Sunday, April 18, 2010

Hello all:

It's a lovely day in Langstone, Wales. At least that's how it appears through the curtained window. I haven't listened to the news yet today, so don't know what the volcano is doing today. Yesterday it continued to erupt and disrupt flights in the UK. We are here long enough so that I'm not really worried about it. I suppose that I should be concerned about the economic disruption.

We are going to have several days off now from performing. Tonight we'll attend a couple of local open mikes, and see how that goes. After that, we will be footloose, and fancy free. It currently looks like we are headed in the direction of France. I don't think Kristi has made hotel reservations yet, so . . . who knows? I feel some anxiety at not having a performance to play in this period of time. I've never felt comfortable just getting out a guitar and trying to randomly entertain people, as I've seen some others do. Whatever we end up doing, I'm sure it will be an adventure.

Yesterday we visited a Roman ruins. Kristi tells me she saw a note somewhere saying this area has been occupied by human beings for 250,000 years. 200, or so of that was with Romans. They built quite a bit around here leaving an amphitheatre that holds 6000, and a large athletic water world, which has been dug up. The baths were destroyed during the middle ages, but it was such a substantial building with huge stones etc. that they apparently couldn't completely dismantle it, although they made a good try. The Archeologists found a lot of valuable stones, and artifacts at the bottom of the bath drains.

It is good to have privacy for a change. The hotel room is quite functional, clean, serviceable. It is a small space to live in, and perhaps these times on the road are a lesson in what a person can tolerate need be. The experience of staying with the people who we play for is always interesting, often less than optimal, and always there's a feeling of truncated behavior.

After the Roman ruins of Caerleon we went to Newport, the largest town in the immediate area. We just blundered around the city center a bit, ostensibly looking for a castle, or a cathedral to visit. These were in the tourist literature for the area, although the castle was slightly hidden in publicity for the area. I think that what is visually interesting is that which you haven't seen before, at least in a general sense. In other words, the things that the locals see every day are not necessarily very interesting to them, nor do they appreciate them as a visitor would. The Newport castle is in a state of decay. It is surrounded by a substantial fence, intended to keep people out of it's immediate perimeter. It is bounded on two sides by roads, and on another by the Usk River. It has been restored twice in it's lifetime, neither time recent. Just adjascent to the castle is a very large work of art, and a footbridge crossing the river that is, in my opinion, a substantial work of art as well. I'll attach some pictures of each. I took a video of the large piece of art. I don't know if I'll have the time necessary to upload it, but I have stills that should suffice to give the idea of what these are.

Another thing that we came across was a fashion photo shoot, although it was not immediately apparent that that was what we were seeing. There was a fellow dressed in tights with a large mohawk hairdo surrounded by women with outrageous hair as well. You could see the pro photo setup with the lights, and backdrop in the square. My immediate thought was that we were witnessing a video shoot for a rock group, which actually would have been a much more substantial layout than what we saw. It was in interesting spot, as there were several sculptures right in the immediate vicinity of where they were working, and in fact they retired to a sculpture further down the road for more pictures.

Eventually, as we were leaving, we saw a sign on a covered table that identified the group as a local fashion organization that will teach you how to be outrageous as well. I guess I spoke too soon about getting over jetlag, as Kristi and I are still having some of the symptoms, although not as severe as before. We just tend to wear out a little sooner than we used to. Maybe some of it is symptoms of getting older, and not enough exercise.

I thought that our last night playing in Fleetwood went really well. One thing I did was choose my songs more conservatively than I had been doing. I know that people can be put off by songs with politics too heavily installed in them, and this looked like a conservative bunch, although since I didn't really take any chances, couldn't say for sure. I can say that the politics of some of my songs go down really well with some, and not so well with others, but in the end, I think that a political stand on the side of human rights will get me more ardent fans than just playing my best songs. Well, I think that those songs often are my best songs. I ended the night, as I have been doing, with "Big Floppy Hats". At least the jetlag is gone enough so I don't think it will impact my performances anymore. Whoever gets us first . . . well it isn't us at our optimum. Keep the home fires burning. Steve Nebel