the ten spot. part 2.
FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 1998 -- Marti took the day off from work and we had a nice afternoon at home together, e-mailing & puttering around. At 7 p.m. I met Christophe at the band’s hotel & birddogged in on his interview with drummer Todd Nance & percussionist Sonny Ortiz. We went next door to an Indian restaurant so the musicians could eat while we queried them & I went first, taping about 20 minutes of interview before metroing over to the club. I had a bad feeling that our reservation for a table for 12 was gonna be botched & this was confirmed upon my arrival. Somehow the club thought we were all dining there on the next night, Saturday! (In the end, we kept that reservation, too, reducing it to 6 people & giving it to Michel, Daniel, Christophe & the German heads -- I don’t know who the 6th was.) Back to Friday: Marti came in soon after me, then our friends started arriving. There were some tense moments as Dirk & Paul, the Chesterfield manager, sorted things out & reinstated our reservation. Finally at 10:15, waiters brought some extra tables up front for us (just like they do for gangsters in nightclubs in old movies) and we got some chow at last. These tables were cleared away for the show, which left us standing in prime real estate in front of the stage.
About a half hour into the set, things got a little too close & hot for little Marti, so I pushed us through the crowd & took her to a banquette near the downstairs bar & got her some water. We watched the onstage action on a TV monitor & chatted a bit with a Moroccan-French kid who comes to this club regularly to improve his English (!). Hajo, our German pal, came downstairs for a breather & beer quest, so after a while I left him in charge of Marti & headed upstairs bearing a beer for Christophe. Christophe, of course, was in the front row, so I had to make a miracle squeeze play to get to him. By now though, a lot of the Widespread fans were recognizing me as the RELIX guy, so this served as my ticket through the jungle! I watched the show for about 45 minutes from this vantage point, then Hajo staggered back up. I decided to check on Marti, who had rallied & was standing at the back of the crowd.
I took her back downstairs, ran into Sarah Brown who was DAT taping in a booth behind the monitor board, introduced her to Marti & explained that Marti had had a slight attack of the whirlies. I asked Sarah if she had any room for Marti in her booth. She pondered for a minute, then took Marti by the hand and led her through the throng to a waiting chair in the band’s wives and girlfriends section behind the monitor board. (Marti was very impressed that Sarah never once let go of her hand throughout this journey through the masses!) Marti wound up with V.I.P. status for the rest of the show, while I plowed through once more to join my friends up front. In a sort of cosmic tribute to her endurance, Widespread’s closing encore was a cover of Marti’s all-time favorite Billy Joe Shaver country tune, “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be A Diamond Some Day).” Hey, who said rock & roll partying was gonna be easy!
SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1998 -- I felt badly that I had blown off our Friday night dinner party, which was to be in honor of our German friends who had hosted us so excellently last August at the Deadhead Fest in the Black Forest, so I reinvited them for dinner at our place, this time on Sunday evening. Hajo & Ralph, along with Michel & probably Christophe, too, will be coming that evening after they attend a Deadicace rehearsal in the afternoon. That meant a grocery-shopping trip for me on Saturday, while Marti did some cleaning. We had a big lunch, then crashed in the afternoon.
Saturday night was another double-bill for Mr. Phil. Marti & I went to La Cigale, a lovely old theatre in Pigalle, to see a band we both love: the Orchestre National de Barbes. These are 13 Algerian-French, Moroccan-French and French-French musicians from the immigrant neighborhood of Barbes-Rochechouart. They sing in Arabic & French; the music is percussion- & chant-based & fun to dance to. Saturday’s show was the final night of their nutty Barbes Tour -- a 3-night tour of 3 different venues in their own neighborhood! They put on a sensational 2-hour show. We had a super time, stopped afterward at a panini stand for a fast snack, then took a cab to the Chesterfield, where I hopped out and Marti continued on home. (This wasn’t a school night, but Marti had church followed by an important Episcopal Peace Fellowship meeting on Sunday.)
Dirk was on the sidewalk across from the club awaiting arrival of the band members & he shouted, “Phil, your friends are at the booth in the back, behind ‘my world’” -- that’s what he calls the monitor board/crew/wives & girlfriends zone -- “Go on in.” There was a huge line waiting to get in & just then I spotted Chris Bartlett & one of his buddies. I whispered, “Follow me” and they slid in, too. Ralph had a backup beer ready forme when I finally reached the back booth & Michel was rolling Eurojoints. We were ready for Show 5!
During the week we’d met lots of American WSP heads, so there was plenty of high-fiving as the crowd frenzy built in anticipation of the band’s big Saturday night extravaganza. They finally hit at 12:30 a.m. & it was a hot, hot show. Everyone agrees that the performances have been getting stronger every night. Saturday night they covered J.J. Cale’s “Travelin’ Light,” the traditional “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” and Tom Waits’ “Going Out West.” Great fun & for this show the band maintained a continuous, massive groove. Five shows down, five to go. Now we’re all off duty on Sunday & Monday.
Gotta rest up -- as I told one of the Georgia heads last night, I’m going for that Ten Spot.
SUNDAY, MARCH 22, 1998 -- On Sunday evening Marti & I hosted an Italian dinner for Michel &
visiting German Deadheads Ralph Metzger & Hajo Lorenz, in town for several WSP shows. I hadn't seen Ralph since the Thanksgiving week Grateful Dead Tribute in Amsterdam & we hadn't seen Hajo for an even longer time -- Marti & I had met him at the August Deadhead gathering in the Black Forest last August. We had had a fun time partying with them while they were here in Paris; they would be driving back to Germany on Monday. We listened to WSP tapes of course & I served a simple mesclun salad with Balsamic vinaigrette, penne with tomato & olive sauce and Italian biscotti for dessert. This simple vegetarian menu would be repeated several times in the coming days, as I kept
extending & revising the pasta topping, derived in part from Marks & Spencer sauce-in-a-jar and some Mr Phil additives. Marti started calling it "the sauce that refused to die." The boys cleaned their
plates & that's what counts.
MONDAY, MARCH 23, 1998 -- Monday was generally a hang-out day for me. I called WSP's
production manager Dirk Stalnecker to see about setting up interviews with band members I hadn't yet spoken with, then I called some friends to tell them about the shows. Marti & I had a quiet evening
alone together, the first in many days.
TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 1998 -- In the morning I went to FNAC for more film & blank cassettes, then fielded a call from Dirk who informed me that the afternoon press event had been rescheduled to Thursday. Sounded like Mercury/Polygram France was still having trouble getting their act together. My pal Christophe Rossi, editor of the French drummers' mag BATTEUR, told me that when he called the record company to find out when WSP's double live CD would be issued in France, the band's representative answered, "What double live CD?" Hello . . . you're supposed to be selling albums here! This was in sharp contrast to the excellent service I was getting from Capricorn Records in Los Angeles, who expressed me the entire WSP catalog.
When I got back from running errands I had a phone message from a French guy named Patrick Kinsen, with whom I had met a few weeks earlier concerning a song he'd written. Patrick has asked me to take a shot at providing some English lyrics for the tune, which he plans to pitch to Annie Lennox. We agreed to meet again the next day. I called Elliott Murphy to tell him about the WSP shows coming up this week, but he had a commitment to go see one of the guys in his own
band, who was gigging with a tiny French rocker appropriately named Little Bob. Later in the week, Elliott was going to Switzerland for some dates of his own. I had dinner with Marti, then went alone to
the Chesterfield Café for the kickoff to Widespread Panic, Week 2.
This was the show that separated the men from the boys. None of my French buddies, like Michel, Christophe or Eric showed up Tuesday night, but I had a great time with all my new American friends among the WSP fans. They all read RELIX, so we were exhanging e-mail & snail mail addresses, hanging out together waiting for the set to begin. A number of them had spent the weekend up in Amsterdam & had road tales to tell. I made a foray down to the dressing room & said hi to the group. They had had a good weekend, too; a number of band and crew members had gone down to La Villa, a swanky jazz club on the Left Bank, to see Ravi Coltrane (John & Alice's sax-playing son) & his quintet on Monday night. The WSP guys were hoping that some of the jazz players might show up late one night this week to sit in with Widespread. (Branford Marsalis jams with the band on "Picking Up The Pieces," on the new double live CD that the French record company doesn't know about.) The show was a hot one, with a great jam out of the drums: "I Walk On Guilded Splinters" (a Dr. John cover)>"Tall Boy">Jam>"Rebirtha">"No Sugar Tonight" (another cover)>Jam>"Gradle">"Makes Sense To Me." Whew.
go to the ten spot. part 3.
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the ten spot. part 1.
Email: phildemetrion@yahoo.com
