Semi-recovered now from a little Bacardi-fueled weekend jaunt to lovely Romania, a country I was fascinated by as a lad due to its deep Dracula connection--Voivode Drak-cool, whose dark mythopoetic shadow loomed large in my youthful cosmogony (it's true, at a tender age I knew deep down-- "where the wild things are"-- that when I grew up, I wanted to be either a vampire or a rabbi) ( they share certain similarities)...

My own earliest libidinous stirrings were engendered/provoked by the black and white cinema spectacle of #1 alltime femme fatale luscious Barbara Steele gasping writhing and heaving on her slab in Mario Bava's "Black Sunday", commanding Dr, Kroobayon to come and embrace her ("the grave's a fine and proper place" indeed--speaking of which, one fondly recalls Lenny Bruce's Fantasy Lp cover for "The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce" which depicts Lenny's Dejeuner Sur L'herbe du Forest Lawn in lurid, appropriately nauseating, 50's color supplement tones)...

I was also hooked by Bram Stoker's florid description of the stalking of Renfield by the 3 weird sister predators who inhabit Castle Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola made quite a meal of this in his take on the Count--but nothing beats the heat generated by Christopher Lee and his fetching toothsome brides in the '57 "Horror of Dracula", courtesy of the House of Hammer.

"Blood is the rose of mysterious union"...

anyhow, back to the present-- this here jetski to Romania was a quickie...and due to the security snafu at Heathrow my 8pm flight from JFK on Thursday night was delayed for hours, meaning I would then miss my Saturday morning London to Bucharest connection...so after frantically searching for an alternate flight route for an hour I located an Austrian Airlines NY to Vienna flight with an ongoing connection to Bucharest...and then that plan had to be scuttled, I was cosmically thwarted once again as the heavens came tumbling down, down as I pulled into JFK...resultiing in a delay on the ground there for 3 tedious hours...resulting in missing my connecting flight in Vienna--

which meant I finally pulled into Bucharest at 11pm Friday night on a late fligh out of Viennat after enduring the considerable charms of the Flughafen for 5 long hours :-(

but--things perked up considerably and my spirits soared upon clearing customs in Bucharest, as awaiting me outside the airport was a mysterious black coach and horses with a pale, cadaverous, top-hatted driver up top...actually it was the longest stretch limo I'd ever seen, a white one with "Bacardi B-Live" emblazoned on its side... and inside the plush leather upholstered interior-- replete with slowly changing fibre-optic psychedelic lighting and the requisite ice buckets/fluted champagne glasses/lavishly stocked mini-bar/color tv/cd stereo and lotsa Bacardi of course-- was lovely London fire-dancer Katie and the beautiful Swedish VJ Anna, both whom had made it out of Heathrow successfully and had been cruising around Bucharest for some hours waiting on me--

they would be my delightful traveling companions for the next 3 hours as our chauffeur packed my '66 Strat, my monster case (Jason Candler calls it "Henry", Richard 'Faust' Mader refers to it as "The Flying Mary") and Gladstone bags in the boot and together we sailed on into the mystic, the starry black night enshrouding largely unseen to these eyes Bucharest, as we accelerated to crusing speed and hurtled on down the highway through the Borgo Pass (just kidding) en route to Mamaia, the largest resort town on the Black Sea ... out came the rum and coke(s) and Kristal and sandwiches and some other unnameable pick-me-ups and yes by golly my mood doth improved considerably, I could--finally--really relax, stretch out, and luxuriate in the splendid feeling of crossing yet another border, and Katie and Anna proved excellent company indeed throughout the night...

We pulled into Mamaia by the sea at 2am, and I was immediately riveted by all the visible non-stop action going on/ going down on both sides of the main drag which abutted the beach front--think Italian Riviera with a smidgeon of Istria thrown into the mix, and you wouldn't be far off the map--winkiing and blinking neon casinos and throbbing clubs and glitzed-out holiday hotels stretched along the sea coast for miles, tanned and buffed beach boys and girls were observed in various states of deshabille bopping in full-on party mode down the boulevards (Friday night in full effect here, for sure)...our limo pulled into the Hotel Malibu, and the flirtatious check-in clerk at the front desk gifted me with a suite replete with Jacuzzi and a spectacular view--and after checking out the hotel disco on the beach and dipping my big toe into the Black Sea, I collapsed on the kingsize bed with the tv on--and after being up 48 hours, it was good brothers and sisters, it was good...

Woke to a sunny sky-blue summer morning (cue Jonathan Richman's "Summer Morning" here), Cosmo was due to arrive with our percussionist Shovell and head straight to our afternoon soundcheck at the Kristal Club, but lo she and he and new female tour manager Danielle were grounded as BA canceled more outbound flights at Heathrow...so bereft of our fearless leader me and Katie and Anna headed over to the club with our man Yasmin from Bacardi Vienna who came along for the lig, and after setting up the gear and the tracks which would have to be played as mp3's and would not get the benefit of Cosmo's talented hands mixing and blending them headed for a stroll down the beach and a sumptuous lunch at an outdoor Italian joint call La Fattoria (this is Roman-ia, remember)...then it was back for a swim and some sun on the hotel's private beach...and then a final return to the Kristal Club, where we hunkered down while the tech support crew adjusted their laser light show, 20 vid screens, artifical water falls etc., Katie set up her pyrotechnic Poi paraphernalia and I clocked the local DJ who had a bad Sasha and Digweed jones, also made the nice with the Bacardi meat 'n greet local girls who resembled nothing so much as elegant, fine racehorses--not an ounce of body fat on their lanky tall and perfectly pouting Eastern European frames...and they were later to semi-rudely nudge Katie off the runway o'er-arching one of the indoor pools in front of the bandstand from where she twirled and breathed fire, in order to dance and prance to the sub-Digweed jive the dj kept pushing... eye-candy for sure

we finally went on at 2am Sunday morning and I blasted forth and immediately got the now customary contingent of air guitar players and entranced dancers scoping every flick of my wrist and so it went for a couple hours although we were asked to depart for an hour's break in the middle while they brought back the dj for some more mindless click and thumpery for fear our little momente musicale would actually lose some of the dancers, but yea verily upon hitting again around 3:30am we got our groove back and I got the best crowd reaction from these Romanian Children of the Night, sensuous male/female corybantic ravers gathered directly in front of me and rockin' in rhythm, it's always such a pleasure to adjust and direct my guitar's trajectory and play directly to Faces and Bodies up close and personal in the crowd (my aim is true...)

then it was breakdown time on the cusp of exhaustion, a quick return to the hotel for a shower and 20 minute nap--and then it was "get back in the van" I mean limo and we all 3 of us stretched out on the long leather divans in the back and suddenly it was 3 hours loater and we were at the airport and I said goodbye to my pals and bleerily made my way onto the Austrian Airlines flight back to Vienna and yes! Yasmin had booked me into business class and having 4 hours to kill once I got to Wien I decided to take the 20 minute train into the city center but as it was Sunday Vienna's peepers be tight shut in the main but I had little trouble finding a nice clean doner and wurst stand and feasted on an excellent brat mit brod and senf (White's Deli in New Haven used to have a little paper sign at each table offering up their specialty, "Fat Frank on a Hard Roll"--not a bad meta-description of my Yale buddy Frank Jones, who began his History Dept. senior essay with the sagacious-in-retrospect line: "History has all too often witnessed the gallopings and horn-blowings of many would-be conquerors...". A regular Will Durant!). Then it was off to say a few (just kidding) at the magnificently appointed Rochuskirche, circa 1721, one of the few joints (sorry, Houses of Worship) I could find open there on a Sunday --literally just down the road apiece from Diarchy (a Goth "latex and fetish" boutique), and a Head and Grow Shop (the first Austrian one-stop for Sensi Seeds and related cultivation implements for the gentleman farmer, under cannabis's quasi-legal status there). I love Vienna...

But as it was now time to get back to the airport I attempted to repeat my moves, and was directed onto a train in the underground by an ever-so-helpful ticket seller, where, dozing off from severe jetlag some of which was still accumulation from my Indian odyssey of a few weeks ago, I somehow woke up in the charming little town of Medling miles and miles away from the Wien Flughafen--and dashing out of the station with only 45 minutes to spare I so luckily found a taxi driver who took Mastercard (!) as I was clean out of euros and just made it to the airport in the nick of etc. and had the best flight back to NYC in biz class splendor, Austrian Airlines has the tastiest food by far I've ever been served in 16 years or so of doing this to death on a fulltime basis, first class service and then some and here I am at the end of my spiel-sang to say that when in Romania do as the Romanians do...

"For the blood is the life, Mr. Renfield..."

xxLove

Gary

ps I urge you to check out James Hillman's "A Terrible Love of War" which my Swedish friend Bertil hipped me to (you can order it for a pittance at Amazon)...Hillman is the former head of the CG Jung Institute who astutely recognized the transcendent quality of Skip James' voice many years ago at Yale, as described in one of my blogs from March of this year...this book is probably the most lucid account of the current Mars madness afflicting our planet currently...a voice of clarity and sanity in a wilderness of agitprop noise...

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Posted by Gary Lucas to Gary Lucas at 8/16/2006 07:09:00 AM