Giving to You (I'll Let You Be in My Blog If I Can Be in Yours)
I realize there is a lengthy hiatus again from my last epistolary whistle down the wind but honestly I've been, uh, busy...back home in nyc now and will attempt to paddle backwards through the rush of time's torrents to recount some more highlights of what turned out to be my most memorable overseas tournee in ages...
return with us to those thrilling days of yesternow wherein our last episode I was wandering about the canals of Amsterdam bathed in sunlight which more or less held throughout the duration of my tour, mirabile dictu; said sunshine still holds dominion in zoo york and the streets of the west village are today clogged with men and women in short pants, romance, learn t' dance, o the merry mac dylan holdeth sway still but priketh them natures in her corages/ then longen folk to goen on pilgramages, in any case Jos Van Wissem and I sallied forth from Bruxelles by highspeed train and gave our all and then some with several more meetings of the spirit in Nijmegen (nice to see my old tour manager Laurent Sprooten and number one Dutch advocate Bas Andriessen again) and in the brand new rejiggered BimHuis, splendidly redux deluxe in the hot new Oost section of Amsterdam harbor, in immaculate condition if not conception with ace acoustics and the harbor lights a'twinkling behind us through huge plate glass windows as we played...was my first time playing in the new building, must have cost many a mill, many years to build, and worth it in my estimation, I have played the old joint a dozen times or so, and while its proximity to Nieuwmarket and canal life in general made it a very attractive gig indeed I can say honestly that this was a STEP UPWARDS in classiness...
then it was off to the heart of brightest Germany as Jozef and I traveled to Bielefeld and Halle to further cast the runes (great gigs both of them, first time in Germany in many a moon, thanks to Steffen Wilde for hooking us up)...
and I made a stop over in between to Berlin to pay my respects to and contribute some guitar for a new album being recorded by Super700, a very cool young band fronted by super-slinky chanteuse Ibadet Ramadani, her 2 lovely sisters Ilirjana and Albana, and 4 German menschen with a penchant for the experimental and the outre led by Michael Haves (find out more about them in my earlier Top 10 of 2004 blog entry)...Ibadet's family comes from Kosovo, the group is gigging alot in Germany Switzerland and France now, and they are currently being produced by Gordon Raphael of Strokes fame...we worked in a brilliant retrofitted studio that was originally a deco DDR radio facility overlooking the Spree...I chowed down on the bratwurst upon arrival (a ritual for me, can't understand how wurstchen has been superseded by doners in the hearts of the volk-- my pal Patti Smith is also hip to the brat according to her postings from Bayreuth this summer in Der Spiegel covering the Ring cycle )...
then it was back to Amsterdam to add more guitar to a live VPRO radio broadcast of my dear friend electronica artist Pascal Plantinga's showcase of material from his brilliant new Atatak album "Arctic Poppy"...Pascal is one of my oldest friends and earliest Dutch fans and in fact introduced himself to me at a gig I did in Leeuwarden in 1991 (Ween was opening for me at the Brouwershoek), he later directed and edited a fantastic video for my song "Vampire Circus" which we shot in NYC amongst the stained glass splendor of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (smuggled in a camera for that one), amidst the bloody hanging carcasses of the meat district on 14th street, on the flag-bedizened escarpment outside the UN, in the epicenter of the Times Square neon vortex, camped in front of the JP Morgan headquarters on Wall Street, and in the filmy boudoir of revolutionary sex-worker Veronica Vera (I draw a discretionary veil over the proceedings at this point :-) )... it was great to play live on the radio with his producer Kurt Dahlke a/k/a Pyrolator pumping his variable -speed sampler like no tomorrow and alongside a powerful German female percussionist whose name escapes me but it will come back (Saskia Von Klitzing--she is a dynamo!)...o yes, somewhere in there, yes between Nijmegen and the BimHuis gig, I did a day's lecturing at the Amsterdam Music Conservatorium, my second year in a row there thanks to headman Jack Pisters, students were as lively and attentive and engaging as always as I leavened my storytelling with occasional guitar punctuation... capped-off that night by a great opening-of-classes party at the Milkweg for several Amsterdam academies where the cream of young Dutch musicians held forth in singer/songerwriter mode, in rapper guise, in various punk and even big-band ensembles ... I left at 1am to be caught in a driving night rain that left me thoroughly drenched as I trekked the hour or so back to my hotel along the narrow cobbled streets and bridges 'oer the concentric eccentric circles of the grachts spiraling before me, but cared not as I was transfixed by the hypnotic beauty of the churning dark waters of the canals and the magnificent old Amsterdam cityscape illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning, which lit up the surroundings like an electrical torch, freezing the images in the misty twilight ozone...ahhhhhhhhh, I love Amsterdam!
more to follow...
xxlove
Gary
ps check out Claudia Brucken and Paul Humphreys and their cool Onetwo website, go ahead, google 'em up and you're in for a spellbinding sonic treat...I love playing with these guys!
return with us to those thrilling days of yesternow wherein our last episode I was wandering about the canals of Amsterdam bathed in sunlight which more or less held throughout the duration of my tour, mirabile dictu; said sunshine still holds dominion in zoo york and the streets of the west village are today clogged with men and women in short pants, romance, learn t' dance, o the merry mac dylan holdeth sway still but priketh them natures in her corages/ then longen folk to goen on pilgramages, in any case Jos Van Wissem and I sallied forth from Bruxelles by highspeed train and gave our all and then some with several more meetings of the spirit in Nijmegen (nice to see my old tour manager Laurent Sprooten and number one Dutch advocate Bas Andriessen again) and in the brand new rejiggered BimHuis, splendidly redux deluxe in the hot new Oost section of Amsterdam harbor, in immaculate condition if not conception with ace acoustics and the harbor lights a'twinkling behind us through huge plate glass windows as we played...was my first time playing in the new building, must have cost many a mill, many years to build, and worth it in my estimation, I have played the old joint a dozen times or so, and while its proximity to Nieuwmarket and canal life in general made it a very attractive gig indeed I can say honestly that this was a STEP UPWARDS in classiness...
then it was off to the heart of brightest Germany as Jozef and I traveled to Bielefeld and Halle to further cast the runes (great gigs both of them, first time in Germany in many a moon, thanks to Steffen Wilde for hooking us up)...
and I made a stop over in between to Berlin to pay my respects to and contribute some guitar for a new album being recorded by Super700, a very cool young band fronted by super-slinky chanteuse Ibadet Ramadani, her 2 lovely sisters Ilirjana and Albana, and 4 German menschen with a penchant for the experimental and the outre led by Michael Haves (find out more about them in my earlier Top 10 of 2004 blog entry)...Ibadet's family comes from Kosovo, the group is gigging alot in Germany Switzerland and France now, and they are currently being produced by Gordon Raphael of Strokes fame...we worked in a brilliant retrofitted studio that was originally a deco DDR radio facility overlooking the Spree...I chowed down on the bratwurst upon arrival (a ritual for me, can't understand how wurstchen has been superseded by doners in the hearts of the volk-- my pal Patti Smith is also hip to the brat according to her postings from Bayreuth this summer in Der Spiegel covering the Ring cycle )...
then it was back to Amsterdam to add more guitar to a live VPRO radio broadcast of my dear friend electronica artist Pascal Plantinga's showcase of material from his brilliant new Atatak album "Arctic Poppy"...Pascal is one of my oldest friends and earliest Dutch fans and in fact introduced himself to me at a gig I did in Leeuwarden in 1991 (Ween was opening for me at the Brouwershoek), he later directed and edited a fantastic video for my song "Vampire Circus" which we shot in NYC amongst the stained glass splendor of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (smuggled in a camera for that one), amidst the bloody hanging carcasses of the meat district on 14th street, on the flag-bedizened escarpment outside the UN, in the epicenter of the Times Square neon vortex, camped in front of the JP Morgan headquarters on Wall Street, and in the filmy boudoir of revolutionary sex-worker Veronica Vera (I draw a discretionary veil over the proceedings at this point :-) )... it was great to play live on the radio with his producer Kurt Dahlke a/k/a Pyrolator pumping his variable -speed sampler like no tomorrow and alongside a powerful German female percussionist whose name escapes me but it will come back (Saskia Von Klitzing--she is a dynamo!)...o yes, somewhere in there, yes between Nijmegen and the BimHuis gig, I did a day's lecturing at the Amsterdam Music Conservatorium, my second year in a row there thanks to headman Jack Pisters, students were as lively and attentive and engaging as always as I leavened my storytelling with occasional guitar punctuation... capped-off that night by a great opening-of-classes party at the Milkweg for several Amsterdam academies where the cream of young Dutch musicians held forth in singer/songerwriter mode, in rapper guise, in various punk and even big-band ensembles ... I left at 1am to be caught in a driving night rain that left me thoroughly drenched as I trekked the hour or so back to my hotel along the narrow cobbled streets and bridges 'oer the concentric eccentric circles of the grachts spiraling before me, but cared not as I was transfixed by the hypnotic beauty of the churning dark waters of the canals and the magnificent old Amsterdam cityscape illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning, which lit up the surroundings like an electrical torch, freezing the images in the misty twilight ozone...ahhhhhhhhh, I love Amsterdam!
more to follow...
xxlove
Gary
ps check out Claudia Brucken and Paul Humphreys and their cool Onetwo website, go ahead, google 'em up and you're in for a spellbinding sonic treat...I love playing with these guys!
posted by Gary Lucas at 4:40 PM
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