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
