DAY 7: GUILFORD ENGLAND

KING MIDAS IN REVERSE

Guilford Festival. Martin Elbourne in a cowboy hat. The Waterboys. Hobbits. Corn Circles. Bland British cooking. Boiled chicken, jacket potatoes and a field of suffering Teabags who are a good fifteen degrees out of their comfort zone.

Whoa, it’s hotter than shit up in this piece. We end up three hours late. Stuck in Putney with a flat tire on the rental van. Stuck in Putney with the shot hip blues again.

After some static from security, we arrive to an open field with 20,000 people. Sunburned beauties making their rounds, 17 different kinds of Vegetarian Burgers, kids on leashes, dogs running free… The Stranglers are on an opposite stage. I’d kind of like to hike over there.

Kids on leashes while the Stranglers play. Who could resist?

A geezer on a motorcycle with his daughter in the sidecar says to Dan, “I’m a Green On Red fan and my daughter’s a Chuck Prophet fan”. It makes my day. There is a dog. We need dogs. Dogs need dogs.

We’ve come a long way to spit on a Hobbit.

But of course – if you could spit on a Hobbit just any old where, who’d ever leave home, right?

Yeah, right.

The gig doesn’t look dodgy on first glance to the naked eye, but on closer inspection, there are THE SIGNS. First clue? The bloke behind the monitor desk sports a lobster rash that can only be brought on by three days direct exposure to THE SUN. The dark side of the sun. It’s THE SUN or THE RAIN. Never anything in-between at these festivals.

There are also empty crates of cider with cables tangled like spaghetti spilling out everywhere. It’s a conspiracy of electricity.

Why are the monitor man’s cut off’s down around his ankles? He’s got a lit joint hanging out of his mouth. Only it’s not lit—it went out an hour ago somewhere in the middle of a an Irish folk act’s set. Is there some genealogy to this shit I’m missing?

Remember, ultraviolet rays from the sun will damage the skin but can also create vision problems.

Fact is, they’ve got a good crew here but they are only so strong. After so many bands and more pints, they start to wilt. Wilt like a good old fashioned sex scandal, Christine Keeler, blowing us a kiss. They lose their power.

Yep, it’s every man for himself. Some babies never learn.

Turns out there is some confusion and a Piano Keyboard we requested is not there for Chris in time for our set. An oversight.

The Waterboys go on after us, so we attempt to work the GOR charm to cadge a keyboard from Mike Scott and his middle class gypsies. It’s a shoe-in as two of the Waterboys crew were once somehow employed directly or indirectly by GOR. We reach out for assistance but are given the thumbs down. Shit, they’ve got like three of them (pianos).

Didn’t the same charm got us down into THE PIT in Greece? GOR ain’t got the mustard to cut the custard today. Learn something everyday. Like never trust a man with two first names, and vitamin D and ecstasy don’t mix. And something else, I forget…

Mike Scott, Mark David Chapman, Sarah Jane Olson.

With no piano the set goes a bit wobbly. It goes pear shaped as they’re wont to say here. I’m staring down at Excalibur having to remind myself where to put my fingers, and Chris? God knows what’s going through his head. But he’s playing that organ twice as hard to make up for no piano. The set ventures out to the edge of the cliffs and studies the rocks below, and before we know it, IT’S OVER.

The crowd love it. LOVE IT.

It really wasn’t that bad of a show. Danny was singing his tits off.

The sun goes down and my mood lifts. We stand off to the side and watch the Waterboy’s overblown, melodramatic piano filled set. They’re not bad. Pretty damn good, to be truthful. Inspiring even. So good we forget their precious bullshit from just an hour ago.

Self-sacrifice has it’s values. Lost on many.

“There’s always tomorrow”. And there’s also a good dog crap analogy out there somewhere.

I could use it right about now.

Nah. This is The Sea. THIS IS THIS. SEE THIS LINE, MOTHERFUCKER? THAT WAS THE RIVER! THIS IS THIS!

Day 5:  VIENNA, AUSTRIA

“If you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich?”

Early morning flights are brutal. You feel your body slowly eating you alive from the inside out. Gnawing away at you. Eyes stinging like you’ve been held down and subjected to Drano eye-drops.

I meander around the Duty Free store at the airport. Decide to pass on postcards depicting the Acropolis and the Aegean coast line. If I get homesick for Greece I’ll visit my local Greek Restaurant—I can be sure these same images will be on display beneath a film of the other grease.

All attempts to board as civilized humans goes out the window. The Shanghais principle is in full effect. Shanghais principle? Yeah, no one seems to have any interest in forming a line. So an unformed blob of a crowd mobs around the boarding gateway. Sort of like dumber-than-lemmings lemmings. I’d stand back but I’ve got a guitar in an unprotected soft carry-on case and need to get in there and dog fight my way into one of the overhead compartments or risk having it thrown to the wolves, or worse, down into the JFK equivalent: the den of thieves below, the dark and hellish underworld of baggage handlers

All this for Dan’s clay hip?

We board the flight and Danny makes a point of letting the stewardess know that he’s carrying a fragile guitar. Yes, Dan makes his point.

“Careful Honey, he says, that’s a HOLL-OW-BODY, I make my living with that thing…”

“That’s your living?” she retorts, “You must live in Teepee…”

Good one. We arrive in Vienna and are shuttled to the legendary rock hotel whose name mercifully escapes me right now. With some time to kill before sound-check and fearing lying down and falling into a death-nap coma, I decide to take a stroll through a busy Vienna shopping district to test the theory that the Viennese are the type to reach out and grab you, confront your ass, if you jaywalk. In a “Hey Pal, we-don’t-do-that-here” kind of way….

So far, the first couple of crosswalks, I lose my nerve, but I carry on the sociological Stanford prison experiment in the spirit of science. I’m a good and giving man; I can think of nothing short of slow dancing with Dick Cheney that I wouldn’t do to further the just causes of science, art and core fucking values.

One observation: It’s rather hot out. Spring is in the air. Really brings out the best in women’s fashion.

Next thing I know the wind just kind of blows me into the other American Embassy. A certain Scottish chain restaurant with golden arches. It’s like a Disco in here. Or maybe a rave; hell, I don’t know the distinctions… Fast Food House.

Fine, nowhere else I’d rather be. Because I have an agenda. You see, they still deep fry the (4.5 grams of trans fat containing) apple pies in the Old World. You’ll find that orange lava on the inside and the bubbling lunar surface on the outside. I got to have it. Just got to have it. Evidently, MacDonald’s deleted this practice from the menu in the states 1,000 lawsuits ago. Long before their post Fast Food Nation attempts to escape their hard earned junk-food image, by becoming the largest buyer of green apples and walnuts in the world.

Greece is dead, long live the grease.

We play a club that we later agree is sleazy as opposed to gross. More on that to come. Sleazy is good. Gross is bad.

Whatever.

Chris’s keyboards are turned up in my monitors tonight. Chris is a genius. A singularly funky inventive cat. My ears have grown in 18 years, and I’m beginning to break the code on those hieroglyphic shapes that flew over my head way back when. Always imaginative. I’ve got newfound appreciation for the dude.

It’s a sloppy but inspired set. Too hot to be inside though.

STAY TUNED—TOMORROW WE GET MISSIONARY POSITIONED

Day 3, Greece: ROCKWAVE FESTIVAL, Athens

The Rules of The Road, Unfolding

1) Never overburden your bag.

2) Van must remain upright at all times.

3) Food is to be cooked, peeled or boiled only.

Flying out of Stuttgart with a day and some change, rehearsal under our belts, we arrive a day early in Athens to pop the cherry on this hit-and-run tour. It’s a festival gig. Eight bands on one stage in a meadow atop a mountain overlooking God’s own swimming pool, the Aegean Sea. Cool beans.

Lazing around the hotel pool, chewing the fat, our morbid curiosity gets the best of us and we decide to head up the hill to the festival grounds to catch tonight’s headliner: Guns and Roses.

The radio car drive up the mountain road is dramatic.

With the aid of a little of that old Green On Red charm, we hustle our way onto the festival grounds and after tying on Day-Glo wristbands as instructed, we are escorted down into THE PIT with the shutterbugs and media types; spitting distance from Axl and Co.

Shit, he don’t look so tough.

Somewhere in the middle of Guns and Roses set I swore I saw Axl Rose look at his watch. I mean, it wasn’t like he fixed his stare on it. It was more of a sideman salute. A deft pull-up of the sleeve as if brushing his arm, in one swift motion, a slick kind of maneuver. I turn to Chris: “Did you see that?”

“I think Axl – is that really a word?—just looked at his watch.”

“Is he afraid he’ll go over the allotted time?”.

Chris enlightens me. Such do we expect of expatriate keyboard dudes. Chris says Merle Haggard has a rule barring any of his band from carrying wallets on stage, fearing the audience might think that the band is up there playing for the money.

Obviously, no sane person would play music for money, even overlooking the Aegean Sea. Chris says that Steve Wynn on the other hand—wallet very much secure in his front pants pocket—has his own rule: NO WATCHES ON STAGE.

This is not an advice competition, but I’m leaning Steve Wynn’s way. Music: Keep your wallet and you can always buy another Timex if the hoodlum’s and riffraff swipe it. How much time is enough playing to folks who want to listen? The Rules of the Road unfold.

Don’t stand in the sun if you’ve got butter on your head. Good advice. Maybe worthy of being a Rule.

There was an explosion of light at a peak musical moment during the Guns and Rose set and I felt the heat from another sun on my face. Intense heat. Another sun.

Tommy Stinson (formerly of our old school mates The Replacements) is playing bass with GnR. In terms of pure professionalism—can’t speak for Axl— Tommy has come a long way. First time I saw The Replacements was at SF’s legendary Gay disco Monday night stalwart the, I Beam. Three songs into the set and a fight breaks out ON STAGE. At which point Tommy addresses the audience and asks if there are any bass players in the house. Then he hands off the bass to the first volunteer and heads to the bar to enjoy the retarded but entertainingly inspired disintegration of a gig. Tommy’s learned.

But Axl’s – singing, I suppose. Odd.

Backstage the “Guns” road crew proudly show us the results of the When-Will-Axel-Go-On-Stage? betting pool. A spread sheet laid out like a racing form in three minute increments. Horses with names like: Watery Grave, Knickers In A Knot, Don’t Call Me Late For Dinner, Izzy’s Fax Machine, Donkey Dick Blues.

The Green on Red machine isn’t exactly looking for the trifecta. But hey! We’ve got fluorescent wristbands and an ocean of pretty Greeks to look at while we stumble through.

Axl hasn’t been able to finish a record for over a decade. It seems possible to me that Axl Rose is depressed. Not in a hand wrenching, paralylitic, incapacitated kind of way. More in a veering from ecstasy to agony in a matter of seconds kind of way. Indecisive and dysfunctional, unbalanced spiritually, musically, physically. This could merely be the influence of the Grecian Sea, this thought. These hominids discovered philosophy, am I right? Hey, I’m not Dr. Phil, but he seems lonelier than Martha Stewart, Axl does.

Tonight, though, I get a glimpse of the GnR power, I’d only ever heard about. I really couldn’t name but like one GnR song before tonight, but they are killing tonight with the crowd singing along en masse.

STAY TUNED FOR TOMMORROW… NOW WE GOT TO JIM MORRISON’S GRAVE?