You know something is about to go down when you loose your journal
on the plane to Heathrow, UK. Yup indeed I did. Somwhere between sleep,
Pirates of the Caribbean,Bill Murray and check points, my journal left me.
I have to admit, I was more interested in grabbing one of those nifty
travel pouches they give the buisness seaters. They fit all types of tiny
gadgets. But then i looked into my bag and alas..the book was nowhere.
u-turn back onto the plane, nothing there. I just thought. could it be
back at newark...in one of those damn baskets where they have throw
everything in? And then i just had to give up the thought. maybe when
i get back to new jersey i can ask. And then what i´ve written in that
baby. let´s see...got it last summer from krista as a gift. the first pages
are workshop stuff, the next, that really sweet summer with a then, sweet
person, the aftermath of that summer into a lousy fall, song lyrics, sketches
of poems, telephone numbers and addresses, more diary entries, stuff
regarding my mom. a lot...
with no luck, I nearly missed the bus to the next terminal, to the plane
to dosseldorf, and just had to let it go.
This was a serious "what the bleep do we know" moment for me.
so now i´m in germany, a day after the hit with Yohimbe Brothers
which turned out great...being that we didn´t rehearse at all. my voice
strong and functioning. my reason tracks are coming along good...a quick
tutorial from Di helped a lot with melodies...and john murillo´s chapbook
is actually pretty dang good on the second read...something i have to
do i suppose.
something to be said of British Airways. Now, I thought I left my journal
in Newark. However it turned out that I did leave it on the plane to London.
An hour later in Moers Germany, my hotel phone rang and a guy from
the airlines informed me that they had found my journal, that it would
left at the customers service desk when I head back home in Heathrow.
Now that's love even if they don't know a sister.
So instead of getting low about my journal, I got to enjoy the gig.
With of course,the usual technical items like electrical currents, bad plugs,
and power shortage
me vernon and Di got to walk around to check out the area surrounding
the tent. Yup, a big tent where the shows happened and nothing but
campers and venders outside.
Indian food, crepes with tuna, kasse, nutella, banana, and cherries.
of course, not together.
Back on stage for a line check, my gear kept blowing out the stage which
was a shy sketchy. oh the germans...their accents just make eveything
sound rude.
apparantly my power had died and was the culprit. I have to disagree
but we were not gonna use it. vernon kept voicing he had no power.
They managed to get some additional transformers and hook my gear up.
Face it. We're a fucking crazy band with mad gadgets. Vernon is iron man
all around. Then Leon's got his thing and Loic got the turntables. Lucky
for them Di's Roland drum pad died. And then there's me. But we make
it happen
Ok....We are on!
This tent was big and packed. Pretty scary and I was happy to bring
fake gazelles so that they would not see my fright. Di's kick drum went
somewhere for a moment but I can say, we're tight enough to keep the
mood together. Improvisation key.
Hum...what else? It ended with dopeness. The crowd was dope and
really responded well. They gave off a pretty good energy to feed on.
Pity we were not on the night with Femi Kuti, the crazy Japanese ensemble
and Jamaaladeen Tacuma. Actaully, they were all performing the day
we left which sucked. But we did get a home cooked meal with this
mom and daughter from Namimbia.
The next day, we met with them at the venue. I perchased a CD from the
Moers fest in 1984.They have a label which they put out stuff from the Festival.
Vocal Summit with Jeanne Lee, Bobby McFaren, Urzula, etc. Pretty cool.
Evone and Gloria cooked this boom ass fish and chicken...made some
vegetarian for Leon who didn't go. Just me, Di, Jared and Jason along with
these two guys, one german, one romanian (who happend to have a crush
on the mom and was trying to get her attention...which i hope, failed cause
he man was crazy) and this Japanese chick who now lives in Germany.
at the end of the night, we were all dancing in thier kitchen (mind you, not big),
doing the soul train line. Di fucked everyone's head up when he dropped
to the floor and proceeded to do the worm down the line.
Too much beer and wine.
Got into a cab around 3:30 in the morning, Di nearly missed his ride to
the airport, I passed out as soon I hit the bed. Jason stay over with
the ladies...to protect them :-)
Last one in, last one out. I left around 2 with Jason. Met briefly
some of Femi's band and exchanged info. Got me a kasse sandwich
and got to the airport to find my germany soccor scarf. Ah! perfecto.
