backpacking part 2: valencia

the next day, we woke up as always. then we went downstairs for breakfast which was a little light for the three euros we paid. then we went for a wander around the twisty windy streets of carmen quarter. until we hit the northern border of the town. valencia is a geographically remarkable city - they tore down the city walls to build a ringroad, and diverted the river and turned it's former bed into a park. and yet the old quarters appear to be prestine, save the truly decent graffitti all over the place. at the end of the park, where the river would have been making it's final descent into the sea, they've built the cuidad - a stunning over the top development, surely influenced by sci-fi book covers. it's what the future was going to look like before cyberpunk. there's an opera house, an imax screen, a science museum, some gardens, and an ocean museum thing (like a sea life centre), all gleaming white ceramic structures floating on the water. bizarrely the sea life goes slightly beyond it's scientific remt and includes dolphin shows, and artic and antartic areas... in valencia... where it's really really hot... there by doing their bit for global warming... yay. after checking out the aeriel view of town from the top of the cathedral and picking up some well nice pizza and quaffing some horchata from a street vendor.. oh man horchata. great stuff. made from tiger nuts, tastes like a savoury banana milkshake... we got the bus down to the cuidad and walked all the way back down the river bed park. we et... somewhere.. and went on a bar crawl in the highly popular carmen region again. we got a jug of 'agua del valencia' - orange juice, vodka, and cava - at the first terraced place that did it, as hordes of well dressed, beautiful people strolled around the night. not a place to think to be thinking about frugality. wandering around a bit, we realised we were out remarkably early by these people's standards and most places were hardly open yet. we found a rocking cafe - actually playing faith no more's 'angel dust' in it's entirety, and caused confusion by sitting in the eating area, where they told us to sit, despite telling them we only wanted drinks. i've got to make more of an effort to learn people's language next time. we had a couple of pints, and as we were leaving they were playing the same cocorosie song that they were playing in the conspiratorius place in maddrid.. funny how stuff follows you around. we wandered around and found jimmy glass, a traditionally smokey and dark jazz and cocktail bar. i had the house cocktail and ended up very drunk indeed. we ambled home somehow.

in the morning the we went to buy train tickets to barcelona, determined not to have a repeat of the madrid incident. there was a long queue and between us we managed our greatest conversational triumph yet, buying tickets for tomorrow, even getting the right train time. so then, pleased with ourselves, we went to the beach. i think we may have got another cheese or tortilla sandwich and an icecream. we walked down the beach and found ourselves at the harbour, which was all done up for some god-awful boring boat race. places like that all always surpirsingly massive. they had a maze that sort of missed the point by having no centre but merely an exit. we had some more horchata and found a bus back into town. how it got to tea time i don't know, but it involved another wander round carmen looking for the veggie diner we'd walked past.. which was closed sundays. wandering around yet more, we found a tex-mex place that was pretty decent. running low on funds and energy, we retired to the hotel. there were no shops anywhere in this town. on a sunday, when the market is closed, you just can't buy food. it didn't help that the hotel was a hotel not a hostel and had no kitchen, although one room was obviously used as one in the past, it had a cooker but a bath was in the way.

we hit monday at last. went to the market to pick up cheese and bread and fruit and got our train out to barcelona.

oh no ono vs. ephel duath, from an email to rifa

i was going to see ephel duath right, and i was walking to the bus stop and i thought 'i'll call my friend matt, he'll probably want to come. but it turned out he was going to see ohno ono, a danish synthpop band that he saw on monday that he loved so much he was going to see again tonight., since they were playing several nights in london. so i sit at the bus stop tossing coins and i call my house mate ian up and ask him what i should do. but he only makes things more complicated again by saying he'd come to see them, because it's only in farringdon which is quite close and ephel duath were on in camden. so know i have to decide for me and ian, and who would be so selfish as to deny ian a night out? so we get to farringdon, walk around in a complete cirlcle before finding the venue. when we do, the door man says 'who are you here to see' and i say 'ohno ono' and he sayd 'who? do you mean 'blahblahbhlahblah'' and i go 'that must be it, i must have misheard matt' so we pay him the money and go into the tiniest venue i've ever seen - we have to duck, the stage is full of a three-piece and the audience, all seven of them, are pressed up againist the door. so we go back upstairs to the bar and matt's just coming in, and the doorman remembers that, oh yeah, ohno ono were meant to play, but they cancelled because the stage wasn't big enough for them. we got our money back and headed out back to camden, losing ian who went home, and missed both supoprt bands for ephel duath - bossk and negura bunget - who are meant to be brillig. ephel duath come on, having recently sacked their bass player, so they're now a just guitar, drums, and singer. they completely rock out and the tunes actually make more sense in a way. i love the bond of two piece bands, they're so intimate. and they played loads more off the painter's pallette - the first three tunes of the set for a start. in fact they started with the track that i always thought was the inessential one on the album, the second to last track, and they made it rock

where does davide tiso find all those notes that he plays? having no distractions meant you really focused on what he was palying, and i didn't know there was all that dischord to find in the scale.i'm going to have to work out how to play all his albums all the way through to understand how he does it. then i'll be able to play guitar.
the new drummer was brilliant - watching him go for it in the closing segment of 'new disorder', while repeatedly checking his sheet music to see what the next fill was going to be. okay, he's not that new anymore, this is his second tour i think, but he really came into his own. obviously he's hit it off with davide in a big way, the next album is just going to be the three of them.

c'est tout
.

travels part 1: madrid

in the morning we broke fast with wheetaflakes, which are quite delicious, and rode to gatwick. except it was more complicated than that, with the evil ticket machine at london fields station that tried to eat laurence's card (thank cripes for quick thinking and manicure sets) and swallowed a tenner of mine. i'll get it back. but there's no post office at gatwick airport and i was stuck with the package i was carrying for ruth.being the first of may, we'd looked into what international worker's day celebrations/riots there were planned, and found a gathering at 6 in a square to the south. what with arriving, dropping bags off at the hostel and coming out again, it was gone seven when we got there; a rather nice area with plenty of ethnic restaurants. there still some police loitering around. so we thought we'd head out into town on foot and try and catch up with the fun, wherever it had gone. we meandered all the way up to gran via in the centre of town, and approaching a square, heard whistles... but it was just traffic police. there was to be no riots today, or so we thought... we went to a recommended veggie restaurant, el estragon, which must cater for tourists and or backpackers like us mostly. we sank a couple of bottles of wine with our food (onion soup, cannelloni and veggie paella. i should have had something fake too, you go to spain, you get spanish food, even if it's only a veggie equivalent, right?) i think we wound up back at home, drank with some other hostelers until lights out. we went upstairs to our room, where we admitted to each other we weren't ready for bed, and headed out into the night, beer in hand courtesy of the drinks machine in the lobby. walking round a couple of streets, we came across a line of police in front of a monument. being too stupid to hide my beer, they wouldn't let us past. i finished it off and we headed past them, and found a massive street party.streets were clogged for hundreds of metres. we walked up through the crowds until they petered out; many people looked very punk. we headed back into the crowd and bought some cans of beer off a street vendor, and soaked up the atmosphere. eventually some cool kid started talking to us, we let on that we didn't understand but it's ok cause everyone speaks english. he told us not to stand in that alcove because people were pissing there, then bade us come and drink the local cocktail with him, a mix of red wine and cola. we chatted to him and his friends, who liked football and music. they told us the party was in honour of some napoleonic defeat, some little girl who stood up or something. we steered them away from football - which in spain, it seems, even indie kids like - and chatted about the libertines a bit and stuff. one guy played us some tracks by his band, and they were really rocking. i wrote a couple of band names down for him. after a while of this joy, we needed the toilet, and the night changed. as we were rounding a corner - we were thinking of not going back, and were wandering fairly far to piss - their was a bit of a surge of people coming our way, of the type that made other people want to get out of here quickly. he went up another road and found a square, pissed in a shop doorway; when we tried to go back round the corner, we couldn't because the police had moved up on our position. it was turning proper; lines of people lobbing stuff at police, police charging and falling back like some adult version of 'what's the time mr. worf'. laurence was so happy.after a while, the crowds moved on, skips were rotated, bins thrown down, all good fun, but eventually the mass was dispersed and we skirted round the edges looking for any more action. we got to bed at a time i forget.

in the morning we walked around where the carnage had been and it was clear as day. the monument that the action was around was some arch of triumph with a statue underneath it, and a plaque to the effect of the story we'd been told the night before. we walked down the road that leads up to the prado, a beautiful boulevard (there should be an o in there somewhere), lined with palm trees and semi-permanent book stalls. there was a massive queue at the prado, because, as we found out when we got to the front, being a national holiday, it was free entry. brilliant. we started in the basement to see some glorious hidden treasures, a weird collection of basilisk jugs and goblets with nymphs and faeries for stems, paintings made of rock and crystal.. next we went to the top and worked our way down. the top floor is the smallest and mainly consists of goya's early, happy pictures of children playing. laurence wondered what all the fuss was about this goya fellow. the next floor down housed, among other things, the black paintings. the brightness and joy of the early pictures is the only thing that can prepare you for these, and it's not every day i can tick something off my life to do list. they are terrifying and distressing. full size you can see the vagueness and pain in every face. after these, there were lots of genius artists but they seem to get lost in a confusion of royal portraits and jesus paintings, until you hit bosch; again, something it's worth going there to see. we've all seen his masterworks, but full size they're breathtaking, and too big to make out all the detail on. i've a gap now; the next thing i remember is making pasta in the hostel from rough and ready ingredients. we made too much and a nice german guy helped us finish it off. he was staying one night only, on his way back from 6 months in south america. we spent the rest of the evening playing cards with him and an odd australian fellow who didn't really know what he was doing. the german lad taught us skat, not an easy job indeed, and he had to leave to catch his train before he'd really finished. we headed out for a bit to see if anything was going down tonight, but it wasn't. bed.

the next day was another art gallery day - the rein sofia. it was big. everything was big. guernica is massive, but i didn't find it particularly moving. why is that? it was full of lots of very modern art, much of which looked like wall paper to me.laurence pointed out two american girls who were wandering around at the same speed and direction to us, who had been doing the same in the prado yesterday. we even got in the lift with them, but didn't make more than polite gestures. we wandered around til we found somewhere for lunch, and got a couple of plates of racione in a bar - cheese, potatoes, mushrooms. that day we did some absolutely insane walking. we went and got pudding in plaza sol (the centre of madrid, currently a building site for a new subway station) from a patisserie, and ran into those american girls again. i wanted to stalk, but laurence took us another way - west towards the palace. it began to rain. we walked around another interesting area, to the south west, windy climby stairs and eventually came to an old balconied square which is supposed to be quite famous. we then walked north again, back through sol again but carried on in the direction that them girls went, up through the massively tall commercial streets. we didn't find them, but went for a drink in a smart, possibly gay, bar, then started hitting the tapas trail. most recommended places in the guide book were unfindable or closed or just didn't look that good, so we just found somewhere for grub, ordering two vermuts and a egg-and-potato dish, which turned out to be fried egg and chips. checking out the guide book again, we realised the best place to head was south of gran via again, where an impressive run of tapas bars lived. we took ourselves inside la zapata (or something, ask laurence) for a jug of sangria and some burnt salty veg. checking the book again, we forsook the nearby outlets in favour of a little walk down caller del huertas (earth street, if i'm not mistaken) to a veggie place. it wasn't there, but we found a really cool bar - conspiratorius or something - with awesome music - they even sold t-shirts of themselves. we had another oily potato dish, delicious this time, some more vermut and a beer. then walked home, not a short undertaking from the southern old quarter to our northern hostel.

te next day was friday, our last in madrid. we went to cafe commercial for an excellent coffee, croissant and delicious buttery potato tortilla, then to the train station. negotiations were tricky across the language barrier - i had become the designated talker, preparing stock phrases in my head, getting them out fine, but having no idea of the reply. we got two tickets to valencia, but not until 8 o'clock. realising this was the case, we spent the rest of the day leisurely in the parc real, playing chess with the pensioners (until the parky closed the games house for no apparent reason), eating ice cream, another cheese bagguette, looking at the cool trees and lakes, and playing uke. with a couple of hours to spare, we went back into town for supper and happened by complete chance to find a completely brilliant veggie buffet, which charged by weight. nice hot grub, which a dog tried to steal off me while we were sat outside, sending ukelayle and water bottles flying. so then we went for the train, satisfied. the train station had had the platforms moved three hundred metres further along the track, leaving the main concourse empty, so the authorites filled it with tropical plants, needing constant spraying with water and heat. it was more like an airport, and laurence bought dirty porn comics for some reason*. baggage checks and videos on trains.

we got into valencia and it was lovely. madrid is a quintessential industrial midlands town, but in spain and quite old. it's pretty rocking but not very scenic for the most part. i don't know what we'd have done with any more time but go to more galleries and museums, or head out to the surrounding towns which apparently are fabulous. we got to our hotel about midnight, a truly bizarre building with uneven floors, garish wall paint, pointless rooms and furnitures, and windows that look between the corridors. fantastic. then we went outside again to see if maybe we could get some food or drink, but the only place open was the noisy, cheesy, cafe madrid, pumping out far-too-loud house and revellers under our window. never mind, we slept well in our buckled double bed.

a brief musical interlude

it's been a while since i've put any new songs up. this isn't finished,. but it's what i did today and i'm quite proud of it at the moment. it's on my re-juvenated rupertspace page, and it's chord 'reed (hove branch) (demo)'. i also put up kinky friedman crimeclub and klein bottle fishtank, to demonstrate what is clearly becoming a new direction. look and listen.

bonus section for fact fans!

• the song is essentially two metal riffs stuck together, the second being pretty hard for me to play. i wouldn't say i nailed it, but i'm proud of what i've done.
• the parts used are: clean lead/rhythm guitar with reverb, distorted lead guitar in octave one, distorted lead guitar in octave two, distorted rhythm guitar, bass, and drums.
• in riff a - used at the begining and end of the song - the higher guitar is more prominent in the mix. in riff b - in the middle of the song - the lower guitar is louder. this reflects the position at which each track riff was written, but in my opinion it sounded better doubled up so that the melody didn't suddenly drop an octave, rather just the emphasis drops.
• the song structure is not finished. i'm really just playing around with trying to fit the two riffs together.
• the demo was originally called 'hove' for reasons that aren't clear to me. i change it to 'reed' and then added 'hove branch' in case it might mean something.
• the eagle-eared (does the analogy stretch? maybe i mean wolf-eared) will notice , as i just did, that riff a follows the same basic pattern for it's first bar of music as kinky friedman and pretty girls make cakes - that is, a bass note struck for 2 beats, then a high note for one beat, followed by a note a semi-tone lower than the high note for one beat. get a new trick, grilly!
  

holiday part 0: brighton.

during this tale, ever meal i've forgotten is almost certainly a cheese sandwhich.

i can count this adventure from saturday. two saturday's ago in fact. it being rach and robin's annull birthday bash at their downstairs flat in hove - i always forget that it's robin's birthday too, and i always forget to buy them presents. i'm such a bad friend. i was almost sort of in towo minds about going, and left perhaps a little late in the day. from the train i went to jess' housewhere she lives with some very cool cowly-ish people and stompy the dog. we played the game of life, et rissotto, and kept it real. i got to the party around midnight i suppose; it was somewhat subdued overall, even with css, pulp, and at thedrive in, it was only me, robin and robin's girlf (sorry, i forget your name) dancing. and that got awkward quickly. good conversation and comfy cushions.

clearing up the next morning was surprisingly easy, and we nearly made breakfast at the sanctuary. in fact, some people did, but i was literally less than ten minutes after the 11:45 cutoff point. which didn't bother me too much because it was really too expensive for me anyway. i took myself into town to go to edge world and dave's, and ended up spending thirty-odd quid on the phil collins three, 65days of static, and the locust in edge world. that shop is irrestible. i can't recall what i did eat now. maybe i just forgot to eat at all.i came back to the beach, where we sat around for a bit a dodged frisbees. a man called jacob apologised for calling me a fucking wanker twice the previous evening, which was odd because the second time it was really funny and perfectly timed - it was the first one that felt misplaced (not that either was not said in jest). then rach and i went back into town, chatted to jim and el mcgee and met rifa for foods - redveg and pies. i et two, going on three meals in that sitting. i came back to london and went to the dove with ian, thalia and this rachel (this could get confusing so from now on rachel wheeler will be 'this rachel' and rachel weston will be 'rach'drinks turned into dinner as it was thalia's birthday. or something. no, that doesn't make sense, that was another night. maybe i'[m rolling several evenings into one here.

monday was an organisation day until laurence arrived. i'd tried to pick up my ke on saturday but i'd left my keys and ended up being hcarged 8 pounds for trying to come out the same tube station i went in, which dilligence earned me back. so i got my uke and met laurence at euston.we went to the guitar shop that sells the gorgeous guitar i want to buy, and by playing around, found that maybe it wasn't so special after all. i mean,m it's still gorgeous, but maybe not necessary. then we went to gosh and i left jeffery brown a letter and a blank t-shirt, then we walked down to aldwych and the king's college student union, where chris t-t was soundchecking and rifa was hanging out. tommy joined us too, and the three of us went to see a silver mount zion at the scala. we got chips (basically[actually i had a falafel]), and went in; the gig had been totally oversold and was steaming, but we managed to find a good vantage point. they were brilliant. when loz and i got back here, he started playing guitar and i got a telling off from ian. i packed and we went to sleep.