It was starting to get dark as we headed east on the I-20. We decided that we had time to stop and get a coffee as we didn’t have to play our first show until the following night.  Kenny pulled out his trusty Android phone and searched for “coffee”. This would end up being our most popular GPS search on the tour. Many a morning we would hit the open road and Kenny would send our little plea into the vast Google brain and we would be shepherded to the nearest espresso bar. Anyway, on our maiden coffee search, Google had it wrong and there was no Starbucks where they said there was.  We ended up having to use our own brains ( a seemingly  antiquated activity in the age of the smart phone) and found a Borders with a cafe inside.

  Back on the I-20, I was struck by the amount of Kudzu (aka The vine that ate the South) climbing the tall trees. It’s really beautiful and looks like something out of Where The Wild Things Are. We were both wondering where it came from originally so Kenny looked it up on his Android and discovered that it comes from Japan and Southeast China. I remember the days when a person would have to make a special trip to the library or pull some huge encyclopedia off the shelf to get that kind of information.

  The hosts for our very first house concert were Beth and Brian, both South Carolina natives. They had a beautiful, large house in a suburb of Columbia called Lexington. They gave each of us our own rooms to sleep in and free run of the kitchen. They had an amazing back yard with a large lawn ending in a stand of trees that made you feel like you were in the country.  I was amazed by the number of birds, bugs and other creatures in South Carolina.  The amount of living things flying, buzzing and singing was downright tropical in its intensity. Most magical of all were the fireflies. For a California boy like me, who grew up without them, their presence is almost supernatural.

  Our very first show was fun, but not very well attended. Most of the people there were friends and family of our hosts and some of them never even came upstairs to see the show.  A couple of original Brazzaville fans from our 2002 tours of the East Coast did show up.  They are lovely people aptly named Wavy Davy and Wacky Jackie.   Financially, the show was a bit of a disaster so both Kenny and I started to get an ominous feeling in the pits of our stomachs. This was the first show and if it was any indication of what was to follow, we were going to lose quite a large amount of money. But we were committed! We were all in! We were on the open road and happy to be there.  So with this spirit of optimism and adventure we thanked our hosts and headed south, toward the glorious city of Charleston.

Charleston, South Carolina May 23^rd-May 26^th

  Kenny had always told me that Charleston was one of the most magical cities in America. It’s very old by US standards, originally founded in 1670 under the name Charles Towne. It became known as the Holy City because of the large number of churches there.  It was known for it’s religious tolerance, even allowing Jews to practice!

  Kenny and I rolled into town in our trusty Subaru at about 1pm on Sunday, May 23^rd. We were led to our host’s house by the aloof, feminine voice of our GPS girl.  We ended up naming her Stella and we would shout and scream all kinds of obscenities at her when she would lead us astray. This was especially true in Washington DC, but more about that later.

  Our main shows in Charleston were arranged by a guy named Joshua Fisher. A fan that we met back on the East Coast tours of 2002, Joshua was a red haired Charleston native who came from a railroad family. He exuded an energy and an excitement that was infectious. He played classical guitar back when we first met and in the intervening years, had become involved in various art projects as well as managing classical musicians. He lived in a charming old house on a little dead end street in downtown Charleston. It was one of those crumbling beauties that one sees all over the center of town. Across the street from him was an auto detailing shop that had gone out of business.

  Joshua greeted us warmly and to my delight asked if I would like a sparkling water! It turned out that he was as addicted to the stuff as I am. Joshua had a roommate named Chin Chin, a cellist originally from Shanghai but who had grown up in Montevideo, Uruguay. He was quite tall with poreless, Chinese skin and an engaging smile. I asked him if he would like to play a couple of songs with us and he was into the idea so we sat down and I showed him the string parts to Peach Tree and Teenage Summer Days.

  I had sent out an email to all of the hosts asking them to locate the nearest lap pool so that I could swim on a semi regular basis during the tour. Unbelievably, Joshua, Chin Chin and an amazing classical guitarist named Marco had an informal swimming club that would meet every morning to do laps in an Olympic size pool near Joshua’s house.

I’ll describe that in a little bit.  First, back to the events of the 23^rd.

  Joshua took us over to Tully Alley, a complex of colonial era houses owned by a book publisher named Bob and his brother.  They had bought these places back when the area was a virtual no man’s land of crack dealers and street crime.  In what can only be considered a stroke of genius, Bob and his brother decided to give the front house to a cop, rent-free for a year.  Needless to say, the crack dealers moved elsewhere pretty quickly and the street became much safer. This was back in the early 90s.  Bob and his brother really believed that it was much better to have a healthy, racially mixed neighborhood rather than a gentrified one where all of the black families had been driven out. Their neighborhood today reflects this vision.  There are lots of thriving businesses, including an overpriced but amazingly good coffee spot! And there are lots of black families, mostly homeowners whose properties have vastly increased in value thanks to Bob and his brother, who still live and work in the neighborhood.

  Anyway, I digress. Tully Alley was like an oasis of southern charm.  Bob’s place was behind a black, wooden gate. The first thing we saw upon entering was a koi pond with some good-sized fish and a couple of frogs sitting on lotus leaves. A bit farther along was a little lap pool bordered on two sides by beautiful stands of dark green bamboo. Joshua had arranged for us to stay in the pool house there and the show was to be held just across from it in the lower level of Bob’s house.  The room we were going to play in had large French doors that looked out onto the koi pond. Everything had been beautifully arranged with chairs and a PA.  Just as we were setting up a glorious thunderstorm hit and cooled everything down a bit.

  There was a great mix of people at the show. There were book publishers, artists, film makers classical musicians and even a poet/songwriter/professor from the university named Paul Allen.  He seemed to be the karmic balance for the other Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft). I had the pleasure of seeing him perform with his guitar a few nights later.  I’ve been in the presence of the Microsoft Paul Allen a couple of times over the years at events that I played with Beck and although he has billions of dollars, the poet Paul Allen seems to laugh a lot more. I can imagine how it could make a person feel lonely to have that kind of a fortune.

  We played two shows that night.  They were both absolutely magical for me.  The setting, the moist southern air, the crowd and getting to play with one of my oldest and dearest friends made it a night I will never forget.  Chin Chin sat in with us on the two songs we had worked out earlier in the day.  He was magnificent.  I was impressed by the way he would take a deep breath just before playing a phrase.  Obviously, I used to do that when I played the sax but it interesting that a cellist would do the same thing. I asked him about it later and he told me that breathing is a very important part of playing the cello.

  Kenny and I slept like babies that night.  He had the downstairs and I had the upstairs. The ceiling was quite low upstairs so I had to be careful not to get decapitated by the overhead fan.

  Joshua and I had arranged to go swimming the morning after the show. I went to pick him up at about 9 AM.  Chin Chin came along as well. As we drove, the neighborhood got more and more sketchy, complete with guys sitting on corners giving me the “what you need?” look universal to all drug neighborhoods. Soon we arrived at the pool.  It was a public lap pool, 50 meters long, outdoor, cleaner than any I’ve been in a long time.  The staff was super friendly in a way that one just doesn’t ever find in Barcelona. There were hardly any people there so we didn’t even have to share lanes.  Marco, the Uruguayan, classical guitarist was already finishing up his swim by the time we arrived.

  After our swim, Joshua, Marco and I headed over to a supermarket to buy some supplies. On our way over, Joshua asked me about how my ship tour project was going. I told him that I hadn’t really been working on for a while. Just at that moment I turned left  so that we were driving in the direction of the port and suddenly, directly in front of us, was a gigantic car carrier ship with the word HOEGH written across the side. Thomas Hoegh is a venture capitalist living in London.  He is from a very important shipping family in Norway. He is the first person to ever really support my ship tour idea, even to the point of investing a bit of money toward it. I had never actually seen one of his family’s ships before and I took that moment as a sign that I should get back to work on the ship idea.

  The basic idea is to buy an old freighter, retrofit it with extra cabins and a recording studio and tour the world with a couple of other bands.  The shows would be on the deck of the ship and the crowd would be assembled on land next to it. It would be great for the artists because we would only need to unpack out suitcases once per tour and we could be working on a new record as we travel.  It would be good from a business standpoint because the ship would replace all of the trucks, buses, planes and hotels that represent the majority of tour expenses for a band.  And most of all, it would be an adventure!

  That night we had another house concert planned at the home of Hollie Anderson, an old friend of Kenny’s who was responsible for bringing us to Charleston the first time back in 2002. She used to be a prominent figure on the radio but had since switched over to print at the Charleston City Paper.

  Holly and her boyfriend lived in a brand new house in a suburb of Charleston called _____.  They temperature inside was downright glacial in stark contrast to the heat and humidity outside.  I was freezing and I asked Kenny if we could have them turn down the AC a bit.  He is from Miami and he said that that was just the way it was in the south and we needed to accept it. So I put on my jacket and scarf and got down to the business of setting up for the gig.

  Hollie’s friends were much different from the folks at the first gig. Some of her neighbors came by as well. There was a man who lived next door who was in the US military and was on his way to Iraq. He bought a CD to take with him.  He was involved in transport.  I asked him about the many military transport planes that I had been seeing taking off from Charleston since our arrival.  He explained that Charleston was some kind of a hub and that they sent lots of equipment to Germany from there.  They used large American planes but also a HUGE Russian plane called the Antonov An-225, the world’s largest fixed wing aircraft.

   The crowd was very kind, especially considering that most of them were new to our music. This was the first show on the tour that we were doing without a PA. The house was quite large and I don’t have a very loud voice so I was a little bit worried.  In the end, the show was really fun. The people sang along and we ended up selling lots of CDs and t-shirts.

  That night I turned in early, as I wanted to hit my morning swim club with Joshua, Chin Chin and Marco the following day. I think it was on this second day of swimming that my old bathing suit had what can only be described as a catastrophic failure. I finished my laps and climbed out of the pool. I talked to Joshua for a while and I think I even kibbitzed with some of the life guards before walking off in the direction of the changing rooms. I took off my bathing suit in the shower and couldn’t believe what I saw.  The seam that runs vertically up the rear of the suit had failed completely and there was a 6 inch long gash hanging open.  All I could imagine was what I must have looked like casually strolling around like that! Joshua and Chin Chin claimed they didn’t notice anything but they were probably just being kind.

  On our last day in Charleston, We got an offer to play one last show at a coffee house in the center of town.  After the show we went out with Joshua, Chin Chin, Marco and some other folks for Mexican food. Kenny and I had a long drive to DC the next morning so I decided to turn in early. It was bittersweet to lay down in my comfortable bed in the pool house for the last time.  Our time in Charleston had been so memorable and I felt that we had made such good friends there that I felt sad to be leaving. But I also knew that there would be many adventures ahead and that we would return to this wonderful city one day.

Next stop...Washington DC!

House Concert Journals 2010

  I’d like to begin this journal entry by saying that this tour was really an experiment.  I had no idea what to expect. I was inspired by the apartment concerts in the Soviet Union

played by guys like Victor Tsoy and Boris Grebenshikov in the 70s and 80s. As I began to plan the tour I read that there was already a movement going on in the US of people playing house concerts but I really didn’t know how well it would work for us. I sent out an email to our various fan lists asking if anyone would be interested in holding a show at their house and the response was overwhelming.

    The tour ended up exceeding all of my expectations. It was truly one of the most inspiring and pleasant tours I have ever been on. Our hosts were very kind and hospitable and I feel like we made a lot of new friends. In many ways the house concert format seems like a return to the way live music was presented for hundreds of years. It feels very natural and rewarding.

  I’ve been back in Barcelona for a few days now and my jet lag has subsided to the point where I feel like I can begin to write down a general overview of the tour.

Atlanta, May 21^st

  My flight from Barcelona arrived in Atlanta in the early afternoon. Outside, a big thunderstorm was brewing in the distance.  Kenny’s flight wasn’t due for another 4 hours so I began to explore the airport a bit. I passed a restaurant with a guy playing piano out front.  He was a thin, middle-aged black man with straightened hair and an engaging smile.  He was playing Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely and he winked at me when he saw the guitar on my back. I’ve always loved the familial feeling that sometimes exists among musicians, like a kind of brotherhood that lives just outside the fringes of society. It’s not an easy life, but it’s a beautiful one.

  After listening to the piano player for a little while and dropping some money in his tip jar I made my over to the Starbucks to get some coffee.  I remember, years ago making a derogatory remark about Starbucks to Mark Sandman from the band Morphine.  He laughed and said “Don’t you remember what it was like trying to get coffee on the road before Starbucks existed?” Since then, I’m grateful that they are so ubiquitous.

  I saw a band setting up in a round, central hang out area. There was a large skylight above it and it created a really nice light. The band was made up of middle aged, black jazz musicians.  They were fantastic players. There was a drummer, upright bass, keyboards and the leader who played tenor sax. When the keyboard player saw me, he smiled and made a motion with his hands asking if I’d like to sit in.  I laughed and shook my head. I was never even that good on the sax but the thought of me trying to play jazz on guitar was ridiculous. They began playing a song that I knew but had forgotten about.  The melody and the chord progression took me back years and years to Los Angeles in the early 90s. I couldn’t remember what tune it was but it was so familiar, like an old friend that I had forgotten all about. When the sax player finished his solo, I walked up and asked him what song it was. “Red Clay” he said. “Freddy Hubbard!” I answered and we both laughed. The very first time I recorded anything, it was that song.  I loved it so much that I named my first band Red Clay!

  After a while I made my way over to the arrival hall to wait for Kenny. There was a man who worked for the airport who’s job it was to keep people behind the line while they waited.  But he was also kind of a stand up comic and he made jokes about all the bleary faced travelers as they arrived. I really miss that type of person.  You don’t find those things so much in Europe.

  As I was waiting I struck up a conversation with a group of students from South America.  We were speaking in Spanish and they laughed and told me that I had a really strong Barcelona accent. They were all in the US on tennis or golf scholarships.

  Finally I saw Kenny’s 6’ 4”, white boy afro silhouette coming up the escalator. He’s one of my oldest and dearest friends and I was so happy to see him. We made our way over to Hertz and were helped by an Indonesian woman. She hooked us up with a brand new Subaru that only had 300 miles on it.  This became one of the themes on the tour, brand new rental cars!

TURKISH NEWSPAPER INTERVIEW- Oct. 22nd 2009

1-First of all, congratulations on your new album “Brazzaville in Istanbul”. I listened to it a couple of times, and it seems like you have a talent for picking up different things that you like from different types of music...

Thank you very much.

2-I read in your Myspace page that “you always felt as if you were at a kind of cultural crossroads, as if you didn’t really belong anywhere and thus felt at home almost everywhere”. Where does this feeling come from, and do you think it is an advantage for a musician?

My mother had serious mental problems so the state placed me in a foster home when I was a child. After that, I lived with my grandmother for a while, then my father for a couple of years, then the family of a friend from school, then as a runaway, then with the family of another friend from school. At the age of 16 I was expelled from school so I  got a job and an apartment in Hollywood.  The area of L.A. I grew up in was very culturally diverse with many Latinos, Asians, Blacks etc.  White kids were almost non-existent. I quite enjoyed it but at the same time, I never quite felt that I fit in very well. That said, I think it made me feel much more at home around different types of people than a person who grew up in a homogenous society.

  Yes, I think that this is an advantage for any artist. I think that, historically, bards and wandering minstrels would travel around collecting stories and singing them for the “settled” people in the towns. They seemed like maybe they didn’t belong anywhere but felt at home everywhere as well.

3-You are from Los Angeles originally but now you live in Barcelona, and during your career, you have performed in cities that are very different culturally. Do you like to pursue your influences or do they find you as you travel?

  I think I take a sort of “daydreamer” approach to creating.  I try not to focus too hard. I enjoy letting the wind blow me where it will.  I find that my own ideas of what I should be doing are generally pretty mundane, whereas if I just let go and see where the world takes me, I end up in all sorts of interesting places with interesting people.  It’s the same with songwriting.  I try to just stare off into space, guitar in hand. I like doing in the morning drinking coffee in my underwear, in hotel rooms in faraway places, on long train rides, wherever it is easiest to just zone out.  I find that the real enemy of all creativity is thinking.  Once you are developing an idea thinking can help, but I don’t think anybody has ever found inspiration by thinking about it or chasing it.

4-You have worked with Deniz Cuylan and other great Turkish musicians on this album. How did you hook up with them? And how was the recording process?

  I met Deniz through my friend Aylin Gungor. They know each other from Izmir, I think. In any event, they are old friends. The idea for this album was all Deniz’s. He actually came up with the idea before we really knew each other very well. During the process of recording the album, I stayed at his house in Istanbul and we became good friends. As far as the musicians that we used on the album, I pretty much left it up to Deniz.  He knows so many great musicians in Turkey.  Also, I know very little about Turkish music and he knows quite a bit so, from the beginning, I decided it would be best if I left most of those decisions up to him.

  We recorded most of the album in AliRiza Shahenk’s studio called The Fat Lab. Ali is an amazing engineer and an all around wonderful guy.  He is quiet but has a great sense of humor and really enjoyed working with him.

5-Ara güler, a famous Turkish photojournalist, once said, "Istanbul is Jean Giraudoux's La Folle de Chaillot. Every since my childhood I always identified the city with the madwoman of Chaillot, a crazy woman of the type you can find in the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman civilizations... Now she has grown old, but she never neglets her appearance. She puts on her jewellery, and applies her perfumes. She has caskets filled with jewellery from the old days of magnificent and grandeur. Touch this mad woman of the palace known as Istanbul anywhere you like and a jewel will appear." So what do you feel when you touch this city? 

Wow! That is such a beautiful description of Istanbul. I agree completely. I would add that the old girl has also tried to keep up with the modern fashions and has gone out and bought some clothes that are too young for her (shopping malls and tower flats).

  I am from a city with virtually no history.  If you see a photo of Los Angeles from 100 years ago, it’s nothing but some empty, rolling hills with a wooden building or two. So, for somebody like me, Istanbul is unbelievable.  It’s like some kind of a waking dream. I love to wander its streets and get lost. I always stumble upon something interesting....a police action of some sort in Kadikoy, an empty, roofless building in Tunnel it’s windows filled with cats, a group of dangerous looking young men swimming in their underwear in the Bosphorus, strange old shops that smell of smoke and mildew.

6-In the “Bosphorus”, you sing about a woman in a pink and yellow summer dress. What’s the story behind the song?

  In 2005, when we first came to Istanbul to play the Jazz Festival, I met a girl named Ozgecan Tapa. She was working for the Festival as a guide for one of the other bands.  She told me that she was a dancer and that she was going to Germany to study.  I asked her if she was going to stay there and she said, no, that she would always return to Istanbul because she was married to the Bosphorus.  I asked her what she meant and she told me that when she was 16 years old she had taken the ferry across the Bosphorus and thrown her ring into the water so that she would be forever bound to her city.  I was struck dumb by the sheer beauty of what she had told me.  I told her right then that i was going to write a song about it.

7-Considering that Taksim is one of the chaotically crowded area of Istanbul, I was surprised with the soothing sound of the song “Taksim”. Could you talk a bit about the song?

  It was a song that I was writing in 2005 when we were first in Istanbul. It’s really just the story of 2 old hobos sitting on the beach together at dawn, talking about their lives. I saw something in Taksim on that trip that made a big impression on me.  It was very late on a Friday night/Saturday morning and I was returning to my hotel. Taksim was filled with drunk people stumbling around on their way back from a night out.  Suddenly the call to prayer began. I know that it is a mundane sound for people who grew up with it, but for somebody like me, it is amazingly powerful.  It sounds eternal and almost ominous. The contrast of the drunk people in Taksim and the call to prayer was one of the most memorable moments of that first trip to Istanbul. I thought it related somehow to my song about a couple of old drunks talking to each other about how they had screwed their lives up.  But nonetheless they have a certain beauty and friendship in the light of the morning sun.

8-From listening to your music, I get the sense that you are interested in characters with tragic lives such as like Jesse James... What’s the fascination behind it?

  Historically, tragedy is extremely important in all forms of storytelling.  It’s difficult to tell a compelling story without it. If you write a song about very balanced, well adjusted  people it might be kind of dull.  I think that is because it is our flaws that make us seem most human. Also, I think it is only through music, literature and art that we are able to make sense of the aspects of life that are too painful to absorb in a more literal way.

IZHEVSK- Oct. 2009

I just got back from playing a solo show in Izhevsk, Russia.  You have probably never heard of Izhevsk. I hadn't before I played there the first time 2 years ago.  In fact, because of it's military production capability it wasn't even shown on any maps during the Soviet times.  It is located in the Republic of Udmurtia, which is part of the Russian Federation and is most famous for being the home of the AK47 assault rifle.  Mr. Kalashnikov still lives there.
  I was brought out there to play by a lovely guy named Anton who is the art director of a club called Aviator. While I was there he took me to the Kalashnikov museum. It is a surreal tribute to the man who really invented the assault rifle. It's interesting that Kalashnikov was a simple tank driver who had no formal design training.  It was when he was injured and laid up in the hospital that he came up with the idea of designing a weapon that could be used by tank drivers. He was a genius when it came to weapon design.  Anton said that Kalashnikov feels bad that his weapons have caused so much pain in the world.  He designed them as a way of trying to help defend his country and their popularity turned them into something else entirely.
  We drove buy a beautiful church in the center of town. Anton told me that, when he was a child, in Soviet times, the church had been turned into a cinema.  He loved going there because there were amazing mechanical games in the lobby for the children to play on.  He said that they were entirely mechanical in nature with no electronics to speak of.  There were fighter planes, tanks etc. Izhevsk boasts one of the largest man made lakes in Europe. When the Soviets took power, they sunk the bell from the church in the lake.  In the early 90s they dragged it out of the lake and put it back in the church.  The thought of that old bell ringing again after so many decades at the bottom of the lake seemed magical.
  The show itself was a lot of fun.  It's always a bit challenging to play a solo show.  I just try to pretend that we are in somebody's living room.  One of the highlights of the show for me was when i asked if there was anybody who would get up and sing the Russian part of The Clouds In Camarillo with me.  There was girl near the front who volunteered.  She sang so beautifully it made the hair on my arms stand up.
  I had some wonderful home cooked Russian food with Misha, Yulia, Oksana and Dasha. They were very kind. Probably the most painful moment of the trip came when i was exiting a late-night grocery store just as a large "gopnik" or hoodlum was urinating in my direction and I got a full frontal view of his uncircumcised manhood.  That was an image that I could have done without!
  OK. That's it for now. I am home in Barcelona for the next few weeks and then it's off to Istanbul to play 2 shows Nov. 5th and 6th with the Turkish band. We will be promoting the new Brazzaville in Istanbul project that will be released very soon by Doublemoon Records.

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

Saratov
Nizhniy Novgorod
St. Petersburg (Decadance)
St. Petersburg (Maina)
Moscow
Ekaterinburg
Novosibirsk

Barcelona, 6:23 AM

“prop plane”. It was a text message from Brady, our bass player. I had had to put him on a earlier flight from Barcelona to Zurich where he would meet us for the second leg to Moscow. Rough weather had been predicted and Brady was prone to panic-stricken episodes. I got a second SMS at about 8:30 at the Barcelona Airport that read, “still waiting for my balls to come down out of my stomach.” Thus began our winter, Russian tour. I knew that Napoleon and Hitler had fallen prey to the notorious, Russian winter but I figured that with global temperatures on the rise, Brazzaville might fare somewhat better.

SARATOV-

We were met at Domodedovo Airport by Vanya, our beloved tour manager from our summer 2006 tour. He is a 25 year old student of history from St. Petersburg. He has been to virtually every city in Russia and knows more about them than any other person I’ve ever met. When we were planning the tour he told me that the roads around Saratov are practically impassable so our only options for getting to Kazan or Nizhniy Novgorod were train or plane. Anyway, he was there waiting for us when we got off the plane. With him was Alexander, the promoter from Saratov. We exchanged hugs and quickly left to find the plane to Saratov. Along the way we had to pass through an X-Ray. It was much faster than the traditional security methods. We were able to look at our x-rays on the screen after we passed though. We all marveled at the things in our pockets, the fact that you could see our penises etc. Paco was the last to pass through. He must have moved in a odd way right as the x-ray was taken, because he ended up looking like an alien with long flippers instead of arms and hands. We were all laughing and even the stern, Russian woman at the screen cracked a smile. Then she said to Paco (in Russian) “Go away from here you strange man.”
We have been on many internal, Russian flights so none of us were surprised by the state of the plane we boarded to take us to Saratov. The seats were all about 8 inches off the floor. The interior of the plane appeared to have been painted with house paint. The toilet seat was square and made of wood. The plane itself shuddered and spat like my 73 Chevy Nova that I used to drive back in L.A.
When we arrived in Saratov, we were loaded into a van and driven past the city and into what looked like a stange, deserted village, complete with dirt roads and mean looking dogs. It was quite late at night by this time. We pulled up outside what looked like a warehouse. There were no lights on inside. “Where the hell are we, Vanya?” I said. “I have no idea.” “Is this Saratov?” “No”. “Tell them we’re not going to stay here.”
Vanya passed on the message and after much driving and waiting they took us to a nice hotel in town, right next to the Volga. The following day we walked around the city. It was quite beautiful with lots of wooden houses and friendly people. The club, bizarrely named, The Nega Project, turned out to be very nice with a great sound system. The show was wonderful. We got a big crowd of really enthusiastic fans. After the show, Alexander asked us to come to another club to eat with the sponsor, who was the owner of a bank. Paco and Richie wanted to stay at the venue, which was turning into a disco after the gig but Alexander basically told them that he could not guarantee their safety if they did so I told them they had to come with us. The place they took us was very nice. They had a French chef that served us some really good food and we got to meet the sponsor of the show. He was a really nice man who said he had all 6 of our CDs and was a big fan of the group. We hung out there until quite, dancing to Boney M and old Russian songs and then headed back to the hotel to catch a few hours of sleep before we had to catch the train to Nizhniy Novgorod.

NIZHNIY NOVGOROD-

I have really developed a love of Russian trains. This took a little while though, so this, our first train of the tour was not very pleasant. None of us slept very well and we all kind moped around in a bad mood for most of the trip. I think the trip was about 22 hours all together.
When we arrived, we were met by Igor, the Nizhniy promoter. He was very kind and took us directly to a nice hotel that overlooked the Volga. It was quite cold in Nizhniy. I remember it getting down to about minus 17 during our stay there.
After we checked in, we all went to sleep for a while. When I woke up, I went to the business center to check my email. There was only one computer and it was being used by an American guy in his late 20s. He said hello and asked me what I was doing in Nizhniy. I told him about the band and the show we were there to play. I asked him what he was doing there and he said that he had come to meet a girl whom he had met on the internet. He said that she was from a town about 400 kilometers outside the city. He had been unable to access his hotmail account from the hotel so he didn’t have her exact address. But he had hired a car anyway to take him to her town. When he arrived he realized that she didn’t actually exist. She had said that she was a doctor and that she had been writing him from an internet café in her town. The police there said that there was no doctor by that name nor was there any internet café in their town. It was obviously some sort of a scam. I couldn’t help but wonder if he might not have met with some really bad trouble had he showed up at the agreed upon address. Ivan, my drummer, said that maybe, the lousy computer at our hotel had saved the guys life. I think he may have been right.
The show in Nizhniy was at a Tinkoff, the microbrewery places that we have played many times in provincial, Russian cities. They are good places to play in that they are reliable as far as payment etc. but they are a bit of a drag as far as atmosphere goes. They feel very corporate. The sponsor of our show was a mobile phone company. They had 2 beautiful girls wearing green and blue pom pom wigs and mini skirts. Their top halves were naked, save for the body paint that covered them in the colors, design and logo of the mobile phone company. I thought it was an extremely effective advertising method.
It’s always hard to play to people who are sitting down and eating their dinner. That’s what most of the people were doing at the show. That said, I think we had a pretty good show. The people seemed to enjoy it.
The night before the concert, Paco, Richie, Brady and Vanya stayed at the Tinkoff drinking until they were finally told to leave. I’m glad I wasn’t there. I just heard the stories later. I guess Richie was involved in some sort of a glass breaking episode. I’m sure it was accidental. Apparently Paco burned some money. For anyone who has ever lived in Catalunya, the thought of a Catalan burning money is a virtual impossibility. It made me wonder if perhaps Paco were not 100% Andaluz after all. Then I heard the rest of the story where he tried to pay for part of his bill with the burned money and I knew he was the same old Paco that I know and love.
I guess I should mention here that Alexander, the promoter in Saratov had a terrible cough when we were there. He had the Russian habit of speaking to one from a very close distance. I find that, in general, the Russians have about 8 inches of personal space that they require whereas Americans need 2 to 3 feet. Anyway, ol’ Alexander did a lot of breathing/coughing on all of us during our stay in Saratov. And by the time we were in Nizhniy, Brady had begun to succumb to the illness. On the night train from Nizhniy to St.Petersburg, I asked Brady several times if he was still sick. I said that I needed to sing and couldn’t afford to be ill. He assured me that all was well and I believed him. That was a decidion I would come to regret.

ST. PETERSBURG

“DAVID!!!!!!” This was the first thing I heard as we were getting off the train in St. Petersburg. It was the voice of Sasha, the young girl who had tour managed us the last time we had been in St. Petersburg. She had been the one who had managed to take Ivan and I on the most psychotic taxi ride I’ve ever experienced. The driver she found drove like a madman, on the sidewalk, in the opposing lanes, all while blasting a Tatu CD at top volume. Ivan and I were terrified but little Sasha was singing along at the top of her lungs and leaning out of the window with the wind in her hair. Her voice had a rough edge to it reminiscent of Glucosa, the Russian pop star that Ivan had turned me onto on the train from Nizhniy. This morning, Denis Rubin, the promoter had sent her to meet us at the train. She had stayed up all night because the train was getting in so early in the morning. Everybody was exhausted and went off to sleep at the apartments we had in town. I had a bunch of press to do so I spent the day running around with Vanya and his girlfriend. I ended up not getting any sleep before the show that night.
We played at a club called Decadance. It was a very swank, fashionable spot full of good looking people who had probably never heard of Brazzaville. We had a really fun show there though. There were some models dancing in front of me who became obsessed with trying to make me drink a glass of expensive vodka that they were pushing on me. I took it from them and handed it to Paco. He said he didn’t want it and looked like he needed a break but I told him he had to “take one for the team” so, like a good soldier, he drained the glass and managed to end the standoff with the models.
I didn’t feel very well the next day and spent the whole day sitting around the apartment. We had a show that night at a club called Maina. It was about 1 hour’s drive from the city and there was a snowstorm forecast so I expected a very low turnout. To my surprise, a lot people showed up. It was great show, with lots of Brazzaville fans singing along on the choruses. The show had the feeling of hanging out with old friends in somebody’s living room, even though the club was quite cold looking.
After the show, we drove back to town through an intense snowfall. The guys all went out to a club and I went back to the apartment. Vanya came with me so that we could go over some business stuff. We walked down to a store so I could get some food and water before bedtime. It was really cold. That night I got very ill. I woke up with a fever and body aches. I threw up a couple of times and had a horrible cough. Alexander’s illness had finally found me.
Ivan and I were sharing the apartment. He was very kind to me. He even carved the top off of a large water bottle and gave it to me to use for vomiting. Later, Sasha came over and spent many hours caring for me. I don’t know what I would have done without her. She bought me medicine and juice, she made me oatmeal and just sat in the room with me while I slept. She eventually called a doctor because I was shaking so badly from the fever.
The doctor arrived in the evening. He had broad shoulders and the no nonsense look of a soldier. Hi took my vitals and said that I needed to stay in bed for several days. Sasha told him that I had to take the train to Moscow later that night and that I had a show the following night. He said that there was no way I would be able to perform the next night in Moscow. He began to load up a HUGE syringe with various vials of liquid. I asked her what he was going to give me and she said it would make me stop shaking. She said that it was aspirin and something called “demitrol”. Although, it has been many years since I have drunk or taken drugs, I felt so bad at that moment, that I though “God, let it be Demerol!” Of course, it wasn’t. Anyway, the doctor administered the shot in such a manly, Russian way, that it totally made me forget about the agony I had been feeling for the illness. My ass hurt for a week and a half after that shot.
Later, at the station, we all sat around waiting to board the train. Vanya’s girlfriend asked me how I was feeling. She touched my forehead with her hand but it was very cold so she put her chin on my forehead. I thought that was such a sweet gesture. That night on the train, I sweated so much that my shirt was sopping wet and the pillow felt like I had poured a glass of water on it. In the morning I felt almost human again.

MOSCOW

We were met in Moscow by Misha, who works for IKRA. He is a young guy with amazingly poreless skin. He is very kind and looks like he is about 15 years old. He took us to our hotel near the Old Arbat and we all settled in for some rest. We went to the club later to have soundcheck and to eat something. There was a famous VJ from MTV who was there to do something else and who decided to interview us as well. He looked like Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode. He asked us some funny questions like “What kind of bars do you like to go to etc” DAVID- “gay bars. Better dancing, no fights” BRADY- “I have no memory of where I go when I go out” etc.
At sound check it became clear that my voice was not going to survive the night on it’s own. I would have to resort to using some of the emergency cortisone I had brought with me from Barcelona. All I needed was a doctor or nurse to shoot me up with it. Luckily the guitar player from the opening band was a doctor. He had given up medicine in favor of music for financial reasons! I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, right before our show he came into our dressing room to administer the shot. Ivan videotaped the whole thing. I guess it must have looked pretty funny. The only thing he had to use as a disinfectant was vodka. So the video is of some guy, dressed all in black, rubbing vodka on my ass, slapping it really hard and then injecting me with cortisone while I scream in pain.
The show was really nice. I had made sure that the ticket prices were not too high so there were lots of our fans there. It’s terrible when only rich people can come to shows because they are so expensive.
The following day, Vanya and I went to Silver Rain to do an interview with that had been set up by a woman named Alisa. It ended up being a lot of fun. The Djs and the producer of the show we really funny. I ran into Shura from B2 who was there to do an interview on the show after ours. Vanya, who was soooooo nervous about being on the radio when we did our first interview together in Nizhniy seemed like an old pro by the time we did the Silver Rain show.

EKATERINBURG

The flight to Ekaterinburg left at about 8 pm. There was an older man who had obviously been drinking a lot before the flight. He muttered quite loudly to himself as he tried to stuff his things into the overhead bin after everyone else had already boarded. During the flight he got up to smoke in the bathroom several times. It was amazing to me that nobody from the crew told him not to. Also, toward the end of the flight he was standing in the aisle when a good-looking young woman passed by. He nonchalantly grazed her crotch with his fingertips as she passed. Russian flights are rarely dull. When we arrived in Ekat we were met by Stas, the promoter and his assistant. The girl who had been groped on the plane asked me if we were a band. I told her we were and where we would be playing the following night. She said that she would be there and that she would bring us a lot of Red Bull. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that but I thinked her. In the parking lot outside the airport I saw her and her friend getting into a little car painted like a can of Red Bull and actually sporting a huge can if Red Bull on the roof and it all made sense.
The club in Ekaterinburg was one of my favorites in all of Russia. Stas owns it and runs the whole operation more or less by himself with the help of a few people. It has a very grassroots feel to it. The venue itself is in an old, Soviet era movie theatre. It has good sound and lights and a really homey atmosphere. In addition to the main hall, they have an amazing club on the 5th floor. It basically feels like a persons flat with a bar and sound system set up in the living room. There was a lot of high drama during our time in Ekaterinburg. The night before the show, Stas, mobile phone was stolen from the club. The following night, Paco’ backpack went missing, as did Vanya’s and Stas’s assistant’s wallet was stolen out of her purse.
The show was lovely though. There was a great crowd and then after the show, Ivan and I played an acoustic set upstairs in the little club. All in all everyone had a great time until things started to go missing.
This brings us to the really long train ride through Siberia. Everyone had stayed up all night because there had been a mix up on our tickets. Dan Gotham, a wonderful American guy in Moscow who had helped us to set up some of the shows on the tour had had his secretary buy our tickets for us. A strange thing about the Russian railways is that all departures and arrivals are quoted in Moscow time. This is not so for the airlines and can come as a big surprise to the uninitiated. So we ended up with 6 tickets for a train that left the following night. We had to exchange them for tickets that left at 6 AM and then we returned to the club to wait e few more hours for our train.
By the time 6 AM rolled around, my band, who had been drunk at 1:30 when we first went to the train station, was well beyond that by the time we returned there at 6 AM to finally catch the train to Novosibirsk.
Brady kept asking Vanya to ask the old woman in charge of our wagon if she had any beer to sell. She told him that there was none left because they had their own alcoholics on board. I had spotted a couple of rough looking young guys down at the end of our car. They had a vaguely skinhead look about them. I can’t tell you how surprised I was when the larger and meaner looking of the 2 appeared at the door of our cabin and informed me that Brady was with them drinking vodka and that they would take care of him. After saying this he gave me a sig heil and walked off down the hall. I went to sleep and left Brady to the fate that he had chosen for himself. I guess he passed through some trying moments that morning. At one point, the larger on was trying to make Brady understand that he was a boxer. So to demonstrate he began to punch him. Brady responded by saying, “Please don’t kill me. I have no defense against you.” This reply seemed to work and they got back to the business of drinking vodka.
I awoke in the afternoon after o good 5 or 6 hours of much needed sleep. Ivan and I went to the dining car and ordered some food. All in all I thought that the food on the Russian trains was quite good. Anyway, we sat and talked and stared out the window at the vast, Siberian expanse. At point we saw some animals running across the snow. I think they were wolves but it’s hard to be sure. We made friends with the people working in the dining car. They seemed to have interesting lives. The cook and the waitress seemed to be boyfriend and girlfriend. I thought it must be nice for them to travel around together.
So the hours passed, 26 in all, playing chess, drinking endless cups of tea and listening to our various mp3 players. Vanya had a box set of Monty Python DVDs that his girlfriend had given him for his birthday. He and the kids and Brady spent a lot of time watching those. All in all it was a beautiful final train ride. Even the rough edges of the young hoodlums seemed to have softened in the night. When we arrived in Novosibirsk early in the morning, the boxer and his sidekick came off the train to bid us farewell.

NOVOSIBIRSK

A guy sent by the promoter met us at the train. I was still battling the effects of the Saratov plague that had been torturing me ever since St. Petersburg. I would rest up enough to do a show and then be in bad shape again until the next one. The air was quite cold when we arrived in Novosibirsk and it sent me into an ungovernable coughing fit. When we arrived at the hotel, I went straight to bed. Later that day, we went to the club, Rock City, to eat and do soundcheck. It seemed like a great club. When we arrived there were a bunch of girls rehearsing a hip hop dance routine. They seemed very concentrated on the task at hand. We ate and then had soundcheck. The soundman was wonderful. He and the guy at Maina were definitely the best of the tour.
After soundcheck there was a press conference. The journalists asked lots of interesting questions. I’m always surprised by how often that seems to be the case in Russia. They all seem to be really well read as well.
The show was really great. It may have been the most fun I had on the whole tour. The crowd was so kind and the sound was just great. It’s really hard to play a show when the sound isn’t good. After the show some of us went to a small club around the corner. There was an amazing band playing there. They were called 0. They played 80s Russian songs on traditional, Russian instruments. The bass player was playing the biggest balalaika I’ve ever seen. Everybody was dancing around having a lovely time. After a while I got a taxi back to the hotel to try to get a couple of hours of sleep before our early morning flight.
I heard my mobile phone ringing in my pants. I answered and it was Vanya, “Hello, David.” Hey, Vanya. What’s up?” “We’re quite late.” “Wow. I never got my wake up call.” “Actually, we’ve been calling you and pounding on your door for 15 minutes.” I laughed. I couldn’t believe it. I must really needed to sleep. Anyway, even after I wasup, we were still missing Richie. He didn’t respond to pounding, phone calls, screaming or anything else so we finally had to have security open his door.
We headed back home to Barcelona. Everyone seemed pleased to be going home and also a little sad to leave. It had been such a lovely tour. We all couldn’t believe that it had only been 16 days. When you’re on the road, a week seems like a month because you are having so many new and different experiences. We all felt very grateful to have the lives that we do.

All the best,

David

PS- I would like to thank all of the fans, promoters and kind people who helped to make this tour possible. We hope to see you again soon.

UKRAINE (acoustic tour) March 22nd, 23rd and 24th, 2007

Donetsk
Kharkov
Kiev

DONETSK

“Go ahead, Buddy. You were first.” The man speaking was wearing a 10-gallon cowboy hat, blue jeans and cowboy boots. “Thanks. Where are you from?” I said. “North Dakota” “What the hell are you doing in Donetsk?” “I’m here to visit a friend.” As soon as I he said that I knew that he had met a girl online and had traveled half way around the world to meet her. It’s one of the more fascinating developments of the internet age that people have to travel so far to meet each other. I had seen it before in our travels in Russia. I only hoped that his “friend” really existed.
When I emerged from customs and immigration I noticed a girl in her early 20s waiting by the exit. She was quite heavily made up and had a very kind face. It was clear that she had some kind of a physical disability in the lower half of her body. Maybe she had had polio as a child. Sure enough, she was the friend that the cowboy had come to meet. He appeared a few minutes later and it was clear from both of their faces that they were a bit surprised and perhaps disappointed. I don’t think he knew about her condition and I think that he might have put on a fair bit of weight since the photos he had sent her.
Austrian Airlines had lost Richie’s keyboard so we had to hang around the terminal for quite a while our promoter, Anastasia sorted everything out. During this time, I couldn’t help but glance over to the cowboy and his girl every once in a while. She was helping him change money, buy water and snacks and do all the other little things that needed doing upon one’s arrival from overseas. In the few minutes since they first laid eyes on each other a certain warmth seemed to have taken over. They seemed more comfortable together. I thought that there might, in fact, be hope for the cowboy from North Dakota and the little, crippled girl from Donetsk.
Donetsk is known for two things, as far as I was able to tell. The first is coal mining. The second is organized crime. Mining is the major industry in the area around Donetsk. When we were flying in I was amazed at how industrial the landscape appeared. Everywhere, there were railroads and smokestacks, warehouses and cranes. It was an amazing landscape. Driving into town I saw a huge statue of a coal miner, gazing victoriously into the distance in the manner of most Soviet statues I’ve seen.
Our promoter, Nastya, told me that in Donetsk, people refer to each other by their last names. She said that the reason for this is that there are several very powerful crime families in the region and it let’s everyone know who you are. I’ve been to many crime capitals in the former Soviet Union, places like Ekaterinburg and Rostov. We often end up spending time in close proximity to Bratva because of the hotels we stay in. It’s amazing how they don’t even seem to see us. It’s like two parallel worlds occupying the same point in space/time but existing independently.
The show was at a club with a strange name that I can never quite remember. It means something like “marijuana high” and sounds like ganja bong or something like that. It was a great little place. Upon arriving we were given a wonderful dinner. The staff was very kind. We had our usual mutually unintelligible catfight with the soundman. This is a common problem in the East. There are some decent soundmen but most of them don’t speak any English so it can be difficult to have a smooth sound check.
The show was a lot of fun. There was a large man wearing black who shouted at me a lot. He did this in a friendly yet intimidating way. Variations of this guy have been at all of the last few shows I’ve done in Russia and Ukraine. After the show he began hugging me in that affectionate, yet violent way of that the large, drunk Slavic male. The first one of those guys like that I met was in Novosibirsk. He hugged me with his arm firmly around my neck and told me how brilliant he thought I was. I thanked him and pulled away. He came in for another hug and head butted me by accident. I feel like a little child with bird’s bones next to these guys. Anyway, back in Donetsk, after the show we sat around chatting with the folks from the club and their friends. They brought out plate after plate of local delicacies for us. All in all it was a lovely night.

KHARKOV

The following morning at about 11, we set off in two cars for Kharkov. We passed through villages that looked half destroyed. We saw an enormous pile of salt. It was from a massive salt mine about 100 km outside of Donetsk. Nastya told me that she and her mother had helped to put on a classical music performance inside the mine the year before. Apparently there is a massive gallery that they use for concerts once in a while. It’s so tall that you can fly a hot air balloon inside. The man who conducted the concert said that the acoustics produced by the salt were unlike any he had ever experienced before. Nastya also said that people with asthma spend time in the salt mines and get great relief from their symptoms.
About halfway to Kharkov, We passed through what used to be the domain of the Cossacks. Nastya told me about how they defended a large area from Turkish aggression. She said that they lived in outposts with no women or children and only saw their families once a year. I’ve seen paintings of them and they looked ferocious, like something out of Mad Max. Anyway, she said that they shared everything more or less equally with each other but that when the Russians began to pay them lots of money to defend Russia, it led to their demise.
We stopped at a restaurant that was located on a hill in the center of the Cossack area. You could see for about 100 kms in all directions. We ate lunch there. It was one of the best meals I had in Ukraine. They served us about 5 different kinds of pickled, wild mushrooms that had been gathered in the surrounding forest. We had some of the best borsch I’ve ever tasted and some amazing beef stroganov.
By the time we arrived in Kharkov, the temperature had plummeted to about minus 16 centigrade. We went straight to Fidele, the lovely club we had played the last time we were in Ukraine, and sound checked. It was the 2nd anniversary of the club and most of the people who came to the show were there for that. It was more of a party than a show but we still had a good time. We spent the night in the Chichikov Hotel. It was the place we stayed in the last time we were in town and it was the lap of luxury. The shower was like a tropical downpour. I love sitting down in showers like that, closing my eyes and pretending that I am in a rainstorm somewhere in S.E. Asia. This is especially pleasant when it is 16 below outside.
I know that Ukraine suffers a lot because of official corruption. One story that I heard demonstrated the problem really well. Somebody told me that Nestle wanted to open a factory in Kharkov. This would have provided the city with many much needed jobs as well as a lot of tax revenue. The mayor of the city told Nestle that they could open their factory but that they would need to give him 3 million dollars. They politely declined and said that they would look for another city in which to build their factory.

KIEV

We were driven to Kiev in 2 cars. The car I was in was being driven by Nastya’s mother’s driver. Nastya’s mother is a well-known lawyer and politician. Her driver is a former military man and exudes a calm and quiet energy of total control. It was a joy to be driven by him.
Nastya had to stay in Kharkov because she was presenting a show at Roddom, the theatre that she has with her mother. There was a large group of classical musicians and a rather high maintenance actor on the way so the potential for trouble was high. I told her to go ahead and stay behind and that we would be fine. I regretted doing that when we got to the club because there was really nobody there to take care of us. We were given a freezing cold dressing room. The club itself was the coldest I’ve ever experienced. I was actually cold ontage in the middle of the show with a full house of people. It was very strange. The soundman spoke no English and was playing such hideous music before our set that I actually had to ask him to play a Brazzaville CD. That is something I would never do but he really had nothing else that would be OK. Ivan had made some great pre and post show CDs and had, inexplicably traded them to one of our drivers for a CD of Georgian, acid jazz, a decision he regretted moments after we began playing the CD in the car.
Anyway, the show was difficult at first but became fun about 1/3 of the way through. I have learned that it is good to be patient in those situations. I used to get frustrated and say mean things to the audience or to my band and effectively destroy the atmosphere for the entire night. I took many years to learn my lesson but I’m glad I finally did. There were lots of really friendly fans there and I hope we can go back and play soon under warmer circumstances!
Our hotel was in the old part of town. It was really beautiful. It was on a hill next to a lovely, old street where you can see the house that Bulgakov grew up in. I spent our final morning in Ukraine waling up and down that street buying presents for the folks back home. It was one of the fastest tours I’ve ever done, but we had a great time.
On the way to the airport, Ivan took photos of the men ice fishing on the frozen river.

All the best,

David Brown, Barcelona (early spring, 2007)

Privet, Bratva..…Ya nashu stringi!

Whenever we travel to Russia to play shows, I make an effort to learn a few phrases in Russian that I can say from the stage. They are usually short sentences that sound a bit absurd. The first time I tried this was at Chinese Pilot, a couple of years ago. Artemi Troitski gave me a few funny things to say like “It’s wonderful to play for you tonight here in the Kremlin”. The following night at Art Garbage I got our friend Mara to translate some other silly phrases like “ Last night I dreamed that I was Ala Pulgachova”.
Anyway, It’s a fun way to have a bit of communication with the folks who don’t understand my silly banter in English.
On our latest tour I didn’t get around to getting any phrases together before the Moscow and Petersburg shows because a lot of people seem to understand English in those cities. However, when we arrived in Ufa I realized that I had better get some phrases. There was a table of college girls sitting next to us when we were eating at the club the night before we were to play there. I asked them if they could think of any funny things that I might be able to say at the show the following night. They said that it might be funny if I said, “Privet, Bratva!” to the audience. I asked them what it meant and they said that it translated more or less as “Hello, criminal friends”. I could see how that would be funny considering that most of the people at our shows don’t look at all like criminals. I felt like I needed something else to say, so I asked them to translate “I’m wearing panties”. They told me that it would be hard because the word for underwear is the same for men’s and women’s underwear. I asked if there was a word for thong underwear and they said that it was called “stringi”. Thus “Ya nashu stringi” was born.
The phrase sounded very funny to me but knowing that the Russian sense of humor can, at times be very different from the American one, I decided that I should test my new phrase out before using it at the show. The moment I chose was a press conference that I was doing on the afternoon of the Ufa show. I was in the middle of answering one of the reporter’s questions when I just threw it in suddenly. It was something like “…well I discovered Kino while walking down the boardwalk in Sochi last year ya nashu stringi and I heard some music coming out of a bar….” The reporter’s face froze as if he couldn’t be sure about what I had just said. Then he began to laugh so hard that there were tears flowing down his cheeks. I realized that my phrase was a success. I used it to great effect at all of the remaining shows along with “Privet, Bratva”
An extra funny moment happened with my “Privet, Bratva” phrase when we were playing the opening night of a certain fashionable place in Rostov On Don. I hadn’t known that it was the grand opening of the club when I had agreed to play the show. Because it was their opening night, it was almost impossible for any of our fans to come. As a result the club was full of well to do looking people who had no idea who we were. I came out and sang a song on my own before the band came on and I was greeted by a sea of loveless stares. So I thought that I had better pull out one of my trusty phrases. “Privet, Bratva!” I shouted into the mic. Suddenly, to the right of the stage, I noticed a table filled with middle-aged men with large shoulders become very agitated. They were pointing to me and looking at each other with a look of disbelief. “Oh, God” I thought. “Those guys really are bratva!” “Well, nothing to be done about it now,” I thought and we launched into the next song. By the end of the show the Bratva were were dancing around with everyone else in front of the stage, enthusiastically singing along to our version of Kino’s Star Called Sun. All in all, my little phrases served me well. I managed to learn how to read the Cyrillic alphabet on the last tour so maybe one day I’ll learn enough Russian to actually be able to communicate with the Russian fans in their own language. Until then…

Paka, bratva!

Old Folks

I can’t imagine what the world must seem like to a person of my grandmother’s generation. Things have changed so much even since I was a kid. When I was 13, my friends and I would play video games after school at the local pizza restaurant. We would shoot at asteroids from passing space ships or do battle with aliens that were trying to invade the earth. I was shocked recently to hear that there is a game that is very popular among the kids in which a player can have sex with a prostitute and then kick her to death and steal his money back. Apparently one gets points for that. It makes me wonder what the world will look like when my son is 13. What kind of adults are we creating from children who can go online and view videos of blow jobs, anal sex, shit fetishes and murder. When do kids get any chance to just be kids?
Up until about 2 or 3 hundred years ago, the world that a child was born into looked very much like the world that their grandparents had been born into. For sure, that world contained many hardships that ours does not, but I suspect that there was a great comfort, a great humanity that came from old folks and young folks living in the same world and having some type of mutual understanding of how it worked.
The old people of today have a haunted look in their eyes. They look as if they’ve woken up on a distant planet that only vaguely resembles the world they grew up in. Many of them seem to feel as if there is no place for them here. We hide them away in warehouses so that they can die together, away from public view. Here in Barcelona, one sees a lot more old people around than in Los Angeles. Young people still spend quite a bit of time with their parents and grandparents. But one gets the feeling that this is coming to an end. The New World Order gives no quarter. “You’re either with us or you’re against us” said George W. Bush and he was right. Open markets, the global economy that primarily benefits about 400 billionaires is a juggernaut from which there is no escape. It doesn’t matter if our kids are raised on porno and junk food. It doesn’t matter if our grandparents get slapped around by underpaid, resentful nurses in an old folks home. It doesn’t matter if Walmart and it’s analogues drive thousands of family businesses into bankruptcy. It seems that everything is justifiable in the name of profits. This is not a world I want to get old in. But get old we do. We get older and eventually, we all take the same train home. Until then, thank you and good night.

David Arthur Brown

EMPATHY MACHINE

I sometimes wonder what the world might be like if somebody invented an empathy machine, a machine that could record, in detail, every aspect of a person’s day-to-day experience.
Criminals could be made to experience their crime from the point of view of the victim. A rapist could be made to feel what it is like to be a young girl who is physically unable to stop someone from attacking her.
A neo-nazi could be made to feel what it is like to walk for two months across the Sahara and almost drown in a small boat crossing to Europe or what it is like to be viewed with suspicion and fear even though one is a decent and ordinary person.
Young people in schools could be shown what it is like to be a pensioner, an old woman who has lived through war, who has made love and danced, who has raised children and cooked thousands of meals. They could be made to feel what it feels like to make tea for one and hope, each day, that one of her children might phone.

BIG TOE

The big toe on my left foot is turning towards the little ones and the joint is a bit swollen. I think it’s because of a little bike accident that I had in Amsterdam last summer. The toe looks frail and elderly and it reminds me of my grandmother’s arthritic hands. I was thinking about it yesterday and I realized how easy it is to focus on what is wrong with us as opposed to what is right. So I decided to make a list of some of the things that I’m glad I’m not afflicted with as well as some of the things that I am blessed with:

I’m glad that:

I’m not obese
I don’t have terminal halitosis
I don’t have AIDS
My back isn’t in chronic pain
I wasn’t born in Darfour
I don’t find children sexually attractive
I have a home and people who love me and whom I love as well
I get to do what I love for a living
I’m not in jail
I’ve never been involved in a war
I don’t live in L.A. anymore
I have very good eyesight
I’ve been to many fascinating places in the world
One day I will die and maybe see my ancestors
I have a folding bicycle
I’m not going bald
I still have most of my teeth
I have control over all of my bodily functions
I’m not insane
Summer thunderstorms exist
I get to fly on planes and daydream
I live in Barcelona
I have a studio
I don’t have to die a drunk like so many of my family have
I don’t have to give people advice
Coffee exists
I can try to accept life as it is
Mangosteens exist
I didn’t have a violent upbringing

Mid-July 2006, Barcelona

Hello Everybody,
It’s 2 AM here in Barcelona. The air is hot and wet and still. The sound of fans and air conditioners fill the night. We have been back from our Russian tour for about a week now and have begun to settle back in to the rhythms of life here in Spain. The tour was really wonderful. The fans in Russia are so sweet. There were a few shows where people told me that they had driven 500 kilometers or more to come to our show. I love Russia more each time we visit. The first time we went it made me kind of nervous but each time we return, I feel that I understand the people a bit more and I appreciate how different they are, culturally to Americans and Western Europeans. I learned to read the Cyrillic alphabet while we were there. I still can’t understand most of what I read but it’s a start.
The new CD, East L.A. Breeze, seems to be doing quite well in Russia. It’s due to come out here in Spain in October and it looks as though it might also come out in the US before the end of the year. If that happens, we might end up coming to do some shows over there at last!
The video for Star Called Sun was being played on VH1 while we were in Russia. I think it turned out very well. Emmanuel Clemenceu, the director, gave it a wonderful French, edge of the Earth type of feel.
I promise that very soon, I will write more in depth about the Russian tour, as there were lots of wonderful adventures that would make for interesting reading. Also, next week I will post some of the great photos that Ivan took while we were on the road. Also, he did a lot of filming and there is talk of a “Brazzaville on the road” DVD. I am exhausted and am off to bed now.

Buenas noches,

David

Journal Update- May, 2006

Hello Brazzavilians,
I’m sorry for being silent for so long. So much has happened since I last made a journal entry. We have completed a new record called East L.A. Breeze. You can hear a couple of songs from the album on the music page in the Barcelona Airshaft (Fere stuff) section. The record is due to be released in Russia in the next couple of weeks. I have decided to release the new record in Spain on my South China Sea label. We have found great distribution with Discmedi. We will also be releasing a record by another Barcelona group called Mr. Hubba and El Mono Inventor. I’m also toying with the idea of releasing a compilation with a few songs each of some of the more interesting bands I know here in BCN.
On June 21st, the longest day of the year, we will head to Russia to play some shows. You can see the full schedule on the tour page of this site or you can go to our myspace page at www.myspace.com/brazzaville. We will be playing Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg and Rostov On Don.
We recorded a version of a song called Star Called Sun. It was written by Viktor Tsoi from the band Kino. I used his chords and melodies and wrote my own lyrics. Although his lyrics were beautiful, I felt that they would lose a lot in the translation when trying to fit them to the music so I wrote a song about my mother’s death while preserving the theme of stars and the the sun. The refrain of my version is “There’s one million stars, for every little grain of sand down there”. That was a concept that had been obsessing me ever since I heard about it on the BBC. I was happy that I was finally able to work it into a song.
We shot a video for Star Called Sun. It was shot by a French epicurian swinger by the name of Emanuelle Clemenceau AKA Manolete. He and his cameraman, Antoine, spent a few days with us here in Barcelona shooting. The bulk of the video will be footage of Mariona Aupi playing the role of my mother when she was young back in the early 70s. There is footage of her with a baby (meant to be me), sparklers etc. I have yet to see the video but I’m sure it will be beautiful if I know Manolete.
Ivan, our drummer, has been away in India for the last several months. He wrote some articles and made a short film for Bant magazine in Istanbul. I spoke to him on the phone yesterday and he assured me that he would be back in Barcelona in time to rehearse for the Russian tour.
I was in Norway recently having meetings for the ship project. It is ambling along at it’s pace. I feel that we are at the most difficult time right now and that, once we are able to get past this, all will fall into place and things will progress at a dizzying pace.
That’s all I have for now. We will be trying to get the new record as well as the back catalogue distributed all over Europe as well as in the US. Thanks to all of our fans who have stuck with us and have gone to much trouble to find our stuff in the nooks and crannies of the internet and second hand record stores. We hope that soon you will all be able to find our record really easily.

Un abrazo,

Late February. 2006.
Barcelona

It feels like Spring has arrived. This morning I road my little folding bike through the Eixample at top speed. I was doing slaloms down the middle of the street, taking deep breaths of warm, salty air. A dry wind has been blowing through town for the past couple of days that reminds me of the Santa Ana winds that blow into L.A. from the desert sometimes.
There is a little rooftop above our recording studio. I go up there from time to time to just sit in the silence of the interior of the block. There are 45 stray cats that live there. I know this because an eccentric English woman that feeds them and builds them little houses told me. One of the cats is a huge, gray tom with bits of his ears missing from fighting. He and I just stare at each other sometimes. I wonder what it must be like to be him. I can’t imagine what must go through his mind when he looks at me.
It has been such a joy to get back to work. I’ve recorded most of the basic tracks for the new songs. Paco, Richie, Brady and Pep have come in to record. I have also met with a group of Russian string players who are going to come in next week to record on a couple of songs. I met a drummer today who has an amazing name. His name is Caspar St. Charles. It must be amazing to go through life with such a poetic name. I wouldn’t know.
I’m going to make an effort to keep the site more up to date. I will take some photos in the studio and post them in the Barcelona section of the photos page.

Besos,

David

RUSSIA 2005 (continued)

KAZAN

Sometimes I forget to specify certain things to promoters that come back to haunt me. On this tour there were two things that I forgot to mention. One was that early morning flights were to be avoided if possible. The other was that we required an EXPERIENCED soundman at every show.
Literally every flight we took was before noon and most of them were before 9 AM. We didn’t get back to the hotels from the shows until about 4 every night and then we had to be in the lobby by 6:30 of 7 each morning. The band was pretty ragged after a few days of this. They all performed like real troopers though.
I think it was 6 AM when we met in the lobby of the Hotel Rossia to leave for Kazan. We all thought we would be taken to the airport in a bus, as was usually the case. Mara, our new tour manager told us that Alexey Kabanov insisted that it would be easier for us to get to the airport by some sort of a special train. We were picked up by one of his people and taken to the train station. It was an interesting place. Alexey was waiting there for us. He said that he needed to get Mara’s ticket and some money that he was supposed to have for us. His phone was dead so he asked to borrow Mara’s. Then he disappeared leaving us in the waiting lounge of the airport train. We sat with all of our luggage as the last of the stragglers sprinted onto the train. The train left and there wasn’t another one that would get us to the airport on time. Suddenly, Kabanov appeared looking panicked and told us to grab our things and run back out to the mini bus that we had come in.
When we arrived at the bus, I told Mara to tell Alexey and the driver that the situation was of their own making and that they had to drive to the airport at a reasonable speed because I was not willing to die attempting to get to Domodedovo airport in half the time it would normally take. The driver nodded and then promptly ignored what I had said and drove like a psychopath until we got to the airport. Once we were there it was complete chaos. Nobody knew where we were supposed to go. The flight was leaving in a matter of minutes. The airport was extremely crowded and Alexey had Richie’s keyboard lying across a luggage cart so that he was cutting a wide swath through the crowd as we inched our way through.
Finally, we found some official that rushed us through security and onto the plane with seconds to spare. The lads were all looking around like they had just been shot out of a cannon. Nobody had slept well and nobody could have imagined that getting to the airport would have been such a ridiculous adventure.
The plane was an old Russian Yak. It had been painted with house paint on the interior. Brady was scared because he said that the Spanish army had used some of those planes as transport aircraft and one had crashed killing a bunch of soldiers. It got us safely to Kazan though.
We were met at the airport by the local Tinkoff promoter and his driver. The driver was dressed in a super-cool white suit. There are a couple of pictures of him in the photo section. It became immediately apparent that the Tinkoff folks were very professional about everything. There were posters for the show all over town. They toild us that it had been announced on the radio and TV as well. They took us to the venue for lunch and then dropped us at our hotel to have a rest before soundcheck. The hotel was a beautiful old place with arches and long dim hallways with tile floors that reminded one of a more civilized era. I took a glorious nap and woke up refreshed and ready to play the show.
We had soundcheck and then went and ate dinner. When we returned to the venue there were already a fair amount of people there, Also, the Camel girls were there in all their glory. Camel was one of the main sponsors of the show. This was good news as 3 out of 5 guys in the band smoke cigarettes. Anyway, there were 4 Camel girls, all of them very beautiful and dressed in outfits that were reminiscent of 1960’s stewardess uniforms.
The stage was tiny but that has never been something that bothered me very much. I’ve played on lots of little stages over the years and they have a very cozy feeling to them. The crowd was great. They were very enthusiastic and loving. After the show we got to hang out with some local musicians and have a nice chat with them.
All in all we had a lovely time in Kazan. On the drive out to the airport I took some photos of the beautiful, little houses that line the road. They are traditional wooden homes painted in lovely colors with little gardens next to them. There are some pictures of them in the photo section. Next, we were off to Sochi.

SOCHI

Getting out of Kazan took some doing. There was a problem with seat availability for Mara. They didn’t want to give her the old tour manager’s seat on the plane even though the old tour manager was in St. Petersburg and wouldn’t be needing it. Also, the lady with the steel teeth at the luggage check-in wanted to charge us extra for having musical instruments. The stress and the sleep deprivation proved too much for Brady and he had a freak out on the lady. He was screaming at her in Spanish, telling her that he would pay her nothing “nada! zero! NULLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!” He also told her that he had no intention of getting on her goddamn plane etc. I told him that I didn’t think she spoke any Spanish and that I was quite sure that she didn’t care whether or not we got on the plane. Eventually, after an even more harrowing white knuckle ride than at Domodedovo we ended up getting on the plane. The plane was even more destroyed looking than the one the day before. When I looked up from my seat at the little ceiling where the light and the fan and the call button were located I noticed that the words had been painted on free-hand. That was a new experience for me and didn’t give me a lot of confidence in the integrity of the aircraft.
I was sitting next to Brady. There was very little legroom and he is quite a large guy so he was unhappy from the start. An enormous, Russian man sat down directly in front of him. The man’s weight made the seat in front of Brady sag backwards an additional 6 inches or so, so that Brady was left trying to push the man’s seat forward to avoid having his knees crushed. Luckily the guy decided to switch seats with somebody else so that he(the large man) could be closer to his friends. The large man and his friends produced a 5th of Johnnie Walker Red and began getting drunk. The big guy was so heavy that he broke his seat. He was sitting in front of one of his rather large friends who had to hold his seat up for the remainder of the flight. They were all very good-natured and had a good laugh about the whole thing.

Sochi is a resort city on the Black Sea coast. It served as a vacation spot for the communist elite during the Soviet times. It has a subtropical climate and is not what a person thinks of when imagining Russia. The weather was warm and humid when we arrived and the feeling of the town was calm and relaxed.
We were met at the airport by one of the people from Tinkoff. He drove us to our hotel, which was a beautiful place with a private beach. We couldn’t believe our luck. We all piled out of the minibus and were waiting in the lobby to be checked in. It turned out that we weren’t staying there after all. We were booked into another hotel with a similar name that was not quite as nice but was still pretty good. It didn’t have a private beach but was quite close to the venue and had access to a very nice public beach.
The venue was beautiful. The stage was outside on the upper balcony and faced the Black Sea. The soundman was very sweet but not very experienced and seemed like he was about to have a nervous breakdown during soundcheck. The sound turned out to be pretty bad during the show. My guitar would inexplicably disappear from my monitor at random intervals. We had a good time anyway. We chatted with lots of lovely fans after the show.
Some guy had been taking photos of us during the show and left a book with his photographs for me. They were pictures from Sochi that had been inspired by different Brazzaville songs. They were beautiful photos and I’m very sad that I didn’t get to meet the guy who took them. It is one of the nicest gifts a fan has ever given me.
The day after the show was our long awaited day off. It couldn’t have been a nicer day for it. The sky was overcast but there was no rain and the temperature was absolutely perfect. Everybody spent the day sleeping, eating and swimming in the Black Sea. Even the flight the next day didn’t leave until almost noon. We all felt immensely rested and very grateful.

EKATERINBURG

The flight to Sochi was funny with the large drunken Russians and all but nothing could have prepared us for what we saw on the flight to Ekaterinburg. While we were waiting to board the plane, some of the guys pointed out a pretty girl in a pink skirt. She seemed to be traveling with a rather tough looking middle-aged man. The guy seemed like some kind of a gangster and never smiled.
Once airborne, Brady, who was sitting a few rows in front of me, stood up to go to the bathroom. He looked back at me with a huge smile and a look of disbelief. He gestured with his eyes toward the girl in the miniskirt and the gangster. It looked like the girl was giving the guy oral sex. They weren’t making any attempt to hide it. He didn’t cover her with a coat or a blanket. He just sat with a blank look on his face as if he were watching the 6 o’clock news or reading the paper. It was funny to watch people walk up the aisle unawares, glance in their direction for a fraction of a second and then completely ignore what was happening. It seemed like nobody had any idea how to react.
It was cool and raining when we reached Ekaterinburg. I didn’t know much about the city except that a lot of bands had come from there and that the Czar had been killed there. I had also heard that it was Russia’s 3rd largest city behind Moscow and St. Petersburg. It seemed pretty dreary. The club was quite nice and was the largest of all the Tinkoff’s we had played. The sound guy’s name was Sasha and he seemed to really know his stuff. Our tour manager kept saying that Sasha wasn’t the sound guy, that he was the guy who owned the sound equipment. All I knew was that he was the one dialing us in and he seemed to be doing a good job. I was thrilled to have him.
After sound check, we went back to the hotel to rest for a bit. When we returned, we were shocked to see so many people there. The place was completely packed. It wonderful when you don’t have any expectations for a show and it turns out to be really well attended.
The time came for us to go on and I got onstage to do a solo number before the guys came up. I picked up my guitar and walked to the mic to say hello. After saying a few words I strummed a chord on my guitar and no sound came out. I laughed and asked Sasha to un-mute the guitar and still there was no sound. This went on for a while until I finally had to say that I was going to step off for a few minutes while they figured out the problem and that I would be back.
It turned out that Sasha wasn’t there. They had called him and he was on his way. He had left some kid in charge of the sound who had no idea how to work anything. Finally Sasha arrived. He had been heavily rained on. He un-muted the guitar and the show got underway. After a while I noticed that my guitar was really loud and was feeding back. I asked Sasha to turn it down a bit. It stayed at the same level. After much asking our tour manager told me that Sasha had left again! The poor kid in the booth was about to have a seizure from stress because he had no idea how to work anything. After the show, when I mentioned it to the manager of the club he said that I hadn’t asked for an experienced soundman in my rider. I learned that you can’t take anything for granted. Anyway, I don’t mean to complain. The show in Ekaterinburg was the most fun of the entire tour. The crowd was fantastic and knew the songs. We had a wonderful time and can’t wait to go back after we put out the next record.

EPILOGUE

The trip back to Barcelona was very long and began early in the morning the day after the Ekaterinburg show. As promised, Alexey Kabanov and Ilya met us in the airport and paid us the money that they owed us. I was very happy because I had grown quite fond of them. I have grown less fond of them in the interim because they never paid Mara and Kabanov has seemingly dropped off the face of the earth as far as his email and mobile phone are concerned. But all in all it was a lovely tour and we all had a wonderful time. We would like to thank all of our fans in Russia and say that we will be back soon with a new record in tow.
All the best,

David Brown, Barcelona 2005

RUSSIAN TOUR JUNE 2005
(ST. PETERSBURG, MOSCOW, KAZAN, SOCHI, EKATERINBURG)

We arrived in Moscow at Sheremetyevo Airport on the afternoon of June 22nd. We were met by Lena,Ilya and Alexey Kabanov. Alexey told me that his surname meant “wild pig” in Russian. They welcomed us to Moscow and loaded us into a minibus. I have come to expect bad traffic in Moscow but I had never driven in from the airport at rush hour before. It was a truly soul bruising experience. We were all hungry, thirsty and tired and it took a couple of hours to get to the hotel. I saw posters everywhere touting Moscow’s bid for the Olympic games in 2008 and I couldn’t help but wonder how the city planned to host the Olympics when it barely even possible to drive across town on a normal day.
Lena, our tour manager, was from St. Petersburg. She had the look of a P-burg girl. Her hair was short and she had the dark, swampy, Petersburg personality. She knew a lot about Russian literature and the Russian language in general. Strangely enough, she also spoke Spanish so she was able to speak with the kids (Paco and Richie).
We checked into the Hotel Rossia, directly across from Red Square. It was the coolest Hotel that we had yet stayed in in Russia. I had read that it was the largest hotel in all of Europe with more than 3000 rooms! My room was small and comfortable with an amazing view of the Kremlin.
The promoters took us to eat at a restaurant that they had some kind of business interest in. It was a pleasant place and would be our culinary home for the duration of our time in Moscow.
That night some of us went to a Morrocan Restaurant for tea. There I heard bits and pieces of a conversation at an adjoining table. The people were speaking English because one of them was Turkish guy, the other a Pakistani guy and a Russian girl. I heard some part of a story that the Turkish guy was telling. I missed a lot of it but the point of it was that a guy he knew went to a place in Istanbul for drinks and when the bill came it was $1000. I didn’t think much of it at the time but after I found myself in the thick of my Hassan adventure in Istanbul, those words came back to me.
The promoters had scheduled a radio interview for me for early the morning of the 23rd. Ilya was supposed to pick me up at the hotel at 9 AM. I woke up exhausted and rushed downstairs in search of coffee. I saw that there was a small espresso machine in the restaurant so I ordered a cappuccino. There were 3 girls working there and no other customers. The girls stood around looking very serious while one of them made the coffee. They presented it to me and told me that it would be 290 rubles or about 11 dollars. I laughed and said that that seemed quite expensive. They didn’t see the humor in my remark so I paid them, tipped them and gulped my cappuccino as fast as I could as I could see Ilya looking frantically around the lobby for me.
Ilya was a lovely guy. He was really friendly and would say things like “I read your interview in the newspaper tomorrow.” We drove to the block of flats where Lena was staying and waited for her to emerge. Finally she came out got in the car and announced that before anything else could happen we had to find a place to buy sunglasses and a place to buy water. I knew then that she and I shared the same priorities in life. After driving around Moscow in search of sunglasses we finally arrived at the radio station. The show was a popular morning show hosted by 2 guys who were quite famous in Russia. One of them was in the studio and the other was at the airport on his way to Ibiza. The one at the airport called on his mobile phone to ask me some questions while we were on the air. I must admit, they were really funny guys. The one at the airport kept talking about how there seemed to be an awful lot of fat bottomed girls on their way to Ibiza. He asked if I though that it was OK for Ibiza to let so many of them in and would I let fat bottomed girls into our show? Also, did I like fat bottomed girls or skinny-bottomed girls. I told him that it depended on the time of day and that all girls were welcome at our shows. The host in the studio asked me if I had a hard time living in Barcelona because Spain was supposed to be quite a dirty country and Americans have the reputation for being very clean. I told him I was a dirty boy and he asked me what that meant, if that meant that I was into anal sex. I told him no, that I had never been a full time homosexual etc, etc. All in all we had a lovely chat.
The next day we left for Petersburg. Thus began a series of brutally early flights. I learned a valuable lesson about specifying to promoters that they should book flights that leave no earlier than noon. Anyway, Lena had told me that she was afraid of flying. I had no idea how serious she was when she said that. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone looked more petrified on a flight than Lena. She sat behind me, her hands gripping the armrests. She had a look of utter terror in her eyes. She was sweating and pale. I kept thinking that once we were off the ground and cruising along smoothly at 30,000 feet, she would relax and be OK but that was not the case. If anything she looked more and more frightened as the flight went on.
Moscow had been beautiful in the summer weather. Petersburg seemed kind of dusty and really hot. There were lots of mosquitoes and the hotel we were staying in didn’t have any air conditioning or screens on the windows.
The club we were playing was called Platforma. It had a nice vibe to it and the sound guy seemed pretty good. We ate dinner, sound checked and hung out around the club for a while until show time.
There was a nice crowd for the show. It wasn’t full but it wasn’t too bad. The people were great and knew the music. There was a really nice Cuban guy who took a bunch of cool pictures that night. He took most of the Petersburg photos that are on the site. His name is Josue Lopez and he takes great pictures.
I got to hang out a little bit with Mitya and Masha and their friends. That was a lot of fun. Mitya gave me a cool CD of music he’s been doing called Mon Metro. It was quite good.
The boys got good and drunk and we finally got back to the hotel at around 3. I went straight to sleep as I was beyond exhausted. After about 3 minutes of blissful slumber I was awakened to the sound of a mosquito dive-bombing my ear. That has to be one of the worst sounds on earth when you’re exhausted. I finally woke up, closed the window and had a half hour long battle with about 6 mosquitoes. In the end, I killed them all and managed to get a few hours sleep before we had to wake up to head back to Moscow.
We were picked up at 7 by Lena, Denis, the wild pig’s wife and one of the waitresses from Platforma. I never caught her name and she was about as friendly as an iguana. As we were loading the instruments into the van, I noticed a girl sitting on the curb. She was drunk and looked as if she had been beaten up. She obviously lived on the street. The site of her filled me with sadness. I gave her some cash and went to get on the bus when another street person approached me. He was a young guy about 20 years old. He looked like he could have been 50. They were a side of St. Petersburg that I had never seen before.
In the van on the way to the airport, our hosts were drinking champagne. This continued in the airport until they finally ran out as we were waiting on the tarmac to board the plane. Denis didn’t seem to know what to do with the bottle so he just set it down on the runway. One of the baggage handlers came over and took it away.
Lena faired a little better on the return flight thanks to the champagne and the sleeplessness. We were all completely exhausted by the time we arrived back at the Hotel Rossia. I went straight to bed to try to sleep. I had a hard time falling asleep because we hadn’t been paid for the night before and I was starting to doubt that we would get paid for any of the shows. I had a horrible day of worry and exhaustion. It culminated with me calling the promoters and giving them an ultimatum. I told them that either they paid me everything they owed me by sound check or we weren’t going to play the show that night. The hours rolled by with no word from them so I feared that we were going to have to cancel the entire tour and go back to Barcelona. I turned my phone off and went for a walk. I had to clear my mind a bit. Finally, I turned my phone back on and Alexey’s wife called me. She swore that they would pay me everything right after the show. I didn’t know what to do but I figured that it would be rude to our Moscow fans to cancel at such short notice so I told her I would do it.
The venue was called Starz. No one I knew in Moscow had ever heard of it. I also found out that it hadn’t yet opened. It all made sense to me when we arrived there. The venue actually turned out to be a former factory that was empty inside. The promoter had brought in a stage, sound and light system and some port-o-potties. There were also some folding tables that were to function as the bar. This all would have been OK except for the fact that they had forgotten to promote the show at all. Everyone who showed up was there because they had either seen it on our website or I had emailed them myself. They all told me that there had been no publicity at all. That was really sad but we had a great time playing anyway.
Unfortunately, Lena and Denis weren’t doing so well. The champagne had worn off and they hadn’t slept but an hour or two. Kabanov,(The Wild Pig) was blaming them for many of the troubles with the tour. Lena had no desire to be a tour manager in the first place so she quit on the spot. Thus we were left with no tour manager. Our tour manager, Mara, from our Kazakhstan tour was at the show so Kabanov begged her to tour manage us. She called her boss and got permission to miss a week of work and agreed to do the tour. The most shameful thing about this entire Russian tour is that, as of this writing, the promoter, Alexey Kabanov, has never paid her for tour managing us. It is a real shame because I liked him a lot but that kind of behavior is something that I cannot look beyond.
I will pause the story now, as it is a natural transition point. The following day we left for Kazan to begin the shows that were promoted by Tinkoff. Everything about those shows was completely professional and well done. The publicity was great and the promoters in each city, top notch. I will write about the next three shows soon.

All the best,

David

Turkey. July 2005

It is difficult to know how to begin this journal entry. The Turkey trip was so full of magic and memorable experiences that the thought of putting it down in the journal seems a bit overwhelming, even more so because I haven’t even written the Russia tour entry yet.
We arrived at TAV Ataturk International Airport at about midday on July 7th. We were first met by a hip looking young Turk with a goatee and a sign that said BRAZZAVILLE on it. It turned out that he worked for the festival and he helped us through immigration and baggage claim. He turned us over to our guide, Esra and to our real hosts, Aylin Gungor and James Hakan Dedeoglu from BANT magazine. They were the folks who had popularized our music in Turkey and had given our Cds to the Festival in the first place.
We all piled into the waiting mini bus and headed off to the hotel. I was surprised by how large Istanbul was. I knew that it was a major city but I didn’t realize that it had upwards of 15 million inhabitants. We passed next to the Marama Sea. It was filled with more freighters than I had ever seen in one place. They were all waiting their turn to go through the Bosphorus and on to the Black Sea. I took some nice pictures of them that I will post on the site in the next few days.
A strange thing had happened on the plane from Milan to Istanbul. I was sitting and daydreaming, as usual, and I had a sudden feeling that something had occurred in the world during our transit. I had a feeling that it was something that was very newsworthy and unpleasant. I’m not sure where that feeling came from but as we were driving in the minibus a couple of hours later, James asked me if I had heard about the bombings in London.
The hotel we were staying in was called the Savoy and is located on Taksim Square. Taksim is the center for nightlife and general weekend mayhem in Istanbul. I developed a real affection for that hotel over the few days we spent there. I especially liked hanging out on the front steps with these middle aged black guys who played with a brass band from New Orleans. They would spend every night sitting on the front steps of the hotel drinking amazing amounts of beer and chatting with the local crazies.
I suppose this would be a good time to tell you about my first adventure in Istanbul. It happened on my first night as I was walking out of the hotel to search for an internet cafe.

HASSAN

He approached me from my right. He was pointing to his wrist and saying something in Turkish. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak Turkish.” I said. “I thought maybe you Turkish” he said and pointed to my moustache. I thought that the idea of me looking Turkish seemed unlikely but you never know. He told me his name was Hassan. He said that he had just arrived from Ankara and that he had been there with his father who was a diplomat from Cypress. He asked me what I was doing in Istanbul and I told him that I was there to play some concerts. He asked what I was doing right then and I told him that I was on my way to check my email. I asked him if he knew of an internet café nearby and he said he would find one. He told me that he had a girlfriend in Taiwan and wanted to see if she had written him an email.
We found a place to check our email. He helped me to use the Turkish keyboard and when we were done, he paid for my internet. He asked me if I wanted to go and have a beer with him. I told him that I was going to meet some friends in the lobby of the hotel in about 25 minutes and that we were going to go and see a band called Baba Zula play. He told me that he was going to a place just around the corner that had been recommended by his hotel. He said that they had belly dancers and that it was supposed to be a really nice place. I told him that I didn’t drink beer but that I would come and have a quick soda with him and then I would have to be on my way.
When we arrived at the place, Hassan suggested that I leave my bag with the coat check guy. I told him that I would rather hang on to it. As soon as we walked into the club, I could tell that something fishy was going on. There were no other customers there and the room was filled with Russian girls. I asked him what the place was all about and why there weren’t any belly dancers. He looked perplexed and said he didn’t know. He called a waiter over and asked him something in Turkish then told me that the belly dancing would start in a few minutes. I found that a bit hard to believe but didn’t really think much about it. We ordered our drinks and a couple of the Russian girls came and sat down with us. There seemed to be about 12 waiters and they kept bringing us cherries, nuts, pears etc. I must admit, the fruit they brought was really good. I hadn’t eaten dinner so I ate a lot of it. It was fun to chat with the Russian girls as well because I had just been on tour there about a week before. Anyway, after about 20 minutes I told Hassan that I had to leave and that we needed to get the bill. He said OK but to wait just a few minutes until he finished his drink. Finally we got the bill. I opened it and couldn’t understand what it meant. It was my first day in Turkey and the money was very confusing because everything is in millions. He kept suggesting that we just split it and put it on our credit cards. I said that would rather pay in cash but that I needed to know how much we were paying. He suggested that we go to the office to figure it out because, being from Cypress, he found the Turkish money as confusing as I did.
When we got to the office, we were greeted by a large man in a suit. The man’s mouth was smiling but his eyes were like the eyes of a snake. They were completely devoid of emotion. I asked him how much my half of the bill was. He said some large number of lira and I asked him what the equivalent in dollars would be. He said it came to exactly 1200 dollars. I laughed and said that he must have made a mistake. He said that there was no mistake and that I should have checked the prices on the menu before I ordered my soda waters, cherries, nuts etc. I told him that I could buy a car for 1200 dollars. He laughed and challenged me to find a car that I could by for that cheap. I told him that I didn’t look at the menu because I didn’t think that it was possible on my home planet to find a restaurant where mineral water cost over 100 dollars a glass and cherries cost over 50 dollars a piece. We went on like this for a while and while we were I took out 100 million lira or about $70 and set it down in front of me. I realized that I wasn’t going to get out of there for free and I was trying to figure out how much it would cost me to walk out the front door with my body intact. I didn’t mention the money, I just set it on the table. Meanwhile, my good friend Hassan was having a panic attack over the size of the bill. I told him not to worry, that I would sort it out. I took out my mobile phone and suggested that we call the police or the people from the Festival that brought us to Istanbul. I saw that I had absolutely no signal on my phone because we were in a basement but I pretended that I did. I tried to use humor to diffuse the distinctly unpleasant atmosphere that was quickly descending on the office. I told the man in the suit and the other menacing man who had recently joined us in the office that I would gladly put them both on the guestlist for my show the following night as well as provide them with free Cds and t-shirts but that there was no way on earth that I could pay the bill.
It was then that Hassan said something about how we should just pay up because they would take us to the police station and we might get beaten etc. That was when I realized that he was a traitor. “Your not my friend.” I said, wide eyed with betrayal. “You’re one of them. You brought me in to this you fucking asshole!” “What you say?!!!” was his reply and he looked truly hurt that I would doubt his friendship. They claimed to be taking him to another room to pay for his half of the bill on a credit card even though there were 3 credit card machines on the desk in front of us. After he was gone, the big boss said that he would let me go for double what I had put on the desk. I put down half what he asked for and walked out the door. I wasn’t sure if they would come after me but I didn’t really care at that point. I made my way to the Baba Zula show and told my story to Aylin, James and a table full of their friends. It was then that I learned that people get beaten and sometimes shot in the kneecaps when that happens. I felt really lucky to have escaped relatively cheaply and with all of my limbs intact.
I’m going to send this off to our webmaster, the great Thomas from Sweden so that he can post it and I’ll continue with some more tales of Istanbul tomorrow.

Best,

David

Amsterdam, June 2005

We played 2 shows in Amsterdam last month. The first was at a great new club called the Foyer and the second was at the place we played last year called The Pakuis Wilhelmina.
Our friends Olga and Jeroen had been working non-stop to get the Foyer finished in time for their opening weekend on June 17th. It looked beautiful and on the 17th they had a bunch of cool Dutch bands playing there. It was packed and we all had a lovely time. The next day was sunny so most of Amsterdam was at the beach so our show was a bit less well attended. It was still a lot of fun, though. There are some pictures from it in the photo section.
Sunday, the 19th was my birthday. Brian, the owner of Wilhelmina, picked us up in his boat. We had told him that we needed to transport our amps etc. to the club and he told us to carry them down to the nearest canal and he would pick us up and take us to the club. We carried our stuff to the police station because they had a nice low dock. We loaded the stuff on the boat and had a wonderful cruise through the canals. I had never seen Amsterdam from that perspective before. We saw families eating dinner together at long tables next to the canals…people sitting and reading on their houseboats. It was one of the most beautiful birthdays I have ever had.
On Saturday, I had gone wandering around on my own. Olga had lent me her bike and I had set my mind to getting lost in Amsterdam. There are certain cities that are good for getting lost in. Amsterdam is one. Tokyo is another. Los Angeles is definitely not one of them.
I ended up at an outdoor market. I found a guy who had a booth where he sold artwork. He had lots of original prints that were really nice. I would have bought several things if I had had a way to carry them back to Barcelona. In the end I bought a lithogragh of a couple of parrots.
Farther into the market, I found an organic food section. I had developed a bit of a Dutch cheese obsession on this trip. I heard that there were certain Dutch cheeses that were all natural and made in small batches by the farmers. I had also heard that it was only possible to buy them in Holland because domestic demand for them was so strong that there was never any left over to export. At the cheese booth, I saw the singer from the band, Hospital Bombers. They had played at the club the night before. He showed me a cheese that he claimed was the best cheese in Holland. It was an aged Gouda that had a slightly sweet taste. He also showed me a cheese that was made from the first milk produced by the calves. It had a slight taste of grass about it.
The show at Wilhelmina was a lot of fun. They had a Bar-B-Q beforehand. I got to see a really cool kid I had met the year before named Dan. He was the son of Hess, one of the guys from the club. He is a super great kid. He and I and Ivan went for a swim along the dock next to the club. Brain told us that it is the cleanest water in Amsterdam.
All in all everybody had a good time. The boys spent a lot of time in the coffee houses and riding around on their rented bikes. Paco proved to be a true menace on his bicycle. Once, when we were riding to a restaurant, he suddenly stopped in front of me causing me to slam on my brakes and veer dangerously into the street. Another time, he took off in front of a moving car causing it to slam on it’s brakes to avoid killing him. After dinner at the restaurant called Amsterdam at the old water pumping station, Paco was unlocking his bike and he knocked 2 other bikes to the ground. Dutch folks don’t take too kindly to foreigners knocking their bikes over. We had an entire outdoor patio full of people looking at us with fire in their eyes. Paco was swearing in Spanish about how the fucking Dutch people don’t know how to lock up their bikes properly.
That’s all for now. I will write another entry soon about our Russian adventure. It was really fantastic. Also, we are on our way to Turkey on Thursday so I will be writing about that as well. Make sure to check out the photo section to see pictures from Amsterdam and Russia. Once again, thanks so much for supporting Brazzaville.

Besos,

David

ALMATY, March 2005

It’s been quite a while since I promised to write about the Almaty trip. I’ve been falling behind with my journal entries of late. Anyway, here is what’s been happening in the world of Brazzaville.
As I said in the last entry, lobby call was at 6 AM to leave for Almaty. Mara, the Kazakh girl who was going to be our guide and translator for the trip, was there to meet us and take us to the airport. Once at the airport, we sat down in a little café area and ordered snacks. There was some really loud techno blasting in the background. It was funny to hear that kind of music playing at 7 AM with a bunch of Russian business travelers sitting glumly at their tables waiting for their flights.
The flight itself was pretty nice except for the fact that the AC on the plane was broken so it felt as though we were flying to Kazakhstan in a Banya!
Almaty really felt like it was at the edge of the known world. I mean that in the best sense of the word. There was a faint smell of wood smoke when we got of the plane. There was a tremendous view of the mountains as well. I pulled out my camera to take a picture of them and a man in a police uniform with an oversized hat on told me that it was forbidden to take photos.
We were met by Vasily, the local promoter who was responsible for bringing us out there. He was a charming Russian with an engaging smile and some really cool gold teeth. He gave each of us Kazakh hats as souvenirs and then we piled into the van and headed for the hotel. On the way through town we passed old style wooden houses with beautiful designs above the front doors. We saw soviet style buildings and new, oil money structures with all the charm of a shopping mall in Pacoima. There was a mist in the air and the smell of burning fields seemed to be ever present. That is one of my favorite smells and made me feel an instant affection for Almaty.
The hotel itself was a beautiful old place. Vasily had gotten each of us our own room and arriving there in our sleep-deprived state filled all of us with an enormous sense of gratitude. The window in my room opened out onto a park of some sort. It was dusk by that time and the air was filled with the songs of birds. It was about 20 degrees warmer than it had been in Moscow and I had a feeling of extreme wellbeing. I wanted to lay down and sleep for 12 hours but we had been invited to eat at the club so I jumped in the shower, changed clothes and headed downstairs.
As we pulled up to the club I felt a shift occur inside the van. Everyone was looking at the venue with a sort of puzzled expression on their face. It wasn’t what I had been expecting. I thought we would be playing in something that resembled a rock club or a theatre. Instead we pulled into a semi-circular driveway in front of a club that looked like it came out of the movie, Scarface. It was obviously a product of the vast amounts of oil money that has been pouring into Kazakhstan of late. It was all columns and marble and nervous looking attendants. I heard that it belonged to the President’s daughter. Our host was a Spaniard who had been raised in Switzerland. He spoke several languages and had the easy charm of a European who is hired to bring an air of class to a new establishment.
We were shown upstairs to the dining room and seated in a plush leather booth. There was a man playing a plexiglass piano on the other side of the room. He played beautifully. Apparently he came from Prague. I’ll bet he wondered how he ended up in an empty dining room in Almaty playing a plexiglass piano.
Our hosts, Vasily and the Spaniard whose name escapes me, were very kind to all of us. They had us order whatever we wanted from the menu and after lunch they showed us the disco where we would be playing.
The venue was all glass and metal and lights. It had a state of the art sound system but I was worried that the people who frequented the club might not be the same people who listened to our music. It all seemed a bit upmarket.
The next day Vasily took us all up to the mountains. They were really beautiful. There was snow everywhere. We took lots of pictures and bought apples from some beautiful old women by the side of the road.
Later in the day we did a press conference and went to buy dried fruit in the market.
The show itself was pretty fun but was not very well attended. Some of the people there seemed like they were fans of ours, but the majority seemed like wealthy Kazakhs who had no idea who we were. There were tables of people who looked like diplomats. They didn’t smile or dance. They mostly sat looking a bit bored as TV cameras filmed them. The show was pretty surreal but I had decided to accept for what it was and have a good time. As long as I am able to do that, I can enjoy almost any show.
After the show, we did some more interviews and then went back to the hotel. We only had a couple of hours to relax before we had to head off to the airport. Paco and Richie got really drunk in those couple of hours and by the time we had to get in the hotel shuttled they were 3 sheets to the wind. There was a very conservative looking, Kazakh couple in the van with us. I’m not sure what they made of young Paco laughing hysterically and screaming about “la putisima”.
Our flight was delayed. Paco, Richie and Brady made friends with some Russians from a Moscow based film crew. It was about 6:30 AM by this time. Before long the Russians were treating the boys to Styrofoam cups filled with whisky.
Eventually our plane boarded and we began the 18 hour Odyssey that would eventually land us home in Barcelona. The first leg, from Almaty to Moscow took about 5 hours. When we arrived in Moscow we were told that we only had one entry on our Russian visas so we would not be allowed to leave the airport for the 9 hour layover we had there. Furthermore, they told us, we couldn’t leave the lounge we were in. When I pointed out that there was no source of drinking water, the woman just shrugged. I asked if she would go and buy water for us if I gave her money and she said no.
I think it all turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We were all incredibly sleep deprived so we just lay down on the concrete floor and went to sleep. A couple of hours into our sleep, a guy came around with a floor polishing machine. He polished to within an inch of our sleeping bodies but he didn’t ask us to move. Bless his heart.
After about 5 hours a representative from Iberia came and told us that we could proceed to the gate. As we were going through security we each got felt up by a good-looking woman in white gloves. I thought that there would be a lot less complaints about security delays at LAX if the personnel all looked like her instead of some overweight guy who looked at you like you were the blond cell leader of Al Qaeda in the US.
The flight back to Madrid and then the one to Barcelona were uneventful. I think I slept a bit but I can’t really remember. I always get a lovely feeling when I arrive back in Barcelona. It wraps itself around me like a quilt in winter. It sits, perched on the edge of the Mediterranean, gazing east, a benevolent city in a world filled with conflict.

-David Brown, Barcelona 2005

April 2, 2005

It’s 1 AM here in Barcelona. I finally feel as though I’ve been able to catch up on all of the sleep that I missed on our little Russia/Kazakhstan adventure. It’s always a hard landing for me after a tour. 5 days on the road can feel like 25 days at home as far as the amount of interesting experiences one has. I’ve been kind of a mopey little man the last few days, sad about being here in beautiful, sunny Barcelona.
I should talk a little bit about our trip. Arriving in Russia always freaks me out. It takes me a full day to adjust to the strange reality of Moscow. I feel that every time I go there I understand it less and less. When I first arrive the city seems to be made up primarily of casinos and traffic jams. Nobody seems to smile and the whole town has a feeling of exhaustion about it. Inevitably, my impressions of the city transform by morning. I seem to sleep like a baby in Moscow. It’s odd that a city that tends to unsettle me so much gives me such a comforting feeling while I sleep. I wrote a song called Hotel Ukraine that came out on the Russian version of Welcome to Brazzaville that is all about waking up in the Hotel Ukraina on a cold, gray day and staring out the window at the smokestacks across the Moscow River and feeling completely at peace.
We stayed at a huge complex on the outskirts of the city this time around. It was built for the 1980 Olympic games and is almost a city unto itself. It was filled mostly with Russians and is located next to a very large traditional market.
The girl who was looking after us in Moscow was named Masha. She had a shaved head, vaguely predatory teeth and referred to Moscow as “Ugly Babylon”. I told her I liked the name and she made me promise to write a song that uses it. She was a great hostess and took good care of us. She said that her boyfriend had shaved her hair off because she had gotten home a 6 AM in an extreme state of inebriation and had fallen asleep in the bath. She awoke to him shaving her head with clippers and telling her that every time she looked at her hair she could remember not to come home at 6 AM anymore.
I had a great time hanging out with Artemi Troitski and getting to choose some songs for him to play on his midnight radio show. I was blown away by how absolutely fantastic Sound and Vision by David Bowie sounded. Low has always been one of my favorite albums and it really stands the test of time.
The following day Richie and I went over to a radion station called Silver Rain to do an interview and play a song. It was really fun. There were about 7 people in the studio. There was a news guy and a traffic guy and 2 really funny radio “personalities” that kept things lively. Everything happened live and had a great energy about it. Richie and I did a version of a new song called Jesse James with just guitar, voice and casio. Masha did some live and direct, “Ugly Babylon” style interpreting for us.
The sound guys at B2 were way better than they were the first time we played there about 1 1/2 years ago. The show was OK but I felt like I had put to many “never before played live” songs right at the beginning of the set and it made the band feel a little stiff at first. In the end we all had a good time, though. It was really nice to hang out with ol’ Max Semelyak again. He’s one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met.
When we were driving back to the hotel, we asked the driver if he could stop so that we could relieve our bladders by the side of the road. We were all happily peeing into a Moscow snowdrift when a police paddy wagon drove up and stopped in front of our van. We all hurried back into the van and our driver got out to talk to the police. The cop opened up the side door of the van and began to lecture me in Russian. I took a CD out of my bag and handed it to him. He asked me if it was our music. I told him it was and he said to have a nice night and not to pee on the street anymore and he walked back to his van.
We got no sleep at all that night. Lobby call was 6 AM. Our flight to Kazakhstan left at 9 and you can never tell what the traffic will be like in Moscow. We all dealt with the sleep deprivation in different ways. Brady’s was the most novel. He opted to drink as much as he could and then go bowling in the 24 hour bowling alley in the hotel complex.
It’s getting very late here in Barcelona so I’m going to have to postpone my account of the Kazakhstan leg of our journey until tomorrow.

Sweet dreams,

David

Sept. 22, 2004 Barcelona

I’m so glad to see that so many people from so many different countries have been visiting the site. Today I’m changing the mp3s and switching out some of the images in the ship section and on the home page. I’m going to do my best to keep the site fresh and interesting. I’m also going to try and add a forum section so that everyone will be able to post their thoughts. Don’t forget, you can always write us an email from the contact section (telephone icon) by clicking on the planet icon.

I’m just finishing a book called Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It is easily one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years. I highly recommend it. It is his third novel. I rushed out and bought his second book, Number9dream as I neared the end of Cloud Atlas. I’ll report back on that one soon.

It looks like I’ll be heading off to London in Oct. for another round of ship meetings. There is lots of momentum in the ship project at the moment. I have been collaborating with some Norwegians (solid, seafaring folk) on the project of late. I will post any new developments as they occur.

The Russia tour is due to happen in late Oct. but the specifics are still being hammered out in a smoky backroom somewhere in Moscow. As far as I know we will be playing Moscow and St. Petersburg. Beyond that, nothing is clear although I should find out more this afternoon and will post all the dates in the tour section as soon as I do.

Our “best of” album, Welcome to Brazzaville, is due out in the U.S. on election day, Nov. 2^nd, so go on out and pick up a copy after you vote. Mimicry is doing a great job with the CD so far. They’ve got Team Clermont doing radio promo and Buzzword PR on publicity and they wrote a really funny onesheet that is going out to the stores. I’ll include a copy of it below.

Fall has arrived here in Barcelona. We’ve had several late night thunderstorms that vanish by morning, leaving the sky clear and blue and smelling like the first days of school back in my youth in Koreatown. I’m working on a song right now that tries to capture the feeling of being a teenager in LA in the early 80s. It’s all busses and beaches and bags of weed and mexican girls and Magazine and cholos with their hair slicked back and palm trees, hazy through the smog of an LA afternoon. I know this is a subject that I’ve written about before but I feel I have more to say about it. Shit, the Beach Boys made a whole career out of trying to capture a similar feeling.

Adeu,

David

BRAZZAVILLE ONESHEET

“Brazzaville crafts sophisticated pop where languid bossa-nova-influenced rhythms and gritty lyrics conjure dark deeds on steamy dead-end streets.”—The New Yorker

Sorry, we couldn't resist leading at least one of these onesheets with an industry quote. But whatever dark deeds are evoked by Brazzaville, the worst one is that they have been criminally overlooked. They've gotten all kinds of great press, and strokes from critics and all that. That's because their music is rich, unique, uncontrived, and extremely fun to listen to, even though it speaks in hushed tones through music boiled in a heavy noir. They put out three albums independently, all of which in saner times would have found happy homes on major (or at least big) labels. Now, if the label moguls were too jaded to be moved by the music like the rest of us mere humans are, or just too stupid to see Brazzaville's obvious wide appeal, shouldn't the list of producers who contributed selflessly to this music have helped sealed the deal?—Michael Rozon, Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, R.E.M, Travis, Beck’s Mutations) and Tony Hoffer (Air, Suede, Supergrass, Beck’s Midnight Vultures), to name a few. If that didn't work, couldn't they have milked the musician's "also played with" list? Doesn't do us much good here, but here it is anyway: Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Cibo Matto, Ben Lee, Beck, Sean Lennon, the Lemonheads, Joan Baez, Fiona Apple, Natalie Merchant, Porno for Pyros, Ozomatli and many others.

So in the interest of salvaging something good from oblivion, what we did is collect a sort of "best of" album from the band’s seven-year recording career and asked them to contribute a few new, unreleased tracks. Thus, Welcome to Brazzaville. Now, let’s just end this thing how we started it:

"dark, sophisticated pop from one of L.A.'s most accomplished new bands. Think of Brazzaville as vagabond pop for fans of Morphine, Tom Waits, Spain, Leonard Cohen and Tindersticks."-- New York Times

“... one of the hippest and most exiting experiments to come down the pike in a long, long time... an intuitive, impressionistic take on our shrinking world where themes of isolation and loneliness are at odds with the promise and allure of easy international transit.” — Tom Pryor, Senior Editor, CDNOW

“Slinky, spy-at-the-beach sounds that suggest exotic, tropical vacations courtesy of the Federal Witness Protection Program and an invitation into dangerously cool, Yakuza hangouts where nobody knows your name until all the doors are locked.” - Carbon 14