Last entry was posted by my daughter from a text I sent her but there's a few bits of the story missing. You will recall that the hotel was poor, in fact it probably resembled the sort of hospital you would end up in if you fell into a coma in Algeria and had no travel insurance. The promoter went missing but our hero of the hour was Tony who wrote some pithy e mails and texts (beautifully worded complaints capable of flaying flaky promoters) and low and behold we ended up in a decent three star hotel near the station. Yes the cost of breakfast has gone up from 5 euros for coffee and croissant for me and Twig to 17 Euros but it's worth it just knowing you are going to get some sleep. So checked into new abode and splurged on lunch, hence bottles of Chianti and secret pint entry.
One of the unknown quantities of these gigs is Marco, Our Italian keyboard player who we have never met. The deal was we needed two days of time in a rehearsal room to get it together before the gigs on friday and Sunday but it was quite obvious from Emilios comment in the ride from the airport ie. "so, tomorrow we do tourism!" that no rehearsal room had been arranged. Instead we could set uo at the Blackout club on Thursady at 5pm and then have an extended soundcheck before the gig on Friday. Again this was totaly unacceptable and Tony again fulfilled the "daddy" role in securing us a rehearsal studio. Only problem was it was 50 k outside Rome and the car that came to collect us was a Clio or some such small thing and an hour late. We ditched my guitar and took the two others and made the best of it but at the end of the journey I felt like one of those Chinese kittens that's been grown in a bottle.
And that's when we met Marco and Jean Marco. It was Jean Marco's studio we were using which was brilliant. It was down a track in a sort of suburban garden in the grounds of his house and it was well equiped and personal; the sort of place you can imagine recording an album, chilling out on the patio in between takes. We got four hours of good time there and managed to get through half the set list with Marco which we thought was good progress.
Marco is half German and half Italian, he has a callection of 43 synths, he lives for music although he is also a computer programmer, and wants to get things 110% right. The only problem is that what he thinks is right is a replica of the records where as we know we were shit at doing keyboards when we recorded them and have a pretty good ideas of how we want them now. He knew all the songs note perfectly but the idea that Less might be more is something we are working on. I like Marco a lot which is good because he's coming with us to the next gig and also to Athens.
I'm just filling in time now before a radio interview and another evening of rehearsing at the club. Got to daSH.
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