mo (x2)

holla back.

A HARD WEEK'S WORK (for real)

Ok. We played on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday in Belgium, Holland, and Wales. From my experiences with these recent Summer festivals, including the Summercase and Resfest sets in Spain and Brazil, I've learned that you can observe a lot about a certain culture or people just from watching them enjoy themselves. Each festival we've played this Summer has been a new perspective on human beings as a species. That might sound a little over-analytical, but I don't think people watching has ever been more fun for me.

Consider yourself a foreigner for a moment, walking around the streets of New York. Your place of origin doesn't really matter, I'm just talking about "foreign," meaning "not from here." The simple act of putting one foot in front of the other in the "city that never sleeps" more than likely is enough evidence for you to make a few sweeping and general judgements about who New Yorkers are as a people. New Yorkers walk quickly, listen to i-pods, wear somewhat fashionable clothes (sometimes UNfashionable), and seem to function on a pronounced level of solipsism. In other words, New Yorkers in transit are all about the big number 1: the only unity to the city of New York during the work day is that everyone is miserable and everyone is on their own way to something somewhere. Every major city in the US I've had the chance to visit has its stereotypes, all of them different, but the umbrella fact is that whether you're in New York, LA, Kansas City, Seattle, or Kalispell Montana, you probably consider yourself "american."

Now, I'm no expert in geography, but I figure the country of Belgium is probably about as big as Pennsylvania. And all of Europe is only about a quarter the size of the continental United States. But in that area we call "europe", every single country is filled with beings who are completely and utterly different, down to the very core. Belgium was the sight of our first festival date, entitled PUKKELPOP, and was certainly the most mainstream-minded, with the headliners being Fall Out Boy (bleh) and the Editors (eh?). Even Sonic Youth and played (mmhmmm!!!), although not on the same day as our set. My buddies in Devotchka also played the day after us, which is a bummer because they're the cooooolest. You would remember their music from the soundtrack of Little Miss Sunshine, for which they received a grammy nomination for best soundtrack....props.

The actual grounds of the festival reminded me much of the Woodstock paradigm for outdoor music festivals, nestled right inside a tiny little suburban town called Hasselt, all full of bucolic scenery and down-home feeling. With that being said, my conception of a tiny little suburban town has nothing to do with the country of Belgium. Seriously, if I had to free associate the word Belgium, my buzzwords would be "waffles, chocolate, and Brussles". I couldn't name another city in Belgium for the life of me, and why would I? What relevance does Belgium have to me in my American ignorance outside of fatty breakfast-cake and those pepperidge farm cookies? And seriously, do they even have those cookies in Belgium? If you asked me a question about Belgium, I might even say something bogus like, "don't you mean Luxembourg?" Ha. I kid, I kid.

In talking about this past group of shows, I am going to try and boil my recollection and writing of them into sensory terms. For Pukkelpop, my memory of the experience will be forever encapsulated and colored by the sense of smell. For some reason, everywhere on the festival grounds had the pervasive and utterly recognizeable odor of vomit, as if the stages were downwind of a human vomit farm - hilarious when you consider the name of the festival. The quote of the day came from Brian: "COME FOR THE PUKE, STAY FOR THE POP." amazing. We arrived around 3pm, after about an hour drive from Brussels, and promptly took care of our procedural responsibilities, including getting wristbands, signing contracts, and vegging out in our cozy dressing room. Although, having not slept for more than hour or two before having to ship out to the venue, we in the Diamond were all understandably pooped. Brian even went so far as to curl up underneath our table of fruit, hummus, and assorted snackees to catch a few zzzzs. I took this time to survey the action and take in the scene.

The crowd at Pukkelpop was undeniably youthful. Full of hair dye, rebellious piercings, and band t-shirts, they sat on blankets smoking and drinking and having a merry old time, without parents, of course. I had a moment of nostalgia being there too, as I flashed back to my oh-so-cool-at-the-time trips to the K-ROQ weenie roast and acoustic christmas radio festivals in 8th and 9th grade. Shara and James and I also went to check out our stage, which seemed part Cirque De Soleil and part Greek theatre. As we walked in, the band LIARS was doing its very darndest to channel Jim Carrey's african tribal dance moves in Ace Ventura II: When Nature Calls. I kept on waiting for the singer to start talking from his ass-cheeks. He was thin, gumby-ish, uncoordinated, and not necessarily gifted with any musical talent outside of his strut and preen, but he really did capture the audience. LIARS was part noise band, part nerd-garage rock, and part total garbage. They threw out all the conventions of form, harmonic structure, and musicality, and did it in a way that I actually didn't mind. It was certainly loud, too, which is always fun.

After Liars, I went back to our dressing room to change my bass strings. Our artists liasion was a belgian woman named Suzie who was tough, straight to the point, and ended all of her sentences with this weird cadence that made it sound like everything she was saying was a question, even though she was essentially giving us orders of protocol and the do's and don'ts of the the festival. With about 2 more hours to kill before our show, I went to see the Editors from the side of the main stage. I sat next to the security guard, a hulking german guy named Frank, who had his hands full with a completely trashed group of brit-dudes who had played earlier in the day. I never found out what band they played in, but all they did the entire set was hug aggressively and intimately, shout-whispering in each other's ears over the music of their favorite band. I watched very scientifically, taking notes on the extremely well-executed show in front of me. The Editors are a band that has obviously been on top of their game for quite awhile. They played ULTRA tight, performed exuberantly, and basically just blew up the spot. er something. The singer had these weird, spastic moves, and the drummer was basically a muppet behind the skins. I had a good time watching them, even though their music is a little too far down the main stream for me, and all of their songs end the exact same way. But now i'm just being a hater. After the Editors, it was time to get our game faces on. We got dressed, loaded up one of the artist shuttles, and headed over to our stage. Our set was to start at 8:30, which was a bit unfortunate considering that Iggy and the Stooges' set was to start at the same time on the main stage, but to my surprise, the tent was more or less filled to the brim at the zero hour. At points during our set, especially between songs or during really quiet moments, i would hear a distant Iggy riff in the background. Kind of weird, but kind of cool, too. After the set, I crashed HARD. I didn't even have the energy to drink free booze! We left at 11:30 in a shuttle and headed back to the hotel. One down, two to go.

Next up was the Lowlands festival, in neighboring Holland. We met downstairs at 8am, got all of our 12 bags together (2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 symbal case, 1 snare case, 4 suitcases, 1 duffel bag, 2 computer bags) and got on the Brussels subway to get to the Brussels train station to get to the Brussels airport to fly to the Amsterdam so we could catch a train to get to a car to the festival grounds. There's a reason i didn't use a comma in that whole shabangbang. On that last train ride, we acquired one Russian tagalong named Lev, who we were nice enough to bring to the festival with us. Lev turned out to be a total ingrate and made a stink about not being able to stay for the other two days of the festivals......BOO FREGGIN HOOO LEV!! BOO FREGGIN HOOOOO......but what can ya do? My dad always said, "never look a gift horse in the mouth;" obviously Lev had never heard this expression.

Once we actually arrived, we only had 1 hour before our set. Just 1. We quickly got our show clothes on, drank some scotch, had a pep talk, and rocked. We had also added one new song to the set to fill time, and we had put it together during a nice little jam/song-learning session on the train. "Riding horses" was the name, and it has always been one of my favorite of Shara's songs. The set was fantastic, the crowd was chatty but totally enthusiastic, and we were done with our playing responsibilities by about 6pm, which meant I had the chance to shoot over to one of the other stages to see the band BATTLES. This was the band i had badly wanted to see at Puke-and-Pop the day before, but had been too exhausted to make it happen. They are a band that sounds like some sort of alien future-music, with tinges of Miles Davis on coke, Marilyn Manson on weed, and the silent film "Metropolis". That's about as good a description I can muster. If you get a chance to see them, take it. You will (probably) not be disappointed.
Their concept is essentially the interplay between looped, mechanical rhythms, and live drums and instrumentation. I think they rule. Most of the set was instrumental, but that little gem features some computer-altered singing.

I'd have to say that the feeling of cold weather on my skin during the middle of August was the sensory way of remembering this festival. That, and the sensation of panic in my gut as Shara approached Brian and I at dinner with the words "I LOST MY PASSPORT." Shara had gone to see Damien Rice play at around 8:30, because our friend, Joel Shearer, plays guitar in Damien's band. During her sprint back to us after the set, her passport had fallen out of her hoodie pocket somewhere between her position on the side of the stage and the catering tent. So, for the next two hours, we panicked and waited to see what would happen. Would we even be able to get to Wales for the Green Man Festival tomorrow? At that point, we had no idea. Needless to say, this was not a good feeling. At all.

In the end, and at the very last minute, someone turned in the passport to the lowlands information desk. Hallelujah! Now, instead of spending the entire saturday scrambling to find a replacement passport for Shara, the only consequence of the near SNAFU was that we bedded down around 3am, rather than something more like midnight. When we got to the hotel, Brian and I found that we had been assigned a room with a king bed, rather than two twins. I went down to change the booking, but forget to make sure that our wake up call would be switched to this room. As a result, we were awakened 5 minutes past our lobby call time, and had to bypass showering, teeth brushing, and the other usual morning tasks. The lack of a shower on this day would come to haunt us for the weekend.

Again we made our way to the Schipol internation airport to catch a flight to London, Bristol. Again we carried our cumbersome load of instruments, luggage, and carry-ons, and again we had a trying day of travel. This time, it was essentially a car to a plane to a bus to a train to a train to a car. And again, finally, miraculously, we arrived at our destination in Glanusk Park, Wales. If I were to try to describe the scenery of the Green Man Festival, it would be in one word: HIGHLANDER. Sure, that movie/bad tv series was set in Scotland, but you get the picture. As we drove over the stone bridge towards the festival grounds, we saw a sea of tents lined up in a massive field, one of which would serve as our lodging for the next two days. The good thing about this day, in spite of the arduous travel and shlep, was that we were essentially in rest mode. The day was saturday, and our set was on sunday. What this meant is that we got a chance to loaf, and simply watch the festival.

However, there was one thing standing in the way of our complete and total relaxation: MUD. When i say mud, i don't mean it in the sense that I'm used to knowing it. Not like when you're a kid and you make a mud pie, and not like the post-snow melt-off mud I'm used to stepping in accidentally in NYC. I'm talking about 6 inches deep, squishy, stinky, ubiquitous filthy mud. Furthermore, my sensory memory of this festival will forever be characterized by the sound of my feet sinking through the chocolate brown bleh which surrounded me. To make matters worse, i only brought one pair of shoes - my show shoes - which were white adidas shells. As you can imagine, they were soiled in a matter of minutes. Brian, too, fell victim to the mud, soiling his new suede loafers. Go figure.

The people here at the Green Man were an odd bunch. British beyond belief, or even the wildest stereotypes of what a Brit must be. Everyone wore the tall, rubber boots called "wellys" on (named after the British General Wellington who invented them) to shield the feet from mud; everyone was white; everyone had features so markedly similar that it almost looked like a sea of clones bobbing joyously to the music.

The first set I saw was of the band Clinic, who I'd heard on record before, but never seen live. I liked them, but didn't love them. They wore brown head to toe uniforms resembling doctors scrubs, top hats, and SARS masks. Watching them from the side of the stage, I noticed the lead singer's hands shaking furiously as he played the keyboard, a sign which meant only that he was nervous or that he was totally high on blow, which, if you know their music, is entirely unfathomable. Here is a clip of their set from near the food tents above the main stage. The sound is actually pretty good, but you can't quite see the outfits. Oh well.
Brian napped as I walked around in the mud, and Shara and James went off to do some business-related errands.

After a while, I forgot about the mud; I forgot about the fact that I would be sharing a tent with my 3 compatriots, including a single air mattress with Brian; I forgot about the fact that I had been staying in hotels at the other festivals we played, and realized that I would rather be doing nothing else in the world than this, mud or no mud. That night I watched most of Battles' set again (yes, they too played Green Man) and introduced myself beforehand. They were extremely nice, and appreciated the coincidence of having been on the same three Euro festivals as we had for the past days. I left their set a bit early to watch the indefatigable (?) Robert Plant do his thing on the main stage. During his set, I met a dude named Steve from South London. He was completely drunk, rolling doobies, and spitting complete and utter south-london dialect NONSENSE for ten minutes. As I looked up to the stage, I saw a supergroup of celebrity look-alike musicians, including Casey Jones from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie on one guitar, Hank Azaria on lead guitar, Pinder, the trumpet player from Conan Obrien's band on keyboard, the singer from Judas Priest on drums, and finally Adam Goldberg on bass. These guys were great musicians, but I just couldn't get over their likenesses. Also, Casey Jones' actual name was SKIN. I shit you not.

Robert Plant's set was hard to watch. I saw the brilliance with which he sang in Zeppelin, but also the signs of old age on his face. Worst of all I saw that these Brits were a tough audience, heckling him throughout the set with caustic utterances like, "where's JIMMY?" and "you're nothing without JIMMY!!!." I felt for the guy. Here he was, in front of 10,000 or so people, being heckled. What a bummer. Anyways, the ZEP tunes they ran down were great. There was "whole lotta love", "going to California", 4 sticks, and a handful of others, each one stirring the drunken, muddy crowd into a frenzy.

After his set ended, the main flood lights from the stage were turned on to show the remaining festival goers dancing like a bunch of crazed hippies in the slop. And, although Brits by and large are not known for their dancing, they will forever stand in my memory for trying to. What's more is that this festival was FILLED with families. When I was watching Battles' set, I saw more than ten 7 or 8 year olds flopping around to the futuristic music. And because of the contrast in styles between that set and Robert Plant's, it seemed to me that the two stages exemplified both a view of the future, and a glimpse into the past. Pretty deep stuff if you ask me.

We bedded down around 1am, Brian and I sleeping head to foot in our two sleeping bags. I was kept awake by 4 totally obnoxious teenagers, laughing, shouting, joking, and just being hooligans until the wee hours. At one point I mustered all the strength and dickheadedness I could, and shouted, "WE'RE RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.....SHUT UP!!!" but to no avail. Finally, miraculously, I fell asleep.

The next day was show day for us in MBD. We got up, brushed our teeth, and headed over to the "folky dolky" stage (its official name) and posted up. Our set was at 4:30, so I got a chance to see the bands playing before us. The only one worth mentioning was a band called "the laughing windows." They were good, but apparently not good enough for anyone to post a highlight of the set on youtube. Use your imagination.

Our set was good, but not our strongest one of the mini-tour. Obviously, we still had fun and still rocked it.

So, I guess you could say that's all she wrote! We left the next day early to retrace our steps back to London, missing a train and nearly losing our minds on the way. I am now sitting on the couch in the house of Sir Derek Jacobi, where my father is house-sitting while rehearsing for a production of 12th night. I couldn't be happier. If you're not familiar with Derek Jacobi, that's too bad. I got to watch him almost every day in Latin class during my 12th grade year in High School, in the BBC miniseries "I, Claudius." Small world, I guess. Anyways, thanks for reading, and until next time keep MBD in your heart.

MO pics

yes. mo pics from brazil. click on dem.

FLASH FROM THE PAST

here are some cool shots from RESFEST in brazil. check out the SWEEEET karaoke/sushi place action shots. nate

GEEETRRDUUN

Time to go to work, if you can call it that. I've just arrived in Brussels after my two flights, and I'm feeling intense. There's something about sleep deprivation that flicks a switch in mind. Maybe it's also the fact that flying overnight to Europe just feels like one super long day, and I only hit my second wind once I realize how backwards it all is. There's a deja vu aspect to this as well. I've felt like this before.......INTENSE........or maybe just crazy.

I flew out of JFK at 6, and landed in Dublin at about 5:25am. Light had just begun to peak out from behind the green hills, and most of my fellow travelers were rubbing their eyes. I just sort of stared straight ahead, not having the strength to do much else. My connecting flight to Brussels was to leave at about 6:50am, and the gate was to be closed at 6:25 - or at least that's what my boarding pass said. After winding my way through the Dublin airport, following all the signs and signals, I came at a fork in the road. To the right were the A gates, and to the left the B and C gates. I looked up slightly cross-eyed at the departure schedule monitors and saw the word "Brussels" next to the symbol A65. Naturally, I made a right turn.

The path to the A gates was under construction, and every couple of minutes I would see a sign saying "allow 5 minutes" for flights out of the A terminal. I chalked this up to caution, but soon found out the walk took altogether about 8 minutes; I was strolling along at a snail's pace. When I got to gate A65, there was a long line of irish, all of them wearing a similar face of befuddlement and exhaustion. I noticed the planes oustide were RYANAIR; my ticket said AerLingus (there's a crude joke there, but I'll be a cunning linguist and refrain from making it). This is the point where any rational, thinking, rested human being would conclude he was standing in the wrong terminal. But not this human being. Guessing it a mere peculiarity that the name on the plane didn't match the name on my ticket, I patiently shuffled step by step up the que (cue? how the hell do you spell that?) to the gate. "There's NO WAY there could be TWO planes heading to the same place......this has gotta be the one....." The ticket-taker took my paperwork and silly passport and did a little double-take, both at my passport pic and the boarding pass itself. "This is an AerLingus ticket," he said matter-of-factly. "Yes. To Brussels," I replied, as if he didn't already know that. He took a moment to soak in my stupidity before pointing to the letter "C" printed in black ink below the word "terminal." I looked at the clock, which now read 6:17am, about 8 minutes from the cutoff time for my actual flight, located about 2000 yards away in the AerLingus wing of the airport. With no time to waste, I took off like a freak down the terminal, a panicked blur of carry-on baggage and blue pants whizzing past the "allow 5 minutes" signs.

I don't think I've ever been so freaked out, exhausted, and pissed-off in my life. As I got to gate C44, I was panting, dripping sweat, about to pass out as I managed to blurt out, "ISITCLOSEDYET?" (that's not dutch....). The man looked up calmly at me and said, "we'll be boarding in about ten minutes." And MAN did i feel like a horse's patoot. Now i was the really sweaty, slightly psychotic looking guy waiting online to board the plane. There's something terrible about being the only sweaty person amongst a group of non-sweaty people. I have experience in this, too. Often i play tennis in manhattan and forget my change of clothes in my car, parked next to the L train back in brooklyn. What this means is that I have to ride the subway COMPLETELY drenched in sweat, ashamed, stinky, and fielding more than a few what-the-hell-did-that-guy-just-do stares.

Anyways, once I was on the plane, the only eventful thing that happened was the fat irish man sitting next to me waking himself up once every ten minutes with a massive snoor/snort. So, having avoided a sure SNAFU, I have arrived safely in Brussels. We will be leaving in two hours to go to the festival venue at Pukkelpop. I can't wait. More to come later.