 2/26/00
Fabulous. Any way you slice it, listening to Marvin Gaye
at 30,000 feet above Nova Scotia is a stone groove. The funny thing is
that I told the other guys that it was really important for them to get
some sleep on the flight and they're all snoozing and I remain firmly
outside the land of nod. I asked the steward what kind of whiskey they
have on board and he said "Jimmy Walker". It did kind've taste a bit like
Kid Dyn-o-mite, actually. So three drinks and a Klonipin (Thank you David
Thompson) and I'm still wide-eyed and scheming about licensing deals.
I should be nice and knackered when we land and it's the morning of tomorrow.
Brussels was a nonevent except that I ran into a friend
of mine that I hadn't seen in 10 years. He was on his way to play Motown
in Germany, of course. Anxieties aside, we absolutely breezed through
Customs with 100 CDs and a couple dozen T-shirts unchecked, thank you.
Now we are at the Hotel de New Cologne (I think) and I am attempting to
take a nap. It's not working.
Barcelona is really beautiful, it's very European (for
some reason) but it also has a breezy California vibe. The weather is
just perfect-about 65 degrees and a big, bright sun. Must buy sunglasses
(which I will then lose immediately). Palm trees, it's pretty great here.
The Hotel of No Colon is pretty low key. It's a cold water affair, which
has really rained on my enthusiasm for a shower. When in Rome... David
and I just went down to a little cafe place for some cafe' con leche and
we're waiting to be picked up for soundcheck at the Zeleste club. Our
hostess, Eneida, is ill so we don't know who is coming to pick us up.
2/27/00
There is a small yapping dog in residence at the Hotel
Del Shannon. A very nice girl named Cristina came to pick us up and get
us to the venue. She has apparently done something horribly wrong in life
for she is supposed to be our guide for the next few days. Poor girl.
The show last night was really great. I got stuck with
the dreaded Peavey bass amp, but we are in Spain so who exactly cares?
My new Epiphone bass performed admirably.
The club, Zeleste 3, is a new room above a big room (about the size of
Avalon I guess). Yes was playing in the room below us and one of the people
there took Clyde and myself down for a peek. Jon Anderson said "I don't
know what the name of this club is (about a million people yelled out
"Zeleste" but he ignored them), but tonight this is the house of Yes!"
(fist aloft!). Silly Jon Anderson.
We played with two local bands, Sidonie and Bondage,
both of whom were quite good. The crowd was really responsive for our
set. There was just tons of beer in the dressing room so I did the old
Guided By Voices bit. After each song I would pound a beer (or about 1/2
of one anyway) and then throw the can against the back wall-SPLAT! They
dug it. There was a top geezer there with a Stax/Volt T-shirt who was
obviously way into it so I threw him and his buddies a couple of beers.
They passed them around amongst everyone standing near them. We played
really well. A pretty normal set: All That Way/ Real, Real Gone/ Molly/
Apologize/ Mandy/ Brighton Rude Boy/ Butternut/ Nicola/Back Of Head/ Wide
Awake/ Soft. Plus a big encore of "He's A Whore". Note to self: Cheap
Trick not very popular in Spain. Most of the girls kind've stayed back
a bit, but the guys were bouncing around quite a lot. All in all, a very
pleasing experience. Gear back to the Hotel de Nomenclature and it's time
to go out.
Cristina
had a few friends and they decided to show us a little bit of Barcelona.
Her friends included this tiny little girl named Marta who looked like
a doll standing next to Clyde. Marta's distinguishing characteristic is
that she went to university in Scotland and now only speaks English with
a tremendous Glaswegian accent. Very odd. I was wearing a "Back To Mono"
button that I got in the Phil Spector box set and they pointed out that
mono means monkey in Spanish. I told them that I was anti-evolution. We
went to La Rambla (Rambling man...) which is a big strolling area. We
went to a couple of bars in search of the infamous absinthe. We were not
successful in our search. After the bars closed, our guides took us to
a place called Karma which they promised was the cheesiest bar in all
of Barcelona. There was a pretty big line and the other guys and gals
decided to call it a night. I really wanted to just be a pirate and see
this big, cheesy disco so Cristina, Marta and I waited and eventually
squeezed in to the most crowded room I have ever been in. You couldn't
even dance; you just moved your head around. They played a lot of crappy
music (big surprise), but I will admit to a moment of exhilaration when
Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" came on. Cristina and Marta showed me their
best air-guitar moves and we agreed that the mullet is the haircut of
the future.
We left there at 5 A.M. and decided to call it a night.
I had been awake for 43 hours and the sun was threatening to come up.
Going for the old Keith Richards merit badge, kids. The girls called me
"La Bestia" (the beast), but mostly because I asked them to.
Now
it is about 3 PM and my good friend, David Thompson, has wandered off
without telling anyone where he was going and we are trying to go to the
Zoo to see the albino ape (which Clyde has vowed to wrestle, posters are
being printed as we speak). That's probably where Dave is. Later on Eneida
and her boss are having a dinner for us. I had a huge piece of toast with
Anchovies and Tomatoes for breakfast, apparently I had ordered it. It
was a bit like the time Ad Frank french kissed me at his birthday party.
It was nothing I desired, but one must rise to the occasion.
2/27/00 3 A.M. Briefly, we went to dinner at the home of Eneida's
boss, Reyes. Reyes used to be quite a big pop star in Spain in the 80s
and she's a mad woman all around. We had a really nice time with "Auntie
Reyes". She made us a really excellent dinner (we even posed for photos
with the flan) and we drank large quantities of really good red wine.
Then Rum, then Scotch. Then all of Reyes' old disco and bubblegum 45s
had to come out and be played. It was a really nice evening. Tomorrow
we are going shopping and sightseeing with Reyes-and we have vowed to
go to the zoo. I have a distinct feeling that we will be sleeping through
the zoo hours. Classic Pills. Shopping here is a bit different due to
the fact that all the stores close from 2PM to 5PM for the siesta. It
seems like a perfectly reasonable thing, unless one is trying to purchase
the Birds CD that one should have purchased 10 minutes earlier. 2/29/00
5 A.M.--MADRID Now we are in Madrid after a long-ass bus ride. It was
about 7 hours with a 45-minute lunch break for the driver. I listened
to "Exile On Main Street" the entire way. Reyes and Eneida were very excited
because they did a segment about our tour on Radio 3. They have national
radio here, and Radio 3 is the rock station and there's an indie-rock
show on every night at 6. Reyes says that us being featured on there means
that every cool kid in Spain knows who we are now. We'll see about that. 
David is sick. I guess he caught whatever Clyde had last
week. He has a fever and a sore throat. Of course, I've seen him play
sick loads of times before, but I'm a little worried about the traveling
exacerbating the situation. I'm sure that he'll be OK for tonight, though,
and Madrid is sort've the big deal for us as far as distributors and labels
and stuff. Also, the promoters who brought us over here are in Madrid
and I'd like to impress them. The promoters are called Love To Art and it's
basically these three madmen: David, Juan and Pepe. They are the ones
who have brought the Gigolo
Aunts over here a few times (as well as Velvet Crush, Tommy Keene
and a few others) and every other word they say is "Motherfucker". "Your
soundcheck is at 4, motherfucker. Would you like a beer, Motherfucker?"
The club they run is called Moby Dick and it's got a great nautical power-pop
theme. You know how merchant seamen always love the Raspberries. Yar. The show went quite well. All my worrying about David
and I ended up blowing my voice out a little. I didn't get a chance to
really do any warm-ups and the high notes on "Down With The Beautiful"
were a bit screechy. No excuses, though, the other guys said that they
thought it was good and we got another encore. It's pretty cool to hear
a bunch of people in Spain chanting "Pills, Pills, Pills". Geez, I hope
they were referring to us. We did "Band On The Run" as an encore. Not
seen as clever or cute. They all seemed really excited to hear that it's
Dave's birthday. The rest of the set was great and we sold 38,000 pesetas
worth of merch. Many autographs were signed, many drinks were bought for
us. I even got a good bass amp: and SWR Redhead which Jamie liked a lot. One odd thing about the Madrid audience is that it was
a virtual sausage factory: no women at all. It's OK, just weird. We met
a lot of very groovy people. One thing I have yet to mention is that there
is not a man, woman or child in Spain who doesn't smoke constantly. In
case you were wondering where all the tobacco companies are spending their
marketing money...I mean, in all the restaurants, in the airport, in any
store you go into. Dogs smoke in Madrid. Jamie wants it documented that he is "all fucked up-write
it down". He can't walk, per se, yet he travels. Oops. Senor assy just
said hello. I think I'd better sleep.
03/01/00
SALAMANCA We got to see all of Salamanca at least twice while our
driver, Pino, looked for the club. We didn't mind, though, 'cuz it's a
groovy looking town almost all the way to Portugal. Besides, we get lost
on our way to shows in Cambridge so it was Pills Double Live Gonzo. Pills
Greatest Hits. Pills Come Alive. Anyway, we found the Goddamn place and
we got a police escort from a friendly geezer on a motorcycle. 
David and I managed to get up early enough to go the
Prado museum for a few hours today. Sadly, we did not have time to check
out the Picasso, Miro or Dali pieces that they keep down the street, but
we got a pretty fair share of del Goya, El Greco and Valezquez (funny,
a lot of his pieces have a guy in the background playing a foam-green
Jazz bass and smoking too much). Anyway,
apparently we have flown 3,000 miles to play at an Irish bar: The Irish
Rover. And just like in Boston, it is filled with a bunch of bimbo students
and interchangeable guys with backward baseball caps. There are tons of
American students here at the University and they are all at our show.
We do everything we can to avoid these sorts when at home, but they ambushed
us here I suppose. We rocked their lame asses anyway. There were some
really cool looking mod guys up front and one guy actually know all the
words to "Wide Awake" which is a bit of a mindfuck. 
Dave broke two strings, and as we were the only band
playing, there was no back up guitar. We went into a spooky D minor groove
and Clyde did the monologue from "The End" by the Doors. "The Killer Awoke,
he put his boots on..." while Dave put a string on. They never noticed
a thing. It was a good show, although some fucker threw an ice cube and
hit my new bass. Luckily, I know how to say "This is my new bass, you
motherfucker and I will hit you in the face" in Spanish. It turns out
that the three years of Spanish One I had in high school actually taught
me Spanish. Well, it's not perfect Spanish-more like Esperanto retardo-
but I am definitely. getting by. It was David's birthday on stage tonight
and I got everyone to wish him Happy Birthday in Spanish. Salamanca is a huge University town so, after we finished
playing, the Boom-chp, Boom-chp, Boom-chp music started up. Not my scene,
man. A bunch of idiots acting slutty on their parents' dime. I will drink
a lot and glare at them. David says it's because I'm a bitter old man.
At least I'm a bitter old man in Spain! 03/02/00 Zaragosa The big lesson of today is that riding all day in a van
with the boys is only marginally more exciting in Spain. We stopped in
Madrid to trade in Pino for a new driver, Ivan, who looks like Pete Donnely
from the Figgs. Unfortunately, Dave's cold seems to have worsened. He
doesn't sound so good. I am pretty shagged out, too. People in Spain speak with a built in lisp, so Zaragosa
is a swell place to be. Our show went really well at the venue: the Casa
Del Loco. Dave rose above his illness and really socked it to them. It
was a very large venue and not full, but all the kids shoved themselves
up to the front of the stage and danced. They went mental when I announced
Dave's birthday. After the show, this girl Anna, and her friends Olga
& Laura and her boyfriend helped us carry our gear to the van (they insisted)
and then gave Dave & myself a little tour of Zaragosa. There's a huge
basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary of Pilar which they tell us is a
huge tourist destination. We went and sat at the top of this water fountain
and talked for a while. They are all big Gigolo Aunts fans so we told
them that the Aunts like it when people call them "big pussies". We also
told them that Dave Gibbs is a "Sex Bomb" which is a stupid Tom Jones
song that's popular in Spain right now, and that Steve Hurley has a glass
eye. They promised to repeat these things the next time the Aunts play
in Zaragosa. We had a really nice time in Zaragosa and I even managed
to get up a bit early the next morning and take a look inside the basilica.
Fantastic.
03/03/00 VALENCIA
The
drive to Valencia was really something. There is no highway between Zaragosa
and the East Coast so it was this incredible 2-lane experience through
the countryside. You could really see the landscape changing as we went
past isolated terra cotta houses with 1/2 pipe shingles in varying states
of collapse. The arid earth tones of the North gave way to a deep red
clay and there were less olive trees and, eventually, orange groves. As
we entered Aragon, it was like a whole different place. 
Valencia is a beautiful seaside resort town. We hooked
up with the most affable club owner, Vincent, and he led us to his club,
the Crater. It was a really small little place with no stage, or dressing
room or anything. That's cool, we don't mind meatballing it once in a
while. Back to Monkey, right? I finally found some absinthe in a shop
near the club. I'll have to smuggle it back to America so I can cut my
ear off and mail it to a prostitute. There was an Arabic marketplace near
the venue and Dave and I went and petted the camels. One of the vendors,
who looked quite a bit like Gene Simmons, said "Oh American: fucking fucking."
Um, yes, quite. The show was very intense. There really isn't any bullshitting
the audience when they are 18 inches in front of you. We were billed as
"Power Pop Genuino" which sounds like a phrase I would make up. The Crater
was just packed to the rafters and people were going mental. It was a
very sweaty show and the audience acknowledged Dave's birthday with great
vim, verve and vigor. Dave broke his usual assortment of strings and his
voice was going, but we had tremendous energy. We did "Psychotic Reaction"
as an encore and the people just went apeshit. After that, there was nowhere
to go, and the people kept yelling so we did "Picture Book" by the Kinks
and even gave our new Van song a try (a suggestion to which Jamie replied
"No, No, No, No fucking way, No....One, two, three, four."). Many people
bought us many drinks. Yo soy el baracho.
03/04/00 YECLA (MURCIA)All
through the tour, whenever we told people that we were going to play in
Yecla, they would roll their eyes and say "Oh, you'll have fun there!"
Yecla is a tiny town on the Southeast coast that is a port & trading town.
There must be something in the wine in Yecla, because the people are just
crazy. It's exactly like in Star Wars when they go into that town to sell
Luke's landspeeder and go into that wacky bar. And tonight we are the
house band! Also, it is important to mention that it is Carnival the night
we are in Yecla, so that just takes it up a notch. 
The bar we played in is called the Happy House and it
is run by this madman named Raffa and his whole family. It is a tiny little
place with a postage-stamp sized stage which they expanded for us with
much hammering and pounding. Before we could even soundcheck, Raffa took
me into his confidence and introduced me to this amazing peach whiskey.
Well, I wouldn't want to be rude. As darkness fell, all sorts of strange creatures began
to scurry from doorway to doorway in the narrow cobblestone streets outside
the Happy House. The we heard this amazing music and ran up the alley
in time to see the Carnival procession go by. It seemed like everyone
in Yecla had some sort of strange costume on. There would be a group of
cowboys, then a half dozen robots, then a drunk guitarist-oh wait, that's
Clyde. Raffa took us to a hamburger place for dinner. They make their
hamburgers with ham, for Christsake. Dave and I somehow managed to order
a hamburger with a fried egg and anchovies on it. We went to the band room above the club and I honestly
didn't know if we would be able to play. Eight days of drinking, no sleeping
and riding in a van had really worked us over and we were really dragging.
Dave could barely talk, let alone sing. Jamie, Clyde and I were sitting
there with our heads in our hands, just exhausted. There had been a couple
outside who told us that they drove 100 kilometers to see us after hearing
us on Radio 3. Also, there had been a full page article about us in the
paper that said our music was the sound of 3 cans of Red Bull (an energy
drink they have here which is rumored to contain the testosterone of a
bull). I was really sad, thinking we were going to let everyone down. I don't know exactly what happened, but we were absolute
beasts on stage. Jamie was just phenomenal. The stage was so small that
I could lean on the wall and sing into my vocal mic and the place was
just packed out the door. The people were right in our faces and jumping
up and down and screaming. There was a window to the bar next to my bass
amp and Raffa's sisters kept passing beers to us (and a bottle of scotch
found it's way to Clyde's amp). It was just so hot in there that you could
drink as much as you wanted to and not get drunk. I had had about 6 shots
of peach whiskey before we played (just to level the playing field, you
understand) and I drank 5 or 6 beers on stage and a bunch of Scotch and
I wasn't drunk at all. I just felt completely high on the energy of the
crowd. The entire room sang "Happy Birthday:" to Dave at the top of their
lungs. I couldn't believe it, but Dave's voice held out for the whole
set. We hadn't been using a setlist for most of the tour and this allowed
us to just play according to the vibes of the room. We ended up playing
all the songs from our CD, Brighton Rude Boy", "Down With The Beautiful",
"Apologize", "Mandy", "Psychotic Reaction" and two sets of encores with
"Hobby Horse", "Picture Book" and "The Van Song". It was so hot and wet
in the club that I was literally wringing my shirt out between numbers
and I really thought I might have peed myself at one point, 'cuz my pants
were soaked with sweat and beer and condensation. After the set, the DJ started playing dance music and
all the Carnival people crowded into the already sold out room. Raffa
and his sisters insisted that we should toast many, many things. No exaggeration,
they poured at least 10 shots down my gullet over the next few hours.
The night just would not end and all the feathers and sequins of the costumes
made it quite surreal. I tried to break up the drinking with occasional
doses of water, but in Spain they have a saying that water is only "por
los patos"-for the ducks. I just about crawled out of the Happy House.
As Clyde said before we passed out "I feel like Ron Wood". Viva Yecla! |
