Snow seems to be a running theme this winter. I was thinking late last year how I had seen far more snow as a child than I have in recent times, so it’s nice to finally get some. I spoke to Nora on the phone and she said that alot of the snow in Berlin had begun to melt. She was saying how she hadn’t seen so much dogshit on the streets in here life. She said it smells rank . Dog shit is a massive problem in Berlin. People don’t want to pick it up. I wouldn’t want to pick it up either. It’s dogshit! I need to not get started on dogshit…
Anyways more snow. Last day in studio. I am out here because I wrote 2 more songs way past the 12th hour. I am swapping them out with two on the record. The two in question were incongruous with the rest of the album. The 2 new songs are called “Shadow Boxing” and “Anything”. I have one more vocal to do. Wish me luck.
It’s a beautiful sunny day today in Berlin. I have been writing and writing and writing. It’s been good. The strike rate has always been 20 flat songs and 1 that stands up by itself. These songs come from a different place in the brain than the others. I’m not familiar with right left brain responsibilities but I think the reason it is hard to write a good song maybe relates to it coming from an unconscious area of the brain so there is no way of repeating it because it’s unmapped, unknown. Like being blindfolded and taken in a car somewhere and then blindfolded on your return, you would never know how to get there again. A song from here is a postcard which ignites upon consumption this area of the brain.
When I hear something which comes from this unmapped place, I get a little jolt and for a moment I am transported there. This feeling is addictive. It is escape.
Anyways I got one of these the other night. It is nice to know if I empty my head enough, I am still light enough to float off to that cool secret place.
On another note, I was driving the other day and I heard a familiar voice singing on the radio. It took a while to figure out who it was because the lyrics and his voice were beautifully juxtaposed and later it all made sense when the announcer said it was a cover. The song is by Magnatic Fields and the singer is Peter Gabriel. Still one of the best voices Britain has produced. The song is called The Book Of Love. I’ll take it down if it’s naughty to have it here.
It comes from his new album of cover versions buy it
It has started snowing again in Berlin. I have been holed up in my room, writing. It’s nice to have a room to do this. Before we bought this house, and before the people that had it before us, it was a bar. This room was a disco. A friend of ours came by and while here she realised why the place was felt so familiar. She was all “We would sit over there, and the bar was over there and the DJ was over there…” She even found some photos of some nights they spent here. It’s cool to imagine all the parties that have happened in this room. It’s the best writing room I ever had. I think there are many good ghosts in these walls.
The writing place I had in London was this huge room. We took out the 1st floor and opened the whole room up. It sounded great but the space I created was cramped into a corner. I wrote some nice tunes in this room. My Eyes was written on the piano there and Re-Offender. Before this we lived in a tiny little house down the street. I had a nice little room there. I remember covering the walls in poems and writing before writing Driftwood and Blue Flashing Light. I wrote Sing downstairs there while watching MTV with the sound down. Before this all 4 of the band stayed in a house on the Haringey Ladder. We had a horrible landlord. This little fat Italian man called Mario who would come in regularly, uninvited, and take vegetables from the garden and nosey about. It was a nasty place but we had fun in the summer of 96, traveling from there to The Fortress rehearsal studios and to Camden for drinks at The Good Mixer. I wrote Midsummernight’s Dreaming in that house. It features on the back of Good Feeling. It wasn’t the most inspirational of spaces.
Oh and between the place I had with the guys and the little place were Driftwood was written, there was a flat with the most awful neighbour downstairs. One weekend while I was in Rome with the band, my friends did an all nighter and when I got back, the neighbour was livid. To get me back he turned his sound system up full at 7.30am in the morning and blasted The Lighthouse Family. It was torture. We almost came to blows. Another time I was lying on the couch and had the TV on super quiet and all of a sudden I could hear someone shouting. I thought maybe he and his girlfriend were arguing again but I froze when I realised he was screaming at me!! He screamed “YOU ROCK’N'ROLL WANKER” which to this day is the best insult ever thrown at me…
Has anyone else experienced passive aggressive/ aggressive shop assistants or flight attendants, waiters etc? I got one today at the art store Boesner. We were paying, and the moment we put our stuff on the counter the girl started behaving in an odd way, like the way you might expect your sister to behave the next day after you’d dropped your jammy donut onto her art project. Then I gave her my card and she slammed it into the reader. At this point I had to call her on it. “Is there a problem?” Her face flushed red as a tomato. I thought she was going to keel over “No?” Now she was outwardly pissed off and verging on purple so I asked if I could see her manager. She called him, and suddenly she was all giggles and flirty and I can’t speak german but by the tone of what she was saying it was apparent she was covering her ass. So the manager came and I explained and he was all “Ahh, she was puting that card in the machine hard because it wasn’t working properly…” which was totally bollocks. Anyways, anyone else experienced this kind of thing. It must be common. Ok rant over. Let’s talk about what we did at the weekend…
Went to see the boys next door play a couple of songs tonight. There is a music school on our street. They have a showcase show 3 times a year and so tonight was one of these shows.
I came into the show with two women playing a piano duet. It was very good. Everything else was fine although suffered from bad tuning. One of the easiest ways to sound good is to tune up as perfect as your instrument will allow. It’s something i learned when i were beginning to record in studios. After every take- tune up. The folks all played really well but the tuning let most of them down. And tuning is also a great nerve beater. It’s a productive fidget.
Anyways the boys came on rocked the tisch. They played Four Kicks by the Kings Of Leon. Their choices of songs have been very cool. Never choosing the obvious. Then I got a real surprise… they played U16 Girls… Travis’s first single on Independiente!!! It was brilliant. And of course… they were in tune.
Ahhh.
So I am home. Jet lag has passed. Clay has a temperature which is sweating out with lots of water and warm clothes. I can feel something stir at the back of my left nostril. Although viruses suck, there is relief in knowing I won’t have to sing tonight.
We are lucky to have brilliant neighbours. The boys next door are some of the most talented and applied kids I ever met. Brothers Carl and Nader (14 and 12). As well as making stopmotion movies of socks coming alive, and playing basketball and cookery, they are in a band. So when I got my desk installed I asked them to come and record a demo one afternoon. They chose to record a cover of Molly’s Chambers by The Kings Of Leon. None of your Sex On Fire, no no no…
They brought their pal to play drums. He was very talented too, telling me the snare wasn’t sounding quite right, the seat wasn’t right, you know… a perfectionist. So I fixed the seat and took my lucky newspaper off the snare. He nodded approval. (“That snare is older than your dad weeman”)
Anyways I worked them hard but hey were so well rehearsed, we pretty much nailed it in very few takes. Check it peeps.MOLLYSCHAMBERSBYLCN
You have kindergarden, you have pre school, you have nursery but Germany is the Icelandic horse, having an extra gait. That of the kinderladen. Kinderladen is much like kindrgarden but is more relaxed, with more emphasis on playing. Kinderladen’s began popping up in the late 60′s and 70′s in germany and from what I am told were anti establishment for the time but they have slowly gained in popularity to the point where now modern german kindergarden has taken on alot of the kinderladen philosophy. Anyways Clay started kinderladen this week. He started on Monday. I don’t remember this happening when I was at nursery, but for the first week or so the parent/s stay with the kid until he or she has settled in and is ready to let go. It’s very gentle and makes the kids really feel safe as they move into their new chapter. So this week I have mostly been in the company of 2-5 year olds. These people are the coolest. They are so natural and don’t hide their emotions. I feel quite at home. The kinderladen day starts with breakfast around a table with all the other kids, then some play, then go outside in the snow for some outside play, ( I was relentlessly ambushed by 6 toddlers yesterday).
Then back for some inside play, then it’s lunch, then they can choose to sleep or storytime… what happens in the afternoon I can’t say because we go home after lunch. There are 3 women and a guy who work there. They are all very cool and deal really well with the kids. They also feed them organic food. Apparently organic food has the same amount of nutrients as normal food but has non of the chemicals or toxins associated with the mass food industry, insecticides etc which probably contributes to many ills cancer blah. Nora has leaned toward organic for some time and, although sceptical at the beginning, I have to say I, don’t get ill as much as I did before. Oh and the kinderladen is german speaking. Clay speaks english but understands german. He speaks more german when I am on tour. There is one other little boy who speaks a bit of english but it’s of no consequence as most kids at that age operate outside of language. They all have their wee trays which are stacked up, containing their vital shit. Anyways, I was happy to see The King was in the building.
The park had about 300 people sledging. Don’t think I ever saw so many people sledging in one place. Before we left the house we had a discussion about head gear. I was thinking how nobody wears a helmet when they sledge. Clay wore a helmet. We went down the hill 6 times. On the 6th, we hit the bottom of the hill at top speed. Usually people at the bottom of the hill quickly get off their sledge and move out of the way but some little kid in front of us stopped very suddenly and just sat there. I had no time to steer out of the way and ran straight into her sledge at full speed as she was getting off. I smashed my left shin to bits. CLay went flying. He was fine. The kid was fine. My shin is fucked though. Will wear football shin pads the next time.
