So, we're travelling through Fistful of Dollars territory as this is written, en route to Madrid and the beginning of the Spanish leg of all this gleeful madness.
Sine the last missive was posted we have been trouncing around France for the last week or so (the specifics are starting to get difficult to recall, any notes deteriorating rapidly in the moist fug of the Ape Module) having quite a marvellous time really, predictably with very long stretches of driving to ignore each other and recuperate in.
The francophilic (i.e. frog-loving) tendencies of a certain American in the band have been confirmed absolutement … he's like a combo of Last Movie-era Dennis Hopper playing around with the edit of Godard's Breathless - for those of you not familiar with cinematic intellectual drool, that translates as 'a rather cool oddity in time and space'. There was a grief welling in the man as he drove us, against his own iron will, across the Pyrenees border into Spain, which, according to this worldly gent, has no proper language, cuisine or road-sense. Given that the sunblasted stretches of Spain we're currently in seem to ensemble a quite hilly version of Meeekatharra, certain of the rest of us actually feel quite akin to this rugged landscape. We're also secretly fucking glad that we don't have to endure French cheese any more; as good as it is, it has been at the epicentre of a foul stench emitting from our Ape Module's fridge and will not be missed in the least, except of course by you-know-who.
After a show in Lille, we made our way to Bretagne, which, at the risk of being misinterpreted, I would describe (from the little seen there) as the Tasmania of France (and I mean this in a good way, we love Tassie) It was a very wet and welcoming place, where we fell straight into the tattooed arms of Seb Blanchais (a Breton label dude, local promoter and all round great guy, who in spite of having had a baby only days earlier, was incredibly helpful and good to us) and a couple of good shows in the rainy northwest. We crossed paths with the newly arrived James MCann and the Dirty Skirts band (old friends from Melbourne), just starting their own idiotic musical pilgrimage through France and Spain; we sympathised deeply over many beers, banged out some tunes on the local radio station (courtesy of Orville and Marie, merci) and limped out of town.
We then spent 2 nights in the vicinity of a little hilltop village called Dolmayrac - this has got to be, hands down, one of the most beautiful places you can imagine, and exceptionally good people there to boot. We played in a tiny place tucked in the midst of this 12th century village (the venue is called Le Rad) to a chilled crowd of local yokels from the surrounding area. We were then treated to 2 nights in the hospitable cottages of Pif, Jack and Mumu at their beautiful country spot, elementally perched between rolling ploughed hills, cow paddocks and prune orchards (the local agriculture centres around le pruneau, we were treated to Pif's prune tart, it helped in good ways…), it was exceptionally beautiful and relaxing to be able to roll out our swags there, so to speak, and eat, drink and sleep. In return the erstwhile Frenchman of the band (see above) took it upon himself to reciprocate our hosts' generosity with some cordon bleu cooking that, to be frank (and based on some past, somewhat dubious experiences of Alex's cooking) left us all (French hosts include) a bit gobsmacked as to his kitchen karate. Hours of preparing the stuffing of nuts, apples, peaches, herbs and all sorts of other gourmet shit to stuff 3 weird-looking French chooks (kinda yellowish with their heads still attached), a couscous laden with gourmet goodness, it was like Iron Chef Camembert in there for a while. The judges concurred that all former cooking sins had now been erased and we proceeded to celebrate this great discovery, spending a wonderful red-wine (and local grapa L'eau de Vie… and whiskey…and beer) - fuelled night poring through Jack's well-stocked vinyl collection. C'etait fantastique….
The other event of note in this time is our discovery that another band member, Joines as he is known, has developed St Francis of Assisi-like powers to revive dead animals. I shall explain. While shopping in a nearby village, Joines, in his benevolent way, rescued a near-dead pigeon from the side of the road (i call it a pigeon, but it was a butt-ugly mutant of a thing, part sparrow, part vulture), both its legs either deformed or broken, and, grounded, it was completely unable to move or fly. Tempted to just smash its head in and put it out of its misery the saintly Joines chose to instead give it a chance, make it a little cosy nest in a box and hope that it pulled through. Nothing much more was seen of the vermin-bird until the next morning when (a very hungover) Joines was discovered asleep in the Ape Module Coma Booth, with this ugly little bird-bastard-thing, mutant legs splayed in all directions, happily perched atop his sleeping girth. Somehow it had made its way from the shitted up box it'd been cooped up in, and flown, yes flown, no other means were possible, to perch itself upon our newfound saint. Eventually we of course, had to leave, and no-one being too keen on this genetic throwback of the avian world becoming our new band mascot, we were contemplating what to do with it, when the bird, sitting on Joinesy's open divine mitts, just suddenly spread its wings and flew off into the blue yonder. A miracle had been performed, the Bird Surgeon Saint is born, and Steve has sleep with his first French bird.
Being keen conspiracy theorists, we made our way into Spain via a place near the French/Andorra/Spain border, called Rennes le Chateau. This is an abbey steeped in controversy in the Catholic chirch, the details of this, along with its significance, can be found by reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail, an heretical exploration of the fact that Jesus shagged Mary Magdalene, had a kid (a girl, who ended up in this place) etc etc Da Vinci Code blah blah blah - those of you less bookish could always Wikipedia it, there may be pictures. Either way, an absolutely stunning medieval village perched up in the mid-Pyrenees, where we quietly watched the sunset to the accompaniment of some local hippy doing his stringed-harp practice for the day, quite a treat.
So, now we move ever onwards, through the sun-bleached plains of Aragon, towards Madrid, where we will base ourselves tonight before starting 8 consecutive shows here. Gonna be a hoot. Our poor little Australian brains ache at the prospect of having to grapple with another foreign tongue (Steve's Spanish is so good, he was assumed by a shopkeeper to be a German, whilst speaking English…), but we, as cultural ambassadors of our own fair brown land, will do our utmost to protect the somewhat dubious reputation of Australians abroad. Hasta pronto.T
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