Tokyo Drifter:

Albert on a giant video screen in Shibuya.



Albert’s first show in Tokyo was a launch party for his Japanese Label – Rough Trade Japan. They held the party in the exclusive salon above the Louis Vuitton store in Harajuku, It was incredibly tastefully decorated and, as one might expect from a LV store in Tokyo, very high-end. So much so that one of the label reps was dispatched to sit with us in our “dressing room” (an unused floor of the closed store) to make sure we didn’t fuck with any of the clothes; a smart and at the same time slightly patronizing Japanese way of treating us. The audience seemed like a very cool Tokyo crowd, but at the same time, they didn't seem so grating to me as they would have had we been in LA, London, or New York. Maybe it's because it all went over my head?

Wandering around Harajuku is interesting. I walked around a store called La Foret – a six-storied department store catering to twenty-something girls about town (it was suggested to me as a place to go to check out the Harajuku vibe – I don’t normally hang around girls clothes shops. Not since my conviction, anyway). The clothes were great – I didn’t see anything naff at all. Not like the other “famous’ department store I looked in--Shibuya 109--which caters to younger girls and had a load of nasty clothes, the sorts of things Bai Ling and Paris Hilton would wear. The girls were much younger there too. I left very quickly, as I felt like I should only be in there shopping for my imaginary niece. Strangely, across the road near our hotel were lots of porn shops advertising, surprisingly enough, young girls. I only have two rules / maxims that I haven’t been proven wrong on yet. The first is – and this is the most important – Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever ever, ever, ever, ever trust a hippy. Not for a second. Not with anything. Not even with an ant for a nanosecond. (And I have friends with hippy tendencies but they’re not hippies. Real hippies are wankers--I’ve never met an exception to the rule yet, ever. I’d rather talk to a Nazi – at least they’re up front about being tossers… anyway, I’m digressing) The second maxim I hold onto is that you can gauge a nation by it’s advertising and its pornography. Japan has some weird-assed porn, so to speak. Lots of young girls being forced into humiliating sex. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s interesting to note. And not particularly erotic, so I'm told.

This is a girl being photogrpahed outside of La Foret. It looked liked an amatuer photo-shoot but for all I know she's # 1 in the J-pop charts. (Although I suspect she's some kind of Japanese sub-Kelly Osbourne..)



And this is a great example of Japanese fastidiousness. At night, these roadworks are very busy with workmen. During the day, everything is stored neatly until they need to use it again. Can't imagine seeing this kind of attention to duty on the M1 or the I-95.






I visited my favourite-named bookstore in Harajuku. I wonder if they know what this really sounds like in the west – I suspect not. I was looking for an English language section in a bookstore to try to find a copy of Shakespeare’s King Lear (of course I was, what else?). Stupid as that sounds it’s good to have a mission when you’re shopping abroad- it makes it more interesting, otherwise I find I wander around aimlessly looking at things I don’t really want and feel bored. I got close – there was an English version of Macbeth. There was also a couple of good English titles: Teaching Infant and Pre-School Aquatics, A Pictorial of English Coastline from the Air, and Roland Barthes- Empire of Signs, which I ended up buying as I can’t leave a bookstore without buying anything. I like bookstores, even when the shelves are unintelligible to me, as they were in Book Off.


We visited (twice in three days) the Park Hyatt Hotel to go to the bar on the 52nd Floor, made famous by Lost In Translation. It’s one of the best views of a city anywhere – even rivaling Sugarloaf Mountain. Tokyo goes on forever, like LA, but it seems as dense and as built up as Manhattan. The photo below doesn’t really do it justice, but it seems every building has softly flashing red lights on it, as far as the eye can see. The main drag below is Shinjuku, which is one of the dodgier areas of the city...




The food was some of the best food I’ve eaten anywhere. For seom reason their steak sandwich is absolute perfetion-- everything you could imagine a steak sandwich to be. And while that sounds wanky, if you ever go there and try one you’ll know what I mean. I suspect it’s like eating human flesh in that sense…..and we're doing that later on tonight in Osaka. I'll let you know....

Tokyo:


I’m a little jaded. I remember the first few times I came to Japan and I was sooooo excited. Now I’m a little more used to it and I’m still excited, but tonight I try to sleep on the hour and a half drive in from Narita to the hotel instead of staring out of the window to look at everything… Of course, I can't. And instead tick-off the landmarks in my head. the hotels near Narita, the Ferris Wheels, the site of Summer Sonic, etc, etc...




Our hotel is in the heart of Shibuya. With The Strokes we stay in a different part of town but this time we’re back in the middle of Shibuya. It’s good. I like Shibuya. I remember coming here 12 years ago and spending a fortune on Pizzicato Five CDs at HMV when I was on tour with Pulp. 12 years ago, Jaysus....

After we arrive there’s a brief Production Meeting and Label Promotion Meeting. Both are very traditional Japanese ways of doing things. It’s where we go through the schedule and the details for the forthcoming week. Today it’s quick and easy. Back in the day they would last a long time and be much more formal. Things seem more relaxed these days, which is good and bad, I suppose. Maybe it's to do with my perception of things here but I remember it used to be a lot more formal; now its more casually professional.

Afterwards, I go for a walk through rainy Shibuya. It’s busy (It’s 9PM on a Saturday night) and full of young people. It’s exciting, but I’m no longer curious about what’s in the stores: the mobile phones will be worthless to me outside of Japan; the record stores sell the same stuff as I can get in New York; the clothes will be too small for me. I’m waiting until the morning before the promo to go to Tokyu Hands – the best store in Japan for just 'stuff'….no doubt I’ll come out with too many nice pens again.





I eat at a noodle bar. The ordering process is great: you select your meal from a machine outside (pick a number for your meal); you pay the vending machine and get a ticket; you go inside, and give the ticket to the staff (who all shout out a greeting in unison everytime a new customer comes in); they serve up boiling hot noodles in minutes. My bowl of Pork and Noodles was amazing and cost about US$7.50. The glass of iced water was so cold and the noodles so hot I gave myself a wicked toothache for the first half of the meal…it reminded me of where I was. I think things in Japan are frequently extreme in weird ways. Maybe it’s a jetlagged perception but the noodles seemed super hot (how?) and the water was very cold. It’s like nothing’s done to a half measure here (Its an observation not a gripe, btw). It’s good to be in a place where people are polite, and sometimes--I feel--especially so because I’m a foreigner and speak no Japanese. Staff at the noodle shop and Starbucks (I know, shame on me. What can I say? I need coffee. I gots me a case of that jet-lag…) are all very solicitous and helpful, making sure I know how the ordering and paying and waiting in line system works. It wouldn’t quite happen the same way in Manhattan…




Back at the hotel I was impressed at the small football field I could see from the elevator on top of a neighboring building above Shibuya Station. Tomorrow’s schedule is busy for some of the band with promo. We’re all going to the label offices in Harajuku for a press day. I’m exicted, I haven’t been there for ages. And the best thing is, that’s where Gwen Stefani comes from. I wonder if there's a statue of her there or anything...?

Back Out There.


After a month or so at home it’s time to go back out on tour. Albert and the band are in LA and I go to meet them there so we can all fly to Tokyo together. Sounds easy on paper, right?

At JFK, on the day after the Notheast Blizzard, the airport isn’t functioning at 100% yet. My 9AM flight is delayed (after we board, of course). I’m grateful, because so many flights were cancelled the previous day the standby list for my flight is seventy-one names long.

We sit at the gate for a couple of hours while the pilot waits to get the all clear from the tower. The Port Authority were still trying to clear ice from the runway and as our aircraft was full we apparently needed the entire runway to take off from. By 11:30 we pull away from the gate to get de-iced. Then we return to the gate. There’s a problem with an engine. (It's a drag but I'd rather they find out while we're driving and not flying...)

We’re told we can get off while they research the problem. When I come back with a coffee we’re told we’re changing planes. I get my stuff and go to the new gate where other passengers are being removed from another flight – allegedly to accommodate us. No one knows what is going on. So many flights have been cancelled at JFK that terminal is packed an people are getting upset and huge shouting matches are happening at other gates. I call our travel agent, there are no other flights available to LA from the New York area until Sunday. Everyone who can call someone gets the same news. No flights anywhere.

Eventually, two hours later, we board our original plane. The fuel valve problem is fixed. At 3PM it looks like we’re about to take-off when a Gate Agent comes up to me and tells me to get my stuff and get off the plane.
-No.
-Mr Priest, you need to get your things and get off the plane
-Why?
-It’s from the captain.
-So? Why?
-We need your seat to send crew back to LA
-No. I have to go to LA.
-You have standby seats and we need them.
-No I don’t.
-Sir. Get your bags and get off the plane.
-I don’t have a standby ticket. I have a regular ticket. I bought this seat.
-Sir you need to get your bags and get off the plane.
-I also have seven passports for seven people flying to Tokyo from LAX tomorrow morning and if I don’t get this flight I don’t get there then they don’t go to Tokyo and we cancel a concert tour.
-Sir you need to get your bags...

After another five minutes of this, me and the guy next to me (he was asked to leave too), were told to sit back down, it was okay. Not a word of explanation or apology. Not that I’d planned to leave until security were called. The passport / Tokyo part of the equation was a fact and I wasn’t going to get off that plane unless someone with the authority to arrest me was asking me to move.

But after 6 1/2 hours, I didn’t care--I had to get to LA on that flight. There were no other alternatives. I'd seen flight after flight cancelled during my two hours of waiting inside the terminal. The place was in chaos. No one knew what was going on.

Eventually I got to LA – seven hours late. Just enough time to eat and go to bed.

Personally I think it’s a sign (Along with my head injury in Nottingham and my stolen luggage in Vancouver) that I shouldn't be on tour anymore.

Mount Wilson

One of the things I love about LA is the vast variety of terrains there - not that you can always tell this when you're driving past identical strip mall after identical strip mall for mile after mile. However, aside from the bland urban landscape (which does have its own appeal...), there are beaches and deserts and mountains all within easy reach of almost any part of the city for those with a car.

On my last night in LA before heading back to New York I took a drive up to Mount Wilson. It's along the Los Angeles Crest Highway (#2 Freeway), about 20 miles away from Glendale into the mountains. The driving is great fun during the day, lots of tight hairpin curves climbing for 5700 feet. The last five miles before the Mount Wilson Observatory are so tight and windy that tonight I got a little unnerved. There weren't many cars around and off the edge of the road (along its entire length) is a sheer drop for hundreds--if not thousands--of feet down the mountainside. When I got to a certain altitude I got the feeling there might be black ice on the roads and if I spun-off, I could easily spend the rest of the winter at the bottom of a ravine until I was found by hikers in the spring. This happened to a bass player from some LA band a couple of years ago - his car crashed and he wasn't found for months. It is called the Los Angeles Wilderness after all. Quite....

This is a rare dead mans curve with a safety barrier, most didn't.



When I got to the top the view was amazing, as it always is. There was a slight dusting of snow on the ground and the car told me that it was only 28 degrees fahrenheit ( -6 celcius) outside. It was a very still cold - there was no wind but I felt it was stealing my breath. Up above the city it was very very quiet except for the cracking of branches in the nearby trees and the sound of my own feet on the gravel road.

This is looking south towards South Central and Torrance.



And this is down the mountainside into Pasadena, which is apparently 7 miles away as the crow flies....you can see the route of the 210 freeway going left to right.



LA is so vast. From Mount Wilson you can easily see to the Pacific Ocean (29 miles away to the West) and down to Long Beach to the South and out east to where the city peters-out into the desert. So many millions of people laid out flat below, so much infastructure, hundreds and thousands of cars traveling somewhere. The silence and the ice and the sheer weight of the darkness in the sky (depsite the thousands of stars visible) spooked me. It took half an hour to get back down to the freeway (18 miles) , driving with the car sitting in second gear all the way down to use the engine as a brake.

I think one very obvious option now is that I should move here for a while as I'm so fascinated with the place. I don't want to relocate permanently, but I want to get more immersed in LA in a way that one can't when one's only visiting. Not sure if I can take working in California for long as it's still a (sometimes charmingly) alien culture to me, but there's only one way to find out. If I don't go live in Asia, that is.

Btw, if the adage is true, I'm taking up cards. By rights I'd be cleaning up about now.

Here are some more pictures - these are from Runyon Canyon. I guess with the cold north winds blowing the air had been kept clear of smog and the views from Runyon Canyon are worth the climb (or you can drive up Mulholland, but really that's very lame....).




That's Catalina Island out in the distance...



And that shadowy headland on the left (below) in the far distance is Palos Verdes. The running trails cover the Hollywood hillside. I was taken with the signs that said Beware Rattlesnakes.




Finally, on my way to LAX before my flight I took a drive around Palos Verdes. This is a posh residential area south of LA and north of Long Beach, it sits on a headland that you can see from anywhere in the city. The views of San Pedro harbor are spectacular as are the views of Los Angeles to the north.

It's such a huge port, with Long Beach, and eventually Mexico, to the South.



Some surfers were out too. What a boss way to spend sunday morning.



In the far distance you can see Downtown LA through the haze. Mt. Wilson is one of the mountains beyond.



And a sailboat under the smog, looking north towards Malibu and the Santa Monica mountains.



One thing that wasn't so spectacular on the way to LAX was the detour I took. A friend of mine had made a documentary about Outsider Art featuring the Watts Towers and I've always wanted to see them. So I took a few minutes and came off the freeway to drive-by. Thing is, I was on the phone and not paying attention so I got a little bit lost and suddenly I was off the main drag and driving down some side streets. It looked just like Watts / South Central looks in every rap video and movie you've ever seen, down to the gangs of guys hanging around on the street corners. Fact is, coarse as it sounds, I was too white to be driving around there in a nice rental car, sightseeing. It wasn't my place and while there are thousands of good people there I'm sure, I would have only had myself to blame if I'd got into trouble with anyone who was looking to make a point. (Comparatively) rich white boys shouldn't go sightseeing in Watts. It's like a 21st Century version of the Dickensian sluming it. I made my way out and back onto the freeway as soon as I could. It's easy to forget in America that the line between being in an ok area and being in a bad place can be as short as a block or two. Check-out the Tenderloin in San Francisco, or north of Bourbon St. in New Orleans....easy places to make a wrong turn in. Last week in San Francisco, outside the venue we were working at, I had some clown walk along behind me trying to grab my shoelaces. I told him to Fuck off but he wasn't bothered by me, not really. I'm 6ft tall and solidly built. There were 4 cops on the corner. He only left me alone because some brothers told him to stop clowning. Lucky me, I reckon.

My Luggage:


So I love Vancouver, except for one tiny little detail. During our show some thieving pikey bastard went into the bays under our bus and stole three suitcases. Two of which were mine and one of which was Steve's, our guitarist. Whoever did it had brass balls and must've come with a car because my cases are so heavy I can barely carry them through an airport myself; Steve's wasn't light either.

Steve lost about $2000 worth of clothes. I lost about $8500 worth of suits, burberry overcoats, expensive luggage, British leather boots, the works. On one hand I couldn't really care less about the stuff - its only stuff and at least no one was hurt - but it'll be such a drag to replace it as I get most of my clothes in England. (Which begs another question - as I dress like a banker, both in actuality and as per cockney rhyming slang) who the f*** in Vancouver will want to dress like me? I know it was part of the commonwealth and all but really....

We didn't find out until the morning when I checked into the hotel in Seattle and opened the bus bays to get my bags. Fuckers.

Because I'm such a picky tart when it comes to clothes I really don't want to buy just any old thing to replace the stuff I lost but I had to go to Old Navy and the Gap when I first found out to get some essentials. Consequently I feel like I'm dressed to deliver pizza these days. Vanity, always vanity. (And I hate quoting Margaret Thatcher but she's right. That was her reply when she was asked what was the worst thing about working with men. And for the record she should be tried for treason for what she did to Britain in the late seventies / early eighties, in my opinion. Evil government. *Shudders*).

Anyway, I hope the person who's got our clothes is too short and fat to get into them. I hope htey all have size 12 feet so they can't wear my Australian man boots. And if they do wear anything, I hope when they nod out on smack in whatever khazi they habitate I hope they're stabbed in their sleep by another pikey and bleed out into my Brooks Brother's sweaters and replica 1970's Coventry City Away Strip. But apart from that, I'm over it.

Tossers.

Went to L.A. on January 1st. I had to see some places I’m writing about and I wanted an excuse to travel to L.A. God help me but I love it there, even if it is the world capital of disappointment. All the blond, sunny Hollywoodland stuff passes me by – I think it’s a deliciously dark place, very noir, full of melancholy and desperation dressed up as positivism (obviously I’m using broad strokes here to make a point). Also, once you’re there, the West Coast laid back mindset seems to make more sense on every level. L.A. feels like its own universe and really, it’s at the end of the day internationally speaking so it is kind of isolated in many ways. I really want to live there fo a period of time but can’t see that happening right now as I have no point there nor do I want to go to LA to start over from point zero. I think it could be a cold place to live if you don’t have something going on, much like New York can be too. However, I’m fascinated with the place. I don’t understand how time disappears in the city. No sooner have you got going than the day is over. I ate some (too much) amazing food too and it seemed easier to do than it does in New York when to my mind, trying to go to eat feels like a bit of a rat-race, so to speak.

I went running (or crawling on hands and knees) in Runyon Canyon, an amazing place in the hills just north of Franklin Avenue in Hollywood. The trails lead all the way up the steep hillside to Mulholland Drive and above – in places I had to scramble to keep climbing but when one gets to the top the views across L.A. and the Valley are legendary. And it’s great for your thighs too…photo’s when I go back if I remember to take my camera.

Now we’re in Vancouver. Canadian immigration is really weirdly either very hot or cold – always has been every time I’ve come through – I’ve talked Britishers into Canada without passports before now but sometimes I’ll be interviewed by Nazi Jack McNazi, the Nazi Mayor of Naziville Canada on St. Nazi’s Day at Nazi O’ Clock…. But not today, thankfully. I kind of forgot I was changing countries if I’m honest. That’s LA-itis right there. If I’d come from New York I’d have been much more switched-on. Whatever, dude.

I’d forgotten how much I like it in Vancouver too. It feels like Hong Kong to me, only a hip, English-speaking version. Gorgeous, friendly, well-mannered people, junkies begging outside the Organic Market just to keep it real. I’ve got a boss room too, which, is always a great thing to discover. There’s even a steam room in the gym to look forward to tomorrow morning before we get started. I get to see friends and ponce about in a gym. What a slack tart.

Christmas In New York:

A boss Christmas. Normally I’m all Bah! Humbug about things but this year, as much as my creaking enthusiasm and innate cynicism allowed, I got slightly more into the spirit of things. The city seems to empty-out over the holidays, mostly. I’m always happy and surprised when I get the park to myself when I go running. There are times it’s possible to do this – after a storm is a good time. I’ve run around the reservoir and seen no one before now during/after a rainstorm. I highly recommended it-having Central Park to yourself is amazing. It’s one of my favourite places to go running in the world. (Along The Peak in Hong Kong is another, as is along the Bosphorous in Istanbul).

This is the Jackie O. reservoir in Central Park, made famous by the movie Marathon Man. It’s 1 1/2 miles in circumference and a great place to run.



I’ve seen countless movies too: Babel’s great, but doesn’t resolve like an American movie--but I like that. I’m the worst person to send for movies as I always like dark things—“This is a good one: it proves there’s no God and the blind orphan gets left alone to starve in a cave at the end sitting next to the worm-eaten corpse of her dead child. It's in Urdu with High-German subtitles. It’s brilliant!” while everyone else was hoping that I’d get Air Force One…..; Casino Royale is totally boss – I saw Die Another Day on TV this week and it seemed pale and camp in comparison what with it’s invisible cars and hammy John Cleese as Q. And I think Brosnan’s Bond is okay but Pierce Brosnan always seems like such a pompous tosser. Daniel craig is the Don if you ask me; The Painted Veil is good but slightly thin although I could understand most of the Chinese in it which made me feel more cleverer than I should; The Curse of The Golden Flower was similarly okay. Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat were both really good but Zhang Yimou seems to have seen Twin Towers too many times; some of the set pieces felt a bit tired and overdone. However, I could watch Gong Li peel potatoes for hours on end (and pay for it) so I wasn’t unhappy. I’ve only ever seen her be crap in one movie and even then she looked amazing and I simpered away to myself for 2 hours anyway. (I never said I was a reliable critic); Notes on a Scandal is deliciously malicious. Both Cate Blanchett and Judy Dench are amazing in this and the story is great (The book by Zoe Heller is excellent too). The bench where they sit on Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath was where I used to go to mope when I’d first moved to London and I was a bit skint. I’d sit on that bench and feel sorry for myself (which I did/do to Olympic standard) and wonder at the size and romance of London in front of me. You can see all the way down south to the hill at Greenwich from there--the whole of the city before you. Anyway, I digress, the opening shot shows suicide bridge over the Archway Road too. I don’t know how many people have jumped off that bridge – it’s not quite so romantic as jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge might be, for example. You land on a road and get squashed by a Number 43 bus going to Muswell Hill. It lacks any kind of flair, I reckon.

Finally got some writing done. Writing’s very like going to the gym for me – it takes a while to get myself motivated, then I feel a tremendous guilt of I don’t do enough of it but I feel completely exhilarated once I’ve finished for the day. Time glides past. It’s similar to playing when you’re a child and being lost so completely in something that you don’t realize really where you are or what you’re doing. Writing anything for this blog would have felt like cheating on the other writing. And it would have been, too.

This week I’ve been listening to Ryuichi Sakamoto’s film music while I’ve been writing (He wrote the outro piece used for Babel which is very simple and haunting – it’s called Bibo No Aozora. It fits the closing scene perfectly to my mind). The pianos, violins and cellos are all simply layered but very delicate and beautiful. It’s impossible for me to get tired of this music. (However right now I’m listening to Panic! At the Disco, go figure….)

I wanted to get the song Djabaram from Sakamoto’s Beauty LP but it’s not on I-tunes. It’s such an amazing song and sung by Youssou N'Dour. I’m kind of glad I can’t understand the words as it adds to the song for me.

Buying a physical CD has started to feel a little strange to me these days…can’t quite work out how that happened. Must've been after my Myspace profile logged its 5000th friend and I started riding a skateboard around Carroll Gardens while working on an animated short based on my autobiography. No, really, it's like V for Vendetta only better and I'm also recording all the music myself on garageband....I was flagging a cool lifestyle blog for a while. It kept me current with what the kids are into but it's so cool it changed its URL as its old one had become passe and know one knows what the new one is.

New York City:

It's taken a few days but I'm starting-slowly-to feel civilized again. Despite my ceaseless desire to be going somewhere else I love New York City and can't imagine I'd feel any better anywhere else. ('cept of course, if I was maybe getting on a plane). I was trying to work out what's behind the wanderlust and I can only conclude-sappy as it sounds-that it's a form a romanticism; always thinking what we lack in ourselves is to be found somewhere else. Keen grammarians will note the sophisticated switch of personal pronoun in that last sentence). I'm only glad that this afternoon I didn't succumb to the urge to go to the airport and fly to the UK because of the fog and delays at Heathrow.

I fasted for two days to try to expedite the recovery from trans-fats and sugar--dietary staples for the past month on tour. It worked some, I'm feeling better than I was and my blood doesn't feel like a slurry of badness. A few other things have gone well too: I got my nice watch back from servicing which was free even though it was out of guarantee (that never happens in NYC). Also, I was about to go to buy a new I-pod and just for luck I tried my old one one more time as I was on my way out of the door and it started working again (why it couldnt' do this on tour when I had hours rattling around in a bunk, I don't know...my god is a smartarse god). Thinking I'd just saved $250 I celebrated by spending all that on Beatles CDs.

Which leads me to...and forgive me for stating the obvious but I forget from time to time...how good were the Beatles? Even now, 40 years on, the records still sound fresh and exciting. Admittedly they trigger a certain nostalgia for me (I can still remember riding my bike around with my friends near the local shops and singing Beatles songs when I was about 7. We used to do that for fun, me and my mate Paul). Paul McCartney is one of the most underrated bassists of all time. His playing is genius. And John Lennon's lyrics are so deliciously nasty. I think being working class and English adds some poignancy to what they achieved because in a way The Beatles, although pop stars beyond compare, were kind of like us. I certainly thought that music was a way out when I was growing up largely becuase I was listening to my big brother's Beatles records from ever since I can remember. I felt so much better just getting into these songs again--I hardly listen to them anymore. I'm always awed by how emotive and evocative music can be. Even now, listening to The Beatles, I can experience my first rock and roll thrill. If I listen to The Jam I can get that teenage sense of defiance and frustration. Music is a such an emotional shorthand - it can always go straight to the heart of things. Unless of course it's a support band soundchecking their drums. Then it's the slow screech of fingernails down an endless chalkboard in the ninth circle of hell. I guess I haven't quite got over being on tour yet.


I'm enjoying the pre-Christmas New York too. All those Christmas lights around Europe has me appreciating the lights in New York so much more. Both the tree at Lincoln Centre and the lights at the Time Warner Centre look great. Not too garish like the old tart of a tree at Rockefeller Centre. I've even walked through Times Square twice and not cursed once. The photo's don't really do them justice but this is the tree at Lincoln Centre...



And these are the colour-changing lights inside the TW Centre at Columbus Circle.



One other small detail about one of the statues in the TW Centre. Take a look at this picture...anything stand out?



If you look closely you can see that its willy has been polished to a different shade of bronze than the rest of the statue (and that's the correct proportion for size vs height by the way...I don't care what anyone else says). It cheers me to think that all the Upper West-Siders doing their shopping in the Time Warner Centre can't help but touch the statue's todger. That's some serious polishing to have changed the shade of bronze. I salute my prurient neighbours! You messy mobsters....

Tour Manager slight geek side-note follows: I've just submitted the tour accounts. Only a month of touring and two currencies so not so much cash changing hands--excepting the merch money (and what is it about local merch' sellers? Out of a month of touring only two could fill in the childproof inventory form and manage the cash easily...kind of shocking really). It was fun getting the merch money every night though. It felt old-school, back to the days of cash every night instead of fees being paid as wire transfers. I remember picking up $50K at a festival one year and carrying it around with me all night while I celebrated...ah, happy days. (There was another festival in Finland where I got chased by security off the scaffolding during Bon Jovi's set--they were being such pissy bitches backstage they deserved someone dancing on the PA during their set, I say. I was good too-groovy as fuck. Then I left the float on the bus...but that's another post). I'm so happy with the Euro. It used to suck having to do accounts for every currency in Europe. I was cursing the Swiss this summer when we visited for a day and I had to open a new sheet to account for about $20 worth of coffee receipts for the band. Poor me, eh?


Anyway, the tour accounts are done and it feels like I've handed in my homework and school's out for the Holidays. I've tidied my apartment, nearly done my laundry, a new Gong Li movie is released tomorrow and I am writing endlessly on my blog as a way of avoiding any "real" writing or studying. I guess I can only put it off for so long. Funny, now I've finally got the time to do exactly what I've wanted to do all year long the first thing I do is procrastinate...well, except about going to see Gong Li.



Keeping me smiling through the Times Square Christmas Tourist Crowds: Oldies but Goldies.

The Beatles - Here There And Everywhere.
The Beatles - The Word - even groovier than my dancing to Bon Jovi.
The Beatles - Girl. Still kills me everytime.
The Beatles - I'm Only Sleeping
The Beatles - Help. What a single--it doesn't stop.
The Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen In Love. Pete Shelly has one of those classic British whiney voices. I don't think anyone else could have sung this song so well.
Neko Case - That Teenage Feeling. Because it's good to be reminded not to settle for things.

And I got this link on a email blast today. The video is well worth a look. It made me laugh because he does actually drive like this. Not that he'll admit it.

Jarvis Single Micro Site

Emptying My Camera:

So before I close the book on this year's touring I found these photo's on the Camera.

These are the Christmas lights in Barcelona.



Hmm, yes, I know. After London and Paris they seem a little, Leeds-esque don't they?

And this the Christmas Tree in the centre of Madrid. I think it sits on Km 0, the point from which all distances in Spain are measured and I think, with the Ayuntamiento in the background, the administrative centre of Spain. Unfortunately there was a ton of construction so it was hard to go look properly. Oh yeah, and I was supposed to be working too...





These are the lights in one of the shopping precincts in Madrid. Note the mental-busy crowds at the bottom. I ate by myself at the top of this street in a sandwich shop in a break between soundcheck and the show. As I chewed on bread so crunchy it cut my mouth I saw a sign for a FunFurter. They looked dreadful but I wished I'd ordered one of those instead. I would have looked a lot more exciting hunched over a FunFurter instead of the not-very-spicey chicken thingy I was fish-hooking my soft-palatte with.

It seemed an anticlimatic way to spend the last night in Europe. I felt sad to be leaving. Much as I want to go home and not be on tour I do love the travel and romance that comes with it (unlikely as that sounds for a tour bus; but there's something to be said for going to sleep after leaving Paris, waking up in Milan, and watching the Swiss Alps rise in silhouette in the night as you fall asleep). I'll miss the people I'm traveling with too-they're warm and funny and bright and good friends. I've spent much of the past year with some of them so there's a kind of shorthand, I think, that exists between us that feels like home. A certain critical mass of shared experience. If only we could get weekends off so one could have a life too...





This is a friend (pictured on top of our gear at JFK when we got home) that someone acquired on the way to Italy, late at night, at a truck stop. To be honest it makes a change from the usual giant water pistols and monster truck videos everyone normally ends up buying. It's the size of a small child and has one leg sewn on backwards so it was instantly easy to warm to. His owner grew very attached to it and who could blame them? We all secretly wanted one and to compensate we discussed ways to vilify our little green friend. One idea was for everyone else on the bus to be photographed one at a time in a different compromising position with our furry friend and the photo's emailed to the owner after the tour. Another idea was to buy an oversized sex-toy for the little green loveball and leave it inappropriately dressed in its owner's bunk. In Barcelona I went as far as to go look at oversized sex-toys in a shop on The Ramblas. The girl in the sex-shop was very helpful. She looked like a Lit. Major and her breath smelled of garlic. She showed me a full range of strap-ons. In the end I didn't buy a strap-on. Buying a strap-on is a commitment, especially for a joke. They cost a lot of money, even the cheap ones. You've really got to want a strap-on, I reckon. And I didn't.

In the sex-shop I felt another piece of rusted tin crumble from the wall of my heart. Exactly a year ago I'd learned I'd passed my exam in Basic Mandarin from the Chinese Government. Now I'm looking at strap-on's in a naff sex shop in a touristy part of Barcelona. It's not even that funny a joke. Time to get off the road for a while. At least until my knuckles are no longer dragging on the ground.

Köln:


We have a day off on the outskirts of town where I sleep all afternoon and into the evening. I feel stupid for wasting a day off like this but what are you going to do. There was a good sauna in the hotel that I visited to compensate... It’s our last day and show in Germany and I’m sad to be leaving. It’s a boss country. This is not a popular view. Kind of English without all the English (and English is a dialect of German…linguistically speaking. But of course you knew that already…). However, the venue in Köln was one of the worst on the tour. For some reason, certain clubs achieve the basest of standards in terms of equipment and décor and facilities and stop there. I can only guess it’s because the owners don’t care and in some way view a grotty, run-down club as having some kind of rock and roll bona fides or something. This place looked like interrogations took place there.



And upstairs, in the production/office dressing rooms, it looked like the kind of place that interrogees were forced to sleep – as Brian and Steve are demonstrating after dinner.



The hotel where our day rooms were (for showers) had a vending machine in the lobby that dispensed miniatures of Whiskey, Vodka and this tour’s favourite, Jaegermeister. Supply always meets demand so in a suburb of Köln in a deserted two-star hotel people evidently like to get mullered on Jaeger…


Paris:

Another overnight drive and we get to Paris in good time and prepare ourselves to leap off a moving bus with all our luggage because the traffic is so bad and we can’t stop on the Blvd de Clichy for longer than the turn of a light. Like L.A., Paris is one of those Cities I always look forward to getting to, but when I do I invariably get bitchslapped as soon as I step off the bus.


… in the hotel I ask for the keys and the woman behind reception gives me an attitude. She complains that there are three rooms but nine people; these rooms are for one person each. I say c’mon, stop pissing about, we're only here for showers, here are the reservation numbers, give me the keys and we'll be gone as soon as we came. She boots-off and refuses to give me even one key even if I relent and promise that only one person is going into the room. She speaks no English at all and then only speaks French with a sneer. I give up on diplomacy and while Marc, our French speaking guitarists remonstrates with her in French, she complains that the hotel is only used to professional clients (it’s a toilet on the Blvd de Clichy – hard to appreciate the joke without seeing the crap hotel. There were no shower curtains in the bathrooms, for example..) I call the label who arranged the rooms to sort it out. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to start a day pissy to get even the basics taken care of. It's a long time since I've tried to check in to a hotel on the Blvd De Clichy. Last time I remember I ended up jumping over the counter and giving out the keys myself...

The quality hotel frontage....



Which is across the street from this...



Which looks old and tired in the grey daylight, doesn't it? Whatever, Montmartre has an enduring charm.

Sure enough in time it’s all sorted out. There’s a lot of Gallic shoulder shrugging and indignant conversations but finally we all get to shower ahead of a day spent doing press, radio and TV. Marc is by now enjoying himself with the woman behind the counter who is warming to us now she realizes that we’re not trying to rip her off. She even tells him that had we not been musicians (we’ve got three guitars with us for the day’s promo) she’d have thrown us out on the street, as though this is a consolation. While ten minutes previously she couldn’t understand my request for “An Extra towel, s’il vous plait.” She now regales me, in perfect English, with the difference between Berbers (what she is) and Arabs and how the Moors (her ancestors) colonized southern Europe. I guess she’s studied the chapter on “Introducing Oneself” in English but not got to the chapter about staying at a hotel. Or the one about not being a miserable, incompetent, acidic sow.

Paris is an amazing city. Despite the traditional rivalry between the French and the English I can’t help but respect their bolshie no-shit attitude (however frequently misplaced) and the fact that the French built Paris (and to be fair Rennes, where we also visited for a weird festival, was similarly beautiful). Even after all these years visiting it’s still breathtaking. While Albert and Matt did press I got to see some favourite sights – even if a little briefly.

Paris form Sacre Couer...



One of the funicular cars at Sacre Couer had crashed in the Place Suzanne Valadon. A ring of Gendarmes hung around while I and all the other tourists took photos. It didn’t look like anyone had been hurt.



I even had time to have a Chinese Movie buying accident in FNAC and Virgin and to wander around the Marais – something I haven’t done in over 10 years. There's a boss tea shop in the Marais called Mariage Frere's that's been around since 1854. On a recommendation I went for tea and cake - both were excellent. The kind of place where the service justifies the prices. It was packed...and one of the most polite places in Paris, for sure.



And the Champs Elysee looked amazing (well, maybe it loses something in translation here but...).



And so did Notre Dame...the great thing about Central Paris is that you can get around it so easily.




Even the chore of working in Paris (Like New York, London, L.A. blah, blah...) was easily overlooked because of the beauty of the place and the show was one of the best of the tour despite having to load-in up a hill and through construction. The night of the show I dreamt I was going out with Bjork. It was great, she was all into me. Then when I woke up and I realized that I wasn’t going out with Bjork I felt like I’d been dumped. By Bjork. I left the band at the label to do their last day’s promo at their label and wandered around the Marais and Pont Neuf alone and in the rain singing Paris Match by the Style Council to myself. I didn’t even have an I-pod to mope around with. Woe is moi.

This is the view from/of Pont Neuf where lovers go to hang out. As I'd been chucked by Bjork it seemed fitting that I sulk here by myself. Note the young lovers snogging next to the Seine. I'm in the City of Love and everyone is at it but me. I consoled myself by thinking they were about to throw themselves into the water.





The drive to Milan from Paris is about 1000KM. I slept for most of it. We were in Milan for about 12 hours. I like Italy for my vacations and nothing else. Oh, and the guy on reception was a dick here too--I’m going to start photographing them from now on….. I couldn’t get on the bus fast enough at the end of the night – except that our trailer with all the gear in wouldn’t hitch correctly so we spent 20 minutes trying to nudge a 1-ton trailer 1/8” to get the pin in it. Class. One hasn’t lived until one’s been covered in crap from a trailer that’s been dragged around the autobahns and autoroutes of Europe. Yum. I don't know what it was that made being in Milan so anticlimatic - Italy and the Italians are all so boss. Maybe it's just tour fatigue?

Outside of Barcelona I woke up on the bus and Brian, our lucozade swigging, cadbury’s button chomping, 20 benson smoking guitar tech’ was watching Supersize Me. I breakfasted on strawberry jam filled smiley face biscuits and cadbury’s buttons and joined him in watching the movie. By the end I was feeling suitably nauseous and it occurred to me that touring is very much like Supersize Me. We’ve eaten crap for nearly 30 days – everyone’s tired and lacklustre and there's a vague malaise floating around but spectrally, just out of the corners of our eyes. Intellectually I know we’re all hanging out with friends and getting paid for it and doing what we love but I am convinced the fatigue is partly because our diet is so bad. I feel like crap around the clock and am hoping for a bodyectomy when I get home.


In Madrid the band left the stage at 11:55 PM. By 7:45AM we were back at Barcelona airport for the flight back to New York unwashed, bleary-eyed and exhausted. 15 hours later, including many I missed thanks to vicodin and tylenol PM, I was home.

Back a day and I can’t quite remember how only 36 hours ago I was baked and falling asleep in my bunk, watching the Spanish service stations pass outside my window. It’s strange to come to the end of a tour and to feel the forward motion desist. Even while sleeping we’ve been traveling at 60 mph all week. Coming home to a quiet apartment feels a little like coming down from a sugar high. Wandering around the city it takes a while to feel grounded. When I got back I had an urge (I always do) to get a change of clothes and go back to the airport to get on another plane to somewhere. I think it's a sickness.
It took me 36 hours to book my next flight.

Berlin: Journey to the East.


We left Amsterdam around 2AM and drove overnight to Berlin. Everyone was in an ebullient mood, for obvious reasons. I watched Grey’s anatomy and fell asleep. I wasn’t alone in doing this. We ate Olliebollen, a heavy, raisin-filled sugared dough-ball my friend had bought for me as a sample of Amsterdam's finest food stuffs....they are delicious, and just the thing after a few hours in a coffee shop. Which is why there are so many cake stalls open around the Leidesplein in the evening I'd imagine.

Berlin is one of my happy places. I love the city. I can’t really explain why but when we arrived I breathed a sigh of relief. It’s such a cool place full of art and culture(s) and smart people. The city looks great and is steeped in history. Walking around doing nothing here is better than doing most things elsewhere. (I feel the same in Beijing too….go figure). Our hotel was on Wallstrasse and even the cheesy US Wall Street themed hotel with Stock Market figures as the corridor carpet design and a hundred dollar bill as the bedroom carpet design didn’t dampen my mood (Note also the chocolate Euros left as a welcome gift on the bed and the packet of tissues printed as dollar bills in the bottom left corner…). It was so naff I couldn't help but enjoy it and the room’s décor was Germanic in its pragmatism with kettles hidden in closets and doors with warped wood as handles. It's in a quiet corner of the city right next to a U-Bahn station so getting around the city was a doddle. I went outto dinner with friends for a while before finding myself so tired I had to come home to sleep. I did learn that there’s a German verb from the name of my home town: Coventrieren. It means to eradicate a city (Which is what the Luftwaffe did to Coventry during the Blitz in WW11). I felt vaguely pleased to know we’d been immortalized in language, even with such a negative connotation (I guess the UK version would be to Dresdenize…?). Sadly, given a day off in one of my favorite places it was all I could do not to sack out before 10PM. Shameful.



The band’s promo the next day was in Potsdam, about 40 minutes outside of Berlin. The radio station was along the street from the Potsdam film set where Marlene Deitrich used to make movies. The fake streets were still there and reminded me of the sets in California at Universal. There were some (genuine) mansions along the block that looked just like these movie-set facades and the film sets were set apart from the public suburban street only by a fence – they were very open and visible. Although judging by the state of the Streetcar on this set it’s not like the local kids seem to hold the perimeter fence in very high esteem.



Later in the day, after soundcheck, we took a walk along the East Side Gallerie. This is a section of the wall that was left in place and is now used by muralists. Behind this section of the wall is the river (Pictured from the other side—The former West—below). To escape the East one would have to scale two walls, then clear a section of barren no-mans-land under the watch of the guardtowers, and then swim across the river. I can’t imagine the desperation people must have lived with to try that. One of the saddest sights in Berlin for me is near the Reichstag. There are small crucifixes on the walls as memorials to those who died trying to cross over: they were shot, they drowned. Some of them were so young, and some of them died only a few weeks before the wall came down.









I love the architecture in Berlin. There’s such a mix of old and new and the old has such a presence and sometimes a fantastic monolithic feel in the former east. How can you not love a city where the U-Bahn stations look like this? Next door to my friend’s apartment building in Prenzlauer they are redeveloping a former mechanic’s garage that was a previously a bathhouse used exclusively by Stasi Officers. Although that’s a dreadful kind of history, how can you not be fascinated by the fact that this still exists? Maybe it’s just me but that the façade of our hotel was bullet-scarred from WWII did nothing but add to the experience of being there. The city breathes its history.



Tonight everyone’s gone to the same bar we visited in the summer when we played here before. It’s good to know places you like in cities abroad. It makes a place feel like home – which Berlin may well become one day. Certainly it has got to be one of the top places to live in Europe.

Got to Hamburg after a hazy night in Das Bus (it feels like a submarine as it’s a double-decker and all the ceilings are low. Low enough for me to keep cracking my head on) and on my way form the shower rooms at the hotel to the venue I passed a Gallery showing a Casper David Friedrich exhibition (German Romantic school). I’d tried to see his work before in Berlin but the wing of the gallery had been closed. This morning I snuck off while everyone was sleeping but got to the Gallery only to find it closed on Mondays. Same with the Chinese exhibit in the gallery across the square. Bobbins that, innit?

Tchoo Late and Tchoo Schmelly!


I think I can say my Anti-Amsterdam phase is over now. I’m just anti-scuzzers. And who could have a problem with that? We’ve just had a night-off in Amsterdam--the first quiet time I’ve had since the start of the tour. It’s taken nearly 12 hours of mooching around and doing nothing special to start to feel anything like normal again. Tonight I ate falafels and talked about nothing much with a friend. It felt so normal a small grateful tear rolled down my cheek at the end of the night. Or maybe that was because the falafels achieved a legendary spiciness. Either way, it was pure, unadulterated gratitude.



I wandered around the city a little at night. I was hoping for a little more by way of pagan lights but the lights here were very understated. Aside from the obvious red ones, that is. Understated but apt, I thought. See for yourself. When your City looks as cool as Amsterdam what do you care for Christmas lights?



The area was busy, not just with men in raincoats or gangs of men out drinking (although it was mostly this), but with couples and tourists safely enjoying the edginess. Walking past all the prostitute’s windows my second thought was that it’s got to be a hard, hard job. The men (not me of course, I'm different to every other man on the planet) really do view them as chattel. The whole red light area is steeped in a kind of workaday seediness – there are the dealers, the women, the storekeepers and the skeevy pimps all making a living by selling an assortment of fantasies. Then there are the punters (many of whom are so tightly coiled they almost flinch if you look at them) all slightly breathless with anticipation and eager to believe even the most exhausted hooker’s smile or the shadiest dealer’s spiel about his drug’s potency.



North African dealers hang around on the middle of the bridges hissing the names of the drugs they can sell to you. Along one street three people spoke to me, and I heard in order (I’ve tried to get the Dutch accent down phonetically, I really like the accent here…):

“You chlike any cocaine?”
“Porno! Come in before it gets tchoo late and tchoo schmelly!”
“Psst! Charlie. Chou want shome?”

This seemed so absurd and open it made me laugh. Then I saw five English guys pushing their friend into a hooker’s doorway and cheering and it all seemed less absurd and more obscene. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a sordid fascination with all of this (I will go to my grave believing you can gauge a nations psyche by looking at its advertising and its pornography) but I felt like I was slumming it in the end, going to look at the poor people scratching a living by ruining themselves before going back to my schmancy hotel to blog about how delightfully vulgar it all is. Voyuer would be a generous description, I think.



I was thinking it might be a chuckle to go for a smoke in a coffee shop (and it’s been a long, long time since I did that) but that would only be good in the right company and the only person I want to do that with isn’t here. Probably a good thing too. Or not. Seeing all that broken humanity somehow makes me want to steep myself in feelings altogether more aspirational and to foster those sensibilities that come from tenderness and not self-loathing. After wasting so much time I’ve a desire to make more of life instead of less. Watching people attend their own wakes is ultimately depressing; it’s always easier to say no to life. Which is ironic, isn't it?

Get out of London!

We’ve finished the first leg of the tour around the UK. The shows went well but the schedule was exhausting – there was no down time at all. I can’t remember van tours being this tiring before, (maybe it’s an age thing!) but that we haven’t had a day off in over a week and have often been doing shows and multiple radio shows and promo etc, every day has proven a little too much. Everyone looks completely shagged.

Our tour bus arrived tonight which means I won’t be driving any more. I didn’t mind the driving as much as I didn’t like the navigating city centres with a pony map and looking for somewhere to park for an hour or so each night. Bombing along the M1 at 90mph is fine—although it was better before my ipod died. Still, now I have a new nest in the tour bus – slightly smaller than the ones we had in America but it does have a window, which is really good--it’s like a little porthole. I’m in one of the front bunks above the driver so it’s close to being a suicide bunk. But it is one of the quietest, which, as anyone who’s spent any time on a tour bus will attest, is one of the most important things—early death notwithstanding. I’ve already filled it with my gadgets – if I could concentrate for longer than the length of time it takes to type up a day-sheet I’d add some books to the mix but I’m simple of mind on this tour already and can't form full sentences today so book learning is out of the window.


We took a cross channel ferry to
Calais (This is the view from the skylight at the back of the bus as we boarded. The glamour of a ferry terminal... actually, geek that I am, I like places like this--all sodium lights and freight vehicles). This was the 4:30am sailing. Stayed awake for the ride and we docked at 6:50AM . I liked the ferry ride – the English Channel (Q: How did we get naming rights to it?) was black and I could see other boats out there heading to and from the North Sea. It felt isolated and almost secret in the way that late-night travel can feel. Boats are a good way to travel--they’re very tangible. There’s a romance to sea travel. For a time I had the south coast of England to myself with just the dark waves for company. I have to say I couldn’t understand why there was a harpoon on the ferry. That must be why one never sees any whales in the English Channel.


I slept until Amsterdam, which was a relief. I have a night off tonight and as long as I avoid all the peasants (thank god none of my party are gagging to mong' themselves out…) celebrating their bohemian tendencies by smoking themselves insensate then I’m looking forward to a night off here and going to dinner. I like Amsterdam except for all the plebs. Maybe if I get bored I can let off a little steam pushing drunks into the canals…?

A chap has got to have some fun, right?



On the MacPod tonight.
Thieves – Unworthy
Pulp – Common People
Cat Power – Where is my Love? / Love and Communication
Placebo – Special K
Neko Case – Hold On, Hold On
The Cure – Why Can’t I Be You?