lenny kaye tour diary: conclusion

7/19-21/08

I have my Rock Lives! moment of this particular go-round unexpectedly, as usually happens. We’re on a night of unwind in Barcelona after the long haul from Scandinavia, shown around by our aforementioned stage right tech, who lives here. We’ve had great tapas (Inopia, 104 Calle Tamarit); hung at Bar Ramon in the Sant Antoni district where there is a signed square Bo Diddley Gretsch on the wall; and sat on Andrew’s roof listening to Ennio Morricone. Now, about two in the mañana, we’re winding back to our hotel when we hear the unmistakable reverb clatter of a live band a few streets over. A Spanish rock group with distinctly Ramone-ic overtones is turning it up on a raised platform surrounded by a couple hundred revelers while the city sleeps around them. Mas, por favor.

Spain is on the ascendant, symbolized this year by their national team’s stunning triumph in the Euro-cup soccer championships, with some of the most enthusiastic fans you might encounter anywhere. We first came here in October of 1976, shortly after the death of Franco when the country was awakening from long years of cultural isolation. I remember playing in a skating rink converted for the occasion, on borrowed equipment, to a crowd hungrily liberated from repression.

This sense of ultra-new contrasting with venerated old is on display in Zaragoza, site of Catherine of Aragon’s beautiful cathedral as well as this year’s Expo 2008, where we play amidst futuristic edifices that swoop along the Ebro river like exotic aquatic bestiaries. The theme of the world’s fair is “Water and Sustainable Development,” with the participating countries musing architecturally on how best to conserve and preserve and venerate this most important element of life. For our show, they might have concentrated on another source of power, Wind, since the gusts on stage are reaching twenty or thirty miles an hour, taking the sound from the amplifiers and whirling it about so that each note has a different frequency, beats picked up and carried like Dorothy on her way to Oz. Actually, looking out over this city of things-to-come, it does feel like we’ve alighted in an Emerald City, and pay no attention to the man behind the screen.

The next night is the last of this over-all-too-soon tour, and is up in the Basque country of Spain, in Bilboa, another jarring juxtaposition of old and new, with the soaring grace of the Guggenheim museum contrasting with the winding streets of the “Casca Viejo” on the other, only a short walk in time and space separating. The venue tonight is Santana 27, and when I walk inside for the soundcheck, I am immediately familiar with its rock-dive vibe. I’ve been in joints like this my entire life; we could be anywhere, in Cleveland, Ohio or Stuttgart, Germany; Fresno, California or Sheffield, England. The crowd is pressed right up front of the stage, and you can dance with each and everyone. We’re just about at the end of our reserves of energy, not to mention sustainable development, but we – band and audience – know our parts in the ritual. We’ve all been here before, keeping the show ascending through its encore, the last chopped chord, the pick placed in a grasped hand, the scribbled autograph.

Home.