Web Log  |  Life, music and everything else...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.