized the tour). I dedicated ‘Earlier Than Expected” to a woman I believed in as capable of being president—who you may not have heard of before, a new face, but combining wit, intelligence and tenacity as well as a superb grasp of the issues—yes, I started the “Tina Fey 2012” campaign right there! It’s harder to write about things going well, kvetching is always easier—but again, this was a career highlight, and I can only say muchas gracias to the Madrilenos/Madrilenas, and enjoy a magic night. I exercised better sartorial judgement this time than in 2005—I came back shirtless, but with my pants on, for the post-FOTB set, and kept my sport jacket on. I busted a button tho. We also had a KILLER hotel, the Vincci Via 66—straight outta MTV cribs, it’s done in a kind of pimp Liberace style—customized mood lighting, all the works. So, I knew that in Madrid you can be out all night partying, and in fact the promoter had an after party at the Costello bar, which I went to—and they had wine. So, I had 3 glasses, and being that I never have time to eat a proper dinner, I was reeling after that modest intake, so I split to enjoy my fabulous room. I think the one thing that keep a band together for 20 years might be single rooms. It just changes your whole day when you don’t wake up next to a stinky guy that you will then spend 7 hours in a van with. You can let it all hang out. I did the right thing—I saw the casualties in the lobby in the morning, and of course I felt like a personal trainer, I was fit as ever. Hehe. Observation: this tour has reminded me of the fact that no matter what I do, no matter what my other musical achievements are, no matter how much I do to create my own singular Stringular identity, this band is where it all started, and I may never make such an impact with anything else—you never know, but, damn, this band has legs and roots and has traveled far with its message. It’s something that is so uncontrived, we were so naïve and clueless and small town-y when we started, I could never not try to strategize at this point, and perhaps the best strategy is no strategy…I spent some time trying to escape the Posies, I think I was very hurt when things went into the dark period of the mid 90s, I had lots to prove, and all I proved is that the gravitational pull of this band, and my bandmates, and the music we made, is very strong, and I might as well enjoy it. I definitely don’t fight it now, and in fact I’m excited about what we could do in the future. I’m excited by the Disciplines, too; and I’m excited about the batch of KS songs that I’ve been accumulating steadily. It’s all good, and I have nothing to prove at this point—I just feel good about these projects and these people, and in fact I feel so much better about myself that I have a feeling that’s the key to why things are going so well—I’m not fighting, or trying to feed my ego. Well, sometimes, a little ego food is unavoidable but it should be treated like pound cake—a dangerous, gut-bloating source of zero nutrition. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I like protein. Build something—a few brain cells, a few muscles. Also: There’s no place like Spain, and I never get tired of playing here. It really makes me wonder if I’ll ever tour the USA again… Hell, I’m thinking about an alternative citizenship should things fall to the right next month. I’d like to say I can’t imagine people being inspired by McCain’s be-whatever-whenever flipfloppery, or Palin’s visionless slogan-sneering, but, never underestimate the lowbrows. If I hear ‘media elite’ one more time…it’s like, yes, the media makes you look bad if you don’t have even a basic grasp on the issues you’re supposed to be leading us on….Tina 2012!!!!!! Love KS On the highway to Cadiz, SPAIN

The latest release by Ken Stringfellow is a split EP with Spain's Muy Fellini, featuring never-heard-before music incl. Ken's take on Bob Dylan, released by King of Patio records in Spain on Oct 8, 2009. Order it directly from Muy Fellini here www.myspace.com/muyfellini 10" VINYL ONLY!!! Subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date on all things KS! older news : 8/3/2003 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008 06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008 10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008 11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008 12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009 01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009 02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009 03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009 04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009 05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009 06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009 07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009 08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009 09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009 10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009 11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009 12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010 01/01/2010 - 02/01/2010 02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010 03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010 04/01/2010 - 05/01/2010