09.03
Hotel It-Is-So-Depressing, Dusseldorf.
Rising from a not-overly slumbersome night, into the breakfasting space, quiet & empty at 07.45 I…
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Shortly afterwards a female worker arrived & an ongoing conversation between the young male receptionist began loudly and continued, loudly. As an accompaniment to this, although amplitudinally unable to compete with the conversing, the Noise Pollution Unit was switched on & set to pollute. An arriving breakfasting man talked loudly into a mobile ‘phone for c. 20 minutes, joined at one point by another man on his mobile ‘phone. Astonishing. Public discourtesies at this level are, well, astonishing.
Hadyn & Bach did what they could to support morning reading via Noisebuster headphones. Trev & Robert decided to leave earlier than usual.
16.03 Capitol Theatre, Hanover.
Abandoning the accommodations of Hotel It-Sucks-Upon-The Psyches-Of-Innocent-Travelers, and climbing into the TrevMobile - there he was on the street, walking from the hotel: the man of the c. 20-minute cellphone conversation I…
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May warts encrust his hairline! May he spend a week in this hotel with only one day remission for good behaviour! Imprecations thus hurled, we headed in another direction…
A 2.5 hour drive with an outside temperature of 1-2 degree C I…
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… to our Hotel Acceptable, arriving c. 12.30. Clean clothes! A shower!
The room…
Always a good sign in accommodations: a television manufactured during this century.
The view…
… but I am undisturbed, such is the distance between this room & that of Dusseldorf.
GC Office Person Mariana arrived to deliver a box of (now scanned) volumes of the original & pre-published Dramatic Universe (1952).
To venue at 13.30 I...
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Porcupine Tree & their Team are living on the tourbus: 19 men to 20 bunks. Ouch! I know that life, albeit with a significantly lower number of passengers than on the PT CrushBus of Terror. The 6-week KC 2003 Euro Tour of Horror was the end of it for me; with some G3 Euro-traveling the following year to make sure.
16.39 From a pal who arrived at the Heineken Hall, Amsterdam, towards the end of Soundscapes…
There was a very disinterested vibe in the room when I entered, lots of blah-blah going 'round, difficult to find a spot for listening but lots of opportunity for bearing the unpleasant manifestations of others... the flash had a "oh piss off then" - feeling to it, very destructive.
I was actually surprised at the applause you got when you walked off-stage in the dark. Was it applause of relieve or appreciation, I wonder?
This is a good description of The Fruit & Vegetable Slot; ie performance time allocated to a support act.
17.23 I have received an e-apology from the responsible person, who did not police the Young EuroJournalist at the KC Anniversary Event in Air Studios recently. Actually, the YEJ was not a journalist, neither was he an industry person, but a fan who managed to use connections to get into an event to which he had no entitlement; and it is unlikely that the several interviews he conducted with various Crims, them in good faith, will be published. The Responsible Person is a good man, an enthusiast himself, not an industry person, not cynical, not distrusting of those who find their way into personal & private spaces. Better this good man remains trusting of the intentions of others than beat himself up when he has been deceived.
Also, an e-letter from a good person who worked hard to support a KC Anniversary release. For various reasons, including an honest mistake by one of those within the DGM Team, he was not formally thanked for this work. In this respect, he has my sympathy: worthy labours deserve appropriate recognition & acknowledgement. However, the letter was misjudged & inappropriate: he wrote to dump his negativity upon me. This is unacceptable, and disappointing from this person.
Often, when someone has a grudge and/or is gruntled with an arising related to KC - ticket prices, volume / sound at shows, venal heartlessnesses of all kinds including declining to engage with & in clearly established form & norms of interaction, such as developing an intimate relationship with someone who once bought a CD, even several, which feature my involvement - it often transpires that I receive correspondence, in various forms of public / private, primary, secondary or tertiary transmissions. The general message is: I haven’t got what I wanted! It is the fault of That Awful Man! Robert seems to be a good person to solve problems, both for those he knows in & those he doesn’t know at all; and subsequent resentment following inevitably if the expected solution is not forthcoming, or is not what was hoped for.
In this way, some things are spoilt; and some useful undertakings that might happen, do not.
23.56 Hotel Acceptable.
Soundcheck at 17.30 I…
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The glass room is the smoking room. Nominally, it contains the smoke of those who do. In fact, there is smoke everywhere inside the building. Security people go to smoke outside the rear doors, which remain open; but many of the staff & local promotion team continue to puff away in the building, ashtrays on prominent display.
The F&V Slot at 20.15. Soundscapes stopped at 20 minutes. Not all the members of the audience, who had been standing for up to 2 hours & drinking beer, were enthused; although some were polite.
We stayed to watch & hear Porcupine Tree. The new material, and the visuals, strike a downbeat at the beginning of a new stage for PT.
Back to a hotel, and tonight in the same city as that of the performance…
"When a musician believes that music is a commodity, music dies in them."
