I continued to blaze away at the top of the week on the Oh, Libia! mixing--realizing that some of the songs were really ambitious, and that I wasn’t going to finish the record in 4 days hahah! One song in particular was a real art project--we recorded the song more or less live, and added a vocal--then we put the tape at half speed (so one octave down but sloooooow) and recorded a vocal that went with the slow speed...when they ran the tapes off to digital they gave me both the 7.5 ips version and the 15ips version. And from here I edited the two together, making a new song out of that--plus choosing which of the ten minutes of music should be edited out, making the final piece less than 5 minutes long--but a real journey in 5 min.
On the other songs there were vocals, bass, percussion, guitar and keyboards to add, to augment these already quite diverse 8 track recordings.
Monday night I had time to run down to Le Motel and have a hello with Gerry from Teenage Fanclub--in town playing with the Pastels, the after show was at my local. Stephen was spinning records. By chance or no, “Frus”, the 17-year-old guitarist/singer in Oh Libia is obsessed with the Pastels...
UDDEVALLA, 9/9
I got up at 6.30 and was out the door just a little late for comfort, at 7.45, but that was made up for by the fact that I found a cab on my street in just a few minutes and was heading to CDG. I fly to Scandinavia a lot, and thus it’s programmed in my subroutines to beeline to Terminal 1, the past-it- prime concrete doughnut. I paid the man, and started to head to check in area 4, home base of SAS. Looking up on the board, however, it seems my flight was absent. A D’oh of epic proportions ensued--I was flying on freaking Air France today. Terminal 2G. So, I quickly headed downstairs and caught the CDG metro train, which goes to Terminal 2, and followed the signs for 2G, which led...up to the surface, and then...the trail went dead. Til about ten seconds later, when a bus marked ‘Terminal 2G’ pulled up. Turns out this is a new terminal, quite far removed from the rest of the sprawling Terminal 2 complex. All in all, this whole wrong way Corrigan cost me about 12 minutes. The reward at the end of all this was to discover the pleasure of Terminal 2G, which unlike the rest of CDG is well-planned, built with modern travel and security in mind, and aesthetically pleasant to pass time in. The cafe is large, dark, and friendly. There are banks of security points, so the line thru them moves quickly. The gates are clumped together, so the passengers are all in the common area, which has plenty of seating and all the shops--the screens tell you when to head to the gate, and on you go. Genius. We had a short walk onto the tarmac to board the flight, and then I was in Goteborg.
I was met by Marcus Carter, who treated me to lunch upon arrival, and we started to head to Uddevalla, an hour or so’s drive, thru beautiful countryside. My take on Uddevalla the town is that is seems like it’s the place they would filmed ‘Let the Right One In’. They could have, anyway. The town boasts, however, a fine arts school called Plusgymnasiet, where Marcus works, and they had invited me to play with and for the students. Marcus played in a band called Depressive Art, and had tried to put together some shows for the Disciplines earlier this year, only to have his band implode during the process...we stayed in touch and here we were, making something happen at last. I arrived, freshened up and was soon meeting the students and running thru ‘Any Love’ which an ensemble of them had learned. And then it was quickly showtime--we had a lot to do, and I had to be on the road by 4 to make soundcheck in Goteborg. The venue itself is a 1930s or 40s cinema; gorgeous, actually. I came out and busted thru some KS material, wandering in and over the seats, dragging my cable along as usual. Great fun. Did a few songs at the piano, and then paused to answer questions from the students. And the finale was ‘Any Love’--me backed by a guitarist, keyboard player, bass player and conga drum slapper. I was a little rusty, so I think we all played with a few errors but the spirit was dead on, and the results excellent. Then it was time to do a quick interview with the Goteborg newspaper and head to the city.
GOTEBORG, 9/9
The other three Disciplines were already set up and running thru stuff. It had been well over a month since we’d played, and I was having a mental block on many of the lyrics of the new songs, but it started to make its way back...sometime during, or close to during, the show haha. I had my preshow cocktail at a wonderful wine bar/wine storage called Le Village, with Marcus & his crew. And then came back to the show really at the exact moment we were supposed to be onstage. Oh, I was rusty, but it didn’t matter...I figured out what to do. Crawling, jumping, grinding, falling, and, yes, singing too...at this point our sets our about 50% new songs...and it’s working, very well. Tonite’s venue was Pusterviksbaren--site of great Posies shows in ’98, ’00 and last year; and solo shows in ’01 and ’04 (the former was broadcast on Swedish in National radio).
MALMO, 9/10
Plane and train options were not happening, at least not affordably or conveniently, so we went to Malmo by bus, which actually was very pleasant. They have wifi on Swedish buses, comes to find out. I had three weeks of movie watching to catch up on during this tour, so I didn’t surf, Charlie-like. We arrived and had a little down time, as the bus arrived early to Malmo; later we walked the 5 minute walk to the club, and eventually found someone to let us in. Babel, the venue, is a former church (formerly known as the venue ‘Jericho’, but this was my first visit to the building). It’s a drop dead gorgeous place to see a show. Soaring whitewashed walls and plenty of windows; a wide/tall but not that deep stage faces a kind of small platform balcony of about the same height across a 15 feet or so of dance floor, and above the platform is another, higher level that has tables and the bar. This architecture breaks up the usual black box feel of most venues and in fact gives the room a tight but noticeable acoustic ambience, just right.
Our show was creamed by the reformation of the Electric Boys, some kind of funky band from the 80s, whose reformation tour was on that night at Debaser, but we had enough folks to make a show and a show was definitely made. At soundcheck we had written another new song, so all in all it was more than worth it to come for this experience.
After the show we assembled at the lovely flat of Magnus Tingsek, and Lise (‘Karl’ as I call her) Karlsnes, who of course was the singer of Briskeby--the person responsible for me being the band I am in now. We hung out at their place, ate popcorn, and listened to tracks from Tingsek’s new album (amazing, Stevie Wonder-esque explorations of jazzy, funky hypermelodic rock, all performed and recorded by him at home, and Lise’s new album, dreamy and electronic lovely pop melodies. Bravo to both!
ESKILSTUNA, 9/11
We had a long train journey to Eskilstuna, and were met at the train station (after a seriously SRO train from Norkoping) by our man Pontus, who books our shows in Sweden. Eskilstuna is a remarkable city--a small town that boasts the site of the Beatles and the Stones’ first shows in Scandinavia; and has given Sweden an improbably large slice of its music culture--some of Sweden’s most massive artists are from there (incl. Kent and at least one member of ABBA). The town has one main venue at the moment--a messy little bar called Raw. Messy, but not without its charm, of course. The main hotel in E-tuna burned down this year--mob related, they say--so we were staying at the Hotel Eskilstuna, about 15 minutes drive out of the center. We all wondered individually when we were going to turn a corner and see the the twin girls or the old rotting grandma in the bathtub. There was even a vintage group portrait on the wall that could have easily had Jack Nicholson in a slick-back look. We weren’t on til midnight, so we had a long and leisurely chill period. Then Pontus came to grab us and took us back to Raw, where we were dismayed to see even less people than in Malmo...what was happening? The town was totally dead, too. Oh well. We went to the dressing room, mustered our courage and came back out to the bar, and somehow, it was full of people. Totally weird. From where? Great crowd, too. I ended up in bare feet, shirtless, slick with greasy sweat and an ice bucket on my head. The guy who rented us our backline lived in the basement and wanted to have a party with us...but we went to bed. I have bruises on the bottom of my feet, black ones, where I jumped shoeless off the stage and landed on a solid connector between my two lengths of mic cable...
STOCKHOLM. 9/12
We drove with Pontus, leaving at noon (ah), to Stockholm, and checked in to the Scandic Malmen Hotel, where I have stayed many, many times now. But I’ve never *played* here...now their smaller bar, the Lilla Hotellbaren, is not only a hot spot (in a hot neighborhood) but has free live shows several nights a week. Great production and a large (for such a small place) stage--it’s spacious and much more glitzy than most venues around...it’s working well. It’s also a yuppie watering hole, and being the shows are free--there’s a lot of non rock people there on a given night, which makes my job a challenge...you have to get those people on board, too. And I think we did a marvelous job. But, there was a slight curse on the evening. A curse that could have been worse, but still...and the manifestation came in three parts, of course. First, about three songs into the show, I tossed my mangled mic stand away and somehow it got caught up on something, and bounced upwards and sideways, and the hard rubber mic club bonked Baard right between the eyes, which hurt a LOT. I felt terrible, and wanted to stop the show right then and there, and go to bed. But, I had to go thru and finish. No blood, but a nasty bump. The second bit was that after the show, we put our things against the back wall of the stage, and when we came from an adjacent room at the end of the night, the big bag that has our backdrop and Baard’s bass amp was missing. Still hoping it was just moved somewhere, but until we review the security film, we can’t say--it certainly wasn’t in any obvious place. So, we’ll see. The third bit was as follows: my routine when I check the band in to a hotel is to ask when breakfast finished (and to make sure it’s included), when check out time is, how to get online, etc. So, upon check in here they told us breakfast would be served til 12.30. Wonderful, I said--and arranged check out at 12.30 since I had to be heading to the airport at 12.45 anyway. But, when Bjorn and I headed at 11.40 to the restaurant, we found breakfast had just finished. Now for the good news--Baard didn’t get hit in the eye; the hotel agreed to help do all the things (police report, etc) to take care of the missing gear; and when we complained about being told the wrong time, the hotel comp’d us brunch, which was even better than the breakfast.
Now, the show itself was really, really good. We had fans there, we made new ones, and the yuppies were into it as well. I crawled on the bar, jumped on tables, made a nuisance of myself. My stage banter sucked cuz I was thinking too much about Baard and feeling really bad. We debuted a new song, we ripped thru our set, and played hard and good, went back for encores, etc. Sold half a suitcase full of merch. After the show I was soaking wet, and it was great to be able to go down to our room and change and shower (the band rooms are always in the basement at Scandic Malmen, and it makes for a some dark and deep sleep). I came back up to the bar and we had a pleasant evening of chatting with Marcus & co (who came from Goteborg) and Jonna Lee, a great songwriter who is now going to be hosting a radio program on P3. And I *still* got 8 or more hours of sleep.
The next day I did what I could to get the ball rolling on the lost bag, and flew home. Waking up at 7 today to take my daughter to school, I felt like a cold bag of some kind of cod-shit mixture. But I’m here, and soon will start on the album for Twice...
Love
KS
Paris
