Tour 2018 - London (Day 8)

Photo from kram srednuas’s Youtube video of Wussy at 100 Club

SoTD: Discos Cheese and Onion Crisps - These suck. I mean I wouldn’t kick ‘em out of bed for eating a woman, but I’m not going to pay money for them. Again. They’re of the reconstituted dried potatoes variety of chip. Like a Pringle, but thicker and faker tasting. Meh.

Britishism: Pulling Mussels from a Shell: Shaun says that the phrase from the classic Squeeze song is about the kissing with tongues. Who knew?

I’m so far behind I have to look at my pictures to reconstruct the events. Like “Memento” with more bowel issues. Lisa continues to struggle with the Dengue Fever.* Her characteristic rash eerily playing out the Stations of the Cross. When she had made it to where Jesus falls down for the second time it was decided she should experience the NHS and visit a doctor. The non-lead singers would do the laundry. As is our lot in life. Folding the lead singer’s underwear being the ritual act of submission for the rhythm section going back to Mesopotamian times**

Lisa got meds, and haphazardly folded clothes, (poorly folded clothes being the ritual act of passive aggression from the rhythm section going back to Mesopotamian times) and we lit out for London Town.***

Upon arrival Shaun decided to surprise us by driving by Abbey Roads. When we got to the iconic zebra stripes he said, “OK, you all jump out and I’ll pull up and snap a picture!” Chuck said, “No.” Shaun said, “C’mon!” Chuck said, “I’m not doing it.” Shaun said, genuine puzzlement rising from his voice, “You’re saying no?” “ I leaned in and said, “We don’t really do cute.” Still, it was cool to see the building and all that.

We got to The 100 Club, which I knew had been the site of a legendary early punk festival, but hadn’t looked into it much beyond that. We load in and start looking at the photos on the walls. The place has existed as a club since the 1940’s and in a different configuration had Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman hanging and/or playing. The current family owners bought it in the 1960’s and it hasn’t changed much since. Muddy Waters played there, every punk band you can name played on that stage. The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney have played shows there. It’s pretty fucking cool. Also, and I think it’s because I’m dead inside, I wasn’t freaked out by it. I remember playing in Seattle where Nirvana had held a CD release and feeling overwhelmed by the ghosts, but I was mostly feeling like I was going to work. To a job I love granted, but even though there were pictures of Pete Townshend on that very stage I didn’t feel his spirit exhorting me to climb climb climb to those heady heights of “It’s hard. It’s very, very, very, very, hard. So very hard.”

Joe and I went and had a pint at The Blue Post, I went record shopping and scored a sweet Iron Maiden picture disc for my son, ate dinner and took a circuitous route back to the club. I was in the Carnaby Street area and alternated between being amused by the high fashion and ostentation I saw, and feeling cranky that all this wealth should be concentrated in one little area while entire regions are piss poor. I mean there’s nothing wrong with fashion; David Bowie and Paul Weller always looked fucking cool. And they aged in ways I barely dare dream of. But there was also a vibe that maybe the excesses mocked with the Capital City’s citizen’s in “The Hunger Games****” are dangerously close to reality. I’m not judging. The Trump administration has rendered satire moot. America was just ripped by the U.N. for having whole regions in abject poverty. Also, I can be moody.

Back to the club and the band before us, Hurtling, were fucking great. Keep an eye out for them. We had easily the biggest crowd we’ve had in the U.K. and were playing arguably the most historic venue we’ve ever played. So how did we do? Ok. Pretty good. I remember our first big New York shows feeling the same way. Everyone pushing so hard for the magic to happen that it never goes from five disparate elements into one cohesive whole. If we’re lucky enough to come back we’ll probably get closer to that say anything, play anything, ride the wave of whatever that particular night is bringing thing that is us when we’re at our best. I know some bands can achieve a Broadway***** levels of consistency, but the rock I love needs to feel like it could fall apart or catch fire at any moment. Please God don’t let rock get codified and safe.

So in the end, I can’t believe we got to play the 100 Club. I can’t believe that many people showed up to see us in a whole different country. And I’m just really grateful for it.

Tomorrow is Brighton

*Or a sinus infection.
** You think They Might Be Giants have lost it? Check that one out.
*** Some are calling “What Heaven Is Like” our "London Town", but I’ve never heard it.
**** Fuck off - the first book was good.
***** I love Broadway. “Wicked” is the tits.

Tour 2016 - London (Days 14-16)

Salty Snack of the Day: Howdah Onion Bhaji – Kind of the shape and texture of sesame sticks but a rice based snack. Delicious but spicy as all get out.

Britishisms Heard Uttered: Bloody – I didn’t hear it once. Has this most British of institutions fallen by the wayside? Is it what the biddies mutter under their breath when the price of porridge goes up by two pence? Is it the consarnit or balderdash of England? I really fucking hope not.

Birds: Robin – I really wanted to see one and I did it! Oddly the robin is part of the chat family here but the blackbird is part of the thrush family.

(Seen in the Royal Gardens) Pochard, Barnacle Goose, Goldeneye, Pelicans (introduced in 1664 as a gift from the Russian ambassador)

These are not show days and Joe and his “wife” are already in Bath for the duration. Monday was very simply driving, going to George and Jan’s place, returning rented gear, figuring out paperwork, then heading to the hotel. We were out by some airport with nothing to walk to, so we ended up staying in for the evening, drinking beer in the hotel café and hanging out with Olie for the last time this tour.

This then would seem a good time to sing the praises of our man-crush Olie. His job is to drive us to and from gigs. The fact that he helped us load-in\out, set-up and tear down gear, sell merch, run and get food, and act as tour guide just shows how much he went above and beyond the call of duty. And in the grand tradition of British comedians he deployed a wide range of accents, voices, and silly walks to keep us pissing ourselves laughing. We lucked out.

As for the rest of the last two days I went full on tourist. I’m just going to list everything I saw and keep descriptions to a minimum. I’m already walking a thin line between Rick Steves and middle-aged man slide show.* I will say that London more than lived up to its reputation as one of the worlds great cities. There was a point where I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear the English language for an hour, but instead a steady flow of languages that were melodiously unfamiliar. It felt like a literal crossroads to the world and I loved it. John E. will hopefully post a recording he made when he was standing on the sidewalk listening to the sound of Indian music being performed in someone’s apartment above him. Some men walking up to the building asked if he liked music and of course John said yes. So then, at 2:00 in the morning no less, they invited him to come up and listen. He got to play a harmonium and talk with everyone.

Tuesday:
My cold was at its worse and I was probably hungover. London was as gloomy as a Death Eater’s mixer after the bridge mix has run out, and promised rain and humidity in spades all day.

• Navigated Tube successfully. (Thanks Harry Beck!)

• Trafalgar Square for coffee, writing, recovering, and realizing there were far too many tourist groups around to even fathom.

• Walking away from people took me to St. James Royal Gardens with all the Royal birds, Royal grass, Royal bird poop distributed with the enthusiasm, dedication, and equality of a Communist’s wet dream, Royal Cigarette butts, Royally brazen squirrels, etc.

• Churchill’s Bunker Museum. Really expensive. Good museum on the man’s life and visits to the map room and such are very cool. But really expensive.

• Buckingham Palace. There was long line of posh, white people in coattails and hats and frumpy dresses and hats holding invitations. Turns out it was a big tadoo for the Queen’s 90th I left the Princess Di latch-hook rug I made in 1997 against the gate and walked away feeling closure at last.

• Parliament House and Big Ben

• Tube to Picadilly Square

• The Royal Society!! Did I mention it was my birthday? Well here was my gift to myself. There was a talk open to the public that night. The Royal Society came into existence in 1660 and has done things like publish Newton’s ‘Principa Mathematica” and Hooke’s “Micrographia.” (there was a small exhibit on that as well) The talk this evening was by the 2015 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar prize winner Professor Hasok Chang and was titled, “Who Cares About the History of Science?” It was a wonderful talk even when I didn’t understand it. So cool to be there.

• End of tour celebratory dinner with George and Jan in East London.

Wednesday

• Walked to the Rough Trade Record Store in the Brick Lane part of London, and then all around the neighborhood. East London reminds me of Brooklyn with its transitional areas and hipsters.

• Decided I would walk the two miles to The Tate Modern so as to see more of London. Was supposed to take 40 minutes but didn’t pay enough attention to maps and it took two very wet hours. Still, I saw what felt like the financial part of Manhattan, with lots of cool modern buildings and people looking smart and business-ey.

• I have to admit I was hurting by the time I got to the Tate. Throbbing feet, sweaty, wet, and just kind of spent. The rest of the day, however wonderful, would take on a slight Bataan sheen.

• The Tate was under renovation but the collection was lovely. Lots of classics but also a nice focus on the incredible power of protest and social commentary that the visual arts can achieve maybe better than the other fine arts. The building felt a little austere with mile after mile of white walls and black beams.

• Met John and Lisa at St. Paul’s Cathedral** for evening choir service. The choir was all male with voices ranging from pre-change to change the channel – that hippie David Attenborough is on. Those voices in that space was profoundly moving and deeply beautiful. We all three wiped tears away and I would’ve likely begun sobbing except for being mostly dead inside. Afterwards the only woman involved in the performance of the service was greeting people and I stopped to thank her. She then said an amazing thing to me. “Do you teach people to sing?” I was surprised at this leap of intuition and told her yes and who I taught. We then had a lovely talk about how the arts are being cut in England, just as in the States, and all the reasons why music is so profoundly important to our core humanity. She said they were sending out a choirmaster to the poorer communities to try and fill in a little of what is being lost. The older I get, the greater the import of service to others seems to be. Connections between people and peoples have to be forged, they don’t just happen without effort.

• Came across where Sherlock fell from St. Barts.

• Walked across Millenium Bridge on a day the Dementors held in thrall, and then peeped on the Globe Theater.

*I can’t define redundancy but I know it when I see it.

** I chose cake but they were out. Damn.

Tour 2016 - London (Days 6-7)

Salty Snack of the Day: Flame Grilled Spanish Chorizo with Roasted Onion – As a vegetarian I just want you to know what I’m willing to do to bring back the best in salty snack news. The question here is can a potato chip ever live up to such a grandiose name? These tasted like smoked paprika and onion powder. So no.

 Britishisms Heard Uttered: Mental – You hear this all the times on British shows and it’s my favorite. Overheard on a sidewalk, “That’s completely mental.” Yes.

 Birds: I saw a Great Tit! Looks like the world’s most badass chickadee. Moorhens with babies in the water and some still on the nest. A newly fledged wren. Finally! Good British birds.

We stayed just outside Cardiff in a hotel right up against the highway. I had about 45 minutes before the slowest among us would be ready, so even though it seemed as if we were surrounded by concrete I figured I’d look around. At the end of the street I saw a football field bearing the sign Albion Rovers Football Club. After reading the plaintive missive spray painted on the side of the club walls expressing that basic human longing for Hoes, Money, and Weed, I found myself on a trail with ridiculously cute families throwing sticks to their dogs. The trail ran along a shallow river and boom, freaking birds everywhere! It was wonderful. With a rolling Welsh field in the distance on the other side of the river, if you turned your back to the highway you were immersed in the countryside. A small distance down the trail, as the stream deepened, I came to a 200 year old lock and realized of course that the river was an old canal. The timbers used to open and close the lock were immense, and as the lock now functioned as a dam, the other side became more of a meandering river with trees arching over on each side. I couldn’t believe my luck. I could have spent my whole day walking this trail, but something possibly even better was waiting for me. Lisa, being her sweet self, had suggested in the van the night before that since we were staying so close to Cardiff why don’t we just go to the Dr. Who Museum in the morning? Interest ranged from none to keen but everyone agreed.

Your visit at the museum starts out with what I guess they would hope was an immersive experience. On the half hour a ticketed group files into a room with smoke and an ominous crack in the wall. Our guide, either an aspiring actress overmatched by the material or an actual tour guide under-endowed with charisma, suddenly began interacting with a videotaped Peter Capaldi, and before we knew it we were in mortal peril and tasked with finding three crystals to save something or other of vital importance. It was obviously designed for children even though there was not one amongst our group. It was as Olie put it, rather cringe-y, but I thought it was delightful nonetheless. We went inside the TARDIS, the floor shook, Daleks threatened us, all the things you’d want to see.

Then you got to enter the part of the museum containing all the props, monsters, and costumes from the entirety of the series. I love behind the scenes stuff. It’s so much fun to see everyday items spray painted and glued to some metal screen or plywood and knowing that through the camera it would look otherworldly. Plus, it meant the world to me to be able to bring back pictures and cool shit that you can only get there to my son.

But now we were late for London.

We were playing two nights at the Windmill in Brixton. Upon arrival the name became obvious as the park adjacent contained an actual enormous windmill like I’ve never seen in person before. It didn’t seem English so much as Dutchy. So of course I passed it on the left hand side. The next day there was a festival celebrating its 200th anniversary and the whole community came and hung out on the green, drinking some local beer I can’t remember now because the line was too long to get some. It was lovely seeing so many people sitting together with nothing other than a pretty awesome DJ and one tent selling beer. The Windmill (as venue) seemed ancient and gave me the vibe of a place that could host open mic poetry readings* as well as gobbing punk nights. Candles stuck in bottles, a huge wooden bar lit seemingly entirely from the refrigerators, and a tiny stage emerging out of the back corner. We were headlining the Walpurgis Night Festival, but to be honest spent several hours on the sidewalk in front enjoying a rare nice night, lax open container laws, and waiting for the dog to appear. The Windmill is famous for its dog on the roof.** There have been at least three through the years and the current resident is named Lucky. I don’t know breeds but he was a bear of a dog with enormous tan paws, and he lived on the flat roof above the bar, occasionally sticking his head over the side to gaze down. It looked as if there was probably an apartment up there too so hopefully he wasn’t outside all the time. From time to time he would drop a sad little fragment of a ball directly onto the sidewalk in front of the doorway. People would huck it back up and every single time Lucky would catch it in the air. Olie went on a two-day quest to get him a new ball but sadly, like Ponce De Leon, he failed.

And then I saw a grey fox! Just crossed the street like it was nothing and disappeared like a less shooty, more urban Rommel. So I guess nothing like Rommel at all really. Regardless, the only mammal I would be more excited to see would be a mongoose. And your mom.

The club was packed and what with there being something like 12 bands there was no time for niceties. We just jumped onstage, plugged things in, felt the collective sense of chaos hover just above panic and started playing. The soundman was on it though. Which is amazing considering he had mixed a million other bands already and we were all crammed into a dark sticky corner with detritus and cables everywhere. We could hear everything and by the second song it seemed like maybe it was going to be OK. Sitting in the hotel the night before we had watched a documentary on the rise of post-punk synth bands like Human League and Gary Numan. They had shown a brief clip of a very early Clash playing “White Riot” in a punk club with bodies flying everywhere and people losing their minds and I just tried to channel that spirit. And it worked. Mostly because of the good sound but whatever it takes. The audience was standing on benches in the back and at times singing along so loudly Lisa could hear them over her own vocals. That’s a magical feeling.

We were due to play the next night as well, performing “Forever Sounds” in its entirety. So off we went through nighttime London, driving across the Tower (London) Bridge and across the Thames to our home and hotel for the night.

The Windmill Day 2

We returned mid-afternoon having had a nice lie-in and I promptly went to a coffee shop called The Stir to write. While gazing out the window I saw a man walk into the middle of the side street gesticulating angrily and obviously shouting at someone off screen. It went on for a while and when John joined me he said there had to seemed to be some tiff at the chicken place up the street. It was unusual in that he was the first upset Briton I had seen. He left. Came back and yelled some more. Again left. About five minutes later he walked into view with a man sporting those ever so helpful neck tattoos, and they were facing each other and smiling. However the man was holding a knife. A nasty looking bugger too. I just started goggling at John saying “I think he has a knife!” The two men clapped each other on the shoulders and then the man, with a wide swing of his arm, hurled the knife into the trees. I still don’t know what I saw.

The rest of the afternoon is easy to summarize. It was a bank holiday so every veg. restaurant I walked to was closed, I got lost, it rained on me, and two hours after leaving the coffee shop I finally found a restaurant. Pizza, Spanish wine, and a nauseating number of couples in the obviously early delusional stage of infatuation.

Then I went back to the Windmill where everyone in the band was experiencing the first night of tour fatigue. Lisa didn’t wake up from her nap in the van until 15 minutes to show time, Joe was cranky, I was anxious and feeling far from home, Chuck was awake,*** and John was steady as always. Still, while the crowd was a bit smaller I was genuinely proud of us as I think we put on a pretty good show. A tour driver had just gotten off his own tour, driven 500 miles from Ireland to see us and only got there in time to see the last five songs. And he was thrilled to have seen it at all. Amazing.

Tomorrow is Leicester.

*At least before the Hague finally declared them inhumane and punishable under the war crimes act of 1996.

** They even have a beer brewed specially for them called “Dog on the Roof.” It was not notable.

*** Thus grumpy.