week one

after a pretty long and not great flight thanks to icelandair (i even had to pay for a meal on the 8+ hour transatlantic flight - have they been taking lessons from ryanair??) i arrived around 11pm in san francisco, to be collected at the airport by my lovely friend andrea williams. she promptly whisked me off to her place in oakland where i stayed for a few nights - thank you andrea.
and also her roommate jennifer. :-)

after a lazy day and a great brunch, being served by a very funny waiter with a massive hickey on his neck, i went to a show at the luggage store. i caught the last ten minutes of elise baldwin's set, which was very pleasant, and then had to put screwed up tissue in my ears for a loud drone set by john krausbauer - a good immersive sound with loads of overtones, but the singing put me off a little and i still have a problem when an artist plays in front of an audience, but has their back to the audience... i know a lot of electronic musicians can be accused of not engaging but surely that's just rude!
anyway, i'm glad i went... if only because i know the next evening's music was a lot better!

i had the good fortune to play at the lab in the mission area of san francisco on 6th january, with andrea, jorge bachmann (who also put the show together) and jim haynes. no-one played 'onstage' and i think it was my new good friend jim kaiser who said 'it was like cinema without the pictures' for most of the night, with jim projecting beautiful abstract images in his closing performance.

EXCERPT OF RECORDING OF PERFORMANCE AT THE LAB, SF 14TH JAN 2012

i also got to meet matthew swiezynski, who runs the fanstastic invisible birds record label, after a couple of years of communication via email and facebook. on saturday i visited him in the amazing art and architecture bookstore he runs in oakland, after going to see jim k at amoeba, and we chatted over a glass of wine for a couple of hours - thanks for that matthew.

when i got back to andrea's it was announced that i couldn't leave california without getting drunk and getting naked.... being british (or just being me!) the thought of being naked in public sent shivers down my spine - but hten i thought, yeah what the hell!

so on sunday, on a drive up north through marin county to the wine country, we did what any normal person would do - stopped and tasted some wine! some good, some not very good at all (mostly the zinfandels) and some great - like the primitivo i bought. This was followed by a chilly walk through montgomery woods, which was actually lovely and peaceful.

then we hit orr springs, which has a couple of shallow pools fed by the natural hot spring water, plus there's a large cold plunge pool and an odd little bath sized pool next to it that's not so cold, before you get to the sauna and steam room at the furthest point. and yes, almost everyone was naked. and after a while it really didn't seem so strange... plus it was soooo relaxing. i advise anyone visiting california to try it!

the evening was topped off by a delicious meal with andrea and jorge at a place called mua, which is a restaurant in a converted car dealership, still surrounded by loads of car dealerships!

after one more delicious brunch - which was actually a thai lunch - i hit amoeba once again to drop off some cd's and dvd's for jim k to try and sell, then visited joe colley's magazine shop 'issues' but didn't get to meet the man himself, then into san francisco for my final evening where andrea and i had great tapas. and saw how early san francisco goes to sleep! everything was closed around 10pm!! i was amazed!

this chapter of the story ends with an 8 hour greyhound bus trip from san francisco to downtown l.a.during which i saw some lovely scenery, the towns of san jose, gilroy and san fernando, and generally enjoyed the trip, to be met at the greyhound station by mr. yann novak, who then drove me literally 2 minutes to his loft apartment that he shares with his partner robert crouch, and that's where i am now.
i have already visited the venue that yann and i are to play on saturday evening - an interesting space called 'machine project', and have some recordings to work on for the performance. and sorry to mention food again, but also just had another fantastic thai meal!! seems i'm eating as well as playing my way across the states....