We're back from a sybaritic 10 days of v-a-c-a-T- I -O- N in luscious Lisbon, my new favorite watering hole, ironic as Portugal is beset with severe drought right now, but though a haze of smoke from encroaching out of control brush fires was visible in the distance on our last day on the beaches at Costa Caparica it did not deter Caroline and I from immersion totale in sun and fun and oceanic rapture there... and in Cascais...and in Guincho...

ostensibly I was there to do a job, closing out Lisbon's annual Jazz Em Agosto Festival with Fast 'N' Bulbous, but me and the missus piggybacked some well-deserved and needed quality holiday time on the gig and hey the whole week was like a non-stop carnival despite an early snafu when Lufthansa misplaced my guitars during the connection in Munich (air route over was Ny-Munich-Lisbon, go figure--well it was a free ticket) but I kept my sangfroid as this kind of thing has happened before, many times, with transfers and obdurate airlines and that's why I have my geetars insured for 10g's each thank you very much...and I've (heh heh) collected...so what me worry, which was exactly the mode 'o day (apologies to R. Crumb) and indeed both my Strat and Tele (both vintage '66 and sea foam green) did indeed turn up at the hotel on the first night when I got back from band rehearsal (we haveta do this--hey it's always a good idea to rehearse anyway unless you overdo it and then it's strictly re/hearse-- because although Jesse Krakow, Joe Fieldler, Rob Henke, Dave Sewelson, Richard Dworkin and I all live in NYC my co-leader Phillip Johnston relocated to Australia last year so we don't get together too much now en masse 'cept right before the gig, same with the Magic Band where we're all dwelling in far flung corners of these United States)...still my guitars turned up late from the airport necessitating a substitute Strat for the rehearsal...must say the Festival folks were extremely nice and helpful in providing one and pretty much anything we needed throughout our stay which stretched into 10 days in my case...although they didn't make with the cosmetics for young Jesse who likes to mascara his eyes and rouge his cheeks to go with his fetching green fingernail polish and pumpkin organge shorts (very much in the beeheartian tradition you know) so Caroline dragged his ass to a mall before out set and purchased a bunch of garish face paint for him and then made him up while we sipped Sumol the refreshing Portugese softdrink in the lobby (shameless plug, this stuff is gooood) and then we were whisked to the Gulbenkian Art Museum not too far from our hotel to blow our brains out before a large crowd of jazzbo's and curious thrill seekers in an outdoor Roman amphitheatre set-up with what looked like pop-art palm trees (real ones though) swaying majestically in rhythm behind us, it was a balmy tropical hot dog night, no lie, a good omen, stars were twinkling the vibe was happening the air was nice and hot and humid but not too much and I wore my white suit which i hadn't donned since the Venice Biennale a couple years ago--and in the audience were some dear friends who had driven 7 hours coming directly down from Grenada Spain to see us: my old pal mixmastersupreme/recording engineer par excellence Harold Burgon, who recorded some of my best sounding Gods and Monsters tracks ("Skin the Rabbit" and "Astronomy Domine") at Elephant Studios in Wapping Wharf in London about 20 odd years ago (very odd years) and who I hadn't laid eyes on since, and who is one of the most fantastic totally optimistic people I know, a real mentor and an excellent engineer who's been really revving up my latest Gods and Monsters tracks, he was there along with his new protege Greg Byler, a really compelling and fresh young singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania who I recently recorded with here in Jack McKeever's studio Thed Maid's Room on the Lower East Side (hi Jack!)...plus 2 gorgeous young ladies from Oporto, Maria Joao and Susana Guerra who graced us with their resplendent beauty and vivacious vibes, my cup runneth over indeed :-) also saw New Yawker Kurt Gottschalk from The Squid's Ear website who was covering the festivities for All About Jazz and who gave us big smiles and the thumb's up sign when we finished and and then we all repaired to the bar in the hotel for some ex-post-festival partying after out set which was greeted rapturously by the crowd thronging the sloping sides of the amphitheatre, all 'cept for the mainstream jazz critic from the local paper who apparently recused himself from reviewing us a couple days later in his festival wrap-up on the grounds that he didn't really understand this sort of thing and thus couldn't write about it fairly...sounds like a gracious exit strategy to me...

Our agent Karin Kreisel looked radiant and happy that we had sandblasted our set so grandiloquently and in truth, we blowed things up reeeeeal good onstage there, oceans of skronk especially from newly married Dave in full fuzzy wuzzy regalia and Joe in blow-me-down tailgate trombone mode and Rob in bugle boy Hawaiian luau drag, Dickie kept things rhythmically off-kilter in his usual manic way and Phillip was mr. cool as usual despite a 28 hour flight and virus, much hilarity and musical pranksterish fun...

Then they flew home and the next few days Caroline and I spent by ourselves in a happy haze of sun dazzled white sand beaches, fantastic ocean (I love to swim in the sea), fresh sea food dinners at midnight in the old funky Bario Alto district, and non stop grins...oh man would that we could have stayed another week there, we hired a driver and made it out to Sintra and then the beach at Cascais one day with Jason Candler my buddy/guitar tech for the festival/sound recordist/auxilliary sax player in Gods and Monsters, who had stayed over a day--what a beautiful medieval town is Sintra, nestled up in the mountains, we got lost and found and then chowed down with gusto at the Cafe de Paris in th heart of the village (the food throughout was never less than first rate), then Jason split to Malta and than the incredible Susana Cavalho Guerra, the Portugese tv producer and all around beautiful person who graces 4 channels there with shows on ecology and public service issues took Caroline and I under her wing and became our guide and chauffeur and drove us and her 2 lovely sons around everwhere in a non-stop whirl of dazzling FUN, we went out to the country with her friends Costinha and Shusha one day to view a derelict 16th century medieval village Shusa is renovating, took a trip another sunny day to the magnificent Oceanaria another afternoon to see the most compelling museum of aquatic life I've ever witnessed (beats the one in Honolulu by far)--in total, she made our trip, which was magical enough to begin with, us being in Portugal for the first time ever, even more magical and mysterious, what a great spirit she exudes, totally life affirming and the whole things was like a prolonged dream and I am still flashing on it, it was sooooooo nice...

then we sadly said our goodbyes and split to London as it was Caroline's dad's 93rd birthday...and we took Henry out shortly after we arrived to an excellent kosher-Chinese restaurant in Hendon called Kaifeng (after the ancient mainland Chinese Jewish community, yes there was such a thing, look it up o you non-believers) (excellent, but don't order the spare-ribs)...and then we spent a week chilling in London (which after Lisbon we found a tad cooler weatherwise), checking the Frida Kahlo exhibit at Tate Modern (go!), seeing films (Walk on Water was excellent) and theater (As You Like It, not bad), and seeing old and new friends including dinner at my favoritie Arabesque restaurant in Swiss Cottage with former Propaganda singer Claudia Brucken, with whom I'm working on a new album project with her partner Paul Humphreys (OMD) with their group Onetwo; the lovely Yuliana Galitskaya and Alex Kan, my 2 Russian friends both living in London, Yuliana cooked us a wonderful dinner and Alex, who works for BBC Russia, regaled us with some excellent stories; and on the last night we hooked up with my pal Garry Cobain from Future Sound of London and his lovely girlfriend the artist Dian Harris for a terrific Indian meal at Eriki, which is also a Magic Band favorite hangout--I'm playing with Garry as part of his Amorphous Androgynous live project in late November and early December at some massive outdoor rave festivals in Australia as part of Earrthcore Global Carnival, we had a dry run last year on the banks of the Moscow River (see my website for pics) and it sounds massive and psychedelic and I am much looking forward to playing with Gaz and with sitarist Baluji Shrivastav and the brothers Rowe again...

gotta go now, more later sooner Gracer

xxlove

Gary

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Posted by Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 8/30/2005 07:23:00 AM