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
