I left my heart in barcelona AKA best weekend ever

I think this may have been the best weekend of my life. I'm sure there were some choice ones way back in my childhood, back in the days of GI JOE'S and hamburgers and body glove t-shirts, but this one is certainly unbeatable when I look at my short life as a near-grown up. To arrive on a friday morning and leave on a sunday morning may seem a little exhausting to most normal human beings, especially with about 3 hours of sleep a night. Notwithstanding sleep, I think I'm also out of adrenaline for about the next four days. I'm pretty sure I used it all up.

After about three hours of sleep after our arrival in Madrid, we headed to the venue, led by our delightful chaperon Cati. Cati works for "touchme" records in Barcelona, which in turn works with our label, Asthmatic Kitty. From the moment Cati came to our room to introduce herself, she exuded a huggable if not down-right adorable energy from every inch of her tiny Spanish frame. I will forever remember her in this sort of mid 60's style goldish yellowish vintage dress, wearing a pair of little green sailor shoes. And don't even get me started on the black horn-rimmed glasses she rocked! Cati kind of reminded me of a hip and european version of the kinda nerdy girl from scooby doo - which is great considering i've been told I look like Shaggy (zoinks).

We arrived at the Summercase festival grounds at about 5:45, taking a stroll around the grounds to survey the scene. The place was amazing. I guess I'd compare it to a smaller version of the Coachella festival, but without the palm trees and trucker hats (so 2004!). My eyes bulged out of my head when I stood in front of the main stage, picturing acts like DJ shadow, Air, and the Chemical Brothers doing their thing into the wee hours of the morning. Even more interesting was the fact that we, too, would have our set on the friendly confines of stage N. "Outstanding," i remember muttering to myself.

Before our line check, Brian and I hung with our carpool buddies for the next two days, Dragonette. They were nice, Canadian, and put on a great show. We also got to share bus space with my new favorite band, "the Gossip". I would see their set in Barcelona the next evening, and it was actually the biggest surprise of the weekend for me. They have a singer who exudes a love of music and a dynamite sense of performance that is at no point one bit contrived or faked. She wore a vinyl mini dress which rode its way frequently up into a certain danger area, and sang like straight up Tina Turner on a speed binge, with great pitch and force. Also worthy of mention is that she is a big girl, but is nimble and quick, constantly moving and gyrating with frenetic sexy agility. She's like a big panther of soul. Check it out and tell me you don't see a little panther in her: THEY'RE FUCKING AWESOME AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND LOVERS ABOUT THEM.

Our set started at 8:40 sharp, after a set by some spanish dude named Mickey Puig. It wasn't really my thing because I don't speak any spanish, but it was fun to watch regardless of the language barrier. They did have a female bassist, after all, and that's always cool. We opened up with golden star, which felt great, and launched right into the song Robin's Jar. Here's a little sample of our opener: Smack dab in the middle of robin's jar, Brian's right crash cymbal fell to the floor, severing the small main line of power connecting the generator beneath the stage to everything electrical above. Suddenly, there was no bass, no mics, and only Brian left playing his ass off to a somewhat confused crowd of about 600 people. Naturally, Shara and I did the only thing one can in a situation like that: have a dance-off. Just ask Ashlee Simpson! When in doubt, dance it out. That's what i say. And although the moment was still semi-catastrophic, we managed to have a lot of fun in spite. In fact, I wouldn't have changed a thing about it, because we dealt with it in a way that was honest and unapologetic. Brian kept a dope little hip hop/funk beat going for about 3 minutes after the power outage, and we just had a little fun, breaking out a variety of different crunk, DEVO-style, and random crowd pointing moves. I have to hand it to the man; BDUB really knows how to get the bootys moving. He would later comment, "that's what i do man! I make those bootys move! I get those bootys movin!" Plus, I'm pretty sure our dancing was waaaay cooler than Ashlee's awkward little half-irish jig of shame. After about an 8 minute delay, we resumed our show. The thing about this little disaster is that the chances of the cymbal falling perfectly on that one cable, as opposed to any other of the many cables onstage, are next to nothing. You couldn't duplicate this if you tried 100 times. By the end of our set, we had won over the crowd, and had a complete blast doing it.

After a little post-show debriefing/high-five session, Shara and Brian and I watched DJ shadow's set on the main stage. I saw DJ shadow about 3 years ago at Roseland ballroom and was blown away by the visual presentation he had behind him. Seeing him again, the images were all different than the ones I had seen earlier. Every sequence was intense, many were extremely dark, and there were a few segments which dipped into political messages and calls to rise up. Here are some of my highlights from his set: . The spanish audience for shadow was amazing, and it was easy to feel the energy pulsing through the throng. I snuck backstage for a second and watched it from the other side; it was a beast of a crowd, hulking and bobbing together as if in some choreographed dance of random movement. (google merce cunningham dance company if you're curious on that concept).

Next up was another new favorite of mine, the band AIR. They were great; all about taste, control, and being totally french. It's funny to be able to discern such a specific national or cultural vibe from a band who sings in english much of the time, but something about AIR just screams FRENCH. Earl Harvin, the drummer of Air as well as on our album "bring me the workhorse", blew me away with his level of technique, feel, and style on the drums. He has also known Shara for many years, so we got the pleasure of his company. He's an awesome guy.

I have forgotten to mention the fact that booze was free and flowing during these nights, so after a point my memory fails a bit. This brings me to one of my little realizations during the course of the festival: there is no real memory anymore! As i think back to the haze of the weekend full of joy and love and mutual respect among fellow musicians, I need only go to youtube to get a reminder of just what it was i did this weekend. We don't remember things in the same way as we used to these days. I mean think about how many of your friends' numbers you know by heart these days. How many? 10? 5? 2? I'm a bit of a savant in this department, and if you know me at all well, I probably know your number by heart. I guess that's just sort of the way of this age, though, and i think it has some funny implications about the direction of our development. Will our memory of the past give way to a broadband form of sensory recollection? Will we lose the muscle of our memory? Anyways, I'm rambling....I guess it's a pretty dang cool thing too. Kinda like being there, but less loud, and there's no free booze.

My other revelation was that American audiences, by and large, don't really stack up to the energy and responses that the euros tend to give. That's not true all around, but maybe it's just worse where I live, where everyone and their mother is in a band. Saying "i'm in a band" in Williamsburg is like saying "I like wearing" pants; the over-saturation of dudes-in-bands makes for sort of a weird non-chalance at shows. Feel free to disagree with me on that one, and of course there are exceptions.

In the end, Madrid was great, but Barcelona was the tops. After the hour long flight, we gathered at the bus like 11 year olds at summer camp. This time we were met by our attache for the evening, Betty, a slender, beautiful blonde spaniard with the most gorgeous accent I've ever heard. I was immediately smitten, of course. We all dropped our stuff off at the hotel, which was located right next to the beach, and left one band by one for the festival grounds. The first time I visited Barcelona with my friends Oliver and Michael, we went with our good friend Sam to see the Primavera sound festival at this very same venue in 2005. We saw Tortoise, Iggy Pop, and a handful of other incredible bands, and I can remember thinking to myself, "ONE DAY. ONE DAY I HOPE TO PLAY THIS CRAZY PLACE." Needless to say, once we arrived I couldn't sit still or contain my overflowing enthusiasm. We ate some food with Betty and Cati, and then headed to our stage. This time, all of our equipment worked flawlessly, thank goodness. We even had the pleasure of a fender rhodes this time, which was something missing from the Madrid set. Again, we threw down the gauntlet, and again survived without major injury (although shara did tweak her knee a tiny bit.

My friend Kaylie, who is working in Barcelona as Scarlett Johansson's assistant came along for a bit of the night, adding a welcomed familiarity to the night. I watched music from Air, Dragonette, The Gossip, Jarvis Cocker, The Chemical Brothers, and one more band whose name I can't remember at this juncture. I had no worries in the whole world on Saturday night. Not one. It's pretty rare that you can say that for an entire day, maybe even an entire 4 days, there was not one single worry in your head.

Finally, as the sun came up over the Barcelona sound, Earl Harvin, Shara, Brian and I got back in a shuttle and headed to the hotel. Right before I got in the van, I had a chance to say goodbye to my flirt partner for the evening, Betty (elizabeth). We exchanged a very awkward customary two cheek kiss goodbye, leaving me blushing like a schoolgirl. I believe my words upon entering the van were, "Well that was fucking awkward." I think that got a laugh.

So I guess that was my weekend. It was near-perfect. The only thing that would have improved it would have been a sweet never-see-you-again make out session, but it wasn't in the cards.

It's now 1:18am on my couch back in Brooklyn, and I'm still waiting for my bass to arrive. US Airways took the liberty of losing it somewhere in between my re-checking it at the Philly Airport and the baggage claim at Laguardia, those fuckers. Our next stops will take us to Holland, Belgium, and Wales, then we're on to Ireland, and finally Seattle. Until then, keep MBD in your heart, er something.

HOLA from Madrid

So, after a long blog hiatus, I'm back on the map. This time, I am writing from a computer station in our hotel in beautiful, sunny Madrid, after a 7 hour plane ride. I guess it's technically about 4am eastern time, and I still haven't slept a wink. I'm way too jazzed to sleep right now.

I've been to Spain on two occassions before, once in the southern peninsula and countryside, and once in Barcelona to visit my good friend Don Samuel Shpall. This place fascinates me, and has since the moment I first set foot on the soil. The faces of the spaniards are shaped like none i've ever seen, and the buildings and layouts of the cities are beautiful, efficient, and vibrant. As we flew over the countryside, I noticed that the layout of the Spanish countryside is completely different than that of the States. When you look down from the airplane window, you see lots of tiny little clustered towns, none bigger than what looks to be about a square mile, and all of them are built in a circular fashion.

Since my last post, a lot has happened with My Brightest Diamond and with my own life. I got kind of burned out on writing the day to day back in April, probably because i feel a little bit odd blathering on about my exports and expecting anyone to care. Regardless, the journal-keeping side of this whole blog thing still holds its weight in my head. I think the last post I made was in Kentucky, as I described our faithful crew on the "twilight in the fearful forest tour." I came to love those guys/girls like brethren, and have been able to link up with a couple of them since to talk shop. Marcel and Rich are back working with the Decemberists for their summer exploits, while Justin and Rick are touring with the Faint and the Cure. Stephen did a stint with the band Slint in Europe, and is now hanging loose in the apple.

Obviously, there have been a number of events i've neglected to address during my hiatus from the blogosphere. For one, Shara dislocated her knee onstage in Las Vegas during the song "magic rabbit" in one of the most shamelessly rocking moments i've had the pleasure of witnessing in my life. We both jumped and landed at the same time, but when i looked back Shara was sprawled out on the floor, still strumming, but looking up at me with confused eyes full of pain. I mouthed to her, "you ok?", and she mouthed back and shook her head, "no...!" Like a true rockstar trooper, Shara hobbled to her feet, leaned into the mic, and asked for a chair and an icepack. We finished the set, and Shara was immediately rushed to the hospital afterwards. The rest of the shows were in chair-mode, but you should check out shara's freakysweet sit-down moves. Really. It's on youtube from the bellingham show.

Another neglected memory was that of the ride between Kansas City and Denver. Brian and I opted to hop on the crew bus for the ride, which took about 12 hours, in order to give Shara and James some alone time on Shara's bday (and skip out on the driving duties). On that bus ride, I witnessed just what it means to drink and be merry. The "pirate ship," as it was so aptly named, seemed to sway with the yo-ho yo-ho of bottles being sipped and passed and sipped and passed. At around 2am we swashbucklers dropped anchor to get some food, although I stayed in the bus and passed myself out nice and cozy in the back lounge. I'm very glad my mates decided against drawing on my face. The one casualty of the debauchery that night was our merch girl, Katie, who ended up face down in a pool of vomitous muck. Oops. I was glad to be out of the office for that one.

Fast forward to our last two shows, in Seattle and Bellingham Washington. Seattle was a blast. It was certainly the greatest venue of the tour, and we were even joined onstage during "No Quarter" by most of the crew, all of them waving the massive pirate flag we bought for them in Vegas and doing their best to plunder the stage. In Bellingham, the feeling was something like that last day of summer camp, knowing that you've grown so close to a group of people and not knowing the next time you will see them again. We traded hugs, emails, myspaces, and said goodbye after a great wrap-up meal at the tallest restaurant in Bellingham. It was on top of a hotel.

After tour, we in MBD had about ten days off before shooting down to Sao Paolo, Brazil, for the Resfest. It was without a doubt the most positive experiences I've had playing music thus far. Olivia and Carlos, two of the main heads of the festival, treated us like royalty, and made sure that everything was perfect. It was my first time playing a festival, and I can't wait to do it again.

That about brings us up to speed. My Brightest Diamond will be doing our thing in about 8 hours at the Summercase festival here in Madrid. Tomorrow, we fly to Barcelona to do our second and final set, and we will be heading back on sunday. Apologies if this post seems a bit manic, but I needed to capitolize on this sleep-deprived and halfway inspired moment of inspiration. More news to come.