Amerikaland #2

I’ll do a proper band-by-band-fuckup-by-fuckup blog for SXSW as soon as I have the time. Unbelievable musical strike rate, despite taking risks and heading for smaller parties further out. SXSW get their quality control dead on, which is rare for this kind of event. ’swhy they booked me …

Saturday AM, I stumble into the living room for breakfast. F’s got a beer-and-cocaine brunch for me ready to go but it’s too early dude, I’m playing tonight and anyway Sarge is making eggs with mushrooms and dill for him, me and Annette.

Our condo is too gorgeous for words, I could live here forever if it wasn’t in Texas. Though of course, Austin is an oasis of progressive liberalism. Over three storeys (in fact technically it’s two condos turned into one), the furniture and garden and view are all luxurious. Pool too, so we lucked out. It’s also only a short 10 minutes down Red River from the insane human traffic and music overload of South By Southwest’s central 6th avenue.

It’s so clean and the art on the walls is so tasteful, the owner must be gay, no question. Plus there’s the gayest blue cut-glass menora I’ve ever seen. A gay Texan jew – that rocks. Only bummer is it’s far too nice an apartment to throw a party in, the interior design wouldn’t survive 50 kids and 6 acoustic musicians. We want to stay here again, not trash the place.

So, rewinding back.

San Diego

Excellent large-scale (50+) house party gig with other touring acts heading for SXSW. Word spreads between the travelling musicians, that police with sniffer dogs are stopping band vans between California and Texas. Our party host is a sweet guy deep into audio recording who turned half his house into a studio / party venue. He’s built one of the best homemade bits of furniture I’ve seen, by creating a glass-topped table with electric circuitboards underneath the glass.

Oddly he doesn’t seem to enjoy his party: constantly worried about cops shutting him down, he runs around picking up peoples’ glasses and doesn’t relax. Weird – he puts these gigs on every couple of weeks.

Best thing is Marc and Emma show up, they’re having a weekend in San Diego near the end of their year in L.A. – didn’t think I’d see them til Los Angeles next week, so that’s fab – and it’s almost like I fall upon them as friends I haven’t seen for a while, so I’m probably a bit too intense and talk too much. We discuss the ethics of zoos, because they’re debating whether to visit SD zoo. Must find out if they did.

Driving north, 50 miles out of San Diego at 2am there’s a kind of internal border patrol set up on the freeway, to catch illegals driving north. Scary. First thing you notice is high barbwire-topped walls and fences closing in on either side of the road. 

Sad – though the battle against illegals has strong support here even from many liberals, especially with Mexico’s drug war so intense and close by.

San Francisco

Ripped it up at Hotel Utah, a lovely show, sandwiched between two charming bands. People came and knew the words. Stayed with Daryl & Natalie nearby, Nat made a lovely breakfast and even supplied a care package that included lethal cookies. They’re coming to South By as well, so we’ll get to hook up again. We scored some immense coffee and then set off on the long drive south-east.

… California …  Arizona … New Mexico … Texas …

At one point we drive 300 miles on cruise control without touching the pedals. Empty, dead straight, dead flat roads through the desert. Jawdropping scenery on a vast open scale. Cowboy movies made flesh. No light pollution or clouds so the night sky is incredible.

Texas is much more hilly and surprisingly green (that’s relative though, it’s not Sussex), with a disconcerting amount of big deer roadkill, every so often on the side of the freeway. 

And then we’ve arrived.

Amerikaland #1

It’s 4am but I’m resisting sleep in case any UK-based people I love decide to email me.

I’m in a motel somewhere in Arizona. Anything American sounds glamorous but it’s no different from a travel inn off the M6. No, scratch that, it is totally glamorous: three hours ago we stopped the car on the freeway to swap drivers and, as we stretched our legs, we realised the night sky was totally incredible. There’s nothing between the cities in this bit of desert scrubland, just this immensely long straight road (in our case, the 10) and the occasional nuclear power plant, so hardly any light pollution. The stars are overwhelming. For Stephen too, because he’s in LA, where there’s no night sky. Earlier today we drove back down into the north-east corner of LA, coming off the 5 to head east. And the smog was thick as a tidemark on the horizon, high above the hills.

Isle Of Man 

To give you an idea how small the plane was, to fly between Belfast and the Isle Of Man, the safety instructions were given by the pilot swivelling around in his seat and just telling us them. 14 passengers. 22 minute flight, very, very shaky. Fucking Steam Packet ferry company bastards, not running a service til April.

We’d upgraded to a ‘gold’ ticket (about £15 extra) because I was worried about taking my guitar on the plane. This turned out to be a blessing, because it gave me access to BMI’s ‘executive’ lounge at Belfast Airport, where I piled into the free bloody marys for breakfast. Unfortunately Manx2 flights aren’t called in the BMI lounge, so I couldn’t relax in case I lost track of time.

IOM was awe-inspiring, thank-you Ballagroove, as always fantastic hosts. Ate at The Sound twice, the cafe overlooking the Calf, which is my favourite place in the world, official. Didn’t go there this time but will when the weather is warmer.

I always leave the Isle Of Man determined to move there. I’ve been lucky enough to visit some of the most beautiful places around the world but somehow IOM takes the cake. Actually, the only thing wrong with the trip was I was dying for some cake after the trolley at The Sound looked yummy, but I never got any.

Gaza Gig

In and out and a bad set choice. Earlier in the day Rifa and me went to Deane City Farm, where they have a white peacock.

Later, for the Gaza gig at Kings College, I played the role of the political protest singer, rolling out all the lefty anti-war stuff and I wish I hadn’t. Some softer or more psych material would’ve actually really offset things. They didn’t need more politics. Jeremy Hardy was on just before me and he was terrific, still the same chap but harder-edged than his Radio 4 persona. He said ‘fuck’. The organisers were very sweet and the BBC acts were charming, so despite the usual chaos of a political event, a good time was had by all. Lovely to briefly see Skulls McMurphy and his charming new Missus. Odd culture/generation clash between the KCL union organisers and the BBC staff but everyone just seemed to enjoy it.

When I got home from the Isle Of Man I accidentally put my brand new passport in the washing machine. You can read about the outcome of that little moment in my new Morning Star column.

I’m going to sleep now, nobody emailed so it’s zzzzzzz time and I’ll write about San Diego and San Francisco tomorrow. 

x

Northern Ireland

Got in last night and caught up on the news – immediately feeling sad about the murders in northern Ireland because we were just there. Onstage in Derry and Belfast, Thursday and Friday, I paired up ‘This Gun’ and ‘Box To Hide In’ halfway through, introducing them with some nervous self-justification, for singing songs about terrorism to people who’ve got far more first-hand experience of it than me.

But that triggered a powerful internal repositioning and rethinking of the lyrics in my brain as I sang them. Always a rare treat because it takes you away from the danger-zone of singing the song over and over again, without real feeling. Songs written about the middle-east are suddenly brought much closer to home.

Actually in Derry I gave up on ‘Box’ – didn’t make it out of the first verse even. Nothing to do with vibe or content, just a technical problem:

The northern Irish crowd is enjoyably odd, in that they talk all the way through your stuff as if they’re not listening, but between songs cheer like madmen as if you’re a hero. I think they have a more balanced relationship with musicians, associating us (especially acoustic acts) with the old fella singing in the corner of the pub that they’re more familiar with than most parts of the UK, so it’s more equal, less inately respectful. A Good Thing but a bit exhausting. It’s only a problem if you’re concussed, haven’t got enough bottom-end in your monitors and therefore can’t hear to pitch yourself over the bar chatter.

I didn’t want to honk at the soundman for more foldback at the same moment as abandoning a song. So I came offstage and did ‘Tin Man’ unmiced on the floor, then went back on, did ‘M1′ and only after that, got the soundman to rebuild the mix, so the sound out front was quieter, and I had more monitors and a brighter mix. The rest of the set was fine but I wish I’d gone back and given ‘Box’ another go, because I felt the lack of an anti-violent counterpoint to ‘This Gun’. Especially this morning, when it felt retrospectively uncomfortably like rabble-rousing.

After the show I even got told off (in a nice way) by a couple of people who’d been chatting by the bar, because once I was on the floor, they couldn’t hear that song. A good night though and one of the cheapest breakfasts ever, in a Wetherspoons-type pub.

Belfast was more pro and we had a half-decent keyboard, thanks to Oppenheimer, so I was able to be Turner’s bitch for a duo show. Izzy did merch and was a star. The soundman at Auntie Annie’s had bodged a broken keyboard-stand, fixing it with gaffer and nails but by the end I was holding it up on one knee, shoving it against a speaker at the other end, using the wrong foot on the pedal and desperately trying to keep going. For encore, the keyboard went high up on top of a monitor speaker. Maybe a rock’n'roll end but we did ‘English Earth’ and it was probably the weakest moment of Frank’s set because I couldn’t hear myself.

I found it reassuring that – despite rapidly impending international superstardom – Frank had the same challenge both nights with the background talking, so it wasn’t personal to me.

I was supposed to drive these Irish shows but missed my flight to Dublin, after some kid twatted me on his bike on Tuesday night and ever since I’ve got scary concussion in the corners of my eyes. Anyway, the back-up plan (much cheaper in the end) was travelling by taxi, so I was forgiven for letting the side down. Main arsehole was I missed Gaslight Anthem’s end-of-tour party, which was probably epic and perhaps even an opening slot.

After saying goodbye to Frank and Izzy the night before, I had an early breakfast and took the smallest, shortest flight I’ve ever endured, full of shame about the carbon.

…and I’ll tell you about the Isle Of Man another time, if you’re fucking lucky.

law degrees

As of this week, it’s now illegal in the UK to photograph a police officer, under terrorist legislation. No, I didn’t mis-type, if I’d meant to write ‘anti-terrorist’ I’d've written that. Same week, it turns out Home Secretary Jackie Smith took £100,000+ of our money on top of her minister’s salary, to pay her sister for rent on one room.

What we really need right now is a really flamboyant, imaginative, V For Vendetta or Unabomber-style one-person ‘terrorist’, to take a massive stand against the grand theft and moral bankruptcy of our establishment. Banksy with a cannon, putting into operation various elaborate ’spank-the-bankers’ or ‘waterboard Hoon’ schemes.

It’s weird it hasn’t happened, just like it’s weird that the assassination of the oppressor by the oppressed seems to have vanished in modern times. Nowadays the only people assassinating individuals seem to be powerful foreign governments. How come, when Joe Public is so obviously bloody furious and frightened, nobody’s kidnapped Hoon or Miliband or some of the bankers or that oleaginous cunt Smith, humiliated shit out of them, left him in a Brixton backstreet and then distributed the footage to every online video service?

I know, I know, it’s obvious, a spurious question, mass media divide and rule is just as powerful as CCTV and not being allowed to even photograph a fucking cop, that’s why.

Another solution: time to fuck the law.

Obviously, we already make the law take second place to our own moral/ethical imperatives. I’ve surely written this before: we drive too fast (sometimes with no good reason). We take illegal drugs. Our sex lives start at too young an age. We steal from the office or download films. We make these decisions blending personal morality with need and a calculated risk about getting caught. Very, very few of us use the written national law as a hard and fast set of rules for personal morality.

Meanwhile, what is the establishment doing? The people running the corporate world, government and media are all doing exactly the same thing, on a grand, and, it turns out, world-recession-causing scale. Read any random page of any random issue of Private Eye and you’ll get slapped in the face by some scandalous corporate, government, media or local government illegal escapade at our expense.

They’ve lost ALL moral authority and, in itself, that puts their adjustments to the written law of this land into the ‘invalid’ box. Fuck them. Damn them to Hell. If Smith has the power to put folks in prison or kick them out of the country, she should live up to the spirit of her office, not just the sneaky, carefully-worded letter of her code.

Ah fuck it, anger is energy, have another milky coffee. 

mourning Morph

Bush family Christmas video

One more moment of craziness to avoid writing a proper blog. I put it on Facebook but can’t resist posting it here too. This is not a spoof, Brits, this is the genuine article:

(super, super gutted. I should be at Proud Galleries right now partying with the Xtra Mile Crowd but circumstances have conspired and I’m at home, sober. tears before bedtime)

eurotour diary #4

FORLI
Yesterday I lost my hat. Cuntsticks.

A misty, half-frozen morning in Forli, where we played last night. Leaving Frank asleep, I sneak out of our hotel room block into a small stone courtyard to phone Rifa. Cobbles frosty on bare feet, so it’s not a long conversation. Then I try to pull the door open but it has clicked shut and I’m locked out. 

Shivering I go sit in reception, where a vagrant blags two euros off me. There’s breakfast but I’m not hungry – and I don’t have enough Italian to explain my predicament and score a back-up key. I play golf on my mobile phone for an hour then venture back. Ha. Turns out I was supposed to push the door, not pull it and was never locked out at all.

Ever since Italian promoter Eric’s assistant (and it turns out, girlfriend) Laura (pronounced ‘Louder’) picked us up from the airport, life has been a ton more relaxed. It’s brilliant to be passengers while someone else fights the SatNav and hairpins. Laura is a principessa, always smiling and we’ve been supremely well looked after here, eaten awesome rustic pasta and got sleep before the gig. Last night was my tough gig of the tour – I wasn’t very good. I found the sound boomy but my headspace was the problem, not the gear. Find myself promising to do better to Eric, which is silly – they both enjoyed it, they say. Frank claims he had his worst show too but maybe was just making me feel better, he sounded ferocious.

Italy looks like Italy. I was worried it might look like Eindhoven. Pokey rough wood, grandiose architecture, cigarettes, dramatic half-shouted conversation with waving arms and the badly-ridden Vespas of classic movies.

All around Europe, Frank has told people that the current trendy thing to shout in the UK when you chink glasses of beer or wine is ‘Chav!’ and spreading this toast worked a treat everywhere else. But Eric and Laura are savvy Anglophiles and rumble us as soon as we try it. Apparently people in the Latvian rock scene still shout “Richardmadeley!” when toasting absent English punk friends.

Eric is a big, quiet laconic guy with a brilliant dry sense of humour. He’s mates with the coke-tinted Nambucca urchin crowd: Jay Beans and Dave Danger and the Holloways. Eric has a hundred dodgy tour stories and has even been over to London to DJ at Frog.

ROMA
A stunning drive across the backbone of Italia to Roma, through snowy mountains and at one point a 10km road tunnel, which is a headfuck. They also have these incredible extended bridges where the motorway snakes above the mountainside for miles on massive stone pillars, like a giant aquaduct for cars. The link back through history to earlier Roman architecture is apparent.

In Rome, Eric gives us two hours to sight-see in the heart of the city. Starlings flock by the thousand over St Peter’s Square, looking occasionally like ghostly angels. The river and prison are beautiful too and elicit lengthy lessons from Francis.

Turner’s got amazing breadth of history, powered by a good memory, which I guess is also why he can play so many cover songs. One of the best subjects to get him banging on about is European and, in particular, Balkan and Soviet history: genuinely the single best-informed layperson on these areas I’ve met. Rather than trying to keep up or chucking my own bits in, I soak it up. I sincerely wouldn’t mind a reading list at the end of this tour!

We’ve argued vehemently about politics, sometimes over dinner to the point where our hosts get uncomfortable. It’s so much about definitions of things though rather than core beliefs: he’s no more truly right-wing (as I constantly accuse him of being) than I am a true commie, we’re scratching at meanings and struggling to balance ideology with lifestyle.

The good people of Roma quietly don’t like their new Pope very much. There are somewhat sickening souvenir stalls all around the Vatican, offering such classy things as plastic holy water bottles, or a €20 mail-order Papal Blessing. And we’re told the shopkeepers are doing a poor trade in Benny tat, as compared to re-issued John-Paul tat. Yes, Jesus Christ would be kicking those tables over if the poor bastard could see what the Church of Rome has done to his “love everyone” legacy – it takes the phrase “sell-out” to the world’s most epic level ever. The Jesus I know would be more into coming to the gig with us, than hanging with those money-changers!

I most love the way ancient aquaducts and other buildings sit happily amongst modernity, graff covered and still alive, cars driving around them. It’s a bit like British city walls but older.

Great show. Lovely crowd, very sexy, these Italians. I play much, much better and Eric understands what I meant. Reasonable opening band and smacky miserable girl singer. OK girl DJ who seems cool at first but is coked off her brain. This is still rarer in Italy but increasing – apparently very influenced by how London is portrayed in the entertainment press. Her friends are worried because her dodgy boyfriend is the dealer. I get drunk and too involved. Oh, Sambucca. I also apparently banged on various doors up to our B&B apartment and called the clanky lift to every floor as we clattered up the stairs. Sorry Frank.

RECANATI
West over the backbone again and south to the seaside resort of Recanati, famously picturesque, hilly and much more chilled out. It gets the most amazing mist I’ve ever seen, high up above the sea and really cold. Thick cold night-time fog like treacle, maybe less than 5 metres vision. Makes me think of Sherlock Holmes’ London but cleaner.

Live radio session in fast Italian. I hope we get a CD of it because they talk about Brighton Pavilion and get very excited when I explain it’s where I got married. Sounded awesome, all bibbly-bibbly-bibbly chris tee tee bibbly-bibbly. I get stuck in their weird lift twice, perform a great version of This Gun and leave my mobile phone behind in the studio by mistake.

Frank’s old friend Nooz – a rock DJ for a different station – shows up for dinner. Epic pasta and pizza nosh in a rock’n'roll restaurant attached to the venue. When MD played in Italy, Nooz told Frank the best thing to say when he first got onstage was “porco dio!”. Frank leapt up and shouted it and the crowd went silent. It’s a deathly insult in Catholic Italia, worse than “cunt” – more like using a racial swearword in the UK. Apparently Nooz also fell in love with Julia and pursued her aggressively until she vowed never to go back to Italy. He’s calmed down these days, trying to use his real name, got a girlfriend and lost some hair. But still writes out a large sign for Frank to hold in a photo saying “Lesson No 2: Porco Madonna!”. Nooz actually misses the gig to drive his girlfriend home, then the fog slows his return drive, so Frank plays for him in the street and a menacingly drunken Italian squaddie type dances and shouts “Fuck you!” all the way through. I’ve got it on film, feels like at any moment we’ll all get bottled.

Then back to our four star hotel.

HOME
In the morning I try to walk to Carrefour before breakfast to score some clean socks and a treat or two – but it’s just too far along what turns out to be the motorway hard shoulder. Return to the hotel annoyed and have cereal and a croissant but there’s no hot drinks left. I’m sure if I asked they’d fix me a coffee (it’s posh here) but I don’t have the energy or the language.

We say fond farewell to Eric and Laura, they were absolutely brilliant – I won’t forget them. Eric drives us to the airport.

Fuck. Bucket flight (Ryan-fucking-air) delayed for hours. Waiting room A) rammed B) no facilities C) very hot. Then: rushed takeoff, turbulence and an intense grumpy vibe on the plane, even stewardesses nervy, before landing at speed through heavy fog, hours late. Flights out cancelled apparently. Crowded train to London. Goodbye at King’s Cross. Hug it out.

I’ve lost: my hat, Frank’s harmonica, a large swiss cheese, almost all my socks and a bag of guitar cables. But I’ve gained: lush new friends, CDs by a bunch of new bands, some movie footage to die for and the keys to a small apartment in Vienna with the shower in the kitchen.

The next day Rifa buys me a new hat, in exchange for the apartment.

 

 

eurotour diary #2

I’m typing this on a ten-hour train ride through the Alps, from Zurich to Vienna and it’s utterly fucking immense, by far the most beautiful train journey I’ve ever taken – but I’ll get to that later. So for now, rewind five days…

KÖLN
After Eindhoven we drive into Germany to the outskirts of Köln to stay in a Formule 1 motel. Formule 1 is a chain of automatic hotels with no human check-in staff or cleaners. It’s all done automatically (which means, um, self-cleaning showers) and it’s one step down in comfort and cleanliness from a Travelodge, if you know what I mean.

Actually I’m gutted to be so near to Köln without seeing it, it feels like an unfulfilled psychic conneciton.

Getting used to the inside-out driving, so the next day I manage to touch 110mph on the autobahn down through the German borders and the Black Forest towards Switzerland. Very proud.

The SatNav is Irish so we’re calling her Shannon.

LUZERNE
This Swiss town is absolutely bloody stunning, high-up, built on a large lake, with an ancient wooden covered bridge and the most beautiful city walls I’ve seen in northern Europe. It’s inevitably touristy but has a laid-back feel.

Tonight we play with cutesy Swiss folk-pop star Heidi Happy, who is launching her second album. Her first album was called Get Back Together and was – I’m told – entirely aimed at persuading her ex-boyfriend to come home. Apparently it worked for a short while.

She’s charming but it’ll be tough to break through in the UK any time soon (if they care about that) because she doesn’t look like Heidi and she’s not very happy. Funnily enough, the ‘cutesy’ thing is entirely an act and when we all go for pre-show dinner (in a place called the FuckHaus or something) with her nine-piece band, she’s a sophisticated bookish type with a dangerous sense of humour, just acting the quirksome thing onstage. Swiss indie label Little Jig, who get some money for each release from the government. This government support will become a recurring theme in Schweiss.

 Venue manager Gisé is determined to get us drunk and, almost aggressively, brings me glass after glass of scotch. Meanwhile Frank is fed some kind of hot-spiced spirit drink, which fucks him up badly.

 When it gets messy we escape to our four-star hotel down the road.

 Increasingly, Switzerland is about driving giddily through gorgeous mountain snow scenes listening to vicious hardcore. I’ve written an MS column about this but touring in Europe is so much easier, logistically, than the UK that it makes me want to do it constantly. Several shows in a row on this tour, we’ll park at the venue without any problems and then walk less than 100m to a hotel supplied by the promoter. Or they’ll drive us everywhere. We get breakfast as well as dinner and the one time we got a parking ticket, the venue guy instantly takes it to ‘deal with’.

BASEL
My joke falls flat: “in England we say Basel like this…” (does dreadful impression of Cybil Faulty).

A bigger city. We’re at a long-running collective-owned anarcho punk venue called the Herschenbeck. It’s in a slightly downbeat gay area a few streets back from the Rhine and not only has the venue existed for 30 years but the building is over 700 years old and survived the Great Fire Of Basel in the 14^th century. Nice place to screw up with intense band graffiti. They’ve set up a series of attic bedrooms for visitors, including touring acts.

By which I mean we’re sleeping in a room covered with sharpie pictures of penises.

We play to 70 or 80 people crammed into their basement. It’s all very anarchist and exciting, although I’m a bit disappointed to see that – despite lots of ranting everywhere on various political themes – they serve meat in the café. At least they have the decency to be embarrased. Other acts are: A.J. Shanti, an NYC queercore singer who used to be a truck driver but now wanders the Euro hinterlands – having eloped with Dora, her Croatian girlfriend, playing impressive angry acoustic girl-on-girl songs. And Tilia a local Basel singer who is just starting out, with a cellist assisting. She has a lush voice, looks like Nora Zehetner and just needs to build confidence.

Don’t know why I’m going on about the other acts, don’t normally, I just was in the mood for exactly the music they provided I think.  

 

Got to stop to write a setlist but more very soon – because after another brilliant night in St Gallen in the snow, it’s all about to go excitingly pear-shaped…

 

goodnight / thankyou

Hey thank-you so much for reading – what a moving and wonderful evening. I’m going to sign off now, I think McCain’s speech was pretty noble and in stark contrast to a lot of the campaign (which says everything really) and now we’re staying up for Obama’s speech and then going to bed.

The USA did a fine thing! Sleep well.

xXx

the 333

At the start of the evening, Rifa predicted 333 and I laughed, but I did hope.

Listening to McCain’s (lovely) speech and watching the Florida call – tip the numbers up to 333, it was, yet again, a moving moment where Rifa was right all along.

What a night.