It's Great to See You Guys!

 "You know the Walkmen are playing on Wednesday," my friend informed me two days ago.
"Didn't we just see them a few months ago?"
"Yeah. And for free. Still, I'd go. It's worth it."
That's about all the arm twisting it took to get me to the first of five concerts I'll be attending over the next few weeks. I guess I still really enjoy live music.
"I finish work at 9. Let's meet at Bikini," I said, referencing the venue, which could just as easily be named after a grilled ham and cheese sandwich as a piece of sexy swimwear. I honestly don't know which one the club is going for.
Being a teacher approaching 40, I try to fool my students and their parents into believing I'm a responsible adult. I do this by donning my responsible adult disguise, which today consisted of khaki pants and a Gap shirt. I fit in well with my last class - three teenage boys who are painfully preppy. It's not their fault - two of them are brothers who were born looking like Ralph Lauren models (tall, blond with brown eyebrows, angular faces). They would look wrong in anything other than striped shirts and boat shoes. Ok, the third looks so Jewish I think his great great grandparents must have changed their name and decided to weather out the inquisition, but he's trying to belong.
Anyway, it wasn't my rock-and-rollingest outfit, but, being a teacher approaching 40, I figured it best not to care. I needn't have worried at all. The Walkmen took to the stage in more button-downs, blazers and crew-neck sweaters than a TED conference. And rocked.

"Thanks for coming. It's great to see you guys. We're the Walkmen," said singer Hamilton Leithauser as the concert started on a quiet and pretty note, just him and the guitarist slowly building up the song.

Their latest album, Heaven, is grown-up in all the right ways. I suppose it's not surprising considering that 10 years ago they were already lamenting being past their prime, but of all the entitled millennial WASP New York rockers (Strokes, Interpol, et al) I didn't expect them to be the sole ones still making exciting vibrant music. They are masters of insinuation, creating moods out of a few spare guitar notes and hinted keyboard lines. They leaned heavily on their most recent material while revisiting hits (hits?) from previous efforts.
"Thanks for coming. It's great to see you guys. We're the Walkmen," said singer Hamilton Leithauser before the band tore into Angela and The Rat.

Remember in the 90's, after the Smells Like Teen Spirit video when every fucking dumbass jock would mosh at whatever show they were at? Pits would form at Cranberries or Inspiral Carpets concerts. It was fucking terrible. We've reached a similar stage of evolution with hipsters, who are now just retarded teenagers with awkward haircuts and glasses partying like it's jello shots night at the delta sigma house. Between the stupidity happening next to me and the awesomeness in front of me, I felt ok about being a teacher approaching 40 in khakis. Now get off my lawn!

"Thanks for coming. It's great to see you guys. We're the Walkmen," said singer Hamilton Leithauser when they came out to do a two song encore consisting of an old song and an audience request. He seemed like he meant it.

A Bad Neighbourhood and a Knife

My job is to help ensure the dominance of English across the planet. Every time I show up in an office or home, I'm committing a manager or child to the path of Western-led globalisation. Yesterday, I added cultural hegemony to linguistic hegemony when I cycled out to a government-assisted language school to teach the savages about Halloween. 

It's not a widely celebrated holiday here. Children dress up in February for Carnaval, and there's no set day for a massive candy giveaway. My first Halloween here, I turned heads and stopped conversations dead in their tracks as I walked through the streets painted blue with a Frankenstein bolt through my head. 

It's becoming more known now. Some stores decorate their windows in black and orange with skeletons and such. The kids I teach have learned about it at school. But this is not enough. While the local custom dictates that the 31st be dedicated to roasting chestnuts and eating little cakes, I took it upon myself (for a fee) to explain to a bunch of adults what the day was really about.

I cycled across the river at the edge of the city and into Badalona. The name sounds like a joke; some bizarro-world evil Barcelona where everybody has a goatee. That might not be far off, as I cycled past concrete fields of dilapidated apartment towers with graffiti on their walls. I arrived at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas where my friend teaches and had hooked me up with this Halloween-themed workshop.

A group of about 40 people assembled in the small conference room. I taught them a little about the history of the holiday, history which I myself had only learned in preparation for the workshop. I can now add it to my ever expanding bank of trivia that makes me really fun to talk to at parties. Did you know that 2 billion dollars are spent on candy every year in the US? Wait, come back. 

This was followed by a pumpkin carving workshop. I hadn't actually done it in years, so I spent the last few of my kids classes practicing. I would show up at the unsuspecting students' home with a pumpkin and  knife, and proceed to make a mess of the kitchen as I hacked away at the hapless vegetable and roasted the seeds. The parents were game and the kids were thrilled, and thus I was ready for yesterday's main event. 

It went well, as it's not actually that difficult, and the students finished with their own jack-o-lanterns. 

The artists and their creations

My final jack-o-lantern

I repeated the whole process for a second group before cycling home to don make-up and blood, and head to a party in the city.

Rock Report - October 26th 2012

Joel claims to be a sucker for basic marketing. Any place that advertises "best whatever in wherever" (eg. lobster, Maine) gets his hard earned dollar. This, despite the invariable let-down when such heady claims are not only missed, but not even approached. The kebab place in Cerdanyola should now be added to this list of lying liars who lie. Their sign proudly proclaimed to be the king of fast food. Already, this is a diminished proposition. Everybody knows that for sheer hegemony and bloodshed, McDonalds is the undisputed monarch. And it's a shitty kingdom anyway, populated by disgruntled serfs and stomach aches. To lay claim to such damned territory displays a tragic lack on regal ambition.
Nevertheless, this pretender to the throne is where Les Fat Jones chose to eat before our show in Cerdanyola last night. Don't ever make that mistake.
Cerdanyola is a suburb of Barcelona, and is surprisingly suburban. Most suburbs around the city are older villages which were absorbed by the capital's expansion and they tend to be grids of older row houses stacked together behind walls that come up to the sidewalk. This one, however, was a collection of tree-lined streets with gardens and so many teenagers. Not that many of them actually came to the gig, but they roamed the streets like the pubescent living dead, smoking, driving and going to the king of fast food.
The show itself was fun. The sound was great and we had a record low number of fuck-ups. (The starring one was when I forgot the piano-only opening riff to Other Cities. Thanks, brain!)
The club was nice, and clearly progressive minded, as it seems they hired a hearing-impaired bartender who told me I sang like David Bowie. That's going on my resume.

(Photo by Alba Mora)

Free Fallin

Hell yeah!

Go to your room, David Blaine.

In other exciting news, Les Fat Jones will be opening for the Gaslight Anthem in Barcelona on November 8th.

Long Weekend!

There was an impressive storm in Barcelona last night. As I watched the lightning flash through my window, I remembered that David Blaine did that thing in New York this week. You know, with the electricity. He stood in a something something a million volts (watts?) something days. Google it. Does anybody even care about this guy? I was going to say anymore, but did anybody ever care? I mean, he was kind of cool when he wandered around the streets doing card tricks, but his daredevil shit? He sat somewhere once for a while, he stood somewhere once for a bit. Has the whole profession really devolved from the insane spectacle of Evel Knievel to the winner of Celebrity Survivor: Boringest Challenge? (Survivor jokes in 2012. #current #relevant #keepingupwiththekids)
It's a long weekend here. Tomorrow is national Spanish day. Living in a secessionist region dampens the festivities somewhat, as does the general state of the country. The Red Cross held an annual drive yesterday that in past years has gone to help Haiti, but this year is being channeled to the 2 million citizens here with no income. Being sat next to the third-world earthquake-ravaged orphans is not helping anybody's mood. But whatever, man. Day off! I'll be out of town, hoping to sneak in another beach day before winter (or the Spanish equivalent thereof) arrives.
Great news for Les Fat Jones. I can't tell you yet, but some awesomeness in the near future was confirmed today. Watch this space.

Rock Report - October 9th 2012

A second rock report in the same week?! Crazy times.
Last night, Les Fat Jones played at La [2], the best stage we've graced thus far.

Our name in lights!

Drawback to part time rocking: a 4pm load-in conflicts with jobs. Not mine, as my current self employment affords me some flexibility. Only half the band was able to make it, so we faked our way through sound check with an assist on bass from the guitarist of Esponja, one of the bands we were playing with. This led to a mercifully short sound check. The downside was an improvised stage sound when we started the set. Oh well.
Show notes: I'm still not a great singer. (understatement?) Some painfully out of tune screaming at the end of a new song led me to think am I really doing this in front of people?
A decent size stage meant I could move more, so I'm back to deluge-levels of sweating. (Too sexy?)
Pacing - Needs improvement.
Rocking - achieved.
Overall grade - B
Thanks to everybody who came, especially the row of screaming ladies in front. (They were all friends, but it made us look cool.)
We've got some cool news potentially getting confirmed this week. I'll let you know as soon as it is.

Rock Report - October 6th, 2012

Last week brought an old friend to Barcelona. Sid, the drummer from Me Mom & Morgentaler, the band I joined the first time I dropped out of university, was in town with his family. It was great to catch up. I hadn't seen him since a rather drunken New Year's Eve party several years ago. We went from terrace to bar, from beer to mojitos, and chatted about a range of things. One particularly interesting story was that of the sandpaper handjob his most recent band got from the music industry. Only the details differ in yet another "major label expresses interest in your group, throws money at you, wastes your time, kills your career" narrative that I and others I know have lived through. It's a sad reality that what is perceived to be the peak of your music trajectory is often just the last foothold next to a sharp cliff.
And yet, we persevere.
This weekend was Les Fat Jones' first out of town gig. And by out of town, I mean outside any town.

The venue

Next to the venue

The show was nominally in Torrello, a collection of houses about 80km north of Barcelona. Situated on the outskirts of town meant in one direction lay a church and some buildings, and in the other, trees. We played with 2 other bands: Twisted Nails, a heavy groove and riff band (think Queens of the Stone Age) and Zero Absolu, a solo guy with keyboards, guitars and pedals who built really intricate soundscapes and then screamed over them.
The people at the venue and the other musician were all friendly and helpful. Thank God, because right before our set, the bass amp crapped out and we needed to borrow one.

Not something you want to see five minutes before set time

During the third song, the PA died, leaving me with no amplification for my keyboard or vocals. After some desperate scrambling by the board, sound returned in a weakened state. Yet despite these setbacks, we played well and I had a good time. Driving to the middle of nowhere and playing for a couple dozen people still seems like a decent way to spend a Saturday evening. Especially when you have no career depending on it. Part time rocker is turning out to be as much fun as full time rocker, without the stress.
Tomorrow, we play in Barcelona. If you're in town, come on down.