NZ Musician

London
There is a permanence about the place (future societies will discover the brick ruins, along with calcified fried chicken remains and Damien Hurst’s Golden Calf perfectly preserved in formaldehyde amongst an English midden), but there is also a constancy in the power that the city holds over our imagination. Anything can happen here, for better or for worse, London giveth in vivid detail, deep and filthy, the all-devouring matriarch.
We are here to meet up with our estranged band mate, the indefatigable Myele Manzanza [see NZM June/July 2008]. Accepted into the 2010 Red Bull Music Academy, he’s been party to lectures by the likes of Roots Manuva and Moodymann, recorded with Hudson Mohawke and generally living it up in 40 Europe. Feeling left out, myself; keyboardist Taay Nihn and soundman Benny Tones have made the arduous pilgrimage across oceans, completely fabricated cities (Dubai International Soul Vacuum) and time itself.
Tuesday 6th
We are straight into rehearsals, nigh on five months from our last performance. Feeling rusty, like grass that has been covered over for a few months. A bit of sun is doing us good, around 25 we have rolled into England with precise meteorological timing. So good to see Myele again, I love his inquisitive, all-in, speak-your-mind approach. He recounts his experience of the Red Bull Academy, and of living and playing in the US with the likes of Roy Hargrove and Taj Mahal.
Wednesday 7th
Our first gig is a club called Gramophone in Shoreditch. The place resembles a brick oven with a huge system in a confined space. I imagine being trapped in a microwave, with the potential of being cooked. Carry earplugs at all times. Joy Orbison is killer; for a minute now he’s been creating that real London dance sound, termed by Giles Patterson as ‘emotional electronic music’.
Thursday 8th
We’re over in Notting Hill, West London – a very diverse neighbourhood. I’m told this area was the old ghetto for Black English, Jamaican and Irish. It is also the home of Trojan Records’ UK faction. Nowadays it’s million-pound-property, developed up hard out. The club we are playing is called Mau Mau and it’s one of the last live music venues in the area, the rest have been systematically shut down or discouraged from hosting live music. It was therefore in no way a coincidence that we were shut down halfway through our set for posing an ‘environmental hazard’, whatever that means. I guess we were burning trees in the street. It couldn’t have been a neighbour’s complaint, because they were all there with us.
Friday 9th - Austria
After leaving our suspiciously ‘crackish’ accommodation in West London, we view sun up from a black cab on our way to the airport. We are headed across the English Channel to Vienna, Austria – I hear it has a good scene for beats music. I’ve never performed in a Planetarium before. An Austrian cosmologist beams pictures overhead of Wolf-Rayet 22, a dying star (loss of solar mass due to extreme stellar wind) 5,000 light years or 50,000 trillion km away. In the theme park next door we eat the most obscene meal, a leg of roast pork per man, served with potatoes done three different ways, pickled cabbage and horseradish. We decide to take a doggy bag to Germany, and continue eating our pig legs over the next 24 hours after managing to clear them through customs.
Saturday 10th - Germany
Frankfurt is one of Germany’s smaller cities at just 2.3 million. We are taken to an industrial area near to the city’s docklands. In the middle of it all is a man-made private lake. So into this bourgeois swim club steps one very hot and flustered Maori, intent on swimming in that damn lake, whatever the consequences (dragged out by the villain from Universal Soldier yelling at me in German). Thankyou, goodnight.
Sunday 11th - Poland
Ever heard of Poznan? Neither had I until last year when we met a young Pole in Warsaw, writing his masters thesis on Sun Ra. He invited us to play on Malta Lake in West Poland; designed for competitive boating and a true example of Eastern Bloc public space. The whole country could hang out in this arena and still have space to drag a tank or two. Unfortunately the whole country didn’t show up. Reasons for this could include that we were playing during the final of the World Cup.
Monday 12th
On our way into Berlin I see the strangest sight so far on tour. We pass a very regular looking paddock at one end of which stands a metal sculpture of a bull – just a regular bovine sort of creature, except scaled up by a factor of 2 and made of iron – with a 5-point star welded to its back, adorned with Christmas lights. Now in one corner stood a very dejected looking bull while a harem of cows crowded around this shining metal bull that had become the default alpha male. You can’t fight technology.
The city itself is happening. There exists a very palpable kind of freedom, the energy of the wall coming down is still active. They know how to look after their own the Germans: the water is perfect straight out of the tap, the country’s sandy soil means a huge amount of ground water – no chlorine or fluoride mind control here. Mean as bike lanes and a reliable tram system. You can have a beer in the park while playing table tennis. We have a few days of much of needed rest.
Friday 16th - Holland
After playing to Churchill-faced English tourists on a pub-crawl through Berlin, we depart Germany by train, final stop Amsterdam. I leave my wallet on one of the carriages with 200 Euro inside. Our first gig is about an hour southwest of Amsterdam in Den Haag, a beachside community of temporary restaurants and clubs. Every venue must completely dismantle their establishment at the end of summer, and rebuild it the following year _ a labour intensive policy, but its strength is that they don’t have permanent development uglying up the coastline.
Monday 19th
Our final gig is at Sugar Factory in Amsterdam, A dope place to play – the kind of venue that Wellington is missing, a 400-capacity, medium-sized club. I have to say that we have met some amazing people on this tour; it is helpful to have another perspective on your work. Three weeks is a good amount of time to tour I reckon, especially if you have commitments at home, also good for band morale. It’s back to the true joys of family life for me, but not before two days in a confined space, strapped to a TV screen.