lenny kaye tour diary: part two

7/10/08

I am having lunch with Opeth.

Well, not exactly. Adjacent is more likely, for they are at a nearby table at this seaside hotel where we are encamped, about twenty minutes drive to the Rockwave Festival in Athens. A big fan of their double-D duology – Deliverance and Damnation – I shake a few hands attached to tattooed arms and let them know we’re all in this together. Later I’ll see them on the beach, fresh from the water and sunning themselves before heading to the festival site; not quite your Swedish doom and gloom.

It’s harder-than-hard rawk night at the Fest, and though I long to indulge myself in Morbid Angel and Opeth and headliners “Da” Priest, this is no moment for “Living After Midnight.” After playing in Byblos, our wakeup call to get to the pair o’ planes that hop-skip-and-a-jump us from Lebanon to Greece comes at 4 ayem. Coupled with jet lag and the urge to explore Beirut which kept me on the move, I’ve hardly had any chance to reset my body clock, and am well ready for a day off eating feta cheese and drinking Mythos beer. Knowing we have four shows in as many daze coming up, I wisely opt to prioritize my energies and hearing and sleep early. Yes, I be a wuss.

But nine hours in dreamland pulls me in tandem with Euro time, and by the next day I feel ready to meet the Grecian mobs head on. Our bill sandwiches us between Locomondo and Manu Chao, two Euro-bands that straddle the cross-cultural, blending Caribbean riddims with a sense of the tropical. Locomondo bounces from ska (Andrew, our stage right tech, describes it as “polka on speed,” a not entirely abstruse comparison) to reggae to dance-hall, and the dreadlockeded lead singer has no trouble rousing the considerable crowd. Manu Chao closes the night with a riot of Gypsy groove and bonhomie, reflected in the next morning when I come down to breakfast and these Genet-like characters are still partying from the night before, mugging for each other, laughing and enjoying the road-brotherhood of a band.

As for us, we take our hour slot and powerhouse through it, feeling the first rush of tour momentum, riding the audience’s energies and our own sense of elation at watching the mob catch each phrase and toss it back, urging us to be like that bungee jumper I see off in the distance, leaping into space, skimming the ground before being whirled aloft. The adrenal of exhilaration.