To explain my sudden absence from the past two issues of bay times, I took a vacation to London, leaving this country for my first time ever, if you don’t count Tijuana and Montreal, which I don’t really, as they are technically all on the same land mass and neither of them were near as much fun as London. This I’m certain has a lot to do with my gracious hosts and former roommates the notorious Adam and Michael, also known as The Canadians. Just prior to my arrival they persuaded an undesirable roommate to vacate the premises, no doubt running and screaming just so I could have my own room. The poor thing left a trail of anti-depressants and high-tech gadgets in his wake and rang the doorbell and ran away a few times during my stay, but having my own little room in a council flat in the heart of Brixton was great.
There were a couple of things I hadn’t anticipated at all about traveling to London, one was the sweltering and humid heat, a near constant for the entire two weeks and the other was jet-lag. No kidding, you’d think that by now I had artificially altered my own body clock well beyond being affected by the crossing a silly little international dateline, but the first three days consisted of sleeping interrupted by occasional minor outings, yawning and nodding out on the Tube-London’s totally incredible underground subway system, the scope of which and experiencing it definitely requires all of ones faculties, energy and focus. It frightened me at first but eventually the tube became my friend, whisking me through its labyrinth of tunnels, stops, connections, walkways, platforms, escalators and rush hour insanity. Adam and Michael had devised a fun little game to help me learn the stops. It involved being on a crowded train and making up dirty variations on the upcoming stops names and asking me out loud within earshot of other passengers questions like, “Are you going to Twatenham Cunt Road?” (Tottenham Court Rd) or “We’ll transfer to the Circle-jerk Line at Splooge Street,” (Circle Line, Goodge Street) or “We’re getting off at Felchley Road before Wet Humpstead,” (Finchley Road, West Hampstead) or “The stop you take is Fuckhirst Hole, not Fartingdon,” (Buckhirst Hill, Farringdon) and you get the picture. Infantile as it seems, my sides were splitting trying to supress laughter on a crowded train over this word game, all the way to their home address on Crusted Rod (Croxted Road).
I also had the pleasure of meeting up with ex-patriot Ggreg Taylor for a wild evening out. Now three months into his residency in London and essentially he is happy as can be. He was getting ready to return stateside with his charming boyfriend Warren for Burning Man. I’ve never seen Ggreg being more happy, thrilled with the prospect of being able to act more himself than the media savvy activist/organizer/opulent superstar image he forged in this town and upheld for a decade. For a change he’s organizing his own life, indulging in selfish pleasures he’s possibly denied himself in the past, and devoting himself to having and being a boyfriend and I really couldn’t be happier for him. I’ve never known him to do the boyfriend thing and it really agrees with him. However, I feel like I know Ggreg well enough to say that I could see wheels turning in his head and fabulous ideas will in time be unleashed upon London’s world class nightclub scene, something San Francisco retains but a dim memory of and seems in constant danger of being stanched completely. Tis a pity.
Warren and Ggreg met me at a place called The Vauxhall Tavern for a drag act called The Dame Edna Experience. That scene was very very crowded with hot men all of whom had serious buzz cuts—not a full head of hair in the place really, which I cant say I didn’t like. And the boys are fanatical about their drag divas, replete with audience participation, and choral booming chants of “Ed-na-aaa, Ed-na-aaa Ed-na-aaa.” She was pretty funny, and belted out a tune like first verse as Dame Edna, second as the original artist (impressive Karen Carpenter, Atomic Kitten, Celine Dion etc) and third verse as himself I think. It was clever and Edna has a delicious mean streak—sparring with an annoying heckler. She joined the crowd out of drag afterwards and seemed like a very fun person. Something else I hadn’t realized was such a common practice for a night out in London was the massive amounts of ecstasy people do. They’d pop a half tab in yr mouth every couple hours. It was the act that said, “Welcome To London.” Not my drug of choice and having not done it for 10 years or so, it was like a new experience. People would ask me if I was okay and I’d say, “I’m so high,” and they’d say, “So American—here we say,’I’m off my face.’ Would you like a bump of K to even things out?” Who am I to refuse when a bullet full of powder my cat has done more of than I have is slammed to my nose. It was all done so openly too, and I didn’t end up hugging people too much or walk wobbly and pee on a stack of magazines thinking it was my litter box like Handsome my cat did after he was neutered. I certainly missed him while gone. He would have liked the fact that foxes roam the suburban streets and backyards of Brixton—I saw one.
One of our major planned outings for my trip was to attend the famous annual Reading Music Festival, a three day long multiple stage multiple act rock and pop music festival that I had read about for years. Reading is just a train ride away from London and is a curious little otherworldly resort-ish town that about 80,000 young people descend upon for three days of music towards the end of summer. It was very hot outside so we were spared the burning-man-esque 60,000-person mudbath it has turned into in years past. It was a strange trek to the site of the festival through a makeshift tent village and a huge fair-like mass of merchants booths set up to provide for the concertgoers every need, from head supplies and smart drugs to glowing jewelry and Indian parasols and bootleg CD’s and Rave fashion accessories. It all felt rather weird, like a cross between a hippie/raver chill-out zone (a popular club term in London, chill-out, not quite sure of the meaning but it has made it to the front windows of many corner grocers) crossed with a Turkish earthquake refugee camp. The people were bent on partying bigtime but I must say the crowd was quite civilized and free of many of the anticipated trappings of such an event, like say no one vomited on us, we weren’t beaten or raped or dosed by a stranger and we got to see all of the days acts we were interested in seeing.
The first act we caught was the “It-band” of the moment, especially in England, whom I had just seen here before I left on vacation at Bottom of the Hill and for all practical purposes, the sensation surrounding The Strokes is fully warranted. At the Reading Festival they were moved from one of the smaller stages to the main stage at the last minute as they truly have hit London like a full on pop sensation, Radiohead and Kate Moss and Vivienne Westwood in the audience, Japanese girls outside paying 500 pounds for scalper’s tickets, etc. I was delighted to see that an old favorite of mine, The White Stripes are currently enjoying a similar response in London as well, like the second coming of Christ or something. Told ya so. When I left London the entertainment guide Time Out featured The Strokes on the cover with the headline, “Why does everyone want to shag the Strokes?” Easy, they are all totally adorable They have a really likeable and fresh sound that is seemingly drawn from mostly influences indigenous to their native New York City from a host of bands dating back about twenty years or so. They remind me of Television, The Velvet Underground, a little Modern Lovers, a bit of Talking Heads, that sort of thing—all blended up and spit out with a solid pitch energy that envelops you in a warm irresistible and familiar pop/rock joy. Their songs do what songs should do, the instrumentation while far from bombastic provides a fervor and fury that is exhilarating with melodies and constructions that shine with half innovation and half homage. Their songs hit your aural senses like a well-tailored article of clothing—it feels good on. There’s a vocalist that sounds just like Strokes vocalist Julian Casablanca and I can’t for the life of me figure out who it is. Any suggestions?
At Reading their set was picture perfect—the sound was excellent, they seemed extra boisterous and self-assured performing to their largest audience to date and I’m sure they were thrilled to be moved to a main stage spot just before Iggy Pop and P.J.Harvey. Their 12-song set hit the high marks in my opinion but the pressure must really be harsh for a young band deemed the next big thing and causing an international sensation. I hope it doesn’t eat them alive, but they do seem to be somewhat careful and levelheaded about it.
As we watched from the small patch of shade provided by a soft ice cream truck, inhaling exhaust just to be in the shade, Iggy Pop hit the stage, bearded and looking like the hottest guy to ever play the role of jesus. I’ve never seen Iggy and I’ve heard how great he was and must admit, for such an old guy he looks great half naked whipping around the stage like a maniac. His set consisted mainly of his latest LP, which has one or two decent songs but is an overall disappointment.
I couldn’t wait to hear something from the Stooges era Iggy—some of the most important and seminal rock music ever recorded, and he eventually did “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (big surprise there huh?) and it was lackluster and I began to see him as a former great with a bunch of Slash-wannabe L.A. studio musicians aping out this bought and sold rock and roll angst thing so I went on a search for batteries for our digital cams—both had gone dead, leaving Adam and Michael in the shade so they wouldn’t whither in the sun with heat stroke. No batteries but I could have gotten body pierced if I wanted. Next up was PJ Harvey, our main reason for attending—and it was high time the sun start to set. This gave us the confidence necessary to get closer to the stage, which was flanked with two huge video screens which were great for watching from afar all day.
We actually got pretty close with relative ease and then P.J. Harvey was announced and what we saw onstage had all of our jaws just dropping. She walked out on stage wearing a black bra, a shiny little black slit mini-skirt, knee-high five-inch spiked heel boots, red red lips and nails and very black hair. This was the furthest thing from an outfit I would have anticipated from her and she looked phenomenally acutely sexy and aggressive. She is a fucking goddess. Also another element to her multifaceted mysterious image came to the fore twice during the set when she stopped two different songs and made her musicians do it right. “We’re going to give Eric a chance to tune his bass guitar and start that again properly.”
She was giving full on I-can-be-difficult Diva supreme, which I always suspected might be the case. Her set was a welcome respite from that hollow power-chord mongering that riles the crowd up. Her songs were more subtle and softer but no less intense. She did mostly material from her latest, Stories From the Ocean, Stories From the Sea including a really great song that I learned was on the British version of that disc but not the domestic U.S. release. My favorite part of her set was a chilling version of “Rid Of Me” which she performed alone with just an electric guitar, and as the cameras for the screens focused on her face and she started to sing that quiet high part of the repeated words, “lick my legs, I’m on fire, lick my legs of desire,” I swear it was like she was channeling a personality, her voice almost thrown, her face contorting slightly like she was speaking out of one side of her mouth. It gave me goose bumps. I think the only other vocalist I’ve ever seen that manages that intense quality, a psychological complexity, like the keeper of many voices is Diamanda Galas. And then she’d just rip into the guitar parts so furiously and loud and powerful and solo. By the end of her set all the other artists back stage were crowding the wings watching and thinking there was no way they could top her performance. Billy Joe of Green Day told the press that it was at that point that he decided they would have to light all their equipment on fire at the end of their set, which they did but we missed it, opting for a leisurely train ride home before the rush.
And I’ll have to tell you more about London in my next column because I barely dented it.