Real Time

Seattle dB Festival performance with Harold Budd
The show isn’t meant to start yet, I’ve just come onstage to switch on all my equipment and tune up my guitar, but my presence generates applause and the lights go down. Silent anticipation from the audience as the sound of my heart beating faster resonates from the stage. Everything seems to take an age in this silence, then, what the fuck?…..My computer has just did a ‘blue screen of death’. Oh dear, it’s going to be one of those concerts.
It never fails to amaze me that I fall for Harold’s charming, confident, nay, cavalier attitude towards soundchecking and getting all the tech bits just right. He seduces me into believing that everything will be all right, as indeed it usually is, but tonight I have problems.
Standing on stage with your computer rebooting is sort of like standing onstage with no trousers on. I mean, it’s reaaallllly embarrassing and I’m no Brian Rix. I can’t really make this funny. My laptop slowly comes to life, I start the first song. Minutes have past. What the fuck? It’s done it again, another blue screen. I imagine all the shit my friend ken will give me for not using a mac. This is now reeeeaaaallly embarrassing. I ask the audience if anyone from Microsoft is there tonight, it being Seattle and all. I sense myself becoming Brian Rix. A few people laugh. Fuck it, where’s Ken. Ken, please come on stage and make it work. I think, fuck it, I have to do something so I start to play the guitar while Ken comes on stage and tried to remedy my problem. I’m making up some nice improvised tunes with my looper which is working while he messes around with my laptop and says things in my ear like, ‘dude, you really should be using a mac’.
No, I really should be using a band.
I play guitar for a few more minutes making stuff up and feeling, rather inadequate, when ken does his magic and makes my laptop work. I play some of my songs. Well I play for about half an hour and at a certain moment Harold appears at his piano and joins in with what I’m doing. Nice. I play for a bit and then discreetly fuck off. I sit backstage for a while having a panic attack, consider leaving the building but the dressing room window is two stories up and if I jump out of the window, I know I’d land in a dumpster or something, it’s that kind of a night, so I opt for going to watch Harold play, which is, as ever, quite breathtaking and very inspiring. I wait until he plays a certain chord and then rejoin him on stage and play with him for half an hour or so. Just a moment or two before we finished I started to feel relaxed. Then just as quickly, it was all over. We were very nicely received by the audience and I wanted to thank them all for showing a little empathy, or at least not pointing and laughing while I was onstage with my trousers down.

Same old…

Time to write a little about music. I should, and often mean to, but more often than not start to ramble on about some small calamity or other. I’ve started a new production, a very interesting band from Australia called Heligoland who are currently based in Paris have asked me to produce their next album, so I’ve been in Paris recording some of the backing tracks with them and I’m really very excited about this project, the working dynamic is very pleasant, focused and the tunes have already gotten themselves under my skin. It’s nice to be working with others again, something that only now I realize that I miss. So, it’s early days for this album but I have a feeling it’s going to be very special.
As I write this I’m flying over North Dakota on my way to Seattle where I’ve been invited to play at the dB festival, and, while I’m sorely tempted to do another travel disaster story, I’ll spare you.
Suffice to say I just spent the night a couple of thousand miles from my intended destination, have no idea where my luggage is at but am on rather intimate terms with every possible security/immigration agency that the US have to offer. I now know what SSSS means which appears on every boarding card that I’ve been issued in the last five years. It means, we’re going to fuck you up so that you miss your connecting flight. I swear to god that everyone with a uniform in the airport at Philadelphia had it in for me. They look at my boarding card, see that little string of s’s and SWAT teams drop down through the ceiling on ropes and drag me away. I think even the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee lady thought she had the right to fuck with me as well because she had a uniform. I think she saw the SSSS on my boarding card, which was sticking out of my pocket, before short changing me $20.
OK, enough of that, I’ll get back to the stuff about music. As I was saying, I’m going to perform at the dB festival, and it promises to be a special one as I’m going to be performing both on my own and with Mr Harold Budd who will also be performing. That’s good news. It’ll be nice to see him as I haven’t seen him since before the summer. Curiously, the last time that we performed together was in Seattle, last year during the film festival. Well, those folks in Seattle sure have taste because we’ve never been invited to play together anywhere else. It would be nice to play more often with Harold as it really is quite special when we play together. It’s also scary as hell as he has the habit of using those black keys on the piano from time to time, which confuse and confound me no end. So, although we’ve made some records together I shouldn’t imagine that we’ll be playing any of that stuff. In fact I haven’t the faintest idea what we will play, which is one of the things that is appealing about doing a show like this.

After that, well, I’m due to spend a little time in Lima, not playing this time, but spending some time in the studio producing a band called Resplendor. I really enjoy the energy of this band, who have performed with me twice recently, and they have now invited me down to Peru to do some recording with them. It’s been a while since I’ve produced bands and it is nice to be doing this as I get the chance to practice some of the other disciplines involved in making music. I’ve learned that being a producer is very different to being an artist, to start with I have to make them happy with their record. I think in my dim and distant past, the formative years of me producing people, I put in too much of me and not enough of the artist. Younger men have larger egos, I guess. I don’t feel the same way now, as far as producing is concerned anyway. So it’ll be interesting to see what comes out as I have no idea what the energy will be like in the studio. That’s exciting.
Oh, and the food is really good down there
More travel nightmare stories soon, he says with some degree of certainty.

Things I did last summer….

All through the summer I was invited to play at some small festivals and other events which were, for the most part, pleasing if not a little exhausting. I had imagined a peaceful summer, spent doing all those things I never have time to do, just popping away for a weekend here or there to do a show. Didn’t really work out like that as I always forget that most of the shows I do involve travelling great distances, careful rehearsal and all the other things that are part of my life, you know, like, losing my luggage, being selected for secondary screening and third degree at every airport I travel through and the other adventures I encounter every time I leave the house. So my summer didn’t really provide much rest and relaxation and I certainly wasn’t really very productive. Playing live is reproductive which doesn’t really count.
When arriving back into France after that little adventure in Seville I started to, perhaps regret, just a little, having spent the last few years giving France such a hard time. Curiously, the simple act of crossing the border gave be the impression of coming home, even if home was still two days drive away. That’s quite a nice feeling. I can’t say I have felt it for a few years.
One of the concerts I played was at Heyres, in the south of France, as part of the Midi Festival, an intimate gathering of Electronica, in a beautiful setting, the Villa Noailles, sitting atop a hill overlooking the Riviera town with an incredible view and an interesting history, it being a favorite hang out of Man Ray and Jean Cocteau. I was welcomed warmly and everything about the way the event was organized was warm and friendly. The gentleman who invited me, Frédéric Landini, was very nice indeed and I’m not just writing that because I want to get invited next year, he was really cool. However, it was strangely disconcerting to be playing a concert in France where no-one was running about being stressed and obnoxious. What was also a bit strange was that I played in the afternoon, without the benefit of my Lumiere film to hide behind which almost guaranteed that I’d do something stupid in full view of the public. Well, I don’t like to disappoint. A consequence of my clothes being stolen in Seville was that I had no shoes, so I had to go on stage wearing some flip flops, which, is not really very fucking cool. Worse though, was that when I tried to press one of my effects pedals, I pressed about five of them at the same time, because the aforementioned flip flops were about the same width as the snowshoes that arctic explorers wear. So I had to stop playing, take off my shoes and play in my bare feet, which was realllllllyy fucking embarrassing, maybe worse than wearing flip flops in the first place. It was not, as my loving family pointed out, attention seeking behaviour.

me at midi
Doing a road trip is usually fun, doing one with your family on board, while you have some concerts to play is, well, interesting. It’s nice to cross a few boundaries every now and again, my life normally being so compartmental. Switching back and forth between artist and dad several times a day is something which, in our home, most often happens without effort although put me on a stage and have my six year old at the front trying to take a picture of me with the lens cap on and I’ll not be sure how to act.
Of course my instinct is to stop playing, put down my guitar and go to her aid but I’m guessing that’s not the right thing to do in that circumstance. That, and I’ve already stopped to take my shoes off a couple of minutes before and it could be taken as a sigh that I’m not really concentrating.
Then of course there the big one, the teenage daughter along for the ride as well. Who knows what goes on in her head as she’s watching her father looking uncomfortable on a stage with a guitar around his neck?
In fact, who knows what goes on in her head? Period.
I’ve had some totally surreal exchanges with her recently, the most outstanding of which I started to scribble onto a paper napkin as we were eating at the time. She was talking about turning up at some event or other dressed up as a persocom, to be precise, a chobit, a metal eared human looking robot or rabbit, I may have misheard.
I looked blank. “You know nothing about Cos-Play, do you dad?”
I looked blank again and scribbled some more. “Oh, no, you’re not going to write that into your web log are you? That stupid little window into your pathetic miserable little life”.
Too fucking right, I am.
I really wish that she’d been brought up by normal people.
Anyway as we sat eating a pizza my whole family criticized the way I pronounce dogshit in French. They broke it to me, gently at first, but then with a little more persistence, that when I tried to talk with the audience in French, no one understood a word of it and they were all being polite by not pointing and laughing.
To have the opportunity to pass the time with my girls, while rambling about the continent playing my guitar, well, it seemed a pleasant place to be right at that moment, even if they do remind me how retarded I can be all the time. You can’t really ask for much more than that. Unfortunately it doesn’t give me much to write about in a web log. I mean, come on, who really wants to read about me getting on OK with things. There’s no entertainment value in that, is there. Still, it doesn’t happen often, so indulge me.

Next, I ventured back to the country of my birth to play a couple of shows during the Edinburgh Festival, which were in a really unusual venue deep in the heart of the old town. Edinburgh is a great place to experience at any time, but during the festival it buzzes like no other place I’ve ever been. The atmosphere is only marred slightly by the presence of an unusually large number of mime artists.
Can’t say much about my shows, I think they were OK, or at least nobody told me that I sucked. What I do know was that they were really late at night and I dozed off just before showtime, only to be awakened by the applause after my introduction (which no one had told me about). Thus I entered the stage with that look of a startled rabbit, caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. I’m useless at the best of time after having a nap; it takes me five minutes to recognize my surroundings so I probably appeared even dopier than usual. Whatever. I found out what tired really means the next morning when I climbed to the top of Arthurs Seat with Violette as I had, in a moment of insanity, promised we would do before we left Edinburgh. I managed to survive the ordeal without being hospitalized although I ached everywhere for days afterward. I played Glasgow as well on that trip in a tiny little venue with candles on the tables, and met a nice bunch of people after the show, hung around and talked shit. That was fun.

me@punkt

After that, well I was invited to Kristiansand in Norway to appear at the Punkt festival. That was a real quick trip but included six flights to get there and back but nothing untoward happened to me at airport security, no planes were missed, no luggage lost as Madame Guthrie was with me and things like that don’t happen to her. She has a smile, you see, which melts people. No one would ever lose her luggage or remove her toothpaste. Arriving in Kristensand at night left the biggest surprise for the morning, when, on opening the hotel room curtains, was revealed the sheer beauty of a small Norwegian coastal town, with the full complement of blue sky, water, mountains and trees. Soundcheck was at 9am so we had the rest of the day to look around and took up an offer made by the festival organizers of a little boat trip around the fjords, stopping at a little island for a delightful lunch of fish soup and returning a few hours later. It was like being on holiday. Lovely. The only problem is that my Madame now imagines that I get spoiled like this every time that I travel to do a show and therefore has ceased to believe me that what I do is hard work. I was very impressed with this festival, and I not saying that to get invited back there either. I loved the venue and the care taken over the production. I was able to use multiple projectors in the theatre which is something I’d do more often, given the chance.

me@punkt

Don’t know when that’ll happen though, as I’m kinda really needing to get some new music done, my studio needs to have a little life breathed into it and a layer of dust brushed away. It’s been a while since I wrote any music, for me at least. It’s overdue.

Seville

OK…OK….OK, I know, I only write about stuff when things go wrong and It must seem like when many weeks pass without me writing that things must have, apparently, been OK.
Well, I have to agree, this is probably the case.
But hear this one out. It’s a doozy.
Seville is, acknowledgedly, the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of Southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and therefore somewhere which sounds worth driving 1700km to have a look around, make a nice concert and, more importantly, if given the chance, taste some interesting new dishes. So I was happy and grateful to be invited to play at an open air festival there, in an old monastery, a most historical building, claiming a tree planted by Christopher Columbus after returning from the new world. How cool. Why not?
So jump in the van with a somewhat less than rock’n’roll attitude, rather more of a, well, a let’s take the children, I can’t remember the last time we spent some time together, kind of an approach..
It was a nice drive down there and I felt glad to see the sun and blue sky which seemed to be evading most of Northern Europe this year. It was a fairly relaxed journey which I spent listening to audiobooks while driving, with a stop of in Bordeaux at my favorite restaurant, one in Vitoria to pick up a teenage child and another in Madrid to break the journey. On arriving in Seville I met my production host, Andy Jarman,who warned me about leaving my musical equipment in the van as Seville is a city with a lot of crime. I was able to have him take my equipment to his place rather than leave it in the hotel or street. However you have to park somewhere I parked on a busy, well lit street as he suggested and emptied the vehicle of valuables which we duly did.
However, with the experience of recent events it was really not too much of a surprise to arrive back at our vehicle the following morning to find the left hand window broken in and all of our possessions either scattered all over the place or, in the case of all of my clothes, missing. My six year old daughter Violette had her clothes and some of her toys missing too and seemed thrilled by the idea of being robbed however my other daughter, Lucy Belle was gently sobbing saying ‘motherfuckers…. motherfuckers…..motherfuckers have taken my vans and cyberdogs’.
I had no idea what she was talking about as she is, of course, a teenager but later found out she was referring to her shoes and really strange big trousers which young people of a certain ilk take delight in wearing.
The strange thing is the thief largely ignored the items that I would have stolen had I been a Spanish junkie, you know like Lucy Belle’s credit card and cash, which she had, rather stupidly, left in the vehicle.
No, it sort of got me thinking that this person needed middle aged mans clothing with teenage girl underwear and all of our dirty laundry. Well, you know, I’ve not much experience of Spanish people so maybe that’s normal.
Another curiosity of stealing my clothes is that it was over 35 degrees and while I could understand stealing, let’s say, a Speedo, it seemed a strange choice to run off with a navy blue woolen suit, even if the thief would look very dapper indeed while wearing it, if not a little sweaty as I would have, had I had the fucking chance to wear it..
Anyway, I digress; I’ll get back to my tale. I fashioned a quick repair to the broken window with cable ties, the things which, increasingly, seem to hold everything in my life together, locked up and headed off to the police station to make a report. This took about an hour and consisted of contemptuous policemen grunting at us, shrugging a lot and regarding us with a look that said ‘what did you expect, you tourist filth?’ I understand that there is not much to be done in a situation like we found ourselves in at that moment, no rounding up of the usual suspects and no team of detectives following up leads. The only lead I had anyway was that the thieves would probably be dressed, well, just like us. I didn’t want to end up in a Spanish prison so we quickly left.
On arriving back at the van I experienced a strange feeling of déjà vu. Well not quite déjà vu as this time it was the right hand window which had been broken in, while we were in the police station, and this time it was a more professional and thorough job. What had been missed by the first thief wasn’t missed by the second one. To be robbed on a busy city street in broad daylight is quite something, even for someone from Scotland.
Welcome to Seville.
Now, call me old fashioned but this situation was starting to become, as my firstborn would put it, a little irksome. There seemed really very little to be done except smile and get on with it. So, we went to the venue, the aforementioned old monastery, and soundchecked, which was rather pleasant, ate and then tried to return to the venue only to find ourselves locked out. I imagined Christopher Columbus beating on the same gates shouting, ‘Come on guys…. hey, guys……let me in……I have some seeds’.

I spent most of the show looking at the audience to see if any of them were wearing any of my clothes. I played as well as I could,which was not bad for someone who knew he would smell real bad the next day. No really, I kinda, sorta, um, er, well, how do you put it, mmm, enjoyed the performance. I could see the moon and the stars as I played and it sounded just lovely. Just for a moment I forgot that someone needed my dirty laundry more than I actually did and that felt just fine….
Trouble was, the next day I had to go to France.

Lonely Planet

Words fail me right now.
Anyone who has ever read my weblog will understand that I have a special gift in life, namely blurring the boundaries between what is unlikely and what is possible while traveling by air. This time, with a direct ticket from New York JFK to Paris CDG it’s only natural that I should end up in Toronto, right?
The concert I did a few days ago was obviously just an excuse for me to travel and therefore gather interesting and self deprecating little vignettes for me to entertain y’all with. You see, right now as I start to write this I’m sitting on the floor of a crowded airport terminal, in a small pool of my own tears. I’ve just been told I can’t fly home with the ticket that I have as it is invalid for travel and, as it is the one provided for me by the people who arranged my concert in Brooklyn, there’s not much I can do about it as I can’t raise them on my cell phone. Did I mention that my cellphone battery just ran out. Or, that they could let me on the plane if I gave them $2500. Or that I don’t have $2500. Or that the wi-fi in the terminal is temporarily down. Or that I am traveling alone with all my equipment and luggage which is less than manageable for one person. Or that I just paid $3 for a luggage cart with a wonky wheel that wants to go around in circles all the time. It goes on…

What to do? I’ve already returned my rental car so I’m a bit stuck at the airport. Umm, OK JFK… Airport hotel, I ask a shuttle driver to take me to the least expensive airport hotel. Fuck, $300.. I’m being held to ransom here, as well they know it. Ah well, at least I can get online. I’ll have a shower, get some food from the restaurant and get online to sort out a ticket.

me…. Excuse me, where’s the restaurant?

receptionist…. We don’t have a restaurant sir.

me…. Sorry, I think I misheard you, I’m retarded, it sounded like you said this $300 hotel doesn’t have a restaurant.

receptionist…. That’s correct sir, however we have a complimentary breakfast consisting of pissy american coffee and donuts with icing so thick you could wax your legs with it.

I ask, already knowing the answer, if there was a bar with little snacks in it but I was answered with a look which said ‘don’t be pathetic sir‘…

I got online, contacted the person responsible about my travel and secured a ticket to Paris via Toronto the next day. From La Guardia. Cab fare $40. I went to sleep and, well, I have to say it is probably the most comfortable bed I have ever slept on and my sleep was deep and refreshing, something I wouldn’t have thought possible given my loathing of spending so much money on something I couldn’t get years of use out of.

Now, recently traveling to South America with my wife I was reminded of how much easier life is for a young attractive woman than a middle aged man with too much luggage. She has such a lovely smile and manner that I feel sure she could smuggle a bomb onto a plane and have the security people carry it on board for her. All it would take is one little flutter of those eyelids or a few words in her charming foreign accent. She is forever getting free upgrades or not having to pay excess baggage charges all because she has a nice smile or so it seems. So with this in mind I thought I’d try it out myself at La Guardia, I mean it’s worth a try right, so I smiled my nicest smile at the security people, who led me off to a small room as I obviously appeared to be high. I was relieved of my toothpaste by an officious TSA officer. This, sort of, pissed me off and I spent the first part of my flight scheming revenge by thinking of witty acronyms for the letters emblazoned on her shirt, you know Totally Stupid Asshole and Toothpaste Security Agent, and the like but I soon tired of that and spent the rest of the flight wondering how to bring down an airliner with a tube of Crest Whitening should I be able to sneak one on next time.

I met a very cool rabbi on the plane, who said lots of prayers out loud as we took off. He explained to me that he prayed for safety, and I have to say, he’s rather good, as we landed without incident some time later. He asked me about living in France and I said my usual joke about it being nice but it would be better with less French people and he answered with the same for Israel. More room for the Palistineans then? I asked, just fucking witcha rabbi….He was cool though and I enjoyed talking to him. He was a kind of high tech rabbi as well as he had loads of consumer electronics, ipods, laptops, cell phones and stuff. And a big assed hat and curls. I’ll have to see if he’s on my space.

Last week my travel to the US had been mostly without incident, unless you call not being able to get on several flights and having to wait in the airport, without incident. I do nowadays. The low point of my eventual flight to New York was being seated exactly one row behind business class, having that curtain pulled over in front of my face to stop me seeing all those people up there getting champagne, food that looks like real food, blow jobs from the flight attendants and all of the other things you can have if you spend $12000 on a ticket. However I felt happy with my seat as I got to witness two old men trying to have a fistfight over the honour of one of their wives, whom the other had been, allegedly, kicking under her seat. It was like a John Wayne movie with things like ‘you will apologize to my wife right now, feller or I’ll bloody your nose’ and ‘the hell I will’. It was really funny and attracted the attention of all the flight attendants, well the ones not busy blowing the business class passengers, whose training had evidentially not prepared them for septuagenarian fisticuffs. If truth be told the wife was so disagreeably ugly that I wanted to kick her myself…

But to get back to my story, I had to wait a while in the airport in Toronto and got a introduction to Canadian culture while viewing TV in the lounge. The program was called Swimsuit Poker, or something of the sort, and featured girls with big breasts, in swimsuits, playing poker. This explains a lot to me about Canada.
I’m sure I gave Air Canada a bit of a bashing in a previous journal and it was probably for good reason. They have really, really uncomfortable planes, a strange thing for a national carrier. There are no-frills budget airlines in Europe with more comfort and facilities. Should there ever be another holocaust I’m sure Air Canada would get the contract for the transportation.

And now, well I’m back in Paris at the airport. Amazingly, my luggage arrived this time, albeit last on the carousel, which, naturally, made me miss my train back to Rennes by about 3 minutes. I have to wait 3 hours until the next one. I’ve a bit of battery left on my laptop so I’ll compose these words for you while it’s still fresh and before the tears dry up.
It’s now 36 hours since I left for the airport in NYC.

Studio B

My concert at Studio B in Brooklyn didn’t suck but, overall, it was somewhat of a disappointment to me. I found the conditions in the club less than favorable for a nice performance and I didn’t really get into it.
Everyone told me afterwards it was good but I know they were just sucking up …
However what didn’t disappoint was the four pieces of music that I played with my friends Andrew Prinz and Odell Nails who had kindly sat in with me. Yes, that was rather cool. Hope I can do something like that in the future.
I really have to rethink these club shows as they simply don’t work for me. It’s somewhat disheartening to ask for certain requirements, which I feel are vital to my performance, only to have what I ask disregarded by the people in charge of such things, you know lights, sound and that stuff. OK, I played, tried to do my best but, hey, don’t ask me to enjoy it or even give any more than the bare minimum of what I’m capable off. Sounds Harsh? I don’t care. A successful concert requires more than the careful attention to detail that I try to give, it requires a little understanding from those involved in the production and it involves the audience as well, as, lets face it, the concert is pretty much all about the audience. In this instance the audience were warm and appreciative, apart from some fool shouting for ‘from the flagstones’, I played OK but the sound, lights and projection was pretty bad. Why do those people continually try to make my show into a rock concert, cranking the sound level up to deafening volumes and filling the stage with disco lights? Especially as they have been given instructions to the contrary. I don’t understand.

Somewhere Else

I’ve been in the US for the last few days. I have a performance to do on Thursday and, because it’s in a rowdy assed night club instead of a serene theatre type environment, I’ve decided to try something a little different. OK, I’ll still be on the stage trying to avoid the spotlight, shuffling about uncomfortably looking at my pedals, but I’ll be doing so in the company of two other musicians, namely Andrew Prinz from Mahogany who has kindly offered to play bass and Odell Nails on drums. This isn’t part of a grand plan, rather me taking a few risks and, in essence, trying to expand my horizons and learn a little at the same time. Although I’ve recently worked on Mahogany’s album Connectivity, I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Andrew before yesterday and Odelll walked into my life with a large smile on his face only this morning. I find myself very impressed with these people, musically and, more importantly, on a personal level. I feel simultaneously thrilled and terrified at the prospect of sharing my music with two people that I’ve just met and don’t really know. However, their enthusiasm heals my fears. Just for today.

At moments when we play together it is delicious. At moments it makes me fearful that it may not work. I just don’t know. Right now I haven’t the faintest idea how this will turn out, but I have high hopes that it’ll be luscious and pant wetting. I suspect that whether or not it’s any good the whole experience will be pant wetting for me but that is another story. The plan is that after playing together today and, for a moment, tomorrow we try to figure out, I don’t know, lets say, four or five pieces of my music, and then present them on Thursday night in Brooklyn. It’s a long time since I played with others and, even then, not with my music so I’m curious to see what happens. I hope it doesn’t suck.

Dispatches from South America – The Personal Version

Now if you ask me the summer seems a strange time to choose to have winter but those happy folks down in South America seem OK with that idea and it suddenly struck me that an idea that I’ve lived with for forty five years on this planet, you know like Santa coming when it’s all snowy and July being a good month to hit the beach, are not in fact, universal. I mean, we could learn something from that, given that the shops aren’t nearly so busy in the summer than they are at Xmas. Several other ideas seem to differ slightly from my assumed knowledge, firstly that, over there one only has a ‘good chance’ of reaching ones destination alive when taking a cab and that guinea pigs are not, as we northern hemisphere types believe, cuddly little pets for our children rather tasty little appetisers for our lunch. That said, I’ve eaten weirder stuff in Japan and even survived a few Muscovite cab drivers, both in Moscow and New York, I hasten to add.

Chile
We we’re greeted by our hosts at the airport after a 14 hour flight from Paris and whisked off to our accommodation under an overcast sky along a typical airport highway and was assured that all the large piles of trash were were due to the trashmen being on strike. Shame on me, I was a little dubious but was pleasantly surprised a few days later when the accumulated piles of trash in the neighbourhood disappeared. The sun came out also revealing the majesty of the snow capped mountains which glisten in the sun in a way that beguiles and seems to overshadow most things, always reminding us how small and insignificant we actually are. It’s really difficult not to look at them, if you are there as a tourist, just as it is difficult not to look skywards whilst in Midtown Manhattan. Simply, I’m happy, I’m somewhere else. There’s lots to see on this planet and I’m running short of time. However I start to feel if I take a cab it may not exactly speed things up but terminate things forever.
With jetlag hitting myself, but not my seemingly tireless wife, Florence, we dropped our bags and headed into town for a quick look around. Just before I left home I’d bigged up on the whole Chilean deal with an article in one of my (stupidly expanding) collection of National Geographic Magazine but, in my usual untimely manner, it was from August 1973 and, I have to say, about as useless a document as my ‘concert contract document’ , more of which later.
So while I quickly updated myself on the, not exactly, breaking news of the military coup of September 1973, the repression of the people, the music of Víctor Jara , his persecution and all sorts of other fucked up shit which made Margaret Thatcher seem like, well, you know, still the worst thing that happen to the UK in the 20th century but just a bollock hair less evil. Despite the death of the dictator and ascendancy of democracy and the building of a large 80’s shaped cell phone building, built by, presumably, the cell phone company in the 80’s and such things, I couldn’t help but be compelled to take photos of a jackbooted military presence with an inordinately large number of armed ‘ninja turtle armoured militia’ presence. The event they were “protecting” was a protest by about 25 pre-school teachers about there not being enough red crayons to go around, or something of the like. The military presence seemed really threatening, even to someone who lives in France and goes out on a Saturday night. The best was seeing the armoured water cannon vehicle, I believe nicknamed ‘llamas’ as they spit when they are pissed off. I don’t want to paint a bad picture because it’s not at all like that, it was just unlucky to see that stuff before seeing anything else. Actually Santiago seems a very cool city and it’s not been spoiled by a certain chain of ridiculously over priced Pacific North Western coffee shops yet. You should go.
Happily I can report that in all my stay Chile I saw not another gun or shiny leather boot, even when I begged. However the whereabouts of some pre-school teachers remains unknown. I think they may have gone to MacDonalds.
After that, well, wander around downtown Santiago, trying to look like someone who doesn’t need to be shot just at that moment. Go for a coffee. Hey, y’all, this is a beautiful city. Fuck all your European shit, you can feel the struggle of those who walked before us as you walk the streets here. Those grand thoughts along with the more Guthrie-esque “hey I can afford coffee here without taking out a mortgage’ .. Happy.
Went to the Central Market.
Fish in mind
Those of you who know me personally will wonder how it took me so long to get there.
Didn’t buy a fish but saw this.
Please Identify

On the last day that we were there we spent the day near Valparaiso, a delightful and historic port city, just up the coast at a friends apartment, where we ate Ceviche and Chilean Sea Bass the size of a small child. I saw pelicans which, although are surely not the brightest birds in the animal kingdom, have such grace and beauty that it seems a shame to eat them.
just joking, they wouldn’t sell me one
I have been in the company of really nice people with very interesting things to say.
I’ve been introduced to so many familiar things in a new way.
I even saw my wife taken into police custody for being sober.
I cannot complain.
However…
I Never did get to eat Centolla.

Peru
In all truth, I had imagined that it’s be fun to tell of my trip to Peru, somewhat in the same manner as a tintin adventure, with me, of course, dressed in a white suit and panama hat, wiping my brow with my banadana from time to time like Charles Laughton. As it turned out it wasn’t like that, in fact it was somewhat more bizarre, but to my credit, I chose not to wear white, which as I had discovered in Chile, had been a big mistake but for different reasons, mostly involving the fans of goth bands from the eighties.
Peru, without a guidebook, was as captivating as one could imagine. It started with the stereotypical hyper-bureaucracy at customs, something living in France had prepared me for, you know, like smuggling 20kg of crack cocaine inside and old antique clock but having spend three hours there, while they valued the clock, ending up paying $15 timepiece tax or whatever. Thankfully I hadn’t the need to smuggle drugs to Peru, apart from the obvious reason that i t w o u l d b e r e t a r d e d – I don’t do them anymore.
So, between the pointless French style red tape, mixed with the guns, shiny leather and sweat of the Spanish influenced Peruvian border police, whose paperwork has to be filled in, apparently not in duplicate nor even triplicate (heaven forbid, the mere suggestion may have you put up against a recently bloodied pole at the airport to be shot), so… no, forget quadruplicate, everything has to be filled in in quintiplicate This made me feel ever so grateful that Madame Guthrie was accompanying me on this trip and had recently had to deal with France Telecom on my behalf and therefore found this not challenging in the least.
So we meet or hosts, get whisked from the aeroporte to our hotel, while we innocently gaze out of the van window taking in the small part of Peru, probably the most representative part of the real Lima, given that most folks live without room service here and I, for one, find it captivating, sort of reminiscent of Naples except chaotic (which will only make those of you who have visited Naples smile). In short, it’s like the South America seems like in the movies. However, I see nothing which seems more fucked than Grangemouth, Scotland… Peckham, London… Belleville, Paris or MostPlacesWherePeopleDontDriveHummers, USA. In short, life seems vibrantly chaotic and truly worthwhile. Please excuse my naivety as I come here as a tourist but the point is, Ok, if you watch the TV here you can see the problems, the life in the shanty towns, all of the over tired clichés of South America. But, really I’m only here for a couple of days and I am being welcomed by the warmest, most welcoming people I’ve met since, er, well Chile.. (Wait a minute, you know what I mean. Nobody from our production tried to shoot me here, hell no, I had to go to Illinois for that) More importantly, I’m being exposed to something which will, without a doubt, enrichen my life, expand my horizons and continue to influence my thoughts for a long time to come.
Oh, and I met the future president of Peru, who, with his learned friends, taught me a few things.

Welcome Home
It would appear that in the narrow corridors of the Elysée, my name has been passed from government agency to government agency after my recent insurgent behaviour as a disgruntled France Telecom customer. Well, hats of to them, m o t h e r f u c k e r s, they must have got some of their wires to work as they managed to pass my name to another branch of the, thinly disguised French regime, (thinly disguised as a first world democratic country that is), namely Air France.
When arriving back in Santiago, Chile after a few days in Peru, to take the direct flight to Paris, I was somewhat startled back into the reality of the ’so called’ developed world by a, pretty, but altogether pretty retarded, check in person at the Air France desk who informed me, with that, oh so missed ‘fuck you’ attitude, that I hadn’t witnessed for the last 10 days, that if wanted to take my musical equipment home with me I’d have to pay $40/kg for the privilege. Now, I’m travelling with more than 40kg of musical equipment, so you do the math as if I do it again it’ll drive me to tears again.
No matter that the Air France luggage policy allowed me to bring the equipment from Paris CDG in the first place.
No matter that I’d just flown up to Lima and back to Santiago with little more than a smile and a ‘have a nice flight sir’.
No, that’s evidently not the way that the national flag carrier of France chooses to work.
This perhaps should help fanfare to the world quite a lot about the selfishness and greed of, well apparently, pretty much any organisation with the word France in the title.
France for example.
Had I been told in Paris that I couldn’t take two bags, I could have made a decision (for I am 45 and can make decisions myself, sometimes, you know… ) to leave some things, you know, a guitar, my effects pedals or my clothes or something. However, at my Paris check in I’d been greeted like just any other stupid France Telecom, oops I mean Air France, customer, welcomed on to their flight with all my baggage and I swallowed all of their bullshit like the naive piece of shit that they believe that I, as a customer, am.
So, as I’m sure regular readers don’t need to be told, in short, to get my equipment home cost me the most part of the money that I made playing in South America.
However
I, for once, have the last laugh.
ha
oh yes
you see, I gained about 3 kilos on this trip indulging myself on various tasty South American foods.
Didn’t tell them…
saved $120
shhhhh….

35 hours after leaving Lima I arrived home.
I didn’t smell too good.

Dispatches from South America – The Profesional Version

Part 1

I’ve just arrived home from Chile and Peru. I wrote some of the forthcoming words in the heat of the moment and some after some careful consideration. I promised myself I wouldn’t write anything negative in this journal as I feel very lucky to have had a really great adventure and moreso, for fear of upsetting people but, hey, fuck it, I need to write this in order to let it go, otherwise it’ll bounce around inside me and fuck me up. That’s just the way it is. Please take the time to also read my following entry “Dispatches from South America – The Personal Version” which I feel is essential to balance what I’ve written here about my work.

You see, quite simply, although in my recent years I’ve strived to be a patient man I have recently been subjected to events which would have Mother Theresa randomly shooting up a MacDonald’s. In short, I’ve been, once again, proving to myself that I am not able to cope with the indignities of the life I have chosen in music. I must preface this this by saying that I’ve just returned from South America where I’ve performed a few times and I wouldn’t want anyone to imagine that I’ve had a terrible time or been in the company of bad people, in fact quite the opposite is true. It’s just that, given my personality, I’m pathologically unable just to let go without sharing a few of my little calamities with y’all. Nothing super bad you understand, just things which could have been avoided but which were not.
You know, quite a few times recently in this weblog I’ve used the phrase “I have the best job in the world”. Well, I was talking bollocks, as frankly some of my experiences last week suggest otherwise. Sometimes it sucks to be me. I’ll elaborate. I’ve been playing a very simple instrumental set recently, very downtempo, a musical accompaniment to the animated film Lumière. I’ve played in front of, oh, dozens of people before… So, as is my habit I always send out an email to the event organisers with my modest requirements, you know, seated venue, as standing through a movie is fatiguing and, frankly, weird; a big assed screen to project the film on to; no bar in the room, as this often is very noisy and my show is meant to be quiet. I mean, I would say, all in all, my requirements are rather humble. I was once showed a thirty two page list of Morrisey’s backstage needs, not the technical requirements mind you, just the pampering requirements which proves that a/ he’s rather an arrogant old fuckwit and b/ he probably has no need to write a cathartic, but witty and amusing weblog about things as he always gets what he needs which, evidently, proves he’s obviously smarter than me.
Anyway, I never provide a ‘pampering requirements’ document (you know like in Spinal Tap, what shape the sandwiches backstage need to be, that kind of a thing) as I believe if someone invites me to perform that they will look after me, which, naive as it may seem, is what I am comfortable with.
Well I have to say that from the moment I arrived in Chile I was magnificently looked after, no complaints there. Wonderful hospitality. I was received warmly by my hosts who turned out to be fine people indeed.

However
So I’m in Santiago and unfortunately, for reasons perhaps beyond the control of the promoters, perhaps all of the planets have lined up into a big fuck you sign, perfectly aligned to the view from my dressing room, or perhaps because my Spanish is a little less than perfect, consisting of a few phrases which enable me to get adequate supplies of toilet paper in my hotel room, I was surprised indeed to find myself playing, not in a cozy little intimate theatre as I had been told, but in a big fucking disco at about 2am to a large, albeit very supportive crowd who, when talking after a few pisco sours, seemed to make more noise than a Metallica soundcheck.
James Brown fucked me up.
That’s obvious. That afternoon I’d been in the home of my friends Rodrigo and Ivonne when they said, as innocently as normal people say when their cats wander into the room, “this is our cat, James Brown, born the day James died… you’re not allergic are you”. I had sensed the presence of James before this announcement, being, how shall we put it, a little sensitive to the sadistic little evil motherfucking hairy assed bitches from hell since my mother brought me up with about 12 of the them. My eyes started to itch and my nose started to run. My nose started to itch and my eyes started to run. I started to wheeze. Truth is, I like cats but I have to avoid them. This one was cute. I fucked up. I went to the pharmacy. I bought an antihistamine…..
To me, at that point a little nap backstage was in order, for about, oh I don’t what seemed like four or five hours.
Well you know what they say about the drugs in South America. When it comes to drugs I’m about as much of a pussy as James Brown, the cat that is, not the dead guy.
Um…
So really, the cumulative effect of jet lag, some over the counter meds and the sudden depression when one is awakened at 1.57am to find himself, in the year 2007, in the dressing room of a fucking disco at 2.00am to see this…..

when one normally see’s this

is somewhat disturbing.

If I may digress a little I should write that I was enormously touched by the warmth of the audience. There were many people offering wonderful gifts and uncalled for hospitality which I wasn’t really prepared for, emotionally speaking.
Anyway back to my little histoire.
I don’t think I sucked but it wasn’t an easy show.
My first few pieces of music that I played were completely inaudible to me, indeed, I couldn’t even hear my little click thingy which is in my ears. Just as importantly I couldn’t see anything I was playing. Had it not been for the fact that I remembered that my feet were at the bottom of my legs I’d have been unable to press any foot pedals or any of that other stuff I do when I’m up there trying to do my thing.
Difficult.
But once I’ve started the show I can’t just stop playing if there’s a problem and there’s no point in trying to speak to them as I don’t happen to need any toilet paper at that particular moment, so I play on, try to do the best I can under the circumstance and try to be professional, because lots of people paid a lot to get in and they don’t need me to be throwing a sissy fit because I’ve had every single one of my requirements for the Lumière show ignored and would like to be somewhere else.
Now please, please understand I’m not in the slightest part disappointed with anyone except myself, as I really feel that by trying to present the Lumière performance in a disco was a mistake on my part. However, what could I do? Travel to the other side of the planet and then refuse to play?. No, I couldn’t do that, there were so many people there with so much enthusiasm, so I tried my best and endured my time on stage and tried to smile and be polite to everyone who wished me well, while embarrassment and frustration raged inside.
Not fun.

me thinking, omg, why didn’t I choose black?

Part 2

Well at least the next show wasn’t in a disco so that had to be better, right?
I ask you…Where would be the fun in writing this if that were true?
Next night was also in Santiago in the ‘best music venue for my sort of show’.
Ah bon?
Hmm, I should have guessed really, I mean there were telltale signs. It sort of looked like a big bar. In fact there was a big bar, no seats, lots of bottles and glasses everywhere. “Are you sure it’s not a bar?” I hopelessly whimper, knowing what the forthcoming evening will bring. Well I was assured otherwise but, to be frank, I’ve been in a few bars in my time and this certainly seemed familiar territory. Of course, never in my most stupefied haze would I have gone to a bar to watch a movie, but hey, that’s just me not being open minded, right?.. Apparently not. Oh well… I have a fundamental understanding that the people who have bought tickets to my show and have bought my records for the last twenty odd years are the people who have put shoes on the feet of my children and given me the privilege of this, sometimes extraordinary and sometimes very ordinary, life that I have, so I swallow the tiny amount of pride that I have left and play my show as best as I can, wondering all the time why the film looked like it was being projected onto a bedsheet, which it appears was the case, and although I was warmly received by the audience I felt I had let them down by presenting this show in such an inappropriate setting. Oh, and there’s one other thing… I sucked real bad. I had tech fuck ups, film fuck ups, finger fuck ups, looper fuck ups, pedal fuck ups, in short everything that could go wrong obligingly did so. I did check my flies were up before and after the set, which, had they been open as the folks of Aberdeen could bear witness, would have been the final indignity.
OK call me over responsible but it’s my ass up on that stage getting judged on every little imperfection, OK? and despite trying otherwise I kindly provided the audience with many imperfections that night.
Umm, after the show, more wonderful people being very complimentary, lots of photos for fans, sort of twenty years ago popstar stuff as opposed to the indifference that I have become more accustomed to, and indeed as I’ve come to realise, more comfortable with, these days.

Part 3

Went to the seaside, to play in a small theatre in the University at Valparaiso, Chile.
Guess what?
Nice venue, seated, big assed screen, no disco balls, no bad surprises, nice show, nice people. More what the lumiere thing is all about.
Happier.
Trouble is when it goes well I can’t think of anything to journal about it.
The sandwiches were even the correct shape in the dressing room.

My extended thanks to the photos that I stole from Cristian Soto L, Ronald Smith Arredondo and Jorge Matta Abad who are indeed very talented….

I’m..

….going to do some shows in South America. I am, I have to say, rather intrigued by the prospect of visiting a place, one so far away from home, that people may be interested in what I have to offer. In my usual fashion, I’m, you know, a little unprepared, although at this stage that seems like a largely redundant thing to type. When going to another country with weird electricals, while doing a largely electrical show…mmm well, things can fuck up, but mostly they don’t, not in view of the people who watch but..well, I can tell you now that this is one of the parts of being me that suck. My faith in what can happen to make things work out was readily documented her a couple of years back when I was able to find a blank DVD in a gas station, near the venue in Budapest just before going on. I really, no, really,really,really,really,really, hope that something like that doesn’t have to happen again but who the fuck knows? My denial of potential problems can clearly be illustrated by my interest in the question not of what the equipment will be like , nor even the people or the the hospitality, which I’m sure will, of course, be perfect….no, how far away is patagonia and will I be able to eat centolla ?

OK artistically speaking not the most interesting dispatch, I’ll grant you that but, what the fuck, I’ll bet that you are a boring twat sometimes as well, right?

I mixed a most beautiful piece of music by a young gentleman from Denmark called Jonas Munk who releases his music under the name of Manual. It was somewhat more of a mix, something more like what I have done recently with Ulrich Schnauss, which is, roundly speaking, just working with his music, taking away bits that I don’t like and replacing them with things I do. I swear, I do have the best in the world. I’ve not yet met Jonas but I look forward to it.

Ulrich Schnauss has a new CD coming out with a couple of tracks that I’ve worked on soon. I don’t know much more. This is why I usually write all the stuff about France Telecom.