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« June 2004 |
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| August 2004 »
Up at Graham and Aja's for dinner and drinks. L mentions that, in Japan, it is no longer possible to buy used schoolgirl undies from a vending machine. (Perhaps this was an urban myth...) However, she says there are now German men who are in the market for soiled men's underwear. (Another urban myth in the making?) I reply, "Then I'm sitting on a goldmine," which gets a laugh. I wonder for a moment, though, if everyone now thinks I have lots of soiled undies at home, or if the ones I'm wearing are soiled.
Went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Malu didn't want to go: "It's been out too long." I loved it. It was one of those movies that make everything look different when you leave the theater.
Just outside the theater, a man rides by on a bike — one of those low rider bikes. He's a grown man and seems pretty normal by appearance, except he's got a monstrous boom box strapped to the front of his bike. Usually I think of this as a Puerto Rican thing — strapping the boom box to the front of the bike and "sharing" the music with everyone, but with this man it just seems improbable.
I ride off on my own bike.
I can hear the not-too-distant sound of a helicopter. It seems it could be almost overhead, just over the rim of the concrete canyon I'm going through. I look up. Nothing. The sonic reflections could make it either behind of in front of me. Very confusing.
I can see one hovering over a building in midtown — maybe the Empire State. But the one I'm hearing seems it must be closer. This hovering helicopter thing always seems slightly ominous in NY. I crane my neck this way and that as I ride but never see the one that sounds near.
Another boom box biker passes by.
A Jane Austen readin', sensible-shoe wearin' woman on a regular bike, but again with a (smaller) boom box strapped to the rear. I can't hear what the music is.
Last show of this leg. Everyone is talking plane flights home, packing the junk we've all accumulated, and looking forward to rest for a week at least. We're in the Olympia, a lovely old theater. The local stage manager is fascinated as I disassemble and pack my bike into its flight case. In response, he shows me how they do the rain for the production of Singing In The Rain. There's a 1000-liter tank off stage and a copper pipe with nozzles in the flyspace. There are metal water reflectors too, so that the "rain" is not too even. The marley floor is loose, so that puddles with form for the lead to splash in. The water then runs downstage into a gutter, then back under the stage and into a second 1000-liter tank, where it is stored and eventually drained with a garden hose into a tiny room down the hall, which has a small trap door. When he lifts up the door, I can hear (and smell) a distant river, a tributary to the Liffey.
Malu and Jennifer come out during "Lazy" and dance in tutus. At the hotel we all say our goodbyes. We'll see one another in about 10 days, in Edmonton.
On arriving, some of us head off to catch a French physical theater company at a space called The Black Box. The company is five people — a contortionist, a dancer, an acrobat, an opera singer/actress, and a dancer/actor.
The next morning I go for a jog along a path that parallels the railway heading south along the coast. I end up on a stony beach and head back across a cow field, hoping these are not bulls. But the beach turns into a military firing range - "enter at your own risk" - so I do, as I can see a road leading out...and who had ever been at war with Ireland ever since they became a republic and booted out the English?
 In the afternoon I ride my bike out along the beach — an area called Salthill, heading west towards the Atlantic coast. I'm hoping to see cliffs, but as I forgot to procure a map I end up going through a lot of housing developments.
At one point I stop on the promenade by a beach — it's a blustery day but I can see small islands and the opposite side of Galway Bay. Lovely. I hear a noise and notice there is a man yelling and he's up to his chest in the icy water with his arms up in the air. I can't tell if it's a cry of joy or pain.
 The venue is in the hotel! It's in their ballroom. It's a regular festival venue; we have not been tricked into being a hotel lounge act. In fact, the Galway Festival has been extended by an extra day to accommodate our show, but that means we overlap with Race Week, when 30,000 Irish horse racing fans, politicians, and business people chasing the politicians all converge on this town.
The show is fun. The audience shouts and dances, though one person tells me they shouldn't have left the bars open at the back of the room - too much temptation for an Irish audience... so there is lots of bar chatter rising from the rear.
Afterwards, I join some of the others in the hotel bar where a vigorous piano player is entertaining what must be a race-week audience. He's pounding away, singing at the top of his lungs and all 50 people have joined him — all singing, or rather shouting, "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" and other 80s favorites. It's deafening, the loudest wildest piano bar I've ever seen.
Malu refuses to join me. It's too frightening, but I see it is quieter on the outdoor terrace and some of the band is out there.
I chat with some folks who caught our show and over and over the subject of the upcoming U.S. election comes up. There is genuine fear that if W. is elected again, the world will be in great danger. I am asked over and over, "Do you think the American people realize what is going on? Do they still support this man?" There is a feeling of incredulity: "How could ANYONE in their right mind still support Bush?"
I reply that I am optimistic, but that the human capacity for denial is very large — and yes, a lot of people just plain don't want to hear things that rattle their world view.
When I mention that I cycled along the beach promenade, a man tells me about the time he walked along the beach and took stepped on a pig carcass. His foot got stuck in the ribs. I've heard enough.
People buy me drinks. At one point I have two glasses of Guinness in my hands. I decide it's time to get to bed.
Mauro and I discuss the record business as we sit outside the venue. The business is shrinking, but music thrives. There's lots of great music being made, maybe more than ever, but very little of it reaches a large or even a medium-sized audience. Mauro comments that, with digital production, the sheer number of CDs is simply overwhelming. There's no time or room for all those artists. Granted, with digital distribution, all of them might be available to download, avoiding the issues of physical objects. But there's still the problem of getting those who might be interested informed about what's out there for them.
We wonder about the big record companies costs. Recording costs for most of us have stayed level or even gone down. (Top-selling hip hop, R&B, and pop artists are the exception; their beat merchants, mixers, and producers charge a fortune for their golden touch.)
I would think the big percentage of costs is in marketing: in videos, billboards, radio play (still mainly paid for, I suspect), and advertising.
The business model has changed in recent years, too, as these marketing costs spiral upwards, due to all the clamoring competition. So the multinationals are forced to have a smaller roster. And when a major marketing push doesn't pan out, it's financially devastating. The problem is, it's music and human beings, not an unwavering formula like Coca-Cola or the Secret Sauce. It’s erratic, unpredictable, risky, and short-lived by nature. As the product mutates, this model of business is realized; companies are forced to repeatedly find more or less identical replacements. And then repeat the whole marketing cycle.
A whole audience and arena of music is purposely abandoned in this scenario. I suspect a new model will evolve to reach this massive, though dispersed and diverse, audience.
On the way back from dinner at a local Tandoori restaurant we pass a flock of British lassies out on the prowl. For provocative looks, they rival anything in Belgrade. These ones have probably just left the pub and are somewhat hammered. The Serb women seemed more alert and focused.
A photo in today's Daily Mirror, the tabloid given away at the hotel, accompanies a headline about the disputed rise in crime in UK cites- claiming there are no-go zones in city centers- it shows 5 babes just like the ones we passed on the street all laughing as they pass a drunk dude who is horizontal on the sidewalk. They all sport more or less identical cleavage and miniskirts.
Took a walk to the Kunsthalle here to see an exhibition called "Territories." Fully half of it is about the Israeli-occupied territories: the various Sharon plans, the settlements, the wall, the refugee camps. It's all very didactic and sad. The wall is obviously yet another land grab and the territories remaining to the Palestinians are pathetic little handfuls that any idiot can see will inevitably be settled by Israelis. It's divide and conquer. Room after room of videos and maps make it all pretty clear.
Other parts of the exhibition are about U.S.-restricted communities in the Southwest, bits of Antarctica, South Africa, and Afghanistan. It's not so much an art exhibit as a didactic, fairly one-sided polemic presented mainly through room after room of semi-washed-out projected videos. Not that I disagree with the politics, but is this the way to persuade and convince? Wouldn't a TV documentary be better?
The St. Peter's church here, a massive brick structure, is an odd mix of the austere and baroque. Most of the interior walls are elegant, white arches, as one would expect in a Northern church, but the altar is a golden fantasy, more common to Latin Catholic churches. A baptistery(?) has the remnants of weird ceiling paintings on it, images of a tangle of green vines covers the ceiling. In one area, the vines surround two men holding a cloth with an image of Christ's head. The green chaos is frightening, maybe a creepy vision of the dark world outside.
The promoter in Stockholm, an Irish guy named Harry, told a story. He was reading a book on the battle of Stalingrad and left it out on his home table. His 70-year-old Russian cleaning woman saw it and wept; she was a child in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) during the siege of that city. For 900 days the city was blockaded by the Nazi's and the sight of a book about another siege brought back memories. During the war, after a devastating initial period, the city reoriented itself for the long haul. She was around 11 years old at the time and had the job of running the mail to the soldiers at the front. Her family and relatives were dying of disease and malnutrition, but when the soldiers asked her to deliver something into town they would give her some of their food — and she lived as a result, though she felt incredibly guilty.
Harry tells stories about Clear Channel moving into these European capitols and taking control of all the venues. Rather than hiring him on as a local expert, they booted him out to increase profits. As with other multinationals, they often show growth and "profit" on the books by continually expanding. Of course, there's a limit to it, and at one point one has to simply know how to navigate the local waters and know the audiences and be content with what is possible in a given area. Growth has its limits; ultimately, the beast topples over from its own weight.
Granted, Clear Channel has probably done fairly well in many markets. In many instances, they simply are skimming off some profits and letting the local promoters, venue owners, and radio stations owners continue as they were. But it's a risky business. Harry lost his house and his family — so he claims — in the music business. It's certainly not a sure-fire investment.
We're playing a place called Berns, an old music hall. Josephine Baker and Vera Lind performed here. Our dressing room is the Red Room, memorialized in a Strindberg book, which, apparently, is well known in Scandinavia and Europe as one of the first modern books. It's a satire of the hypocritical bourgeoisie, who used to sneak into the Red Room to do opium and have sex and then put on their proper face when entering the music hall.
The Museum of modern art here has a show of young Swedish artists, entitled "Swedish Hearts."
 Carl Erikson has a series of photos that portrays a number of baptisteries used for adult baptism. At first I thought they were weird home saunas, but, apparently, there is a fundamentalist movement afoot here that has resulted in these things in homes and local churches. Kind of like bomb shelters too. There was also a video from the POV of someone immersed in one.
Since the show is partly about Swedish identity, another artist got up in Lapland drag and had himself photographed.
As is their want, the dark side of Sweden is amply represented. One artists did a series of pictures of bodies face down in the woods, marches, or in shallow muddy ponds.
The Iraqis say of the occupation “The pupil has gone [Saddam], the master has arrived [USA].”
Most of the money skimmed from recent Iraqi oil sales and promised for the Iraqi people for rebuilding has been diverted to Halliburton, former CIA operatives, and other U.S. cronies. Ostensibly, these funds are legally allocated by the UN for rebuilding, but that was the same trick Saddam used for years.
The editor of the Russian edition of Forbes was gunned down in his car this week. There are various speculations on the motive:
- Someone was displeased with the recently published 100 Richest Russians list
- The editor was privy to inside information
- The editor recently published a book called "Conversations with a Barbarian" – interviews with Chechnyan separatists
- Another book he published, "Boris Berezovsky and the Looting Of Russia," inspired a lawsuit by Berezovsky, who was absolved of the accusation that he had killed Listyev, the famous TV journalist...but he might still be pissed off.
In another article, a journalist for Gorod Magazine reportedly disappeared and is presumed dead this week. He had been investigating the murder in 1998 of a Duma deputy.
A man from the Center For Journalism in Extreme Situations (really) was quoted as saying this man’s work and his murder may not be related. Uh-huh.
In another article, various foreign consulates have complained about their citizens being robbed by the St. Petersburg police. Apparently, these robberies have declined in recent years, but still persist. An Estonian businessman says he never has problems with criminals at night, only with the police. He said he had a conversation with a City Hall official who said there is a whole business of stealing from foreigners. Police cars from Kalininsky district drive into the area where the big hotels are at night to "earn something."
Russia is already an adventure before it even properly begins. After driving 6 hours from Tampere, we're awakened at about 7 a.m. at the Finnish Russian border. We're met by Nick, our contact and escort. Nick is in full swat team commando gear, bulging padded black outfit, some knives strapped on, and at least one gun. Glad he's on our side. He seems to have some pull, as he waves the customs guys aside when they began to open the bus bays.
We get through pretty easily and then convoy it the 2+ hours into town, but the truck with our gear is stuck in a mile-long line of trucks waiting for inspections. We'll never make the scheduled load in time.
The city was officially founded around 1700 after Peter the Great, who resolved the "Quarrel of Centuries" by driving the Swedes and the Germans out of the Neva delta and building a fortress there.
I suspect "Quarrel of Centuries" is a polite way of describing the bloody pushing and shoving over this key point of access to the interior.
I go off on a bike ride.
I enter a beautiful orthodox church that is "in remont" [being renovated]... on entering, there is a service in progress, despite the scaffolding all over both inside and out. Men are on one side, women on the other. Both groups all standing (there are no pews) in evenly spaced grids. The women all in headscarves and the men have their heads bowed. The voices of a choir drift down from above — beautiful orthodox hymns, transfixing and mesmerizing. The priest in a yellow robe is turned away from us. Lesser priests in black move here and there, one guy looking very stylish in a black robe synched at the waist with a partly grown beard and long ponytail. Could be from a band.
I ride off and enter an industrial neighborhood, a shock in this City of Palaces, canals, islands and incredible beauty. Here are factories in disrepair and outlets for lawnmower parts. Grimy junkyard dogs sleep in the driveways.
I veer back to the scenic beauty of the fortress, the Neva, the Hermitage plaza... It's inebriating. Two elderly, barrel-chested, polar-bear-club dudes are swimming near the fortress. In a park 3 girls sing karaoke at a kiosk as a bunch guys slouch on the benches smoking cigarettes and watching them.
The gear arrives by late afternoon. The show is scheduled for 10PM, but that now seems hopelessly optimistic. There are big signs for the sponsors all over — Mild Seven cigarettes and a local beer. Cigarette girls in white hats and short skirts appear giving out samples and the whole audience lights up.
The security guys are in elegant black suits. Apparently, this is so they "blend in" at meetings of businessman or politicians, but in this context they stick out like sore thumbs. Putin is supposed to have a dinner meeting tomorrow night at the restaurant adjoining this hall, Bellini, so these guys will be in proper context then.
We go on just before 12. It took an hour or more for the audience to all get in, as they were funneled through single file at the entrance.
The sound is less than perfect but the audience is incredible. For the 1st time there is a big reaction to "Aucensia." I guess the Kusterica movie was a hit here. At one point I notice people in the audience doing some weird hand-shaking dance, so I do it too.
With the lack of air circulation and the cigarette smoke it rapidly becomes hard to breathe on stage. I'm drenched in sweat — head to toe — and have to catch my breath fairly often, as do the others. But that only seems to add to the excitement.
After the show we are invited for "a boat trip" which sounds lovely. The weather is still balmy and the light is like twilight, even though it's almost 3 in the morning.
However, the boat is already full of party people we don't know and we are expected to be the honored foreign guests. I sense an uncomfortable situation of being on display and stuck mid-river with a bunch of drunk sycophantic strangers. To be fair, there might be some good conversation and relaxation, but should I risk it? Some of the others feel the same vibe and we disembark, despite some security guys with cell phones who keep saying "no, wait here."
Unfortunately, no one told us that the bridges across the Neva close to cars between 3 and 5AM, so that boats can travel through. The venue is on the opposite side of the river from our various hotels, so we'll be stuck over here, and now it's just hitting 3AM. I see a bridge down river that is already up, but the one upstream still has traffic. We jump in the promoter's van and speed in that direction, but too late. As we approach I see a pedestrian running at breakneck speed to get across. But the guards pull down a barrier and a few cars, our van, and a clump of pedestrian stare dumbfounded at the bridge going up.
Our driver begins to race upriver, past the Peter and Paul fortress. The next bridge is up as well. This doesn't look good. The next couple of bridges are up as well. The driver speeds on. About a half hour’s ride upstream the city is becoming less beautiful and more industrial but there is a known bridge up there that remains passable for longer than the others (though even this one is up part of the time). The driver makes it over, and we breathe easier as we pass to the other side.
Daniel, Todd, Malu and I get off at our hotel by 4 AM but the strings and some of the others are stuck on the boat, so Daniel starts getting a series of frantic mobile calls from them wondering how they are going to get back. They will have to wait till around 5AM.
The folks from Stereolab attended the show, but I missed them. Apparently, they also ended up on the boat.
Malu on Russian fashion: "Dad, do the people here think they look good?"
Sign on a restaurant toilet:
"Don't Put Anything In Here You Haven't Already Eaten"
(Nina, from the promoter’s office, says it's classic Russian humor.)
During the afternoon I go with Irina, from the Moscow promoter's office, and Kiril, a local artist, to check out the Kabakov exhibition at a space opposite the Hermitage. It's called "Incident at the Museum and other Installations" and it's a couple of full-scale installations and some rooms filled with models and descriptions of other projects — realized and unrealized, possible and impossible. Kabakov has lived in the West for 12 years at least and this is his first major show in his homeland.
One part of an installation is hilarious — a reproduction of a toilet in a communal Soviet apartment. Normally these would have been shared by a lot of people in that era — the door is locked and there is the sound of a man endlessly tunelessly singing in there.
His stuff always seems to me like school science project realizations of Borges or Calvino stories. Kiril adds, "Kafka"... Anyway, they don't have a whole lot of sensuous material appeal, but, as literature and food for thought, they're marvelous and inspiring.
Kiril and Irina are sort of amazed that Alex Melamid shares a floor with me in NY. His and Komar's work as a team is the stuff of legend here. Kiril and Irina even know all of their recent projects in NY.
Seva, a musician and former club owner who is helping the Moscow promoters locally, has been instrumental in bringing lots of the more interesting acts here. We talk in the van on the way to the airport. He has a kind of saintly air. I remember from a previous visit, almost 10 years ago, he calmly fed the local punk bands soup at a large table in his Tam Tam Club; these were bands that, minutes before, had been raging, spitting and seething.
Seva was involved with a festival begun some years ago in honor of Sergei, the leader of the group Popular Mechanics, a wild consortium active during the Perestroika heyday. Popular Mechanics lumped all kinds of music together. There were maybe 40 members, and performances could include a symphony orchestra, punk musicians, and a massive Soviet marching band — all playing simultaneously. The festival in his honor attempts to include all of these kinds of music and more (but not at the same time).
Now, he occasionally helps promote shows. He did the Stereolab show and hopes to bring Tom Waits and Eno and Fripp soon. He says his day job, which he loves, is maintaining the clay courts at the tennis club. He wrote a book about his life, The Way Of Tennis Court Maintenance.
His wife (or "the mother of his daughter," as he put it) is a midwife who specializes in water births at home. He said it's much easier, both psychologically and physically, on the woman and child. The posture is more natural and conducive to easy birth than the usual hospital position, which he says was adopted for its ease for the physicians and attendants, not for the mother or child. He says we treat birth and pregnancy as a disease — a statement I've heard before — by drugging the mother and child and "treating" them in a hospital.
Nick reappears at the airport with presents for lot of us (he gives me a snapshot of himself, his sister, and me backstage). Tracy is presented a framed 2004 calendar with a photo of herself and Nick inside a heart.
Success = Failure
I'm reading an Ian McEwan novel at Malu's request. It was a summer reading assignment and I suspect she wonders if she "got it," so she asked me to read it too. I doubt she got all of it. For example, there is a lengthy passage in the 1st chapter where a composer muses on his work and how it relates to accepted academic trends in classical music. His own love of melody vs. late Schoenberg is mentioned as contrasting examples. A 15-year old with an American education can't be expected to understand the references to various academy endorsed styles as referenced by names like Schoenberg or Stravinsky.
I was fascinated by one phrase in this passage. The character says something like success = failure in classical music circles. He's implying that if one's music is accessible, approachable, or even remotely popular, the academic community will disown it. As far as they are concerned, it is therefore an intellectual failure.
I see where this whingeing is coming from. A lot of the downtown NY music community similarly drops an artist like a hot potato if that artist becomes popular with the world outside the cognoscenti. The press and critics often support this view — especially the British press. But, just as often, they adore certain success stories, especially if it is an "outsider," a gifted primitive or exotic.
Some say this is the metal capitol of the universe. There are certainly a lot of metalheads and t-shirts on the streets. It turns out the day we arrive there is a triple bill of Finnish Metal. The hotel lobby is awash with young men with straggly hair or full punk-Goth attire. One of our group points out that the metal girls could take some makeup pointers from their boyfriends, who are generally much prettier.
Conceptually, my favorite metal subgenre is nature metal, which incorporates howling wind sounds and other effects to create an atmosphere suitable for druids, gods, and maybe wolves.
Todd and I go check out one of the bands, a reunited 3-piece whose drummer apparently has had some alcohol-related problems but is dry now. He may be dry, but his head seems extraordinarily large. It's not my cup of tea, but these guys are incredibly tight. Every lick and fill is in synch. The endings are stretched out in elaborate displays of unexpected crescendos and explosions, one set of them following another, as if the endings to 4 different songs were being played together.
The following afternoon Malu and I go to the Spy Museum, which is in a building that seems to house a kind of shopping mall food court. There are lots of interactive displays, including voice-disguising machines that make you sound like Laurie Anderson. There's even a hidden room, which mainly deals with WWII and the Cold War, both of which involved Finland quite a bit, due to its proximity to Russia.
There are some really clunky recording devices. The CIA developed a wristwatch that didn't tell time but had a big wire trailing out of one end. And there's a deadly umbrella that shoots pellets.
We go to an exhibit of the history of Finnish shoe design and manufacture, which is less than inspiring. Finally, we hit a show of Finnish Hockey History. In the center of the room is a large plexi box that allows you to slam pucks at an electronic net.
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In the afternoon I ride my bike out along the beach — an area called Salthill, heading west towards the Atlantic coast. I'm hoping to see cliffs, but as I forgot to procure a map I end up going through a lot of housing developments.
The venue is in the hotel! It's in their ballroom. It's a regular festival venue; we have not been tricked into being a hotel lounge act. In fact, the Galway Festival has been extended by an extra day to accommodate our show, but that means we overlap with Race Week, when 30,000 Irish horse racing fans, politicians, and business people chasing the politicians all converge on this town.