A CABANA BUSH SMOKER, I
Obviously the dominating news of the week preceding was the US Presidential election, which I wrote about briefly a few days ago. Let’s put it this way--with the general trends, the general sentiment, the general worldview--if McCain had won, it would have been a shock, even to his supporters, I think. The system has to tick left of center and right of center now and then to effectively represent such a large and diverse country. If we stay with one political party too long, we risk alienation and division of those who aren’t represented by those values/philosophies/policies. And 8 years of Bush was starting to feel awfully long. I hope, and I believe at this point, that Obama has the ability and desire to put the best people, with the best qualifications, in his team and in his government. Bush’s gov’t put loyalty and ideology as the leading qualification, and we ended up with a few real numbskulls in some incredibly powerful positions. And Bush cultivated an array of yes-people, it seems--hopefully Obama is more deft at incorporating other people’s wisdom into his vision, but able to know when to settle on a decision--in other words, we hope he will the great leader we expect him to be.
Beyond that, most of my week was spent in the studio, the home studio, working on the Bud Reichard record. After the session on Monday Dom & I went to check out Okkervill River, at L--a recently reopened and refurbished small theater near Republique. They’ve been getting tons of good shows there, and the fact is the location is really quite good, just a quick run up line 8 on the metro from my house. Much easier than going out to La Trabendo--which will be competing for the shows of about the same size as L’Alhambra--La Trabendo has worse sound, is much further away and on a different, less convenient line for me, is much further from the metro, in a dodgier part of town. Like many dyslexic people, I was convinced that they were called Overkill River, until I tried to find their myspace. In fact, the cover artwork on their new album, “the Stand-In”, consists mainly of a skull, drawing association with the logo for 80s metal band Overkill. Maybe this is all on purpose?
I thought the band played incredibly well. The singer comes of as a bit of a cliche of lead singer types, maybe a bit too in love with himself, but, if that was a crime, the world would have precious few lead singers outside of incarceration. But the band is smokin, and it all works. There was an extended bit of sophomoric poetry with a metaphor aggravatingly stretched thin that was performed by the singer primarily alone on his acoustic guitar, and this was too much for me to take, but the rest of the set was enjoyable.
SOGNDAL, 11/7
On Thursday, I flew up to Oslo (there was a strike at Orly airport involving security workers, so the line for security was the longest I have ever seen there, but they managed to get us thru on time) and went directly from the airport to Cafe Mono, to check out the
Fuck Buttons, a superb minimalist electronic duo from the UK. With backing tracks, super cheap keyboards, and one small drum they make insane amounts of noise. I arrived pretty late on the evening Norwegian flight, so they were already going and the place was really full, I would like sometime to see them up close and see what gizmo is making which noise. Anyway, what a cool show and what a great band. Of course, being in Oslo is like old home week, I saw tons of friends and my glass was never empty.
The next morning, after a lightning strike on
Tim Wendelboe, I met our sound engineer Lasse at the train station, and we headed to Oslo airport, where half my band was waiting. We checked in and took our little puddle jump flight to Sogndal, on the west coast of Norway. Actually, the airport at Sogndal and the airport at Volda seem to be more or less the exact same building, and the scenery around each is of similar dramatic scale and scope--mountains shooting straight up out of fjords, and such. We were quite high on approach above sea level, so the fjords were far below, but suddenly a snow dusted peak would be right below us, and you could spot little cabins on the mountain tops, no roads leading to them--quite lovely all around. We bumped down and headed for the 20 minute drive on switchback roads to town. Sogndal is largely built on the side of a hill, and the ‘downtown’ is at the bottom. So, at night, on the short walk between the venue and the hotel, on one side was more or less a straight wall of lights, where people lived. But the downtown is extremely quiet, except for the small bands of kids roaming around, who have at their disposal this lovely clubhouse, the student bar/cafe/venue, Meiriet. This year, this week really, the place was celebrating its tenth anniversary, so our show was the main event of that celebration. We were paired up with
Katzenjammer, an energetic band playing kind of gypsy swing and many other things, four women who rarely play the same instrument to two songs in a row--each of them shifting comfortably between drums, accordion, mandolin, guitar, and an enormous balalaika played like a bass guitar. We’ve played a few shows together and only now did we break the ice on their natural shyness and really hang with them. I really enjoyed their show, it’s very positive and fun.
Alison, our most loyal fan, who has traveled all over Europe to see us, who has probably seen 80% of our shows plus the odd KS/Posies/etc show, was there, and brought me a lovely bottle of wine for my birthday, and installed on that a kind of puzzle that you put on a wine bottle and have to solve to get it off and access the bottle. ONe of the gals from Katzenjammer actually solved it after we all gave it a try--but she did just by fiddling with it with one hand absentmindedly during dinner--we asked her what she did and she had no idea!
Well, despite the fact we hadn’t played together in almost 2 months, and despite the fact that Bjorn didn’t arrive until after soundcheck (I played guitar and sang--hilarious), we played a marvelous set--this was just a superb, fun show. All the kids in Sogndal were really ready for a good time, and Katzenjammer really got them jazzed. I was wearing a shirt with snaps that I discovered has their own ideas about when to unsnap, so I spent much of the show somewhere between Robert Plant and Wishbone Ash modes...righteous!
After the show I did an interview with the local paper, our liason from the venue also doubletiming as journalist conducted the session. The dressing room was populated with various locals that we didn’t know at all, and one of them, a quite pretty young girl, was repeatedly walking into a coat tree, instead of what we assumed was her intended itinerary, thru the door one foot to the right. Poor little drunk student girl.
Incredibly massive kudos go to the
Norlandia Park Hotell, whose staff members were friendly and charming from the get go, and who served us a more than decent dinner of their own version of tapas. Tapas appears to be in Norway this year what Thai restaurants were to Seattle in the early 90s--an inescapable phenomenon--the difference being that 95% of Thai restaurants in Seattle seem to be run by Thais; but I haven’t seen any Spaniards around the various tapas joints flung throughout Norway.
When the desk clerk learned we would be leaving before breakfast started at 7.30 the next morning, he immediately arranged that a tray of breakfast food would be put in out rooms while we were out at the show. So, in the morning I had bread, cheese, meat, yoghurt, and fruit. The rooms were kitchenttes, too, and thus I was also able to make tea for myself. Now, that’s a nice hotel.
STAVANGER, 11/8
Indeed, a big bus taxi--a very common form of transport in Scandinavia, for group excursions to the airport, e.g.--you’ll see them with trailers, even, and they are usually Mercedes Sprinter Class (what we often find ourselves riding in when we’re on tour)--picked us and Katzenjammer up in the morning and took us to Sogndal airport. It was a beautiful morning, and as I always ride in the front passenger seat of any taxi/van etc when possible, I had a great vantage to watch the dawn’s cool glow come into focus above the hills as we progressed. Another short hop to Bergen airport, where we had a couple of hours’ layover. We located the reclining leather chairs with footrests and snoozed til it was time to board our very short flight to Stavanger.
We were there to play an event called Nordic Music Week, a nebulously-themed multi-venue showcase of medium-to-unknown bands from around Scandinavia. The background to this is that Stavanger has been pummeled by 11 months of cultural events, free concerts, festivals of every stripe, since being named 2008’s European City of Culture, sharing the honor with Liverpool. Now, to me, that’s like putting the Olympics in two different cities in the same year. Already, the honor is diluted. But that doesn’t stop the money from pouring and and subsequently out. The effect: there is absolutely no cultural event at this point that would hold any interest whatsoever for the citizens of Stavanger. They have been beaten to death with video installations, operas, free Morten Harket concerts, you name it. So, you spread 50-60 mediocre and relatively unknown bands/DJs around a few clubs for a weekend at this point, and you’re just asking to be let down. Even with a few choice acts, like us IMHO and a couple of others...I mean, you cannot cram any more photons, sound waves, vibrations, etc. into the sense organs of these people. They are hunkered down with boxes of Chinese take away, wearing the same sweat pants again and watching You Tube videos and the Discovery Channel. They aren’t coming out until it all goes away, and Stavanger regains its usual, moderately-cultured appearance.
Even my friends didn’t come to this show. Now Stavanger is a tough town under any circumstances, but this show was under pretty severe conditions. Nevertheless, there were some people there--maybe similar to the numbers that have seen us before. We were on at 9.30, about two hours before most folks leave their houses, and playing before two bands that...well, let’s say that relative popularity didn’t seem to be a factor in booking. Nordpole, who played a pretty lackluster take on--yep, 80s electro pop--played after us, to about 8 people. The crowd resurged somewhat for the headliners, a rather uninspiring (sorry, guys) band from Denmark called Veto. Denmark is really hard country for most non-Danish bands, and now, if this is one of their biggest bands, I see the outer edges of the problem. I think the crowd was together for them simply because by midnight, there was nowhere else to go. The shows in the basement (where I saw some of Norwegian thrash heroes Purified in Blood’s set) were probably done, the bar was too mellow, and at least they might still be able to pull in the main room, if they could find someone drunk enough.
Now, back to our show. Being that Folken is large, you can have what in a small club would be a decent crowd, and it looks like a ghost town. Now, when I look at some
photos from the show it seems more crowded than I remembered it, but anyway, I was deeply into it, so not exactly counting heads. Highlights included" 1) me doing a full 'Eddie Vedder': climbing the PA up into the balcony and pulling myself along the railing with one hand, mic in the other; 2) me putting my arms into the coat of an audience member, while he was still wearing it, and doing some kind of extended puppet/robot dance 3) two guys who were at the last Stavanger show, who were super into it and singing along with every word and 4) a young gal who has seen all of our Stavanger shows and was jumping a LOT. You can see all of them in the photos, the balcony bit was a bit out of range for this cameraman.
Back in Paris now, more shows coming up this weekend in Norway as the weekend warrior tour continues!
Love
KS
Paris
