Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Bom dia! É com prazer que anuncio a todos o lançamento dum projecto feito a 4 mãos com o meu amigo António Castro, reconhecido social media manager e talentoso comunicador.
ZOOMZINE é um projecto colaborativo que estará atento à fotografia, design, tendências web e tecnologia e que contará com entrevistas exclusivas com profissionais destas áreas. Na edição de estreia, falamos com um nome sonante do fotojornalismo português, a conhecer às 20H00, altura em que o site verá finalmente a luz do dia. Até lá, subscrevam o feed, juntem-se à nossa página no facebook e aguardem. Já falta pouco… :)
The Miserable Rich European Tour Winter 2010
Day one - Walhallava Time
Tuesday morning, 7.30 alarm. And so begins another lurch from triumph to disaster and back again.
We’re a bit concerned this time. Not only have we had a rehearsal and a good night’s sleep before the tour starts, but the flight is at the very reasonable hour of one pm, albeit from bloody Stansted with bloody Ryan Air.
This is not the reassuring chaos to which we have become so very accustomed in The Miserable Rich. Luckily, Transport London take things into their own hands.
Our train to Tottenham Hale stops unannounced at Seven Sisters, where we are shuffled to another platform for the train one stop further North. Once at Tottenham Hale, and having climbed the mountainous steps to the ticket barrier, we are informed our Stansted train has been redirected back to Seven Sisters. We turn round and pretend we are not worried about missing the flight by talking about anything else.
We make it back down to the platform and to Seven Sisters, mount another set of mammoth stairs in time to find a rather put upon London Underground employee explaining to a growing number of increasingly fraught travellers that the Stansted train has now been re-redirected to Tottenham Hale.
Allowing for the fact that the poor ticket inspector has only just heard the news – and, after all, aren’t the ticket inspectors in London some of the most friendly, polite and reasonable people on the planet? – we keep our expletives to ourselves.
Down again to the platform. It’s 11am, and the train leaves at 11.07. The next one will be too late. If we miss the train, we miss the flight. If we miss the flight, we’ll have to buy another on my ever-expanding credit card. And we’ll miss the first gig and the fee that goes with it. Deep sighs and silence all round.
At Tottenham Hale, the escalator is now packed, so we have to run up the stairs. We make it on to the platform at 11.08. There’s no-one around to give information and the boards don’t register any trains to Stansted……
The train is delayed. Disaster averted. We know that the Londoners, Ricky and Mike, are already at the airport - ‘The badgers are in the burrow’ reads their text - and we let them know we’re on our way and going to make it - ‘The segways are on the travelator’. We don’t have time for our traditional pre-flight pint, but the rest of the journey goes relatively smoothly, and we even manage not to get snagged by the Ryan Air’s one-piece-of-hand-luggage-only fascists.
On the plane, a doctor is called. Rhys and Ricky think this might be because we haven’t had anything to drink yet and responsibly shell out a fiver each for mini cans of Carlsberg. Turns out it’s just someone having a fit in row 26, but you can’t be too careful……
We meet Carsten at Frankfurt Hahn which, being a Ryan Air airport, is nowhere near Frankfurt. On this occasion that works in our favour as it’s closer to Wiesbaden, where we play tonight. We jump into the familiar maroon Hazelwood VW tour wagon and catch up with Carsten on the hour’s drive to the venue.
And what a splendid first venue. Spiegelsaal Walhalla (Valhalla Playhouse) is one of these amazing places you chance upon from time to time. It’s an old cinema, with curved stairway leading up to a ballroom upstairs. Vaulted ceiling, giant chandelier, peeling paintwork and faded grandeur aplenty. We do a quick soundcheck, giving Rhys the opportunity to try out the new Bigfoot stomp pedal to his delight. He usually just uses a bit of plywood with a taped-on pick-up and some cut-up bunches of flyers for feet. Going up in the world.
After dinner from the noodle bar next door, we pile back in to start our in-depth analysis of local beers and listen to the support band soundcheck. They’re really good, with a very sixties feel and some great harmony singing. They’re also a very good-looking bunch, made up of two couples – Bene and Eva, and Eva and Sacha, giving them the name B.E.E.S.
At showtime, there’s a good crowd, despite all the economic doom-and-glooming, and the B.E.E.S deservedly go down a storm. We congratulate them on their performance and get ready, a little nervous that the crowd have actually come to see the locally-based support. These pre-match jitters turn out to be ill-founded, as there’s a huge cheer from the audience when we move out of the intro and into the opening riff of Early Mourning.
Much more than the venue, a crowd can make or break a concert – and this bunch really make us feel loved and at home. There’s a few familiar faces from Hazelwood, our German label, and everyone else seems to be on our side. There’s even someone who cannot contain a little orgasmic groan at the end of five or six of the songs.
The banter flows, the performance flies by, and an hour and twenty minutes later we finish the show playing in the audience to make the most of the acoustics. Lots of hearty backslapping and warm handshakes follow and we’re back in the swing of things. Carsten has to turn the backstage lights off to get us to leave. There’s a feeling that everything is all right and nothing changes as an hour later we’re back at Hazelwood HQ in Rödelheim for more beer and a game of weetabix before hitting the mattresses in the live room.
Before we played, Carsten and I had been discussing how sometimes it’s best if the worst stuff happens at the beginning of the tour, so you can get it over with and end on a high.
Tonight we had a great start. Just hope the rest of the tour matches it.
Day Two - Wetzlarger than life.
I wake up in the studio and the band gather around my mattress to rehearse one of the new songs. There is a beer next to my bed. Still wrapped up in my duvet, I think aloud that this might just be the best rehearsal I’ve ever had.
Today we’re heading back to Wetzlar. We played there a couple of years ago and really enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of the promoter, Siegmar. He’s even come to see us a couple of times in other cities since, so we feel we’ll be in the hands of a friend and a fan tonight.
It’s only an hour from Frankfurt, so no long journeys today. We get up slowly, make breakfast and eat with German label boss Wolfgang. He tells us he’s been looking forward to us English cooking bratwurst for breakfast while we’re here. He also tells us this is very irritating. We’re not sure if this is a lost in translation moment, so we point out that our breakfast time is other people’s lunch, and break into a beer or two.
Mid-afternoon we hop in the van and Will drives us to Wetzlar. He’s suddenly feeling really sleepy despite dodging the alcohol, but manages to get us there in one piece. I listen to a Libravox recording of one of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems. This is made unintentionally hilarious by the volunteer reader, who cannot pronounce his ‘r’s. Surely he could have chosen a more suitable piece than ‘The Raven’?
We hop out at Wetzlar to a warm welcome from Siegmar, a big friendly giant of a man, replete with beard and ponytail both down to his waist. His forefathers were all barbers, and he has chosen a tonsorial form of rebellion and stuck with it.
As is his way, Siegmar opens a bottle of sparkling wine for us to share with the B.E.E.S, who will be playing with us again tonight. We then move on to disagreeing about the qualities of the local beer – metallic with a hint of apricot? – while the B.E.E.S set about getting exceedingly stoned with soundman Chris.
Meanwhile, Will is looking pretty green around the gills. He’s not been feeling well since we got in the van, and even a glug of water now makes him throw up. Siegmar takes him back to his for a lie down in a quiet room. We nervously make plans on what to do if he’s too ill to play.
Fortunately, he gets a bit better and returns ten minutes before stage time, just about able to play. We decide not to play anything too challenging. He makes it through bravely, and it’s another fun show, with a good-sized responsive crowd.
We lig a bit after the show, with the audience and a very stoned bunch of B.E.E.S. I think I’m being really funny telling one friendly bespectacled man in the second row that the rest of the band keep me in a state of abject fear, ordering me to do their bidding and undermining me at every opportunity. I keep pointing to Will and Mike, sitting quietly chatting away on the other side of the room. ‘Look at them, LOOOOK at them, so aggressive, that’s what I have to put up with every day!’ I shout at the poor man. He seems a bit bemused and keeps changing the subject.
It’s only when he leaves that I notice the white stick and the helper leading him through the dark interior of the club. That’ll be why he wasn’t looking then.
We decamp to Siegmar’s rambling characterful house for another terrific homemade meal. Will is sufficiently recovered to eat, though will sadly be missing out on Siegmar’s home-brewed cider.
Another good night. I could get used to this.
Day Three - Waddle home to Rödelheim
Mike and I awake in the fabulous house of Sabine, a local lady who, having a big house and a husband and daughter in other cities, likes to fill it with occasional peripatetic musicians. We enjoy a cup of tea with her, look over some of her collection of artworks and then repair to Siegmar’s for a great spread to start the day.
Siegmar and Sabine then take us for a brief walk through Wetzlar giving soundman Chris time to snooze further. Seems he finished a bottle of pastis to himself last night in a B.E.E.S-inspired marijuana fug.
Wetzlar is a lovely old town. One side of the river, where Siegmar lives, is filled with picturesque houses dating as far back as the 1300s, whilst the other, dominated by the Leica factory, industrialised with several optical manufacturers and a steelworks. Each optical company has built an illusion within the city by way of thanks to the good townsfolk.
We saunter through the cobbled streets, peering into antique shops to bash our heads on sundry low-hanging ornaments, trying on helmets and laughing at ourselves hamming it up on the optical illusions. One favourite, well remembered from our last visit, has Rhys in stitches at what appears to be a teeny tiny Will jumping up and down on a normal sized chairs. Simple pleasures.
Somewhere around the cathedral, the unfinished half Romanesque, half Gothic centrepiece to the town, we manage to lose Ricky, so it’s back to Siegmar’s to find him and pick up the ‘freshly’ risen Chris. We bid Siegmar and Wetzlar a very fond farewell and hop into the van.
Back at Hazelwood HQ, we learn from Carsten that he’s been ill too. He and Will had the red curry on the first night. This must be the origin of the maxim ‘If you’re ever in Wiesbaden, going to Walhalla, don’t have red curry or you’ll holler’.
We do a couple of hours’ work on a new tune called ‘Laid Up in Lavender’, then nip over to Aldi’s for supplies. We get slowly sozzled on cheap red wine as we wait for the beef and venison stew to cook. By the time fellow itinerant Brits Red Drapes unexpectedly appear, we are giggling wildly at old Shooting Stars and new Alan Partridge on YouTube.
The Brits are sharing our sleeping quarters tonight. They look a bit tired and bewildered from their travel, but seem friendly enough. Adam Kesselhaut, an American singer-songwriter recording at Hazelwood, drunkenly tries to incite some inter-band hi-jinks by suggesting a knife fight.
Thankfully Red Drapes tolerate our noisy chortling and inane humour and the knife fight never materialises. We get our retaliation in first by keeping them awake snoring all night.
