2.28.2009
SLIM BUT NOT ALTOGETHER SHADY. Check out 'Unidentified Hit Record' by Minky Starshine, which I mixed 7 of the songs on it, plus sang, played keyboards, percussion, guitar, etc on it. Mike Musburger is the drummer on this album, it's a great, great, pop record. This weekend I didn't go to Tours. I have too much to do here in Paris and will be working thru the weekend. I have been getting close to finishing the Bud Reichard album; we received our last tracks--pedal steel from Patrick of Red Jacket Mine, and some tack piano from a guy in Seattle. So, mostly I've been mixing. I played some bass, and we did some vocals, and dug into mixing. I followed my basic instinct, then let Bud turn things around to the perspective of his instincts, which was great. There were many times when I thought--no way, dude! That will sound horrible. And I was dead wrong. And so I learned a lot from Bud, really. He hears things from a different perspective, and it's the incorporation of different perspectives that makes you a better mixer. On Tuesday I went to see the War on Drugs at the Maroquinerie. They are a three-piece, with the typical kinda Paul Westerberg/Kurt Cobain holes-in-my-jeans, scruffy type singing/playing guitar/keyboards; the typical 'no brand names, no style, no fashion cuz that is a sure sign of slavish devotion to THE MAN'--in other words, Steve Albini, et al, on Bass; and big ol' hound dog of a drummer, who was musically the most sound of the band. The singer had the unfortunate ambition to play a 12 string acoustic guitar live, which meant LOTS of tuning. But, they are a good band, but, also they are really indulgent (I forgive them for this) and very, very dron-y. In fact, they drove an audience of about 100 that came for this little festival at the venue down to about 20 people in just 8 songs. No encore. On Wednesday Dom & I had dinner with the Kim Brothers, formerly known as Shaolin. Charlie has just scored B13U, the new Luc Besson film. They invited us out to their flat way way out in the 17th, and stuffed us with foie gras, sauternes, Vietnamese food, and chocolate. Oh, I felt so freaking tired the next day, but it was a lovely evening. I visited the Red Wheelbarrow, to order some books and buy one in the meantime. But beyond that, I have been in my studio pretty much all week. I did put together some cupboards for Aden's room with Dom. Assembling Ikea is what families do together in this age.... Love KS Paris
2.22.2009
BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL A routine? Two weeks that resembled each other? I could almost substitute last week’s post for this one, minus the last post’s disbelief at the arrival of a bit of home-based life. In fact, like last week, this week I spent the week working on the Bud Reichard album by day, attending to a few social events at night, and then came to Tours on the weekend to visit Aden and Dom’s folks. We are in the last days of recording with Bud; Bud went out to Dourdan to oversee the recording of drums with Julien Audigier, my choice in Paris for drummers with a vintage style. I added some bass and keyboards, and Bud did his last vocals. We also had Pierre Blondiau over to do some shaker on a rather difficult guitar instrumental, that we hadn’t cut to a click track, so it pushed an pulled quite a bit. Pierre had declared the job impossible, but Bud got him to give it a go, and after playing thru four times, he had a pretty good road map of the tempo changes, and I was able to edit the changes to put them in synch. On Tuesday I wasted an entire morning going out to the Institute Pasteur’s travel medicine clinic, to pick up a prescription for anti-malaria medicine for my tour of South America next month. I had already taken my vaccinations in Bellingham, but they didn’t have the pills I needed in stock. So, since Pasteur is where all the French bands go for pre-tour consultation, I thought I would too. On their board of prices, they include ‘consultation w/presciption’ so it seemed reasonable to assume...one hour on metro, one hour waiting for my number to be called, 5 minutes to fill out a form, then 30 seconds to be told, ‘oh, you have to go to a doctor for that’. One of the biggest infectious disease centers in the world and you don’t have any DOCTORS around? One hour back on the metro. Our family doctor gave me the prescription the next day. Tuesday evening I celebrated a bit with my neighbor Remi, of the band Cheap Star, who have at last released the album "Speaking Like an Elephant" that was partially made with sessions I recorded and mixed in 2004; Jon Auer also worked on later sessions (when they had a better studio and a better drummer, so his sessions sound hi fi, and mine sound like they were recorded on 8 tracks in a rehearsal room...which was the case!). I did remix one of the tracks at home later, but before I had my current set up...but still, the record is really good, you can contact their label to order it, or to the band directly. On Wednesday evening I went to the record release party for Flairs the Panic Room, next door to the Pop In on rue Amelot. Flairs is a lovely guy, and his music is cool, and his party was crowded, but, it was to my experience a bit thematically disconnected. His friends--Alex Gopher, Cocosuma, Housse de Racket--DJd, and in theory he did too, tho I didn’t last that long, but it felt just like any other night at a bar, rather then a big event to launch a record. Like, I don’t know how many people walked out thinking about Flairs’ album, which is kind of the point of a rec. release, but maybe that’s too linear thinking in the electrofantastique world... On Friday I went to see Ben Rault, Flairs’ brother, do a solo set at the China Club (now, to try and dissuade you from associating it with the L.A. watering hole for coked-out has-bro’s, called just ‘Le China’, but it still has a kind of weird Hollywood vibe). I felt for him, his stuff is way less confrontational than mine, he sings in a kind of Johnny Cash style, in English no less, virtually guaranteeing him close to zero interest in France. He is an excellent guitar player, and has worked out rather superbly how to work with his Line 6 loop pedal to accompany himself and make solos. I really liked his stuff, pity that most of the people were there to just take up space on a Friday night. A few of us listening tho, and enjoyed it and I, being a solo performer myself, empathized with his efforts in face of the impossible. One thing about Le China, tho, they had Chapoutier Cotes de Rhone for €5/glass, really quite a good deal in Paris. The place is also spacious, which is also kind of a rare atmosphere in a city with very old and expensive real estate. And it’s a 7-minute walk from my house. On the weekend, we made the 2.5-hour trip to Tours. Yes, there is a TGV that takes 55 minutes, but it leaves from Gare Montparnasse, back where the institute Pasteur is, so all the way across Paris, and it’s at least twice as expensive. So, we take the cheap/slow train, which leaves from Gare D’Austerlitz, just ten minutes by bus from our place. Of course, just to torment the poor, they play a little game: they don’t announce the track of this train, which is open seating, until the last minute, and you have the phenomenon of all the people--children, parents with strollers, old folks, people with all their luggage--having to RUN to the train to try and get decent seats. This was really apparent last weekend, when it was the beginning of winter vacation for all the kids, and our train was packed. Here we were at the halfway point, when the divorced parents do the kid exchange, so it was still busy, but there was a little more breathing room. A mom with 2 kids was in our compartment, and they got off at Orleans so we actually had the compartment to ourselves for most of the way. Here in Tours, Dom’s mom does her great home cooking, plus we raid the moldy bottles stored in the ‘cave’ next to the house. During the week, like any good Parisian, I am living on 400 gr. of pure protein per day and a little yoghurt as a reward, celery--as a Parisian you feel the unspoken pressure of living in a city populated by at least 46% models. So, when I chomp down on Dom’s mom’s vittles, no doubt I enjoy it, and no doubt my body is completely unprepared for the richness, diversity and quantity of the nourishment, and flushes it out IMMEDIATELY. Ooooh. But it’s worth it. This morning we went to les halles, the covered market, and tasted wonderful rillon (a kind of tender back bacon), boudin noir aux pommes (sweet blood sausage made even sweeter with cooked apples), and other lovely things. There’s a real Italian espresso maker there, and we picked up a cheese (Chaource) so foul and radioactive that my throat is still burning. Delicious. Aden is very happy here, being spoiled by the grandparents, and she has a playmate here, Dom’s mom’s b.f.’s granddaughter. Watching a children’s science program, ‘C’est pas Sorcier’ which in this episode dealt with the issue of paralysis, I was amazed by its frankness and thoroughness. The causes/mechanics and effects of being para/quadraplegic, were covered--including such topics as the social benefits of having handicapped people in the workforce, and the implications for sexuality/reproduction by being wheelchair bound. I thought, an American program would never put the truth on display for children in such a straightforward manner, and I admire French society for this kind of strength. Love KS Tours, FRANCE
2.15.2009
And so commences 30 days with no shows, no travel. This is certainly the longest I’ve stayed in Paris since Aden was born in 2004, and even then I don’t think I stayed a full 30 days before we headed to Ile de Re with our newborn daughter. In fact, I am not in Paris now; we are passing the weekend at Dom’s parents’ home in Tours, the medieval capital of France, in France’s own valley of kings, the Loire. This week I was once again at work on the Bud Reichard record, we had some guests come in to record--Baltimore expat Dick Turner, came in to play some avant-garde trombone; I know it’s cheap, but check Dick’s myspace, which has come magnificent tunes, reminiscent in equal parts of the sex vamps of Prince and the minimalist style of Momus--and thus here is a guy who sings about SEX whose name is DICK and primarily plays the BONE. I’m not sure if he created the whole scenario, or floats above it an a kind of Freudian dreamscape. He also gives a public art show, if you are in Paris on line 2 of the metro, look for a painted balcony near Stalingrad. And Thomas Brun came by to play harmonica; Thomas is a local songwriter who also hosts a popular open mic, this is how Bid knows him, Bud being a habitué of the evening. This was the day my ProTools chose to act up and kept crashing, it’s worked fine ever since. I think it was protesting after we had spent a couple of furious days editing the drum tracks that Bud brought back from Seattle. We really went to town; these tracks were cut to Bud’s existing guitar, which itself was not cut to a click. I know it’s the hard way, but I really don’t believe some artists are meant to record to a click. I espoused the same theory making the Benji album, and I prefer the to edit the drums into a groove rather than listen to a human being replace a metronome--unless they are really good at it. As it happens, Claus from the Disciplines is excellent at playing to a click and not making the results boring. But these musicians are the exception, not the rule. So, we really got detailed with chopping several songs’ worth of guitar and drums into something we were all happy with. Well, the computer was pretty pissed off, it ultimately had to do all the work! Dominique and I never go out on St. Valentine’s, one of the great amateur nights in the restaurant biz. Knowing the seats are filled with people who rarely go out otherwise, and that seasoned diners avoid the crowds, the restaurants, from the top to the bottom, take the golden opportunity to offer less for more. You get menus, and you get the impression the chef takes a holiday, and you pay a premium. So, we like to go out during the week, prior to the day, when restaurants are less full, people saving their pennies for a Valentine splurge. There are more tables available, and the restaurants are happy to have your business. Especially now, with restaurant attendance down 30% this year, compared to the same period last year in Paris. So, Dom & I went to Le Grand Vefour. This restaurant has been in continuous operation since the creation of the Palais Royal in the 18th century; originally called Cafe Chartres, then taking the name of its celebrity chef, Jean Vefour, at the beginning of the 19th century. At this time, it was patronized by Napoleon, Victor Hugo and the like. After a between-the-wars senescence, the restaurant was rescued and had a third life and was the table of choice for the 20th century intelligentsia--Cocteau and the like. It’s now owned by the Louvre and is in fact a living museum of 18th century decorative arts--the walls and ceiling are all painted with typical curlicues of the era. It is not a cutting edge house of gastronomy--although the quality is extremely high (and you pay a premium for this), the results are one step down from say, L’Ambroisie or Le Carre Des Feuillants. However, it’s pleasing, lovely food, with a great wine list (our sommelier managed to find a bottle of Languedoc red that went with Dom’s veal and my lobster, bringing a powerful fruit and spicy notes to the mix that bridged this gap nicely). And they are not minimalists--tho we ordered no dessert, we were plied with dozens of macarons, chocolates, cakes, and dried fruit candies. On Thusday, I did something out of character--I agreed to go see some band play, that wasn’t something from my own list of favorite bands. It was cold, and I walked to the Pop In, and met up with the band Oh, Libya! from the Mediterranean side of Spain. They had driven for three days to play this show, probably for free, in Paris. In fact, it looked for a moment that I would be their only audience member, so I realized I was doing a bigger service than just ‘representing’. They were really excited to have me there, and in the end there were about a dozen people watching them (shows at the Pop In are always free), plus me walking around and filming them with their video camera. Actually, they have cool, minimalist, murky tunes. Casio, elec. and acoustic guitar, and percussion. I liked them. Before the show, with the doors yet to open, J.T., one of the singers, and I played a 5 song set, me on acoustic guitars, playing a mix of my songs and covers, and J.T. following on echo-y elec. guitar. The others were having a pre-show drink, so it was just the two of us in the Pop-In’s tiny music room. J.T. had left his camera running, and I believe the whole thing was recorded on video... On Friday the 13th I went to see the Yolks at a party for Keith magazine, at the ‘New York Club’, a (hostile?) takeover of the Slow Club, a watering hole on rue de Rivoli, normally for old folks. Down two flights of stairs you find a similar kind of cave as you find at La Mechanique Ondealatoire, and tonite it was a free show with open bar (not that you could get anywhere near the bar) so it was crazy packed. When the Yolks went on with their brand of funky pop--somewhere between ‘Speaking in Tongues’-era Talking Heads and Bananarama--the crowd (avg. age was about 20) was actually moshing. Moshing! In a delicate, French kind of way. It was super fun, seemed totally dangerous--about 250 people in a space meant for half that--and the band is just lots of fun. After the show, my family was a at a dinner party across town; so across town, that they slept there. With the place to myself, I ended up seeing to a mix for The Sad Knights, until 6.30 in the morning. My girls returned with cafe & croissants and woke me up at about 8.30, with the intention that we catch a train at 10.50. We prepared for the journey and left the house at 9.45, watching the bus to Gare D’Austerlitz pass us by; 2 minutes later we were at the bus stop and discovered the next bus wasn’t coming for over 30 minutes, so we had no choice but to take a cab. The Corail, or non-TGV trains, are open seating. The tracks aren’t announced til the last minute, so everyone stands around watching the board to announce their track. We took a chance, since there was a train marked Tours on track 15, we stood closer to it--but then our train was announced on track 5, and we, like everyone else, ran--I mean *ran* to get seats. Sometimes there are more passengers then seats, and this day, being the beginning of winter vacation for most schoolkids, was a high volume day. But, we settled in to a compartment. I watched the soggy middle of France go by. Naked trees with spherical burdens of mistletoe; little gardens growing leeks, flooded fields. Chateaux became more and more common as we got closer to Tour, and soon we were parallel to the Loire. As we passed the fields, some fallow, some pushing up delicate tips of green, birds were startled into flight. Seagulls, pigeons, and others. Crows seemed to be more calm. They might hop a bit to show some effort, but really were unshaken. Outside of Tours, amongst the farms there’s a particularly large lab/factory operated by Pfizer, not sure what exactly is being done there. We arrived to St. Pierre Des Corps and descended, and went into a couple of days relaxing and drinking old musty wine from the cave, and early nights sleeping. Now Sunday afternoon, Dom & I are soon to head back to Paris, and tho we will enjoy not having to get up at 7.30 every morning for a couple of weeks, in fact it’s during the time I am home more than ever that Aden has her vacation. So she will be missed, and visited on the weekends... Love KS Tours, FRANCE
2.08.2009
A WRAP, IT IS I spent this week doing assorted odds and ends, plus working on the Bud Reichard record that I’ve been working on and off with for the last few months, as schedule permits. It was nice to see Bud again, he’s always cheerful, and he came loaded with many files of outside musicians to incorporate into his songs. We received a stunning string arrangement from Phil Petersen, who did some of the string arrangements for Soft Commands. I also did some mix adjustments for mixes I’d done for the Sad Knights from Toulouse, I’d done the mixes at the very end of the year, even on New Year’s Eve, and now with a little time and perspective I was not only able to accommodate some adjustments from the others but take a breather and rethink a few things and make even better sonic environments all around. My MIDI woes were solved--a friend who is a local musician in Paris brought another friend who has a studio in town and he showed me some tricks for solving general computer woes, MIDI routing in ProTools, and we determined I had some ill software, and went back to an older version of this particular softsynth I had troubles with, and it’s been working fine ever since. I woke up to snow on Monday, and this was great fun, having snowball fights on the way to school with Aden. It was all gone by Monday afternoon, obliterated by the rain; and the rain itself gave up and moved on, and we had crystalline blue skies for the remaining days of the week, beautiful sunrises occurring right as we set out for school each day. On Friday I was on the evening flight to Oslo, maybe for the 20th or 30th time in my life. I never know how long it will take me to get to Orly--traffic jams, a sudden drought of taxis--but in fact it was an easy trip this time, and there were very few people in line when I checked in, so when our flight was delayed for an hour due to a mechanical problem, it meant I was in Orly Sud for like 3 hours total. I know every inch of Terminal B, where the flights on Norwegian and Easy Jet leave from. I know every item in every shop, etc. I was so relieved to get on the plane. Upon arrival in Oslo, I quickly claimed my bag, and hopped the airport express train. It stops in the Oslo suburb of Skøyen, which is the nearest stop to Claus Disciplines’ house. Unfortunately, there was a track maintenance issue, which meant the train had to travel much more slowly, so I encountered yet another delay. All in all it was like 8 hours of travel from door to door. But Claus was kind enough to wait up and pick me up at the train station. LARVIK, 2/7 We spent the day getting ready for our video shoot on Sunday; picking up some clothes, getting a few supplies, picking up a rental van, all the details that needed to be covered. It was snowing quite hard, even by Norwegian standards, and we had to carefully pick our way to Larvik, normally a two hour drive but in this case it took about three. I drove in the van with Bjorn, and we occasionally fishtailed if the road was especially persnickety. But, soon we entered Larvik and pulled into the parking lot of the train station. There is a little station house there, with a waiting area, a Narvesen (pretty much a 7-11, Narvesen is everywhere in Norway) and a little cafe called Sporet. Sporet has been commandeered by the cool kids in town, and they do arty things there of all stripes. Its functionality is only coincidental to the passengers--they *do* serve coffee there, you *can* get food (actually, I think it wins as the best hamburgers I’ve found in Europe) but to cite other examples, it’s probably the only train station cafe in the world that has a prominently displayed completely inaccurate clock. You are expected to be here to hang, not because you are in a train station with no where to go. Sporet presumes to be a destination in itself. It’s quite tiny, strung with Christmas lights and has board games of every imaginable type. It reminds me in size and vibe of Prinz Willy in Kiel, but unf. without the delicious cakes. We loaded in, and set up risers along the back wall so more people could see. We soundchecked, running the tiny PA ourselves. After this, Bjorn and I spent the evening backstage writing songs with Ariol, a young songwriter from Oslo, and came up with some really cool things. He’s a very nice young guy, a teenager, but professional and cool. This occupied us in a very productive and pleasant way til showtime. There was room for about 50 people in Sporet; we had 55, plus staff. I dressed in the blue custodial jumpsuit that was part of my wardrobe for the video. I think Baard said it had been his father’s...we opened this show tonite with a brand new, first time played live song, and did another brand new song in the encore. All in all, it was a great party for all the hometown friends of the band, plus we made a few hundred bucks to cover the costs of the video, *and* got to play new songs. And we played superbly well, and had tons of fun. I took at least half the audience out to the station hall to jump for ‘I Got Tired’...I crawled, spat toward, and generally molested the audience and all had a great time. There was one incredible guy, a big guy, pretty drunk, with glasses rimmed with flashing blue LEDs, singing along with every word, I was SO PISSED he didn’t come to the video shoot today, but I guess this night he was pretty drunk so he would have felt quite bad today. He was awesome tho. I played off him most of the night cuz he was so energetic. At one point he started to strip and he threw his clothes across the entire room to land in my open left hand while I sang...amazing. I just remembered that during the soundcheck there was a guy at the bar, super drunk, and really obnoxious, we all wanted him to go away, and it turns out he was still drunk from the night before...man, you can die of hypothermia being shitfaced in -7 weather like this...thankfully he went home before doors officially opened.
As I mentioned to my bandmates, after the show I, completely sober in respect of general health and the 9am call time for the video (I have been starving, exercising, and respecting sobriety--alcohol is yet another carb--for weeks now leading up to this shoot), observed amongst the good people of Larvik that the general fabric of society was rapidly rupturing at every seam...the mating rituals of this particular breed of Norwegian seem to run along these lines: find available, or willing, or unresisting mate; mate. It was getting heavy, so I got outta Dodge and got some beauty sleep. LARVIK, 2/8 Up at 7, I was tired, and my eyes were a bit sore, but I generally benefited from the wisdom of the preceding evening’s choices. We assembled back at Sporet and loaded up the van and drove it to the G Gundrsen Larvik, AS factory. This is the family business of Claus’ oldest and closest friend, Gunder Gundersen (Dom & I spent New Year’s Eve 2007-2008 at the Gundersen’s house in Stavern, just down the road from Larvik). It’s a bakery for making crisp bread: you know, high fiber, whole grain unleavened (that is, flat) things. The business really operates somewhere else and the old factory, that looks to me to a 1960s relic, is going to be demolished at some point, but in fact a technical problem had caused operations to be moved back to the old location just the week before the video shoot was to be scheduled. But, essentially, the place exists as a time capsule--rotary phones, horrific eighties decor choices, and bulky old machinery. The freight elevator alone looked like something from the ‘Saw’ series of movies. I had seen pics of the location, and deemed it a good choice (the price was certainly right!) but I was pleasantly surprised when we eventually entered (haha, Gunder was a little late, having had about as much fun as anyone could have at our Sporet show, and *he* was the promoter!). Before entering, we stood out in the snow, the day was clear and sunny, and we being that factory is on the edge of Larvik’s industrial harbor, we gazed out into the water, which was sheeted with ice. Swans, gulls and ducks rested on the ice or swam in the open channels. So, on the right half of the panorama there was this natural scene, looking across a bay to the other side, which was forested and tranquil. The left hand side was purely industrial--loading cranes, smokestacks, grain elevators. An enormous ferry arrived from Denmark and unleashed a flurry of activity on the wharf, most of which involved pushing snow out of the way to actual work could get done. We went in, and started hauling stuff up the two flights of stairs to the factory floor--the freight elevator was inaccessible as the loading area required a key we didn’t have. The film crew had their gear, and we had backline, risers (which are quite awkward and heavy) and a PA. I set up camp in a small office on the 1st floor (or, to you Americans who don’t understand that 1 comes after zero, the 2nd floor). Here I could change and iron clothes, and at least close a door in hopes the tiny electric wall heater would actually be able to contribute something against the ambient cold. The factory floor wash awash in sunlight from two sides, and this made an interesting contrast with the kind decayed industrial look of the machinery and walls. Since it had just been in use, there were stacks of cooling racks with flatbread, pallets holding 20-pound bags of flour, etc. Oddly, the place smelled like pigeons, even tho there were none to be seen. It was the yeasty, dusty smell of the dust of forty years or more of flour and baked whole grain bread haunting the scene. Some of the machinery had a monitoring catwalk running alongside it so this made a nice place to put Baard and Bjorn and their amps--Claus and his drums were in front of that on a riser that itself sat on pallets, so he was a little higher than me, standing on a riser with my mic stand. The setting, the light, the amazing RED camera that the shooting was done on, all worked together magically, and the song (Yours For the Taking) provided energy enough to make every take exhausting but visually very exciting. We did takes with and without the audience of extras, and let me say, the extras that did come were incredible. I think only one or two came from Sporet--it was noticeable that the people willing to show up on a Sunday afternoon to jump around in a video were mostly below drinking age! And they rocked, really providing a punky edge to things. It was like having the Powerpuff Girls as an audience, singing along. By 5 in the afternoon, the sun was fading fast, and we tore down and loaded out, and celebrated with a wrap dinner at Sporet. I had a glass of wine and enjoyed not worrying about my figure for a bit. On the way out of the building, I was struck by the incredible blue of the not-yet-dark-but-no-longer-light sky and its reflection on the harbor, cut by the pacing swans. A nearly full moon emerged and in comparison the sky at last seemed black. One curious little scene at the factory when we arrived: between the factory and the harbor, just before the land drops down towards what is apparently a white sand beach, but is obscured by 3 feet of snow at present, there is a little caravan trailer. When we arrived, a man emerged, and with no interest in our presence, started to photograph the morning scenery of the harbor on a small digital camera, then went back in. At this time, Gunder was late and we were out in the cold, and I wondered if he was a kind of watchman. Turns out that the caravan is the meeting place for a society of very tidy alcoholics, who meet there every day to drink. Rather than chase them out, the elder Mr. Gundersen, in an impish tweak to the conservatism of Larvik, simply ran them out a power line. Thus, the local winos gather here in peace and in fact practice a kind of ownership off the area, cleaning trash off the beach and shooing off would be thieves. So, I wasn’t totally wrong, but the agreement to watch the area is unspoken and simply developed as gratitude for Mr. G’s generosity. At last, after driving the two hours back to Oslo, unloading the gear and dropping the van, the project was a wrap--before post of course. I pretty much crawled into bed as soon as I got to Claus’ house, but saw an email already from Petter, our co-director/DP, with links to some little snippets of raw footage, and these 5 second bits already look amazing. And, much will grow in the Post/FX work over the next week and half. Look for it around the end of the month! You’ll be hearing about it here! Love KS Oslo
2.03.2009
I uploaded some new photos to the photos section.... Love KS Paris
2.01.2009
Short piece on the upcoming DiSCiPLiNES album in Billboard.com hereHELSINKI, 1/28 After a very short sleep at Ralla's place, we headed to the airport and convened at the SAS check in. I was so tired after my long days in Andorra and my long night of schmoozing in Paris and my short night in Oslo. Argh. I could barely open my eyes when we landed in Helsinki, and I totally expected to go right back to bed upon arrival, but I was starting to come back to life as we emerged from the baggage claim and were soon met by the very friendly Zachris, our t.m. for the weekend. I had seen this scruffy, greasy roadie looking guy walking towards us from the parking area and thought, "oh shit" and then this smiley clean cut guy with glasses bounces in to our field of view from somewhere else. Instant relief! We headed out to the Sprinter splitter van that said "XBOX EXPRESS" on it, in Xbox-style lettering. Bjorn said "to better aid potential thieves in their selection of which vehicle likely to contain stealable items". To which I countered with an imitation of a thief breaking into the back of the van: "there's nothing back here but fake Guitar Hero guitars...these are useless!". haha. We got in the van and...the battery was dead. Zachris laughed: "day ONE of my first tour management gig ever!". He got us in a taxi, and set about getting the battery replaced by the rental co., it was just old and chose that day to die. We checked into the Hotel Presidentti where I have stayed quite a few times...and now boasts free wifi and a huge shopping center next door. The shopping center was a big huge hole in the ground for years, and now it provides a way to walk to Tavastia and largely remain indoors. Plus you can get your cafe there, and it's where I happened to buy in 2007 one of my favorite books of all time, Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day". Our first order of business was the instore at a new, quite large record store called Levykauppa AX. In fact, Helsinki seems to be a record buyer's paradise, as I saw something like 8 hipster record stores, and Helsinki isn't *that* big. Bjorn and I did a fine job of laying waste to the place, by the end of our 4 song acoustic set (he actually played thru a small amp), the PA was unplugged, cables wrapped around upturned chairs, etc. Fun! We also took the amp up to Radio Helsinki and did a couple songs on air that way. We had a very long soundcheck, with Ralla, our drummer for this visit, to rehearse a bit. He's great tho, he was totally on and prepared. So, as usual, I stayed hidden til showtime, and came back to the club just in time to go on. Most people had fled the showroom after Agent Cooper, the support band was done, since there's no bar there. So my guys were worried. To which I replied: this is Finland, they will not let us down! And, true enough, as soon as the lights went down, the patrons came in and the place was filling up--well, Tavastia is huge, so even tho it was similar to the crowd we had in 2007, they had a little more elbow room. But this was soon forgotten as we kicked into it. We hadn't played since November, and I'd been sick in December; I found myself often a bit out of breath, but still it was great to be playing again. I did some climbing, and lots of crawling, and I was so glad that Tavastia has the good sense not to have a barricade. I hopped and bent and crawled, and the peeps loved it. The difference being from 2007 is that people know the words now! My friends were all there, and one of them, Lasse whom we all know as one of the main reasons I have a career in Finland today, turned 40 this weekend! So, since I had to go back to France and miss his party, I had him onstage for a little birthday moment, it was sweet. We ran out of songs before the audience ran out of enthusiasm, and right as we were about to leave a guy begged us to play "Best Mistake" again...so we did! Then the only thing left to do was honor a request for an a capella sing-a-long of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" with improvised lyrics and an a capella sing-a-long of "Happy Birthday" for Lasse. Everybody happy. After the show, we headed to a pool hall, and I had a great time talking to a new friend (we had mutual friends in the US), Arttu, and Sarah, who is a biologist studying in the field in Madagascar several months a year. Dom & I are thinking about visiting her this year in camp. Arttu & I were sharing dad stories about the craziness of our repsective children, plus he also lived in Dar Es Salaam...where he knew Markus from the Latebirds, who *also* spent part of his childhood there! TAMPERE, 1/29 A nice sleep in and we got in the now functioning van (well, the sliding passenger door was impossible to open or close from the inside) and drove thru the endless repetition of little farms with red barns, snow covered fields, and fir trees along the way. At one point I saw a horse pulling something behind it and was surprised to find it was a guy on a wheeled cart on the snow covered road, it seemed like sleigh country to me. Eventually we pulled in to Tampere and I suddenly realized that I had stayed in this same Holiday Inn last time with the Posies, and the club was only a block away. Klubi has always been good to us, and this show was no exception! Highlights included me getting all the audience to lay on the floor with me while I hypnotized them, in the breakdown of "I Got Tired"; and a 'we're out of songs' desperation move of doing "Sin City" with improvised lyrics, actually pretty funny. I borrowed a hat from an audience member, and right on the last power chord downbeat at the end, I launched the hat across the bar which arc'ed frisbee like right back into the owner's hands! Also, it was Baard's birthday, so champagne was brought onstage, and I realized Baard is too cool of a guy to have much material for which to roast him with! Again, an a capella sing a long of Happy Birthday was in order. The audience still wouldn't let us quit, so we ended with a three-piece (I sent Baard to the bar with orders he was not to pay for anything that night) version of "Joe Dallesandro", with Ralla just barely playing kick drum, and Bulle singing with me! TURKU, 1/30 Baard was just a little late coming downstairs, hahahaha. We went to the club and loaded up, and drove to Turku, same kind of landscape as going to Tampere but with less farms and more birch trees. The Klubi of Turku however is quite different than the Tampere branch--the stage is set squrely in a square room, instead of a curved stage backed into a corner in Tampere. There are several levels and lounges, and the Turku has a slightly threadbare feel. But both are highly pleasant (the backstage in Tampere is much nicer tho, and it has a sauna!). This was the hometown gig for both Agent Cooper and Bridget, so they brought tons of peeps to the proceedings. So, this show was really packed (Tampere was a great crowd, tho). We started the day with an instore at "8 track" record store, Bjorn and I did a coupla songs and I crawled into a cupboard and disappeared! I did a really long interview with a music website, the journo was really cool. There was too much noise at the club with Agent Cooper soundchecking and another band in the small lounge, a band from Sweden who I never got to see or even catch their name, they played same time as us, which seemed counterproductive, since our show was packed and the small lounge stayed open much later. For the interview, the journo and I discovered Vinille a lovely little wine bar next door to Klubi. The proprietor is very friendly and their list of wines is extensive and priced reasonably, esp. considering we are in Scandinavia (but inside the EU & Euro Zone). There are fine cheeses, charcuterie etc., if it wasn't a show day I would have wanted to sample some fine Finnish cheese but that's asking for mucous trouble...but I did try a malbec from Bolivia, which was very pleasant and quite cheap. Let's put it this way, it was not an elegant wine, but far more pleasant as a bar wine than much of the cheap wines from Chile that you commonly find, and priced similarly. Showtime--Klubi Tampere offers many opportunities for climbing--the space in front of the stage is at a lower level than the bar area--around the dropoff there is a rail, at which patrons can sit on barstools or lean and have a something to place their drinks on. It's about 6 inches wide, and runs about 6 feet higher than the dance floor, 3 feet higher than the bar level. Of course, I decided to walk on this, and actually did OK til my corrections' and counter-corrections' oscillations were getting too great in amplitude and I had to do a total Matrix-like move to get out of the jam--as I was falling I lept, over the heads of the two people sitting at the rail nearest to me to floor behind them, all while singing! I only glanced the arm of a guy standing near me, but I did spill some of his beer, and while singing, led him to bar, and slapped some coins down and indicated to the barman to give him a refill! The show was delightfully rowdy, and even tho Finnish folks are pretty shy they were rocking hard by the end. During the very long jam in "I Got Tired" i wrapped myself and the mic in duct tape so I could look down and sing without using my hands to hold the mic, but in a really awkward way. It was hard to get the tape off so I did the last song with the mic liberated, and my shirt sort of half liberated, and finally at the end was semi nude. Fun! We closed out the bar downstairs but totally had to get up early the next morning, we left Turku at 7.30 with the first clear day I'd seen since leaving Barcelona, the sunrise slowly pinking up the horizon as we drove on the highway to Helsinki (think AC/DC here). You know it's easier to complain about hardships than gloat over triumphs in a blog (we were great. the end) so that's largely a testament to the fact that Zachris did a great job and kept all the details in place, I just had to sell merch at the end of the show and show up when it was time to leave the hotel. Yum, I could get used to not being the TM all the time! I spent long hours hanging out in HEL and CPH on my way home. Helsinki has a wine bar that offers incredibly rare wines by the glass, well a tasting glass which is about half a normal glass, effectively (it's supposed to be even less). YOu can taste a 1947 Sauternes for €29, or old bottles of Ch. Haut-Brion, Mouton Rothschild etc. I felt that even for me, €20 Euros for a dixie cup's worth of rare wine was an extravagance even by my standards, plus it wasn't even noon yet and my tastebuds were not fully awake. But, there was a lesser Bordeaux from 1970 for just under €6 for a tasting glass, and it was a nice curiosity. It had been open for awhile, so was a bit compromised, but still retained a nice, broken bit of organic overripe strawberry and venison tastes that made it worth a shot. The 62-year-old sauternes is a must do for another visit... In CPH, having finished Pynchon's 'V' on this trip, I got to indulge in a rare pleasure: book shopping. The English language titles were not too numerous and aimed at a UK market (i.e., divided evenly between titles by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, and WWW (World War Whichever) accounts of Royal Army bravery against the Jerries.) But I did pick up an intriguing volume called 'Flirting With Disaster: Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental' about the institutional failures in various professions and situations. I got home and immediately headed to the Elysee Montmartre to watch the spectacularly ridiculous Dragonforce deliver their brand of video-game inspired anthemic metal, truly silly and fun. The sound was weird tho, I started to wonder if it was playback...there is a really odd bit in the middle where the keyboard player, Vadim Pruzhanov, has the stage to himself to play along with some kind of cheap kind of midi techno, jumping around with his keytar, looking a bit like Yahoo Serious. Then he's joined by a rather Botticellian accordion player, and they duel for awhile. Oh my. It was fun to see, but the highlight of the trip was the couscous with tripe that had next door before the show. I also thought, man, THE DiSCiPLiNES take more chances and deliver more authentic pure rock than all these guys jumping around and acting like Charlie Chaplin... Today was market day, our local public market was going nuts. One of the sellers there chased off a group of Gypsy girls who were moving in on a pair of older Japanese tourist ladees, either one of which would be a less than tenacious opponent over any contest involving her Louis Vuitton handbag... it's cold and dry here, not as cold as the -18º C/ 0º F morning that greeted us in Turku, but still hovering around freezing. I watched a great, wonderfully stupid film last night: "Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story" which nimbly skewers the epic musician biopic genre--Walk the Line, Ray, La Bamba, Great Balls of Fire--superb. It's a great cast, which includes walk ons by Jack White as Elvis, and a hilariously nasty sendup of the Beatles with Jack Black as Paul and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo. Superb...! It further cemented my movie star crush on Jenna Fischer although Kristen Wiig is also hilarious and completely hot as the wife that's dumped for holding Dewey's career back. The song "Let's Duet" is an instant classic, I will have to cover that one...the always brilliant Michael Andrews produced the songs for the soundtrack, and they are really good, for farcical inclusions in a genre parody, on par with the Rutles' songs but actually more likely to stand on their own if you heard them out of context...check out the author of two of the best songs in the film, "Let's Duet" and "Guilty As Charged", Charlie Wadhams here. Love KS Paris
 |
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!!!
older news :
8/3/2003
|
