Deutschlande.. into Nederlands...Groningen & Den Haag

Klaus Schulze
Trancefer (1981)

Doing a lot of 'old school electronic" here in Deutschland.Often when I'm here I listen to a ton of Beethoven, Bach, Haydn (ok he's Austrian but he rules) or some of the German electro-school like Eberhard Schoener, Ulrich Schnauss, CAN, Amon Duul, you name it.

Today the rainy quiet day was perfect for this brooding Schulze LP.... consisting of just 2 long tracks...it slowly morphs thru still interesting synth textures...driven by a live sounding drum pulse. Schulze was in Ash Ra Temple and he's originally the DRUMMER for Tangerine Dream, so his sense of rhythm, performed or programmed, is usually pretty interesting...this album however has the great Michael Shrieve on there (yes you know him from the Infamous Santana/Woodstock clip...and LOTUS/live in japan. He's still a monster today --check out the 90s stuff he did with Bill Frisell and Shawn Lane/Jonas Hellborg. Utterly Fantastic.)

Ahh..a truck stop. I'm serious, if you like Good Food- the truck stops in Germany are stunning... I have actually sat at a place in bavaria with ... a vegetarian menu section. People always, ALWAYS ask me how the hell I stay vegetarian in Germany -- it's a myth folks ...this is perhaps one the best, easiest places to be vegan/veg. Really. They get it, that's all. And no - Hitler wasn't a vegetarian. Here's just one little set of choices in a place that wasn't EVEN that great: All kinds of great fresh stuff, some of it organic even. But -our driver - Peter - who is fantastic --still went right into Burger King, saying about the other stuff "Ahhh, they only have crap here"!! Sigh.. Lots of fresh soups, stuff for meat-eaters, dieters, vegans, whoever. Sad to see our American Poison is loved everywhere. They may rail on our politics, but they love our grease. So-- take with a grain of salt when people tell you about 'the shitty food' in other countries. That's for my NEXT project - I am doing a project called "Tour Healthy" where i share some ideas that have WORKED in the field--- how to stay healthy, eat a great vegan, even raw diet, while on the road in ANY country. I have done this in Germany, Russia, Chile, Venezuela, Hungary, Bulgaria, Jamaica, England, Israel.....you name it.


So We're on a long series of highways....
the fall colors are amazing (who needs to go to New England?) and my soundtrack implies forward motion nicely, so it's all pretty trippy without any drugs...the hypnotic, meditative opiate of synth tones will always work for me. They're warm and organic, I never understand why people call this music "cold" or "inhuman".

We drive into Holland and you start seeing LOTS of windmills...one of the many cool things abt this country is --of course you get to see like 500 years of windmill technology!!! What the fuck are we waiting for!!??

Rollins Band
TURNED ON (Live 1989)

Well I'm a collosal Rollins Band fan...just a Rollins fan in general, I love what the guy has to say I love the Black Flag years, along with Bad Brains, Fugazi, that is some required punk rock/hardcore listening. I have every one of his albums, have seen every tour since "The End Of Silence"....the 80s band wth Chris Haskett, Sim Cain, Andrew Weiss, the 90s band with Melvin Gibbs replacing Weiss, and the completely new 2000s band with Mother Superior as his band, until the recent reunion to tour with X.

But his renaissance one man industry deal is just awesome. I don't live my life by it - but I'm intrigued by the possibilities offered by astrology, and as a fellow aquarius (2.09.65) to his (2.13.61) I find myself agreeing a lot with his outlook on the world - an innate fairness of judgement, a propensity to rip on all sides when stupidity is seen, general bonhomie until we are fucked with, then we will crush you. One difference is -- he could actually DO IT...!! I also learned a lot about touring reading his books, great series of travelogue, self -released stuff all available thru his website. His book Get In The Van documents brilliantly the Black Flag years, and YOU ARE THERE with his escribe verite style...check it out!!

But one thread that goes thru many of his "road diaries" (to be certain --blogs before there were blogs) is that -- they toured Europe a lot , and ....played Holland (and Belgium) all the time!!! The back of Rollins Band albums were the first places I read names like ....Nijmegen...Maastricht... Groningen and Eindhoven where we're going today. And when we hit Eindhoven one of our special guests in the audience will be the mighty Theo Van Rock, always listed as the fifth member of Rollins band...and without whose amazing engineering skills the band's might ..simply would not have been captured the way it was...WHICH WAS MASSIVE.

Chris Haskett is just stupidly unsung.....his simple PRS into Mesa Boogie approach with a couple simple pedals had a major head-crushing effect on me. One of the reasons I have a PRS today. Huge, post-sabbath riffs. Simple , direct and devastating. But he really got TEXTURE..and sometimes wasn't doing much AT ALL... just adding some atmospherics with a harmonic ..or one sustained note. Great. Tension and Release. This band had and still has -- such amazing power. But the bottom end was what it was all about - Andrew Weiss, towering under his mop of unruly hair, huge bare feet braving ANY and all surfaces. the dude was unreal onstage, storming around with this HUGE bass sound.

Blues based, soaked-in sabbath and hardcore punkrock, with a decidely funky edge and a fantastic drummer in Sim Cain. Out front you have this crazy, stripped-to-his-bike shorts fireplug of muscles, screaming his hoarse message of self improvement and wry social-observation. Calling people on their shit. Fortunately this very live band recorded a TON of their stuff and Rollins pumped out release after release in the late 80s...any fan of hard rock, metal and punk rock should check out the early stuff before they kinda blew up with the hit "Liar". And those albums with Melvin Gibbs kick ass too. DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT !

What's great about being alive today is you can just GO WATCH IT. We can all catch up on the shit we missed. Rollins Band at Youtube

Bilbao Espana, fly to Barcelona ES

TOUR THE PLANET...
MONDAY OCT 20 -
Bilbao Airport, Espana to Barcelona Airport
SPANISH BOMBS - The Clash
London Calling (1979 UK, 1980 US) -or- The Clash Live at Shea Stadium (Oct 2008)


"Spanish songs in Andalusia...."

"..Costa Brava..flying in on a DC-10 tonight.....freedom fighters died up on the hill"

"....Spanish bombs.... yo quiero infinito....yo te quiero, Oh ma corazon....!"

Wow. a history lesson....a trip thru the glory , fascism, civil war and fiery history of this place.....

What a great song!!

Punhcy riff, layer acoustics (!) and electrics that come in in layers, Strummer and Mick Jones great combo-vocals... I still loive Mick's voice -- he has a great new band called Carbon/Silicon with Tony James of Generation X.

Tthis is simply one of the greatest albums of the 80s, or really any time. so fucking timeless. I can't possibly calculate how much I've heard this LP....I've owned it on cassette..LP...CD...double-CD reissue.....or how colossal the Clash are to my personal mythology. Joe Strummer...man I miss that guy, Never saw the band, but caught Joe once with the Mescaleros, which was glorious.

A lot of people don't know i'm basically a DIY punk at heart -- paying attention politically and LIVING THE CHANGE not just placing your faith in the "next savior" , self -awareness and the whole animal rights influence from the straight-edge side...using technology to better things but fighting commercialism and materialism. The politics.... intense and direct and showed me a way to write angry songs that said something general and didactic....but kept it fun and not slogan-like. And they taught me early on that both sides usually need some critiquing, but fascism was the worst of all.

In 1980 I turned 15 on Feb 9. I got on the train and went down 3 stops from Hazlet NJ to Red Bank, and got "London Calling" with my allowance or whatever I had. I had heard a little of the Clash's debut album, and had taped their Sep 1979 radio concert, I was sold. It's all I wanted, and I wore that little cassette out, I still remember how exotic it was, this new music we had been hearing for a month or so on the radio, this band from England with so much intense, pure punk energy and slashing guitars had...blossomed into a kaleidoscopic blast of countless styles and textures..wow! acoustic guitars...horns... more deep reggae.....funk...rockabilly..and some bona fide runaway hits like "Train In Vain (Stand By me)" or "Lost in the Supermarket". still such an amazing album. Some stuff on there sounds like..really no one else. "Rudie Can;t Fail" and "Hateful"...wow.

I hate the term "ahead of it's time" but I guess it fits here. I also firmly believe nothing is really 'dated'. It may remind one of a time, or be identifiable by the sonics, but how can art be dated? Is Beethoven or Haydn "dated". You NEVER hear anyone say that. When the Beatles used a harpsichord on a track, was that "dated" since the instrument was 200+ years old?? Music fans can really be morons. Anyway -- if you don't know LONDON CALLING go run now and hear it. the brand new (oct 2008) release of the Shea Stadium show is blowing me away every couple days as well -- this was from the tour they did with the Who (my fave band) and David Johansen.


Today's setup time was very intense and difficult for me, maybe i'll revisit that later. Terrible personal stuff, and several days later I am writing a lot, still in therapy and making sense of the world. Somehow I held it together with the help of a very great, compassionate crew and the band. We were in a nice small club (300 cap), the kind Adrian prefers by a long shot.

(PIC: streets of Barcelona, w/typical quiet clean commuter tram. Evil Socialists!!!)

Nice tight setup again -- MARSHALLS, yeah! We had originally ordered fender twins for this tour, with the OPTION for Marshalls, but when Adrian used some Marshalls the 2nd date he fell in love with how they made his Johnson Millenium sound.


ADRIAN BELEW POWER TRIO:
the gig tonight was just great -- I think the band would rank it the best so far--- maybe tied with Vevey or something. I agree - very ROCK n ROLL energy onstage. Always for all of us performers -- a close, packed club is THE BEST , seeing the crazy increasingly buzzed crowd just a few feet from you is unbeatable, really! This place is called FORUM BIKINI, medium stage, very deep and again the band up front, tight. Didn't need my espanol as much tonight, I just kept my head low and got in there and did the job. Very much flying on auto-pilot this night.

Very psyched, energetic crowd, lotsa Crim fans again right up front singing all those words. The band was visibly pumped -= Adrian LOVES this kinda packed crazy vibe out in the audience....as I said The Crimson material went over extra well here in Espana.

The gear has been working pretty well despite a snafu or two....the Boomerang looper has been working fine --in Russia it was intermittent, driving us crazy. I thought it was a power-supply issue, but now it turns out it may have been a faulty XLR direct out on the amp. Fortunately the Johnsons rule and there are TWO channals of XLR out, so I just switched it and we've been golden. (PIC: Adrian Belew Power Trio rocking the nearly 300 happy Spaniards in Barcelona)


We stayed in the city of course, and it was great wheeling thru the clean, busy streets with our promoter for both Espana gigs, runner and general great new friend and music freak - -Sergio Merino. More cool modern architecture..even saw a classic bullring, being refurbished..into a shopping mall. wow. good for the bulls. Sergio explained to us that the Spanish anti-cruelty movement is very strong, and has really pushed back on this brutal, bloody sport. I didn't realize the bull was gutted and chopped up immediately , and sold at VERY high prices to restaurants nearby, so-- people as they poured out of the stadium, would go to their fave place, get some drinks and very soon eat some of the actual bull they just watch get tortured, gored and finally killed. I am glad humans have been headed steadily away from this kind of senseless behavior for centuries now, even tho' some people never will, and so it is. No reason to stress about that. I'm here to help those who want to move forward, and eat a compassionate diet.