Not to be outdone by my archrival, Sean Michaels, I have prepared my own true story of European travel. But mine is much longer than his (and far greater in quality) and therefore requires a telling in two parts.
***
I was really hoping that Cat Power would release an album during my tenure as author of Said the Gramophone, but as that now seems unlikely (I've heard nothing about it), I've found another excuse to tell this story:
Not last summer, or the summer before, but the summer before that (my antepenultimate summer, if I were to die today), I took a trip through some Mediterranean countries. I went to Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and Morocco. I came (via Geneva), I saw (Macy Gray at a bar in Madrid, among other interesting things), I conquered (all of the Mediterranean countries simultaneously (I'm a military genius)), I ate, I danced, I drank and fell asleep in public. I met my friend Vanessa in Geneva and my editor Max Maki in Spain. The latter of whom I traveled with for a while. Then I met up with my sister in Florence where she was studying for the summer. Everything was going just as I had planned. But as my plans ran out, so, too did my money and my Eurail pass. As I left my sister and Florence, I had two days to kill before my flight out of Milan, and no money or friends to kill it with.
I got an email from Max about a Cat Power show at a music festival in Switzerland. Now, I'm no different from anyone else (and you can take that to the bank), which means that I love the music of and the lady that is Cat Power. I had never seen her perform, so I decided I would make it a pilgrimage, give my last few days in Europe a purpose.
There was, however, a major snag:
I knew the name of the festival and the address for its (entirely unhelpful) website, but had no idea where specifically within Switzerland the action was to take place.
So, being a logician by trade, I ventured to the nearest thing to the middle of Switzerland that I could think of, its capital, Bern. At the train station's information booth, I asked if anyone knew anything about the festival. They did not.
From a Bern internet cafe, I watched Ronaldo and Rinaldo and other men with similar names destroy the German soccer team in the finals of the 2002 World Cup. I emerged from the cafe and ran through the streets waving a Brazilian flag and chanting "Brazilia" along with the rest of the hordes (there were actually hordes chanting "Brazilia" in the streets of Bern), and when I came to my senses, returned to the cafe to double check the festival website. On this particular perusal I noticed the number of a ticket hot line, which I called, yielding the suggestion that the festival might be near Fribourg.
Fribourg sounded good to me, so I hopped on the next Fribourg bound locomotive. When I arrived, I again asked at information whether they knew anything about the festival. Never heard of it.
Hope began to fade. A pervasive melancholy took hold and as I was overcome by a sense of loss and purposelessness I decided to board the next train, wherever it headed. Such is the way of the traveler. Such is the insousiance of me, The Traveling Man.
Dudingen was my destination; disconsolation, my mood.
When I arrived in the tiny (TINY) Swiss/German bordertown of Dudingen, I made one more pathetic grasp for glory at information.
Me: Do you know anything about the festival?
Informant 1: Sorry, no, never heard of it.
Informant 2 (hidden low and in the corner): Oh, yes, sure. The music
festival. It's just down the street.
It took only 45 minutes of walking in Informant 2's suggested direction for me to determine for sure that she was lying. I mean, it was nice. Huge fields of tall flowers and cows rolling around like it didn't even matter, real cowbells clanging at their necks. In the distance I saw what I can say with certainty and without hyperbole was (and is to this day) the tallest peak I have ever seen. Though, at this point I realized that I would die within a week in the Swiss countryside at the foot of what I can only imagine is the summit of the entire Swiss Alps, I decided to keep walking. Because why not.
Then something strange happened. The mountain started singing to me. It was a good song, and one that I recognized. The mountain was covering "I'm Waiting For The Man," off of The Velvet Underground and Nico. So, I realized I wasn't so much walking deeper into the Swiss countryside as I was walking deeper into the darker recesses of the pathological human psyche. Or, wait... What was that in the distance?
***
Moby Grape - "Naked, If I Want To"
Sunny, but completely off-kilter. Pay special attention to the "Fourth of July" harmony. A great musical moment.
***
Cat Power - "Naked, If I Want To"
Sounds like Cat Power: languid and pared down.
Elvis Costello - "New Lace Sleeves"
As if Costello has a problem with language - mumbling, babbling, failing to make any sense - the song starts with the band gently trying to coax him into articulating his point, careful not to disturb him, not to get in his way. Then his story is born fully realized, completely cogent. The drums untighten, the bass and guitar unmute. Everyone relaxes. It opens up, unfolds sideways. It develops and builds in ways never expected but always satisfying.
And as Costello's vocal performance becomes more and more soulful and expressive, the organ and the rest of the band become increasingly enthusiastic. "Yes, this is what we wanted."
Like a classic soul cut, but not.
***
Roxy Music - "Re-Make/Re-Model"
After the party and the Elton John piano intro, the song starts in earnest. The instruments are full-out from the start (the earnest one) and don't co-operate, but play against each other; the sax, guitar and electronics battling it out for supremacy in the backwards polity that is this song.
Brian Ferry sings like a cabaret Lou Reed; raising his eyebrows and bouncing his shoulders. Sometimes he praises, but mostly he admonishes.
Then everyone gets a solo. And we get the sense that whereas after every other instrumentalist solos, the band smiles and quietly applauds, after Eno's blazing electronic assault, there is only stunned silence and confusion. But they play on, anyway. Because they're abnormal.