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
