lenny kaye tour diary: part three

7/11-13/08

11 hours in transit, comprised of two planes and a longish bus ride, and we arrive at the festival site in Aix-Les-Bain, France. I’m not exactly sure where I am, close to Geneva and the Swiss border, but the town looks ancient enough as we drive through. I won’t be seeing any of it, unfortunately, as showtime is only a couple of hours away, and we won’t even check into our hotel till long past midnight.

The Musilac fest provides a varied offering, headlined tonight by Vanessa Paradis, with two alternating stages on the shore of a river. As we tumble out backstage Arno, a gravel-voiced singer in the Francais music-hall tradition, is declaiming his songs, to be followed by Hocus Pocus (no relation to Focus) who mingle rap and turntable-ism. As always, it strikes me how the world melds its genres, reaching toward a global mélange of music; the lead singer makes hand motions scored off hip-hop videos, the cadences of down-homie rap translated into the soft vowels of French.

There is threatening rain, ominous black clouds against the night sky, and billowing gusts of wind, but the storm holds its’ breath until we finish our set. As the first droplets begin to strike the festival site, I run across the field to catch Babyshambles, of which I – like most others buffeted by the wind shears of the tabloids – have heard much scandal and not enough music. But Pete Doherty is a winning presence, and the band bangs out the familiar garage / punk chordings I hold so dear, once again amazing me at the resilience of rock’s traditionalist virtues, two guitars and bass and drums and a lead singer drenched in sweat standing on the monitors.

It’s the crowd’s turn to get wetter-than-wet when the skies open. By then, I’m at the hotel, listening to the pour outside and trying to slide into sleep while my body wants to keep on the move.

The rain follows us over the southern Alps into Italy, riding the bus toward Torino. When we arrive at the hotel, shortly after noon, I run into my friend Martine, who manages Fujiya and Miyagi. She tells me of the previous night at the Traffic Free Festival here, which featured the Sex Pistols and Wire. It brought out an especially punque crowd, into throwing bottles at the bands onstage. Johnny Lydon told them they were “impolite” and then carried on with a set hardly changed from the spirit of ’76. God Save the Sex Pistols.

Meeting Colin Newman from Wire, though, a few minutes later in the same lobby, shows that you don’t have to be tethered to your time. Pink Flag was one of my most-played artifacts of Then, and after exchanging mutual admirations, he gives me a copy of Wire’s 2008 release, Object 47. A quick spin reveals the same propulsive melodies amidst the minimalist front-wheel drive and ready wit.

It begins storming when we arrive in Torino’s main park. Traffic is a multi-media’d conglomeration, showing films, live dramatic Interviste Impossibili with “Kurt Cobain” and “Janis Joplin”, and late night dance-raves that go on until dawn. When it’s our turn for the stage, the deluge begins, complete with horizontal streaks of lightning across the sky, a lake flooding in front of the soundboard, water streaming and splattering us whenever we edge toward the microphones. I look to the electrical connectors surrounding my effects pedals and wonder if I’ll become human feedback, a not uninteresting proposition in one’s quest for the ultimate sound. Still, it makes the lyric “the skies split” in “Kimberly” all the more real, and by the time of “Ghost Dance,” with its “We shall live again” chorusings, the air begins to clear. We bear down even harder as the set rises to its crescendo, to let the people know we appreciate their willingness to brave the storming elements.

Another far-too-early wakeup call, another bus, another plane. The fourth night in a row will be in Vienna, and stepping off the festival circuit, we’re playing our own show at one of our favorite rock venues in the world, Arena. Built on the site of an old factory, it was a quasi-hippie encampment in the mode of Copenhagen’s Christiana or the Paradiso in Amsterdam; now most of the stalls selling hash pipes and beads are gone, but the sense of communion that you feel looking off the stage into the audience massed in front, and along levels of balconies, is incomparable.

It rains during soundcheck, but as if to make up for the Noah’s Ark of the night before, the sun steadily returns to prominence. As opposed to the catch-as-catch-can of a festival, where perhaps you’re playing to people more curious than aficionado, this is our crowd, two thousand strong, and without the time pressure of a prescribed slot, we can stretch our wings, swap songs in the set, go on instrumental excursions and even have room for the odd solo gambit. I get to take a ride on the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love.” The love of playing music, for which I would do anything.