Blog
Go Van Go
27th September 2010 | Juliet
It’s a muggy day in Washington but the hotel is fab and groovy, and even in the lift there is an instruction that here you can be fabulous. Well the décor is orange and lime green in places which gives it an Austin Powers feel, hi-tech with retro touches. Outside my window some Tibetan prayer flags are fluttering in the breeze of the building next door.
Rather than give in to exhaustion, a walk is in order, and we head off to the National Gallery of Art, stopping first in the sculpture park next door. Admire Louise Bourgeois’ giant metal spider and huge silver tree, which looks like a tree that has always been there despite its full on silver shininess. There are also two red giraffe type things with no heads. Refreshed with some impossible coffee and odd over-sugared, over-packaged, so-called food, we head into the mega gallery, circling the fountains, and stopping at the huge rabbit-man type sculpture, amazed.
With sun on our heads, brains and pineal glands, we feel almost normal.
Saul mentioned it would be nice to see some fruit one day. An apple a day would be nice.
“We are looking for Van Gogh,” I said to the man on the front desk as he rummages through my bag. “Ah yes, Van Go is right there.” And lo we have Van Go. Shuffled amongst the Renoirs, Modiglianis, Picassos blues and others, Van Gogh gleams. Wow, it’s gobsmacking. Having satiated ourselves almost, I ask the attendant if there is any more Van Gogh. “Yes,” she says, “you go up top, west wing, and there’s more Van Go”. We go.
Exit via the gift shop, we stop and buy sketch books and arty things to do from the children’s section, and head off. It’s like being in a science fiction film but it’s a journey on an escalator. “This is like science fiction from the 80’s come true” says Saul as we sail under a fairy grotto of silverness on an escalator…dropping anchor by some outsize Rothkos.
We don’t find any more Van Go but we do pass a glance over Acrimboldo. Now he was quite a one. Born in 1526, his thing was nature and fantasy via weird heads composed of plants, vegetables, animals and other objects. Hmmn could we check out Munch quickly?
Munch has a tendency to get on one painting and repeat it. A kind of re-release thing going on. The Madonna, The Madonna and then The Madonna. Then there’s The Scream which we didn’t find. We also didn’t find any more Van Go… but we did see one of Warhol’s Marilyns and got told off for being too close generally. There’s an arresting huge painting of three black guys in long red velvet coats circa the seventies. “Is that the O’Jays,” asks Vinny. He too had been watching them on YouTube last night.
Totally full up on art, we head off to the White House for a photo for Vinny’s photo blog for school.
At last we find the White House, which is white, as Saul kept pointing out on the way each time Vinny pointed to a cream building. There were lots of people taking photos.
Then back to base camp Hotel Helix where a fabulous man was serving fabulous red wine or optional champagne on ice. A few of the band and crew were there in the concrete courtyard. The music was cool acid jazz…
Ate Greek yogurt and honey. It tasted like zabaglione on top of the red wine.
Fell asleep for twelve hours and woke up in the seventies… TBC…
Paradise Rock Club, Boston, Massachusetts
25th September 2010 | Larry
Boston O’Jays Party
25th September 2010 | Juliet
We park up outside the venue. Ah, it’s all coming back now. The secondhand shop, the Qdoba and the coffee shop…here we start the day.
Three hours later we head off to the day room for swimming, yoga, weight training, sleeping, chilling and Shiatsu. Then it’s back to the venue for the soundcheck.
The gig was chaotic due to technical problems, beer had been spilt on Larry’s gear and it all went pear shaped. The P.A. had also blown up earlier in the day. The gig went okay once they got over the hitch. The encore was Out to Get You….
“Everything went wrong,” said Tim, cleaning his teeth at the kitchen sink…don’t spit on the crockery…please… Tim brushes on, spits in the bathroom and continues…..
“My walkabout in Come Home took me to walking on the bar, the bar staff were grabbing the drinks before me and security were called to get me down…… The reason why the concert was really good was everything falling apart, stemming from a blackout in the daytime. James were left with a 15 minute gap on stage which would have destroyed a lesser band, including James up till about two years ago, but instead no one was phased and we rose to the occasion by becoming an appalling stand up act which drew laughter and pity from the audience to the degree that it actually enhanced the gig. Crisis as an opportunity.”
Jam J played for first time in 14 years. A major revisit of Wah Wah going on just now.
We were given some homemade cookies and a tin of biscuits. If there are any green grocers out there please could we have some fruit (e.g. pineapples, limes, etc.) (for the scurvy), and single malt, added Jim.
We had an O’Jays dance party in the kitchen corridor on the bus after the show, and finally set off at 3am for Washington DC. Ed Harcourt wanted to stay and party, but he’s on the crew bus so we sent him home.
It’s raining. It’s grey. It’s too early. My Greek yoghurt is frozen, “and so is the hummous,” adds Dave.
“Are we going backwards up the M6,” Saul asks, looking out on the grey sky and endless road.
The day sheet says we will arrive at 11am but it’s gone noon now. It also says yoga pose of the day: gomukasana, cow face pose, good for sciatica and achey shoulders. Try the arms if you can’t do the legs. Vinny is doing the full pose and giggling.
The Trocadero, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
24th September 2010 | Larry
Velvety Victorian in Chinatown
24th September 2010 | Juliet
The venue is in Chinatown. We lug our cases over fetid fishy puddles and enter the dark backstage.
A night in a hotel and we are all cleaned up and organised after three nights on board the love train.
We had sung Love Train by the O’Jays on the way, heading towards the home of the Philly sound… Love Train was their second hit after Back Stabbers, and Thomas printed up some album covers as posters to cheer up the black interiored bus. It was they who also sang “I love music, any kind of music….as long as it’s groovy”. Exactly. The Philadelphia sound is worth a revisit…
Earlier the band perform for Live at Noon, a radio show. “It was brilliant,” said Jim. Taken a little bit by surprise because it ended up being a proper gig in a theatre rather than squeezed into a little room at a radio station. 250 people came to see it.
Dust Motes, a slow Laid, Out To Get You, Rabbit Hole, I Wanna Go Home, and Say Something. Lullaby as an encore… Getting Away With It. About nine songs all together.
Tim goes to the Art Gallery and sees Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Regrouping we head down to soundcheck at the venue….
Chinatown in Philadelphia is very Chinese. Me and Vinny and Jake went walkabout and checked out the local Chinese shops, Vin bought some Chinese masks. Peter Pacifico was there again… He is attending seven gigs on this tour…who is this man?
The gig was preceded by the VIP soundcheck… There was a call for Fred Astaire. There was crying in the audience, dancing, hugging and holding by the onlookers…and a big whoop. There was also a touch of feedback due to it being pulled out the bag for the first time this tour…
The Trocadero is a lovely old theatre. Velvety Victorian in its own way. Anyhow a great gig followed. The audience sang a great chorus, best so far. Cramped but joyful aftershow. Scott the golfer was there with his wife again, faces from the Stone Pony gig last time. It was crowded. Larry’s relatives were there and one of Tim’s rellys too.
Then it was an overnight journey again up to Boston…. 439 miles, a nine hour drive.
Heading North
23rd September 2010 | Juliet
Most toilets flush in E-flat. (This is fact of the day on the schedule.)
There are bagels for breakfast on the bus. Three varieties. But no Philadelphia cheese.
It’s 773 miles to Philly. It’s gonna take 14 hours. Mostly we wake up around 9am in North Carolina ….boiling hot at a truck stop an hour later.
“Only 5 more hours,” calculates Vinny….. Marks iPod is plugged in on a shuffle, and we race on down the freeway.
Andy is practising his trumpet in the back lounge with his iPhone attached to the trumpet with a fish slice… a technological breakthrough, the iSlice…
Larry is brewing coffee.
Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, Georgia
22nd September 2010 | Larry
The midnight train to Georgia
22nd September 2010 | Juliet
We are back on the bus, leaving on the midnight train to Georgia. Except it’s the 1am bus to Atlanta. The bus feels like it’s flying above the tarmac, hurtling down the freeway in the early hours, and then we wake up at the back door of the Variety Playhouse Georgia.
Otis Redding, the King of Soul, was from round here, as is Gladys Knight. Gladys now has a famous chicken and waffles restaurant round here. This place is the land of soul and gospel and Southern blues….
“Art is food, you can’t eat it but it feeds you.” (On the mural on the side wall of the venue. See photos for more Atlantan philosophy.)
We ate veg – some was even green – lots of it, and corn grits with jalapeños and fried mahi-mahi, at the oddly named Yacht Club, a good old home-cooked Southern food bar. Pints of cider. No halves.
Tim ‘n Andy wandered round the local vintage shops, bought some gear for stage.
The audience had waited 14 years for James to come back to Atlanta. One guy told Saul that he was mid 30s when he last saw them at some venue in Atlanta. He had gone back to the same venue today but found the band not there. So he rang his son and said “Hey where are these guys?” Somehow he had strangely assumed the band would be where he had last left them…
Saul is finding this tour much easier than the one two years ago because his mental state is solid from day one…he is enjoying it all.
Tomorrow we are having a bit of a lie-in. Well that’s one way of looking at it. It’s 14 hours drive overnight to Philadelphia.
House of Blues Orlando, Florida
21st September 2010 | Larry
Disney World and jungleland
21st September 2010 | Juliet
Woke up in Disney World outside the House of Blues, after a six hour drive from Fort Lauderdale, our first night on the bus. It’s a hot night ‘cos we haven’t quite got the temperatures right and it’s hot and humid outside. Our first breakfast on board consists of Muesli assortments and milk assortments (vanilla almond milk, yes really) and the usual weak percolated coffee. If you have a banana, write your name on it. Tim wants to get a cooker on board and start doing eggs…
There’s some swimming and sunning action at the hotel up the road which gives us the use of two day rooms to get clean and sorted. The hotel has an African theme. Zebra bedspreads and signs in the jungle garden grounds to “Marrakesh, Zaire” and to the Congo rooms… There are a lot of tropical flora and fauna; palm trees abound. Andy, Larry and Vinny had a few goes on the python slide blasting out of the snake’s mouth. Andy swims 6400 lengths…(approximately). Tim heads off to a national park to get some space.
The crew are setting up the gear at The House of Blues, set in the grounds of Disney with Cirque de Soleil’s big top across the way. The House of Blues is done out like an old style blues club. Lots of retro items, fantastic paintings by outsider artists all over the walls, and incredible metal sculptures in the grounds (see photos). Every painting is a delightful surprise. A huge painting of a woman holding the American flag, which looks like a giant toothbrush, looms over us in the dressing room. I wander round the back corners of the building checking it out. The dressing room is spacious comfy sofas and a central 3 foot brass figure of Ganesha the Hindu elephant/man god who helps overcome obstacles.. I wonder what he reckons to 33 days of non stop travel and 21 gigs…
There’s Lake Buena Vista out of the window and Disney World’s hot air balloon with Peter Pan and Wendy flying on it….a magical place all round. A great gig followed. Brilliant venue. Fantastic crowd….
A very relaxed aftershow takes place in the House of Blues. There’s some folk from Manchester there…
Larry goes out the side door into the main street to be greeted by a horde of fans awaiting signatures etc, an impromptu Q&A session ensues, CDs are signed, and a loud drunken Italian lady gives Larry her pizza. An off duty ‘Pluto’ who looks like Pink talks about James music getting her through college.
