RUSSIA TOURS SEPT/OCT. 2008

VLADIVOSTOK (take 2!)-
  In the summer of 2008, my friend, Ruslan, was working at a radio station in the Arctic Circle.  He had told me that the director of the Pacific Meridian International Film Festival in Vladivostok had wanted us to come and play during the festival. I had heard many rumors about the fest and it’s organizers.  The most interesting ones being about the governor of the Vladivostok region, who was being investigated on some sort of criminal charges and who had vanished for 2 months just before the festival was due to begin. Anyway, poor Ruslan was trying to arrange our shows via text messages all the way from the windswept regions of the Russian Far North. At one point, I began to fear that the shows weren’t going to happen.  I had not received a deposit and Ruslan had grown ominously quiet for a couple of days. I have since realized and accepted that this is a normal phase in the arranging of any tour in Russia; the ominous silence before any deposit arrives when it seems that the whole thing is in danger of falling through.  Even though I recognize this, it never ceases to terrify me.
  So anyway, Ruslan made his way back to Vlad just a couple of weeks before the shows were due to happen and was able to salvage them in a couple of marathon meetings with the big money guys. 
  I’m soooo happy that he did that because the Far East tour turned out to be one of the greatest experiences I have had in years.  The film festival was a lot of fun.  I got to meet many interesting people from around the world.  There were directors like Leonid Rybakov, actors like Gyosha Kutsenko, old friend/cultural icons like Artemi Troitski producers, artists and even a lovely Japanese woman from the Japanese Fungus Appreciation Society. 
  I had brought a keyboard named Oleg out from Novosibirsk to play the shows with me.  I met him back in march when I played some solo shows in Siberia.  He was such a great musician and a wonderful guy that I asked him to come out with me for the Far East shows. 
  The Festival put us up at the Vladivostok Hotel.  It is a crumbling, Soviet era building with a million dollar view of the Pacific. All of the guests of the festival were staying there, so there was a lively, festive atmosphere to the place.
  One of the highlights of my stay in Vladivostok was a boat trip that was organized by the festival.  Only 6 people shows up for the excursion; me, Oleg, Leonid Rybakov, a girl named Masha from a cinema in Novosibirsk, a director from Moscow names Sasha, and the woman from the Japanese Fungus Appreciation Society who also taught Russian literature at a university in Kobe.
  We set out from the port at about 10 AM. The boat was very large for only 6 people.  The captain asked us where we wanted to go and we said that we had no idea.  It was quite cloudy and cold so we didn’t plan on going swimming.  The boat headed out of the harbor past huge piles of recycled metal that were being loaded onto ships destined for Japan, Korea and China.
  We went by beautiful islands with cows on them.  We saw old military installations. The islands looked so verdant. They seemed to be bursting with life. Finally the captain eased the boat into a cove on the side the island that was protected from the wind. The temperature had gone up and the sun was even peaking out from time to time so we decided to go for a swim. Oleg and I hadn’t brought out suites so we had to make due with our underwear. The water was cold, but not nearly as bad as I was expecting.  Leonid and I decided to swim to shore.  As I was approaching the shore, I noticed that there were a lot of small dark shapes on the rock underneath me.  I treaded water for a while until the surface of the water became calm enough for me to see what was down there. I couldn’t believe my eyes.  There were hundreds of sea urchins.  And where there weren’t sea urchins, there were little blue starfish.  And then in the tiny bit of space that was left over, there were mussels and the occasional BIG purple starfish.  I had never seen such an abundance of life. It seemed prehistoric, like a place that was untouched by human beings. Leonid and I swam around laughing, diving down and coming back up with starfish in our hands….a couple of fools, awestruck in the face of the divine.
  Ruslan had arranged for us to play with a couple of guys (drums and guitar) from the house band at Yellow Submarine, the club we would be playing in.  They turned out to be amazing musicians.  Oleg played the bass on his keyboard, Ray Manzarek style. We had a couple of rehearsals together and the guys got the songs down really well. They were real rockers so tunes like Hoover St. really came to life.
  I had some wonderful conversations with Natie, the journalist who did a big story on me the last time I was in Vlad.  She told me all about the couchsurfing movement and the best places in Vlad for windsurfing.  When I was flying into Vlad from Moscow, I looked in the onboard magazine and saw a big article about Brazzaville. Then I saw an article about windsurfing.  Then I saw one about Viet Nam.  She had written all 3 of them!
  I think the best film I saw while I was there was called Sleep Dealer. It is a Mexican SciFi film and it was great. 
  As I have said before, Vladivostok is probably my favorite city in Russia.  The Pacific smells like the Pacific whether you are in L.A. or the Russian Far East.

RUSSIAN TOUR March, 2008 (part 1)

It’s incredible to me that less than a month has passed since I packed up my old guitar and headed out on the latest Brazzaville/David Brown solo tour of Russia. Since that day, I have met so many lovely people, seen so many great places and had so many memorable experiences that it seems like more than 3 months have passed. It’s normal for time to do strange things when we are on the road, but the fact that I made it all the way out to the Russian Far east on this tour really adds to the sense of otherworldliness for me. There’s so much for me to write about and it’s been so long since I’ve made a proper journal entry. Please be patient with me and I will try to tell the story as best I can. Let me start at the beginning.

BARCELONA, March 29th

The tour began as most tours do for me, with a chat with a taxi driver. As drove down Gran Via on the way to the airport, the driver and I exchanged ideas about who was most suitable to be the next US president, the state of the global climate, traffic in Barcelona, the weather in Russia and lots of other far ranging topics. Barcelona taxi drivers are quite friendly and love to talk about just about anything.
I was taking a direct flight on Aeroflot that would leave me in Sheremetyevo 2. The tricky part was that I was going to have to take a shuttle to Sheremetyevo 1 and then catch a second flight to Ekaterinburg. I had spoken to people from Aeroflot about it and they has assured me that it was easy and that my luggage would in fact make the second flight. In the end after a bit of nail biting both my luggage and I ended up safely in Ekat. Along the way, somebody had opened one of my bags and taken 3 or 4 copies of the new CD but I took that as a compliment an an opportunity for our music to spread into areas of Russian society that might not normally get a chance to hear it.

EKATERINBURG
I was met at the airport very late at night by Ann, my local tour manager and Nikolai the promoter’s driver. The promoters in Ekat are wonderful and treated us really well the last time we went there to play at Tele-Club. They put me in a really nice new hotel there and fed me wonderful meals at one of their partner restaurants.
The day after my arrival, I played a couple of songs on the local music TV station. There was a really nice guy named Semyon who worked there. He also worked with the promoter and was trying to explain the situation with the show to me. From what I could understand, the club was a fairly new and exclusive type of place called Hills. He told me that the entrance would be free of charge but that there would be strict “face control”. I asked if that meant that they would only allow people with faces to come and he told me that it meant that only beautiful, rich people would be allowed in. This filled me with dread. I explained that although many of our fans were not bad looking, most of them were not of the sort of glamour set that he was describing. I told him that a solo show, is really much more fun, if there are people attending it who already know and like the songs.
We arrived for soundcheck and my feeling of dread increased exponentially. The first thing I noticed was a gilded bathtub behind the bar. It was placed high up, at eye level. I asked the promoter girl whom it was that tended to bath in that tub. She laughed and said that it was usually pretty girls. It was then that I noticed the runway running the length of the club and the cages to either side of the stage. I asked her if we were in a strip club and she laughed and said, not exactly.
When we arrived a few hours later to play the show, there were several Brazzaville fans shivering outside in the cold. They had not met the clubs “face control” standards and so were not allowed to enter. I told the club that I wouldn’t play unless they let them in so, in the end, they relented. Luckily, a fair amount of Brazzaville fans made it past the cold stare of the security guys and the show ended up being not too bad.
The really interesting stuff began after I played. I noticed a lot of scantily clad girls and guys downstairs near my dressing room before I played. They were in elaborate costumes and had on heavy makeup. One of the guys was wearing a huge black cape with no shirt and insane looking black eye makeup. I can’t remember the shows in much detail except that they were a blend of very serious faced dancers with exposed boobs. In between these shows there was a man who sang old Elvis songs with a mandolin strapped around his torso. He didn’t play it. It was just for show. He actually had a really good voice and Semyon told me that, by day, he was the head of the vocal department at the conservatory.
The next night, March 2nd, Ann and Nikolai drove me out to the airport. I should comment now that all of the regional Russian airports that I have visited in the past few years have undergone amazing transformations. When I first began traveling in the Russian provinces, cities like Kazan, Ekaterinburg, etc had really run down, soviet looking airports. All of these have been replaced by comfortable, modern facilities. It is an indicator of the large amount of economic development that has been occurring all over Russia in the past 4 years. Anyway, we said goodbye and I headed off to Moscow to play a show for the launch of B2 bands latest project.


MOSCOW (1)

I was met at Sheremetyevo 1by a large friendly man with my name on a piece of cardboard. He drove me to my apartment just of Tverskaya where I was met by Nick from Caviar Lounge. After getting settled into my place I walked across the street to my favorote food market in Moscow. It’s in a historic location on Tverskaya and has beautiful molded ceilings and an amazing variety of food. I’ve been told that it used to be a store for the communist elite. It was one of the only places in Moscow to buy a variety of foreign foods. I bought my usual tour food; some good cheese, some nice brown bread, a cucumber, some tomatoes, a large bottle of sparkling water and some yogurt. Back in the apartment I made myself a meal, did laundry and settled in for the night.
The next day Misha, my good friendm tour manager and co-conspirator on the song, The Clouds in Camarillo (more about that later) picked me up and took me to sound check for B2s release party. It was being held in a beautiful old theater somewhere in the center of Moscow. When we arrived there were lots of people running around arranging things. There were a lot of artists there to sing on various songs. I saw Shura and Leova and finally got to meet Shura’s uncle, who had written the music for all of the songs on the record. He was an amazing looking man. I guess he is from Belarus but Misha told me that he a real Odessa type of guy. He lives in Israel now. I have a great photo of the 2 of us that I will post on the website.
I was supposed to sing the song, Kao San Road that I had co-written for their record. The chorus for that song is really high and quite a challenge for me even on a good day. On the record, I was accompanied by a really great, female background vocalist from Australia. At this show, it was just me! I thought that Shura had told me that he would be singing the chorus with me but when I asked him about it he said, “I think it’s too high for me”. So I was left to do it all on my own. Suffice it to say, it was not my most shining musical moment.
The evening was a lot of fun. Misha Kozareff was the MC and he made the people laugh a lot. The audience was mostly media people. At one point, backstage a small group of people walked in who were even more aloof and put out ooking than your average pop musician. I knew instantly that they had to be dancers and I was RIGHT! Dancers have egos that are much larger than musicians or even actors!
Later that night, Misha (my Misha) and I went to the afterparty which was being held at B2 club. The highlights of the night were getting wine spilled on my pants by a very drunk guy, (I think he sings with a Russian band called Punk TV) and meeting a woman named Dasha who’s boyfriend used to manage Zemfira.. I told her that I had used a photo on the back cover of our new record which was taken from a Zemfira video made by Renata Litvinova and she told me that the car, an old Volga, in the photo was her car!
The following day, march 4th I hung out with my friend Andriesh. He is a great Moscow DJ who is originally from Kazakhstan. He made a nice remix of 21st century Girl which will come out on our DVD/CD release later this year. I spent the evening hanging out with him and his young friends. They took me to Krisis Genre and a club called Propaganda. I hate to say it but usually, unless I’m playing a show, I would much rather be in bed reading a good book that hanging out at clubs. It’s a sure sign of my advancing years! But it was a lot of fun hanging out with Andriesh and his friends. Eventually we made it back to his house and he made the bed for me in his spare bedroom. His flat is located near a famous Monastery as well as a well-known cemetery. He promised to show me around the cemetery the next time I am in Moscow.
The room I slept in was a real DJ room. It had 2 computers, a Nord synth, lots of musical gear, empty beer bottles and some great drawings of naked ladies on the walls.
In the morning, Andriesh and I set of in search of food. He asked me if I wanted to take the subway or a taxi and I made that fatal Moscow mistake and said I would prefer a taxi. An hour and a half later, we were still sitting in traffic. We finally opted to get out of the car and walk. We found someplace to eat near-bye and sat down for a quick lunch.
I had 2 radio interviews scheduled for that day. The first was Biology on Radio Maximum. This is the show that Shura and Leova from B2 do once a week. I got to choose 10 songs from different artists to play on the show. I picked some really nice music that I hadn’t heard in a while. I can’t remember all the songs but I know there was some Isley Brothers, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, Serge Gainsbourg, Jorge Ben, the Kinks etc.
After that show, Shura’s driver, who’s name I can never remember but who is a super cool guy, drove me to Silver Rain to do a show with Misha Kozareff. That show was 2 hours long and consisted of lots of chatting plus playing some songs with Misha (Korneev)’s band Minerva. We played some Brazzaville songs off the new record and they played a couple of Minerva songs. One fo the songs, The Clouds in Camarillo, is a song that I co-wrote with Misha and his friend, Vanya. It’s half in Russian and half in English and has become quite popular in Russia over the past month. All in all it was a really fun time.
We hung out at the Silver Rain until it was time for me to go the the railway station to catch the night train to St. Petersburg. I was going by myself and got very lucky because I ended up in a compartment with 3 women who went straight to sleep. You can never be sure who you will end up with. Sometimes it will be young men who want to drink and stay up all night.

ST. PETERSBURG

I was met in St. Petersburg by Sasha, a wonderful girl who works with Denis Rubin,our P-burg promoter. When she first tour managed us, several years ago, she was an 18 year old crazy girl. There is footage of her shot by Ivan Knight screaming out the window on the way to the airport. It was during a taxi ride that had Ivan and I cowering in the back seat fearing for our lives. We had ended up with a psychopathic taxi driver and Sasha was overjoyed with the danger of his driving. Since then she has grown up a lot and has begun to see the world through different eyes. We had a nice talk over tea about the world, God and other early morning subjects.
Richie, Brady, Paco and Ramon had arrived in St. Petersburg the night before. They had gone out with Vanya, our old tour manager from Light Music. Just like on the tours he came out with us on, they stayed up really late with him. It was great to see the guys in the morning. I miss them a lot when I’m out on the road without them.
Our first show was at a club called Maina. We played there last year in February. It’s a great club with good sound but it’s located really far away from the center in a kind of gopniki suburb of St. Petersburg. I was told that there was a TV channel called STS that wanted to do a story about Brazzaville. They came to our soundcheck and filmed us. They interviewed me and then, to my delight, they informed me that, since it was Maslinitsa, or Pancake Week, they would be taking some of us out to eat blinis the following day.
The show was a lot of fun. The fans were very kind. We drove back to the hotel in the snow and I got a good night’s sleep. The next day, Ramon, Brady and I headed out with the folks from STS. As promised, they took us to eat blini. They filmed us ordering and then eating. When we were done, they took us to Kamchatka, the boiler room where Viktor Tsoi, the lead singer from KINO used to work. It is now a kind of museum. They filmed us looking around. I bought a bunch of old DVDs of KINO and then we went back to the hotel.
At some point, while walking around St. Petersburg, I was suddenly struck by the smell of the wind. It smelled like the Baltic Sea. It was such a wonderful smell. It reminded me of my youth in Los Angeles. I think that for people who have grown up near the ocean, the smell of salt water in the wind will always have a special meaning. During an interview I was doing for some local TV station, I mentioned this and they told me that there was a poet from St. Petersburg who wrote a lot about the smell of the Baltic Sea.
The second show in P-burg was at a club called The Place. It was a really beautiful club in the southern part of the city. Again, the crowd was lovely. The St. Petersburg audiences have always been very kind to us. The highlight of the night for me was a little girl named Dasha. She must have been about 7 or 8 years old. She was there with her father. For most of the show she was on his shoulders or dancing around. At point the audience made a really funny sound and I looked down and little Dasha was there holding flowers for me. She was so sweet. It really made me miss my own children.

MOSCOW (2)

The next morning, Denis Rubin met us at the hotel and took us to the airport. As we were checking in, he made some comment about the women not speaking English. One of the old girls took offence to this and is halting English, informed me that she could speak English but that I couldn’t speak any Russian. I told her (in Russian) that I could speak a little bit. She was unimpressed and informed me that she could speak “a little bit” of 11 languages. I had no choice but use my old stand bye phrase one her. I look her in the eyes and said “ya nashu stringi” (I’m wearing thong underwear). That got a laugh ou of the entire line of Russians waiting to check in and it even made the mean lady crack a smile.
When we arrived in Vnukavo Airport we were met by Masha from Caviar Lounge. We dropped the guys at their apartment and then she took me to mine. I ended up staying in a tiny little place very near to the pond where all much of the action in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita took place. I tried to sleep a bit but got sucked in by a “most insane video moments” type of show on TV. I ended up watching motorcycle jumps gone wrong, explosions and bullfighting accidents until it was time to leave for sound check.
The show in Moscow was meant to be the largest of the tour. It was to take place on March 8th, Women’s Day at a club called Apelsin. They had done a great job advertising the show. There were large billboards all over downtown Moscow. When we arrived for sound check, I was really happy with the club. It was a good size and was laid out in a comfortable way. Sound check went OK and then we all went back to our apartments to rest.
You can never be sure about how many people will show up for a show so I was really happy when we got back to the club and I saw that there were a lot of people there. I went out into the crowd and watched Misha’s band, Minerva play. It was only their 2nd show together. I thought they did a great job.
Our show was so much fun for me. The audience was amazing. I felt like I was in a warm shower. It was so pleasant. There were so many couples there because it was Woman’s Day. I think it was one of my favorite shows of all time.
We had some special guests come up to play. Alsoo, Minerva’s violin player came up and played Baltic Sea and Leo with me. She is a fantastic violinist. Misha came up and sang The Clouds in Camarillo with us. And Shura and Leova came by before their show at 16 Tonnes and we did a Russian/English version of their song Show Me How to Be Happy.
After the show, I signed a lot of CDs t-shirts and even a few arms, backs and bellies. There was a quite muscular but rather short man with a very tall, beautiful wife. I guess that she was a fan of Brazzaville so he brought her to our show for Woman’s Day. He wanted me to take a photo with her and he wanted me to put my arms around her and look a bit sexy. I did this but then , when she went to take a picture of him with me, I did the same thing to him. We all had a good laugh about it. My guys and I ate some food after that and then I went back to my little place for some rest. I said goodbye to them as they were heading back to Barcelona and I would be off to the Far East and Siberia without them. It was quite sad for me. I have really grown to love those guys over the last 4 years that we have been playing together. Ramon is a new addition to the band but he is a very kind person and I am really pleased that he’s in the band.
The following day I had some really funny Moscow experiences. I love the way that people can just raise their hand and any car will stop and act like a taxi. But I found out that it is good to try to get into a car with somebody who is familiar with Moscow. The first two rides I got were with an Uzbek and an Afghani. Neither one of them seemed to know their way around Moscow any better than I did. We drove around and around and they seemed unable to find the place I was looking for. I fared much better later when I was picked up by a giant in a really nice car. The guy was enormous. I gave him my mobile phone so that Misha could tell him where to take me and my phone looked like a stick of chewing gum in his hand. He was very friendly and charged me less than either of the other two guys.
That night I went to see Mikhail Boyarsky play at IKRA. I really enjoyed his show and was completely smitten with the song Green Eyed Taxi. It’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard and I really want to do an English version of it.

OK. That is where I will leave it for now. Soon I will write about the Far East, Siberia etc. I will say now that Vladivostok may be my favorite city in all of Russia

Poka,

David

VLADIVOSTOK

I’ve been fascinated with Vladivostok for many years. The idea of a Russian city on the Pacific, near Korea, China and Japan always seemed very poetic to me. I have been trying to book a show there for the past year and a half through a guy named Ruslan who is a friend of an American I know named Daniel Gotham. Dan and Ruslan organized a festival big rock festival called VladiROCKstok there in 1996. For this latest tour, Ruslan thought he had a sponsor that would bring out the whole band to play in Vlad and maybe Khabarovsk. In the end, the sponsor didn’t work out so I suggested that he just bring me out and I could play with some local guys. I’ve done that before in Turkey and the US. It can be a good first step toward getting the band out to a new city. In the end, Ruslan found me a band and set up 2 shows in Vladivostok and one in Khabarovsk.
The flight from Moscow took about 9 hours. I didn’t really get much sleep. I passed the time reading and asking the flight attendants how to say various words in Russian. I really tried to learn some more Russian on this tour and I feel like I know a lot more words now, though I am still far from being able to speak it.
It was early morning as we approached the airport. It was sunny and quite cold. Ruslan and his driver, Sasha, were there to meet me. While we were waiting for my luggage, I heard people speaking Spanish. It was a family from Burgos, Spain. They were in Vladivostok to adopt a child. They were going to be spending several weeks there. I have seen Europeans and Americans in many different Russian cities for the same reason during the course of our tours.
As we drove into town, Ruslan told me all kinds of interesting facts about Vladivostok. One of the best things he told me was that there was a large Korean population, which I knew meant that there must be some good Korean food in town. Korean food is one of my favorite cuisines. In L.A. there are tons of great Korean restaurants but in Barcelona it is impossible to get good Korean food, Ruslan also told me about the local music scene. He said that the 1990s were an exciting time in Vladivostok, with the emergence of rock and roll radio stations and local bands.
When we got into the city, I was overwhelmed with the magical quality of the hills, the crumbling soviet apartment blocks and the shipyards. It was like a city straight out of a Brazzaville song. We stopped on top of one of the hills and got out of the car to have a look at the view.
When we arrived at my hotel, the girl at the front desk said that there was a problem with my passport/visa registration. That is something that happens a lot in Russia. This girl was much meaner than most. I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep but she wouldn’t let them check me in. Finally, Ruslan was able to work out some kind of a temporary solution and she gave me my room key. I decided to give her a CD in an attempt to react to meanness with kindness. I find that it is often a good idea to respond to people that way. It can be like magic. When people are being unpleasant, they are expecting you to respond the same way. If you are kind to them, it is like some kind of magic that extends all through the day.
Ruslan took me to Syndicate to have some lunch before I went to sleep. The 2 shows I was scheduled to play in Vladivostok were at Syndicate and BSB Club. Syndicate was an upscale steakhouse with a 1920’s Chicago gangster theme. BSB was one of the first rock and roll clubs in Vladivostok. Both places were owned by Big Eddie; a huge, gentle guy with a moustache and kind eyes. I met Big Eddie and his partner, Andre at Syndicate. There was a large man who looked like he could rip your arm out eating at a table with a beautiful dark haired girl. Every now and then he would grab her and drag her around the dance floor in a wild tango. I later found out that he was some kind of a special-forces soldier who owned a large marketplace. He came to Syndicate almost every day and would grab different women and drag them around the dance floor. He was a true fan of the tango!
After lunch we went back to the hotel. The mean girl was still there. As we entered she looked up at us. She had been crying. She was listening to the version of The Clouds in Camarillo that I recorded with Misha from Minerva. She was overwhelmed by the song. It was then that I began to realize that that song might have a wider appeal than I had originally thought. Ruslan thought the whole thing was very funny.
While we were eating at Syndicate, I also got to check out the guys I was going to be playing with. There were 4 of them; a drummer, bass player/singer, a guitar player and a keyboard player. They were all very nice guys and seemed to play their instruments well. The following day we had a rehearsal together at the BSB club and I realized that they were from the kind of jazz school of learning songs, which is to say that they get the chords and the basic melody and don’t worry too much about the details. I explained to them that that would be good for my songs. I asked them to go home that night and try to learn the specific bass lines, guitar melodies, breaks etc. They did that and the next day things sounded a lot better.
My second day in Vladivostok, Ruslan took me to an English tea house called the 5 O’clock. It was owned by a guy from Manchester named Barry. He had been in Vladivostok for many years and was married to a Russian woman. The tea house was located on a walking street that began at the ocean and gently made it’s way up into the city. Ruslan told me that many years before, it had been the center of opium smoking, prostitution, gambling and drinking. It was near the water and was where all the sailors used to come when they were in town. When we arrived at the teahouse, Barry’s wife told us that he was in England. The place had a really cozy feel about it. It had a small lending library with books in English and Russian as well as travel guides to China and other neighboring countries. We ended up coming back to that little place several times during my stay. The last time we were there, I even got to meet Barry.

OK. I’ll leave it there for now and try to write some more soon. I leave to play 3 shows in Ireland tomorrow morning so the next installment might be a little while in coming. I’ll do my best to write about it while it’s fresh in my mind though.

Poka,

David

Vladivostok continued

Well it’s been quite a while since I wrote the last journal entry. After being on the road for about a month and a half, I needed some time to rest and get back to normal life here in Barcelona.
I’d like to continue the Vladivostok section with a story that Ruslan told me. He said that several years ago he was in the city of Komosomolsk-na-Amure and he wandered into an art gallery there. They had a show of Japanese paintings by a man named Miyamoto Tsutomu, who is one of Japan’s most well known painters. Ruslan asked the curator how it was that such a small Russian city was able to get the work of such a famous artist to display. They told him that Tsutomu did a show there once a year. They said that he had been a prisoner of war there during WWII and that a Russian prison guard named Vasyatin had taught him how to paint. Apparently, Tsutomu had been searching for that guard ever since the war’s end but had never been able to find him.
Ruslan told me this story one day when we were talking about life and how, sometimes, what seems like a bad situation can turn out to be a very good one.
The show at BSB Club turned out to be a lot of fun. There were lots of fans there and there were even people who had come from other Far eastern cities like Khabarovsk to see the show. The guys had gone home and really learned the songs so everything sounded a lot better than it had at sound check.
The following day we played at Syndicate. While I was sitting backstage with the band, I suddenly heard a strange sound coming from the direction of Kolya, the guitar player. It sounded like a baby dinosaur crying for it’s mother. It turned out to be the ringtone of Kolya’s mobile phone. It was a recording of his little cat meowing.
The show was a lot different than the BSB show. It was mostly quite wealthy people sitting at tables. The special forces/tango master was there, so was Big Eddie and Andre, his partner. There was a table of women sitting right in front of the stage. One of them was wearing a leopard print dress. After the show, I was standing at the bar, signing CDs and she approached me with a funny look on her face. I thought she wanted me to sign something. Then I thought she was going to kiss me on the cheek. Suddenly, she plunged her tongue into my mouth! I was shocked. She just laughed and walked away without saying a word.
Earlier that day, Ruslan had taken me out to the lighthouse. It was a ways outside the city, down an old dirt road. Right next to it was an amazingly high metal tower used for power lines or something. He told me about an 18 year old girl that he know who had climbed to the top of that tower to take photos. He said that she was an auto mechanic by trade.
To get to the lighthouse we had to walk out along a thin strip of land. On either side, there were still chunks of ice along the shore along with bits of fishing gear, old beer cans, used condoms and seashells. I have always loved beachcombing so I walked slowly along the shore, searching for little treasures. I had a vague idea that it might be fun to collect some stones in Vladivostok, on the far western edge of the Pacific and then throw them back in the water, the next time I’m in L.A. on the extreme eastern edge.
The day after the show at Syndicate, Ruslan and I went for a Korean lunch with a very kind local journalist named Natie. The food was fantastic but the real highlight of the place was the old man who worked at the coat check. Half of his teeth were made of gold. His hair was gray and cropped close to his head. He had a lovely, warm smile and he told stories about his days as a fisherman, fishing for crab between Russia and Alaska. He said that they used to steal the crab traps of the Japanese ships. When they would get caught, he said that the Japanese never did anything to the ordinary sailors on the Russian ships, but that they took the officers onto their ship and did very not nice things to them.
Ruslan told me that it was well known that there was a lot of treasure hidden in the old section of Vladivostok. He said that when the Red Army came to the city, nobody thought that they would be in power for very long, so many of the rich families hid the treasure that they couldn’t carry with them. He said that sometimes, when an old building is being demolished in the center of town, gold coins will go flying through the air when the wrecking ball strikes!
Later that day we were met by Sasha and some other friend’s of Ruslan’s. We went to the vintage car museum that Sasha had told me about on the drive in from the airport. It turned out that all of the cars and motorcycles had been restored by Sasha and his father. It was an amazing little museum. There was so much love and care put into the restoration of the vehicles that it gave it an even more wonderful feeling than if it had been a huge, well funded museum.
The weather began to turn. The wind started up and the sky became the color of pewter. I am ashamed that I can’t remember the name of the lovely guy and his girlfriend that took us to the next stop on our adventure. He is a friend of Ruslan’s. They worked together in radio for a long time. Anyway, we piled into his car and he drove us up to the top of a mountain known locally as The Refrigerator. Most people I spoke to in Vladivostok had never been up there. It was a kind of a military installation and to get up there we had to drive along a series of dirt roads with no signs to tell us which way to go. When we arrived at the top, it was snowing sideways. The wind was bitterly cold. We piled out of the car and walked around the hugs guns that were built into the ground. There was a 360 degree view of the city from up there. It was inpossible to remain outside for more than a few minutes so we took some photos, got back into the car and went back down the mountain.
OK. I will leave it there for now. Next stop, Khabarovsk!


KHABAROVSK

The evening sky was the color of pewter and it was raining lightly when Ruslan, his daughter Sasha and I entered the train station. We bought some biscuits and water for our journey from the woman in charge of our train car. Ruslan had brought some steamed broccoli as well. The compartment are designed for 4 people but luckily a 4th never appeared in ours and we all slept well on the way the Khabarovsk..
It was a beautiful sunny morning when we arrived. We were met by the promoter and driven to our hotel. Ruslan told me about the terrible chemical spill that had flowed down the river from China a year in late 2005. He also said that Khabarovsk had been voted “Russia’s Most Livable City”. It seem to be a very clean city compared to many I had visited.
We checked in to the hotel and decided to go for a walk someplace. The promoter took us to a beautiful park that ran along a bluff overlooking the partially frozen Amur River. As usual, Ruslan was an amazing source of historical information. We stopped by a monument that was surrounded by a circle of very thick, iron posts with a large chain strung between them. He told me that the posts were in fact cannons, buried tip down in the earth. It was a monument that was erected at the end of a long conflict. I can’t remember which one exactly.
From the park we continued on to the city center. It was beyond clean! It was spotless. We walked along the main boulevard and through a massive central square. At one point, our promoter pointed out a building to us. He explained that in the original design, the architects had included small balconies facing the street for each of the flats. At some point, the developer decided that it wasn’t wise to have balconies facing onto such a busy street, so the architect removed them from the plans. But he forgot to erase on of them and the building was built with a single balcony facing the street. We all looked up as he said this last bit and, sure enough, there was a single balcony seemingly placed at random about two thirds of the way up the building and a bit to the right of center.
We were met by a photographer and journalist who walked with us,, snapping photos and asking questions. They asked me if I liked to eat blini, the thin, crepe-like pancakes that are arguably, my favorite thing to eat in all of Russia. I told them that I LOVED blini and off we went to a kind of a blini fast food place.
While we were eating our blinis, I commented on the fact that Khabarovsk seemed to have a significantly larger population of gopniki than Vladivostok. Gopnik is the name that is given to the tough, young Russian guys who wear tracksuits, listen to chanson on their mobile phones and often end up spending a large amount of their lives in prison. Yes, they confirmed that Khabarovsk was in fact and bit more “gopish” than it’s southern neighbor.
Back at the hotel, I tried to rest a bit. I did a TV interview down in the lobby with a lovely journalist named Xeniya. Then Ruslan came to collect me and we went off to eat and sound check at the club. My Russian band met us there. They had driven through the night from Vladivostok but seemed to be in pretty good shape nonetheless.
I was amazed when we arrived at the venue. It was a brad new place and it was on the top of a building that was several stories tall. The thing that really blew my mind, was that the ENTIRE roof of the venue and the restaurant next door, was a skylight. It was like being in heaven. It was very funny because I had been thinking a lot about skylights during the tour. I had been wondering why human beings find the diffused light they create to be so comforting. I thought that maybe, it resembled some kind of light that we saw before we were born and that we might see again one day, after we die. Maybe it’s what light looks like from the inside of a star.
The show was a lot of fun. The people were very kind. Afterwards, we were taken out to eat Korean food with Mr. Kim. He was a very cool Russian guy of Korean descent. He had a mobile phone with a Formula One ring tone. So as we sat at dinner, the sound of a car passing at very high speed kept zooming through the dinner conversation.
The following day, Ruslan dropped me at the airport. I was booked on a flight to Novosibirsk on a regional airline called Minerale Voda or “Mineral Water”. It was actually an oddly comfortable flight with very good food for lunch.
The Russian Far East is definitely one of the most magical areas I have ever visited and I am really looking forward to returning there in the fall.

Poka,

David

Next stop, Novosibirsk!

NOVOSIBIRSK

It was a beautiful, sunny day when I arrived in Novosibirsk. There was a lot of snow on the ground and the sky was as blue as a backyard swimming pool. I was met at the airport by Ira,, a very sweet girl who works for Mansur, our promoter in Siberia. We got lost driving into the city. Eventually we found our way to the Hotel and I went upstairs to have a nap.
Misha arrived the next day. He had been in touch with a couple of fans from Novosibirsk named Masha and Julia who had offered to show us around. They ended up taking us to an amazing University campus located in the forest outside the city. The name of it was Akedemgorodok. There were trails through the forest with students walking silently along them through the snow. I tried my best to remember how to walk on snow and ice (I lived in Canada for almost 3 years as a boy) but I still ended up slipping and falling on my ass at one point. It was really painful but amazingly funny all at the same time.
The name of the club I was to play was called Wandering Dog. I was scheduled to play one show there and then another show at a private event for Cosmopolitan magazine. I didn’t know about that in advance so I was a little upset. Those kinds of things are rarely fun so the promoter agreed to book a second show at Wandering Dog since the first show was sold out.
After the outing in the forest, I went to the club to meet the guys I would be playing the shows with. I had sent them some mp3s a few days earlier. They ended up being really cool guys and good musicians. The most amazing of the bunch was a guy named Oleg who played keyboards. He had learned all of the songs perfectly and could also play the bass lines note for note with his left hand. At one point he even strapped some kind of a little percussion instrument to his foot and was keeping the backbeat going as well. He was like a one-man band. I think my favorite thing about him was that he wore the same shirt for 3 days in a row! He was man after my own heart.
The first show was a lot of fun. It was a smallish place with most of the people seated at tables. The crowd was very kind and enthusiastic. There was one woman in the audience who was, evidently, some kind of a singer. In between songs she would clap and whistle and then bust out with some Christina Aguilera style vocalizations at top volume. I was a bit taken aback and didn’t really know what to do, so I didn’t do anything. After the show, this woman, who was in her mid to late 30s and looked like a kind of a Bonnie Raitt style lady, came up and asked me for an autograph for her mother. Her mother was quite old and was missing half of her teeth. The ones that remained were ALL made of steel. I signed the CD for them and the daughter thanked me with a hug and then busted out with a full volume farewell vocalization.
There was a very young girl sitting at the front table all by herself. She had long black hair and looked to be in her late teens. After the show, she asked me for an autograph and a photo. She couldn’t speak English but she said the word, “zaftra”, which I knew meant, tomorrow in Russian. The next night, she was there again. After the show, she gave me a print of the photo from the day before as well as 5 beautiful, lavender colored roses. I asked her how old she was and she said 18……..in May. 17! I said. She laughed. I thanked her for the flowers and she left. Later, I had somebody translate the note that she had written on the back of the photo. It was a very kind message that basically said that Brazzaville’s music had helped through some hard times in her life. It means so much to me when I hear that because music did that for me, especially when I was a teenager.

Next stop Moscow

MOSCOW (3)

Mansur had booked us on an absurdly early flight from Novosibirsk to Moscow. As a rule, I hate early flights. I have so much anxiety about having to wake up early that I usually don’t get more than an hour or two of sleep the night before. I tried my best to change it but it would have cost us a fortune so we toughed it out.
When we arrived at the airport, the sunrise was so beautiful that it almost made it worth it to have to get up so early.
When we arrived in Moscow, we were met by Misha’s father, Yuri Korneev. Yuri works on the Russian space program and is an expert in communications technology. He was involved in the development of GPS. Misha also told me that, during the Soviet times, his dad used to make amplifiers for some of his friends who wanted to play rock and roll.
So there we are, arriving in Moscow for the third time. This time we were getting into Domodedovo, the most modern of the 3 moscow airports. Yuri was waiting for us looking every bit the scientist. He wore glasses, had a funny haircut and had a cigarette lighter on a string around his neck. He explained to me that it made it easier for him to light his cigarettes while driving.
There’s not a lot to say about that day in Moscow. We hung out for a while, killing time until we had to get on another flight to take us to Kazan.

KAZAN

When we got off the plane in Kazan, we were ushered into a VIP van and taken to the terminal along with our luggage. I was surprised. I had never had that happen before. It was all the doing of Ludmila, possibly the nicest promoter I have ever met. She didn’t speak any English but Misha told me that she had a couple of kids and that she knew that I also had children. She gave me some really beautiful little hand-made dolls for my kids. She had also booked us into the Guissepe Hotel, a really beautiful place that is owned by an old Italian man who is married to a woman from Kazan.
Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan, which is a Muslim republic. It is a beautiful city, but is still a bit rundown looking, although, like much of the rest of Russia, there is a lot of development going there at the moment.
I slept like a baby in the Giussepe and the following morning, Misha and I took a walk through town. I bought some things for the family and we ate blini in a local place. As we were walking down a shopping street we were handed a flyer by a goth chick inviting us to visit some kind of a mini museum. It was right around the corner so we decided to check it out. It ended up being a small, rundown storefront, filled with all manner of disgusting items, severed hands in jars, torture machines etc. The place hadn’t been swept and it was so cold that you had to wear your coat inside. It was definitely the type of place you would never run into in the west.
The show was in a club named after a famous, Bolshevik poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky. In the bathrooms, instead of music, there was a recording of him reading his poems. He had an amazing voice.
There is a strange thing that happens sometimes. A promoter will call before we arrive in their town and tell us, “Guys, the show is sold out! I just sold the last ticket”. We’ll all be really happy and then when the gig starts, the place will be half full. I don’t know why that happens but it seems to from time to time. Anyway, that’s what happened in Kazan. She had called us to say that the show was sold out and then the place was half full at show time. Honestly, I was really exhausted by the time we got to Kazan. I had been on the road for a month and had traveled all the way across the largest country on earth. I did my best to play a good show but I fear that my weariness showed through.
After the show, Ludmila drove us to the airport and we got on a plane for Moscow. We were met at the airport by Vanya, Misha’s friend who co-wrote The Clouds in Camarillo. He dropped us at Misha’s apt. and Misha realized that he had lost his house keys. Anyone who has ever been to Russia will know that people’s front doors are solid hunks of steel that look like they could withstand a nuclear blast so without the key, you’re just not getting in. Misha’s dad was 150 kms outside the city at their dacha so getting the key from him would take a few hours at best. In the end, I just ended up getting a hotel room so that I could get a little bit of sleep before having to fly home to Barcelona.
OK. That’s it. I finally finished the Russian tour journal! Next stop, Bucharest!

Questions for David Brown / Aktüel

1-) You often come to Turkey and give lots of concerts. Even you made video clip in Istanbul. What does Istanbul mean for you? What kind of people did you meet in here?

I love Istanbul. I think it is one of the most interesting cities in the world. I find the combination of Europe and Asia very compelling. I am also fascinated by shipping. When I was a boy, my father was a truck driver and sometimes I would go with him in his truck to the shipyards. We would pick up shipping containers from the big cargo ships and drive them to the train yards. I love the fact that Istanbul has a constant flow of ships passing through the Bosphorus all day and night.
I also really like riding across the bridge in a Dolmush late at night.

I have some good friends in Istanbul. People like Aylin Güngor and James Hakan Dedeoglu from Bant magazine have become lifelong friends of mine. The audiences are wonderful in Turkey. They are very kind and warmhearted.


2-) Two years ago, you played with Dandadadan. What do you know about Turkish music?

I don’t know much. I had a great time playing with those guys. They were wonderful. I’ve listened to lots of Turkish music and really enjoy it. I don’t know what most of it is though because I mostly listen to mixes Aylin and James make for me.

3-) Year of 2003 is landmark for you. You moved in Barcelona. Why did you choose Spain? Did you get bored from America? In your last album “East L.A. Breeze”, I saw that you are longing for the past… Isn’t it?

Yes, 2003 was a very important year in my life. Moving to Barcelona was really just an intuitive decision. I felt that life in L.A. had become a bit predictable and I longed for something different. As it turned out, it was a good decision because I am very happy here.
I did write a lot of songs about Los Angeles on East L.A. Breeze. They are mostly about the Los Angeles that I grew up in in the 1980s. The L.A. of taking the bus down to the beach and going up to Hollywood to see bands during my teenage years. I think that it is possible to appreciate your home more when you are living far away from it. I was really tired of L.A. when I left but now, sometimes I remember the Santa Ana winds that would blow in off the desert and bring the smell of sagebrush and sand with it on warm nights. I remember eating Vietnamese food down in Chinatown on a smoggy day. I remember driving on the freeways late at night listening to KPFK broadcasting old lectures of Alan Watts. All of these memories make me nostalgic for L.A. but in reality, I am much happier living in Barcelona.

4-) You have given concerts lots of countries since today. So, Do you like travelling?

I love traveling. I have loved it ever since I was a small child. It’s probably my Jewish half that likes to wander so much.

5-) You worked with Macy Gray, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen. They are biggest musician. Can you explain these experiences? What do you feel while you are playing with?

I never worked with Macy Gray. I shook her hand once in London and it was covered in
7-Up. I have a terrible fear of stickiness so it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I’ve never worked with Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen either, although I have actually shaken hands with both of them as well. Tom Waits had the hand of a laborer while Leonard Cohens was quite soft, like an aristocrat.

6-) When will you release the sixth studio album? What do you say about it?

It’s already done and I will bring copies to sell at our shows in Turkey.

Interview-NTV-MSNBC-Turkey


1. When you were playing with Beck, how did the idea of Brazzaville come to your mind?

-I played with beck from 1997 until 2000. In the early and mid 90s I was really focused on playing the sax and listening to jazz. I kind of ignored much of the other stuff that was going on around then. When I was a teenager I listened to a lot of groups like the Clash, Magazine, The Cure, The Smiths, Mad Professor. I also wrote a lot of poetry. When I started to play with Beck, those two sides of me became re-awakened and I decided to form a new band that I would call Brazzaville.

2. Were you not happy with Beck? How was the time when you quit Beck and form Brazzaville? In my opinion, you don’t like being so popular and ordinary success. But Beck became very popular. Did you have any problems on this?

I had a great time playing with Beck. We traveled the world and became like a family. The music was great and we got to make a lot of people happy at the shows. I actually formed Brazzaville and recorded the first 2 albums while I was still playing with Beck. It was OK for recording Brazzaville but I wasn’t able to tour because I was always on the road with Beck.
I think that success is a great thing but that it can also be dangerous. The more people who can enjoy our music, the better, but when fame makes a person become somebody else, somebody they may not like so much, then it is a bad thing. Success for Brazzaville is OK now because I am already 40 years old and have a better idea of who I am. It’s like Willie Nelson. He was quite old before he got famous and he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. It’s when you get hugely famous when you are young that there is a great danger of completely losing your mind.

3. How do you describe the place where Brazzaville locates in global music industry and art?

I think that Brazzaville has one of the most bizarre and wonderful careers ever! We get to go to all kinds of odd and interesting places. We’ve been all over Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Kazakhstan. We’ve even been invited to play in Romania and Moldova! It’s alike a dream come true for me because I love to go to places I’ve never been before. We also play in more normal places like New York, L.A. Barcelona, Amsterdam etc. and those shows are a lot of fun as well.
I think that I had a certain idea of how I wanted my music career to unfold, and it didn’t turn out that way. I am very grateful that it didn’t because I think I am much happier with the way it has turned out. I think that God, or the Universe, or whatever you want to call it, has a plan for all of us and that the easiest way to be happy is to try to align ourselves with whatever that plan turns out to be.

4. You are much more like a European. Where do you feel you come from?

That’s an interesting question. I think that I am very much a product of the neighborhood I grew up in in Los Angeles. It was in the center of the city. It was very urban and was mostly immigrants from Mexico, The Philippines, Korea, Armenia etc. there weren’t a lot of half Jewish, white boys like me! Anyway, it was a wonderful place to grow up. There were gangs and drugs and all the usual problems of a big American city but we used to take the bus to the beach and wander the streets late at night and get into all kinds of adolescent adventures. I write a lot about that period of my life. The Los Angeles of today is a lot different from the way it was back then.
I do feel very comfortable living in Europe now, though. I definitely prefer it to America.

5. What’s the main thing that attaches you to Istanbul?

I have some good friends in Istanbul. I love the food and I love the Bosphorus. I love the sound of the call to prayer in the early morning. I think that that is one of those things that would seem very ordinary to somebody who grew up in Istanbul but that is really magical to a foreigner like me.

6. Could you tell us what’s your favorite 3 thing about Istanbul?

1-The melody that the women’s voices make when they are speaking Turkish. To me it sounds different from the men. It’s the same in Japan. The men and the women speak the same language, but the spoken version sounds different when spoken by men and women. Turkish spoken by a woman is extremely beautiful.

2-The mussel shells filled with rice and lemon juice.

3-The ships going through the Bosphorus.

7. Do you like any Turkish bands?

I don’t really know many other than Baba Zula, Dandadadan and Bedroom Drunk. They are all quite good.

8. We’ve heard that you are going to work with Deniz Cuylan. Could you tell us what’s going to be? How does D.Cuylan affect your music?

Well, he is doing his military service right now and won’t be back until may. We were planning to make a record together in June but let’s see how he feels when he gets back from the army. I’ve never worked with him before so I have no idea what effect he will have on my music. I’m sure it will be a positive effect tough.

9. How do you feel and what do you see when you are on the stage?

The truth is that I remember very little from the shows. I think that I go into a special mental state onstage because I never have to pee when I’m onstage (and I usually pee all the time because I drink so much sparkling water) and then I never remember the shows very well afterwards. I used to think that it was because I drank so much but I stopped drinking more than 5 years ago and I still don’t remember the shows very well.


10. Is there any difference between when you are playing solo and with your band?

Of course there is. The band shows are a lot louder and more musically complex. The solo shows tend to be more intimate, kind of like sitting around in your living room with a group of friends.

Thanks a lot for the insightful questions. See you in Istanbul!

Un abrazo,

David





We are looking forward to see you here. Good luck and thanks for your time...

Zeynep YAYINOGLU
BILLBOARD TURKEY

Le Cool (Barcelona) Jan 27th, 2008

concert Brazzaville

Reasons to see Brazzaville: they are from Los Angeles, they’ve recorded in BCN, their leader David Brown was a saxophonist for Beck, the New York Times has compared them to Tom Waits, Morphine and Tindersticks, the New York Times hinted that they sound a bit like Belle and Sebastian, The Velvet Underground and The Clash (but in reality no one really sounds like them!), they have a new album, their songs are epics that demonstrate a beautiful immediacy, they know how to be a stage presence, they are invigorating without being false…and most of all you are going to discover one of the city’s best kept secrets that will blow your friends away. They are playing at Helio but soon will be taking off for Istanbul. Oh, and the show only costs 5 euros. And because you are worth it!/ Lluís de Nadal Transl. by Teresa Silva

Brazzaville - Heliogàbal 27-01/08

Miércoles, 30 de Enero, 2008 • Jordi Punto

Noches de domingo diferentes. Eso es lo que ofrece el club Heliogábal, en pleno barrio de Gràcia de Barcelona. Así, el domingo pasado se pudo disfrutar de un concierto de buena música en el que el primero en tocar fue Peter Thompson, un cantautor que lo hizo bastante bien según me comentó una chica guapa que conozco. Me fiaré de ella pues llegué demasiado tarde como para poder comprobarlo por mí mismo.

Pero lo que importa es que llegué a tiempo de ver en directo a Brazzaville. Ésta es una de esas bandas que se disfrutan más en un pequeño club que en un gran escenario, debido sobretodo a su formato (voz suave, guitarra acústica pero enchufada, contrabajo, batería, órgano y percusiones). Brazzaville es la banda del que fuera durante años el saxofonista de Beck, David Brown, el cual fichó a tres miembros catalanes con el fin de redirigir un proyecto que nació en Los Angeles allá por 1998.

Con varios discos editados, la ocasión del show en el Heliogábal era la de presentar su último trabajo, “East LA Breeze”, antes de embarcarse en una gira que les llevará a tierras tan lejanas como Estambul, San Petersburgo, Moscú o Dublín. Seguro que los turcos, rusos e irlandeses también saben apreciar el feeling que desprende la música de esta banda al igual que lo hicieron los barceloneses, los cuales llenaron el club e incluso se quedó gente fuera sin poder entrar por estar abarrotado el aforo.

Formada en un porcentaje del 40% por estadounidenses y en un 60% por músicos catalanes, Brazzaville mezcla en su sonido las cualidades del pop, del rock y del jazz. De hecho, David Brown parece un auténtico crooner de los de antes, con su chupa de cuero, sus tejanos, la acústica colgando del cuello, la barba de una semana y el pelo despeinado. Eso sí, supo conectar perfectamente con el público asistente gracias a unas cuantas frases en castellano y algún que otro baile sin complejos.

Lo dicho, un show agradable y un ambiente de buen rollo para una noche de domingo diferente. No se me ocurre una forma mejor para acabar la semana.

BARCELONA, Jan. 2008

It's been a very long time since I have written anything in the journal. We have had the whole website redone recently by the great Mark Wrafter. This will make it much easier for me to add photos, journal entries etc. Also, we now have a proper online shop! You can now buy almost all of our CDs directly from us. I'll even sign them if you like. In addition, we're going to be selling songbooks and t-shirts.

We have a lot of fun shows coming up. We'll be in Holland (great cheese!!!!!), Turkey, Russia, Ireland and most likely the USA this summer. I promise I will keep journals about all of those tours and post them in a timely fashion.

So, Happy New Year to all of our fans! 8 was always my favorite number as a child and I still quite like it.

RUSSIA- GLOBAL WARMING TOUR Jan 27TH-Feb 9TH 2007