Word on a wing

Let the temperature rise

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 15:19:20 +0200

It's been a bit of a rough week this week, leaving me a little tired. Right now I'm trying to keep my eyes open, while I'm supposed to be digging through some software configs. I've been a little fluey the last couple of days. Not sick enough to be sick, but just annoying enough to be annoying.

Joan As Police Woman

Yesterday I had a dinnerparty with my colleagues. We went over to this place called Bazaar, which serves Moroccon style food. What I never expected possible in my previous job, happened just now. It was interesting to find out the person behind the colleague. I've always kept work and personal life firmly apart, because, well, the people in my previous job weren't really people I'd normally spend a lot of time with. We ended up in a pub and I spent most of my night talking to a colleague about the goth culture, roleplaying and going to festivals. Oh, and some technobabble too, but it's hard to avoid, I suppose.

Last night I went to see Joan As Police Woman at Paradiso. Last time she played there, it was in the little upstairs room. It didn't sell out this time, but I'm sure it was close. I went in straight from work, and had some really nice sushi beforehand at Moshi Moshi. Apparently well known at the Paradiso too, because Joan's bassplayer and sound engineer were there too. Duh.

Joan As Police Woman

The gig started off a little rocky. Paradiso can be really, really noisy, especially around the bar. Joan has a strong, powerful voice, but her songs are soft, more voice than instruments, which means the talkers at the bar become disturbing. Add the plastic unbreakable glasses Paradiso uses and you can imagine what it sounded like. Joan joked about it sounding like she was playing at a wedding.

However, her songs became so quiet, so full of raw emotion and power that while the set went on, even the most die hard smoker, drinker, talker and screamer shut up. I even stopped taking pictures, as my (relatively quiet) shutter just sounded disturbing to me. Stupidly enough, the only sound coming from the audience was the beep-beeping of people taking pictures with their camera phones. Very strange and mildly disturbing.

There's a lot of things to be said about Joan. She's a striking presence, often dressed a little over the top in sparkling dresses or (in this case) MC Hammer like jumpsuits. She's an attractive woman and I am sure her choice of dress or materials that offer a hint of see throughess captures the imagination of many a bloke there and possibly a couple of girls. Then there's her behaviour on stage. She's joking around, sometimes throwing in little anecdotes that only make sense to her and then bursting out laughing in a little party of her own, only to launch into the next dead serious song.

Joan As Police Woman

The audience loved her and just got won over more and more. The applause before the encore was spontaneous and kept going well after what's considered polite, only to be repeated in full force after she had finished her set.

For a moment she seemed to bask in the afterglow of her performance, while the audience virtually carried her on their hands, only to then finally disappear. Not for long though, because even in the 1000 headed Paradiso, Joan is kind enough to pop into the merchandise stand to sign anything people ask her to.

It's amazing how Joan Wasser has grown, from being one of the backing band for numerous people to a somewhat fragile support set for Rufus Wainwright, onto the 300 head room in Paradiso, and the 30 people FNAC in store in Paris I was at last year. And then finally this powerful performance in a well filled venue all of her own. Just excellent and quite a feat in her genre.

Joan As Police Woman

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It's a wonderful life...

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 18:19:56 +0200

Joan at the FNAC in store rocked. It was the weirdest little place, with plastic folded chairs and a tiny little stage. Joan seemed a little frustrated about not getting anything from the audience who were very polite, French and non English speaking and didn't get any of her banter.

I called Stuart on the phone to let him listening to one of the songs, because he keeps missing her concerts for some weird reason. I did get to talk to her a little after the show, which was kind of neat. She's a genuinely nice person and funny too, which helps.

My last night in Paris was a blast. I ended up sharing a room with Oliver and Mandy, both American but vastly interested in foreign culture, France specifically so. It's always nice to meet people like that, who blow the lousy American stereotype to pieces. We talked art and history and the beauty of things in general. Somehow we ended upall together sitting on the sidewalk in front of our hostel. Everybody chipped in with a bottle of wine, cheese and crackers, juice, chocolate and so forth. A grand little, very spontaneous kind of party, in the heart of Paris. It was a perfect ending to a perfect break.

Back at home, things didn't look so up. My eldest dog, Sammie, is very, very sick at the moment. Alright, she's not the youngest anymore at 14, but she's always been doing quite well upto now. That seems to have changed almost overnight. She basically refuses to eat anything and just lies around being miserable. At the same time, she still gets excited whenever I come in, and will cuddle up to me, but only momentarily. The way it looks now, she's starting to slowly slip from our grip. She seems to be suffering from a problem with her liver, which basically makes her feel miserable. The problem is that we don't really know what's wrong with it, and my mother doesn't want to put her through unnecessary suffering where the treatment gets worse than the cure. She's an old dog, and too much doctoring might prolong her life a little, but "a little" is frankly not good enough. So now there's not a lot we can do, but wait and keep our fingers crossed that she'll pull through.

I did go to Antwerp sunday and monday to see Nick again. I've been to Antwerpen a few times, but for some reason never quite realised how small it really was. I wandered around quite a bit, not sampling the Belgian beers, but enjoyed watching the sights and walking along the Schelde river. The show was alright, but not great. I think it's mostly down to me hating the venue and the Belgians being a bit quiet.

Nick on the other hand... I don't know what's come over him. I don't think I have ever seen him so laid back and forthcoming. He'll walk onto the stage and spend the first couple of minutes of the show shaking hands and signing stuff, being really spontaneous about it. He almost seems.... happy.

A happy Nick Cave. There's an interesting concept. What next? The pope having sex with another man? What's this world coming to?

Next thing up is the Came So Far For Beauty thing in October. And what a stellar line up it is. I initially get excited because Gavin will be on stage, but I'm getting Jarvis Cocker, Lou Reed and Nick Cave thrown in as well. What a setup! Now I'm not big on afterparties, but I bet this one is going to be hot.

A few more gigs lined up after that. Looking something like this:

04/10 - Came So Far For Beauty - Dublin
05/10 - Came So Far For Beauty - Dublin

03/11 - Cat Power - Paradiso
09/11 - Nick Cave - Nurnberg
10/11 - Nick Cave - Stuttgart
11/11 - Nick Cave - Mainz
16/11 - The Killers - Paradiso
28/11 - Muse - Brabanthallen

19/12 - Muse - Sportpaleis Antwerpen

Not sure if I'll be going to see even more Nick Cave shows... Im tempted, but I've got this cash flow thing going on at the moment (not surprising at EUR80/ticket). The Killers will be cool too, probably one of the last times we'll see them in such a small venue. Going with loads of friends too, so should be a nice night out. Somewhere in between the Crossing Border Festival is on as well, and Joan is playing a few more gigs, so I'll see if I can go to some of those. So yeah, pretty booked up right upto the end of the year. Very exciting times, but I have to keep an eye on the funds with regards to coming to America next year.

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Bonjour!

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:53:32 +0200

I suppose I've been kind of missing in action along the way. So time for an update.

As of friday afternoon I have a week off... one whole week off to go see loads of Nick Cave shows.

I went to the shows in the Hague on Monday and Tuesday and then to the next one here in Paris where I am now. Tuesday in the Hague was mindblowing. It was great to see how laid back Nick and the band were, joking around, laughing and whatnot.

I bumped into a Bowie related friend the first night and got talking for a bit. After the show he asked me did I know where the aftershow was, but no... no clue, and not really interested. I met him again the next day and he said he'd been at the party and talked to all the lads and whatnot. Great story behind it though. Basically, he was hanging out near the ticketoffice trying to sell some spares and noticed some guy trying to explain the people in the ticket office he was actually on the guestlist. The guy turned out to be a Swee, who had bumped into Nick at the airport. He'd asked where his next show was and Nick said he'd put him on the guestlist. One minor problem: Nick couldn't actually remember his name, so had put him down as "guy I met at the airport". Kinda cute.

So this morning I got up at 4:30 in order to catch the 5:30 metro to the Central Station, from which the TGV to Paris departed. Strangely enough, it was the exact same train, even wagon Nick's crew was in as well. Not that that is awfully exciting or anything, seeing how all they and I did was sleep.

Made it to Paris at 11, which is the nice part about leaving that early. Ran up to a hostel in Montmarte, which initially said they didn't have any space, but came up with something after all. Picked up my Nick ticket at the FNAC and went up to check out the venue, Cinema Grand Rex.

When I got there, there were some people already there, getting very excited. I watched them for a while, until my eye fell on a Dutch paper the little kiosk was selling. NRC. Not my favourite paper, but I figured it'd kill the time, so I bought it. In it there were pages and pages of stock exchange info and news about the government financial plan that was presented the day before yesterday. Boring. Imagine my surprise when I came across a half full page of a Nick Cave cartoon. The illustrator had been to the first gig and had made up a cute little cartoon like about Nick. I actually found it very funny and sure enough... black Merc pulls up, Nick gets out. I didn't want to hassle him, but sure enough, he spotted me, and I showed him the paper to sign, explaining I'd just bought it. While the cartoon was in Dutch, he seemed amused by it. The cartoony characters are very funny all by themselves, so I suppose there ain't no language barriers when it comes to cartoons.

Either way, he signed it and I was very proud, carefully wrapping it and rewrapping it, then decided to run it back to the hostel. Murphy's Law demands something should go wrong along the way, so out of the whole paper I lost that specific page. Luckily I realised it fairly quickly, so I ran back to find where I had lost it. Luckily, I did spot it exactly where I thought I had lost it, except...

...it was in the middle of the road.

...and then some cars ran over it...

....and I was disgusted.

So now I have a signed Nick cartoon with tire marks on it :D

The Paris show itself was cool, though not overly mentionable. Very standard setlist... Very entertaining conversation between Nick and (frankly) the crazy French. The Cinema Grand Rex though... just wow. It's an old cinema with very comfortabl light beige leather seats. When you enter, you walk into an indoor area that is made to look like an outdoor area. Huge stage, with on each side something crafted that looks like a house's facade with french balconies and all, giving the feeling that the stage is sat in between the houses. On top of that, there's a very, very high ceiling, painted dark blue to inky black, with little white lights sat within it, giving the effect of starry skies. Absolutely amazing to see.

Strangely enough, I also ran into a friend and his wife there, that I know from the Dirty Three shows, so we talked for a little while. Good to see some familiair faces.

So now I'm back at the hostel, and there's lots of Canadians scattered around the common area and it's a lot of fun just hanging out there. While I'm absolutely shattered, tired and god knows what, I feel somewhat like getting a bottle of wine and hanging out until 5, getting slowly drunk. Great, slow evening in Montmartre, Paris. Absolutely awesome.

On top of that, Joan as Policewoman is doing an instore in the FNAC tomorrow, so I'm definitely going there. Great little freebie surprise there. But first things first. Breakfast and then the Louvre.

Here's some Nick pics. More to come :)

Nick Cave @ The Hague

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