the working boy...artist at large

tuxedomoon 2002

Poccia (russia)

Yes, chilluns, we done went somewheres else this year too. As usual I have waited until knowing about it is no earthly use to anyone. You can't book any vehicle but a time machine to get to these gigs.

I include excerpts from my on the road site bulletins for your amusement. Thanks and come again.

 

 

 

the posse The posse. From left. Moe. Larry. Carlos Becerra. Curly. Oleg Kuptsov. Solange Garcia. Allesandro Cardellini. Echo cheese.

our name in light

 tuxedomoon in St. Petersburg. Notice the midnight sun. (photo taken at 10 pm).

midnight sun performance




From the road. Some fevered bulletins from the cultural front.

 

 

On the road in Barcelona


gaudi's lizard
gaudi lizard, parce guell


14 June, 2002

Greetings all. This is your correspondent writing from the hotel lobby in the fabulous city of
Barcelona. I am here with the Tuxedomoons since we played last night at the Sonar Festival. This is a massive festival of new electronic music, jam packed with young folks here to have their ear drums bleed from exposure to the latest and greatest electronic sounds. Our show last night was most excellent, we played a set of new material which will find its way onto our new studio cd, coming soon to a bootlegger near you.

This city is quite jammed with gorgeousness and gorgeosity.

I ain´t never seen the like. The streets are crawling with attractive people of all genders and the architecture is to die for, girl.

One highlight of the show last night was the chance to introduce my son on stage. I took the little tyke out after the last bow and introduced him to the crowd with the words "Este es mi hijo." (this is my son, in case you not know). I may have started another unfortunate soul down the road of applause addiction. I was watching his little face as the adulation of some uncounted number of jazzed up young people washed over him and his dad. You should have been there folks. Now he knows what I do besides feed him oatmeal and chase him
around the playground in mytilini.

The next day we slogged through the heat to get to the one destination I could not face missing, Gaudi's famous Parce Guell. I have to tell you, folks, that it is better than all of the photos I have seen in art books.  Walt Disney's take on the human capacity for whimsy and pure fantasy is to this park as a MacDonald's Big Mac is to Cordon Bleu, or any cuisine you care to name that has soul. Cajun, Greek, Italian, anything. This park could be called 'otherwordly' were it not for the fact that it is in our world already. It's just that civilized minds are not often free enough from the limits of stupidity to see through the veil to this extent.  


I would also like to take this opportunity to announce the coming of tuxedomoon.com
at this address you will now find links to other sites, including mine, but much more will come.

that said, I wish you all buena suerte from
Gaudi´s town.
Laters


We Arrive in Russia
land of the midnight sun

16 June, 2002


photo blr. st. petersburg white nights


Your correspondent here in St. Petersburg, (Russia that is if you are American and don't know that there is ANOTHER St. Petersburg in the world.) We, Tuxedomoon, are up here for a week or so, we play here tomorrow and then we go to Moscow.
 
I don't have a hell of a lot to report about life up here in the former home of the evil empire.
I have been luxuriating in the fact that I have my own room here in the Tuxmo Arms, in which I can sleep and SMOKE, without fear of brain-damaging my son. I can also read undisturbed and I have just finished devouring a book by Bruce Sterling. "Distraction" it was called. A political diversion set 5 minutes into the future  as the cover said.  Pretty good. I recommend Bruce Sterling as post-Gibson reading. (In the science fiction community he is known as Chairman Bruce. 
 
First thing off the plane, we got hit by shuckers and jivers. Some knuckle-walking son of Ivan wanted to charge us thirty dollars for carrying our baggage 10 feet. We wanted to get from one terminal to the other of the stunning world-class facility that is Moscow airport.
Were we ever shocked to discover that the ticket agent of Aeroflot was in cahoots with the gypsy cab drivers and luggage schlepper to get us to part with about 100 dollars of Tuxmo money. When we asked the woman at the aeroflot desk when the free shuttle bus service was she replied in words not of this time space continuum.

"I never told you to take a bus, now
you have to pay for standing twenty minutes talking to information,
WHY WHY WHY do you insist on taking a taxi when I TOLD YOU the only taxis here are
 directly controlled by the mindwarp brainfog hare krishna voodoo no coke pepsi. NEXT PLEASE? TAKE TAXI OR TAKE BRITISH AIRWAYS NEXT TIME STUPID!!"
 
 I simply must tell you, however,  that st. petersburg is
stunningly beautiful,  knock out drop dead gorgeous. They have a 'respectable river'here as
peter says. I have never seen a river whose current is so fast. It positively assaults the bridges. We are staying not all that far from the Hermitage and the surrounding plazas.
This town is laid out on a grand scale, the sky is huge and the sun doesn't ever quite
set. We are in the middle of the 'white nights' period. At most, the sun sulks a bit, we have a crepuscular glow for a while and then the sun comes back up.
 
 I will go now, I have finally managed to get online but it costs. I am sitting in my underwear as I write this. I thought you needed to know that.
 
 
peter poses for umma gumma tribute album gracious dining on the moscow train
when I catch you, I'll pinch you so hard. a rose blooms in moscowthe view from our moscow hotel room.


 


MUNDOBLAINEO IN RUSSIA
SPECIAL REPORT from the hermitage.


hermitage museum st. peter

Greetings sports fans. This is your working boy here, writing from an internet cafe inside the HERMITAGE, St. Petersburg's enormous repository of art from all times and places. Thus far I have seen many of the biggies, Titian, Caravaggio (including the Lute Player upon which my friend Harpeaux Crapaud superimposed my haid for my site.) Gaugin, van Gogh, Michelangelo, Cezanne, Degas, Renoir and the hits just keep on happenin'. I am struck here, just as I was at the Parce Guell in Barcelona by how much the pure flow of art resembles religion for black clothes wearin' arty types like me. At the guell park, people were putting their hands in the water of Gaudi's fountains and rubbing it on their heads with a spontaneous devotion I have never seen in a church. Perhaps at Lourdes.

The tuxedomoon show last night was not bad. We couldn't hear anything on stage, but that's showbiz. Also, it was strange to be playing in broad daylight at 9 pm. Such are the idiosyncracies of the planet's attitude towards the sun up here in the north country. These people seem to like us.

peter in peter

 

peter in peter

We played some of the new material which will end up on the new record, taking it out onto the road to temper it up a bit. This is also as it should be.


After the show, our erstwhile host, Oleg Kuptsov and company took us on a boat ride through the late night canals and passages of this city. I tell yafolks, you shoulda been there. We had the moon on the water and the never-setting sun drooling indigo and orange all over the place while we puttered around these broad neo-classical waterways. Simply divine my friends.

 

please don't hurt me

please don't hurt me

on the boat

en bateau

machoman

Now I am having a coffee break before hitting the egyptian part of this place. Later I may go with the boys to buy bootleg software or cd's. When insane, do as the sane do.

I hit the egyptian part and was naturally floored. I also dug the many Roman statues. I also saw a piece of Greek ceramics that didn't make me want to pass out from sheer boredom. Now I am off.

dos vedanya



blaine

(the voyage home)

FROM RUSSIA WITH GLOVES red square


A rubber glove inserted in one's fundament, that is. This here's uncle guido back in athens, deep fried like a thai grasshopper.

Before I go on, a word about Russian security......argggggggh! That's the word. After our halcyon days in St. Petersburg, we got off the 8 hour train to Moscow and were denied entrance to our hotel on the grounds that our papers weren't in order. It seems that the travel restrictions practiced by the former unmentionable regime are still in force and one must supply hard copy to back up one's claims at legitimacy in the Russian federation.


We were thus privileged to discover a new kind of limbo, waiting to be allowed past the border between the street and our hotel. We passed the time at the convenient hotel police station by sipping a coke or two at the convenient Limbo bar and grill, conveniently located in the basement.

All of this security begs the question "What the hell are you dopes keeping so secure?"
"We are guarding the other guards."
"And what are they guarding?"
"It's a secret."


There were not only security guards at the front desk of the hotel, there were roving gangs of security who prowled the halls of this 2000 room monster left over from the heady days when Brezhnev's guests and cronies luxuriated there. Now, the fountain reminiscent of Las Vegas' Sands Hotel lies rusting in the Moscow rain, it's mosaic tiles falling loose almost audibly.

I had planned to go on and on and vent all kinds of spleen but I am afraid that I just don't have the energy. Some slimebag stole my laptop from the hotel lobby in Barcelona and I no longer want to live.

I will write an update soon, describing the sublime majesty of Red Square and the surrounding monolithic buildings, the warmth of the Moscow audience and much more besides.
state of the art toilet in russia

I include for your consideration the fact that I was almost obliged to leave my violin in Moscow since IT'S papers were not in order. I somehow neglected to get a passport for my fiddle, folks. Only a quick inspection by a violin specialist at customs saved my instrument. It seems that n'er do wells have been known to travel into Russia with a cheap violin and leave with a looted Stradivarius from the Moscow Conservatory or something. Hell.



Right now, I am in mourning for my computer. It was a cheerful little fellow, a Compaq, not astounding but all mine. No more, alas. He will be sorely missed by his doting dad.

I will keep my chin up. You have not heard the last from your correspondent, not by a long shot.


July 10, 2002

Happy Birthday to me
happy birthday to me


Yes, it's true ladies and germs, tomorrow, July 10, 2002 is my 49th birthday. On Friday, July 10, 1953 Mr. and Mrs. Reininger took delivery of a big mess of trouble at 3 am in Pueblo, Colorado. What does 'friday's child do?' Hell if I know. I am quite frankly amazed that I have made it this far. I don't need to be reminded how close I am to the 'blue period', my fifties. I say it is blue because I associate colors with numbers in a big way. The number 5 is blue for me, therefore, 50 is blue.

Forty nine is black followed by red. This is called 'synesthesis'. It is quite a common phenomenon wherin some people experience the input of some senses with other senses. Some people, for instance, see colors when they hear sounds, often seeing moving fields of patterns while listening to music. I am one of these. Number/color association is the most common.

I have been spending the last weeks working on my tan and swimming in the sea. This island is marvelous. Tomorrow night I go to Italy where I will play with people from Materiali Sonori in an evening of improvisations. It is worthy to note here that the record 'Keen-o' featuring me, Roger Eno (Brian's bro) Pier Luigi Andreoni and Giancarlo Bigazzi is just now becoming available. One may purchase this fine item at  http://www.matson.it
tell 'em guido sent you.

When I have some pearls of wisdom to share, rest assured that I will pass them on. At the moment I feel blessed to have the opportunity to let the sea teach me a couple of things about permanence.


Thanks all, especially those of you who have jumped the gun and wished me happy happy joy joy already.




 
 
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