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
