France Tour 2006-2007

Intense. Most likely the best word to describe last night's gig at La Cantina, the most popular underground Drum and Bass club in Chamonix.

It was an almost surreal experience, plucked straight out of a movie. Elisa and I really had no idea what to expect, not just because we are a singer and a bass player playing at a dance club, but we were playing with two amazing DJs (which neither of us have done before).

I was slightly apprehensive before diving head first into their world. Some background info: DJs speed up and slow down the tracks they're playing constantly, therefore raising and lowering the pitch of the song. Since it's on a slide type mechanism, there aren't specific intervals the speed is changed by. Anyway, this can cause loads of problems for someone who, say, plays a specifically tuned instrument with specific intervals available to play. That said, on top of constantly having to come up with bass parts on the fly, I also had to re-tune my bass every other song. It's quite an ear training excersize, especially when you can't really sit on stage, pause between songs and tune. Halfway through the night I was able to tune my bass by vibration which I had no idea I could do.

Once I became comfortable with the situation, I let myself go. It was incredible. By midnight the club was completely packed. After being homesick all day, it was exactly what I needed. Although we got paid (just Elisa and I) in alcohol, we were approached by the club owner and asked to play on Wednesday night. Elisa was also approached by another guy who wants to give us a gig? I don't know all the details.

Overall it was a great night, and an experience I'll never forget. How many singers and bass players can say they rocked a Drum and Bass club? It's pretty humorous when you think about it.

What's next? I have no idea.

Where do I start... again?? I might as well start off by saying that I really haven't had the chance to get online in over a week; it's been that crazy. Secondly, I left my camera at Greg's apartment so no pictures yet. It snowed 50 cm the other day. I haven't seen that much snow in my life.

My mind is flying a mile a minute, I don't know how to put this all down without sounding completely insane.

I moved in with Elisa, and it's great. Our apartment is right in the middle of Chamonix Centre, so we can walk to everything we need. I've also started picking up a bit of French since the only channels we have are French Public. It just so happens that the other day there was a Bond marathon.. it was twice as entertaining with Stuart, a bartender in town from Scotland and I commentating in English.

Right. Gigs. After the night at the MBC, everything just seemed to fall into place. We had a gig at The Rusty (a bar in Argentiere) that also went pretty well on Wednesday.

I guess I have to explain something here: this place is so small that just about everyone has heard of us by now. So from the hype of the MBC and The Rusty, we've landed a gig tonight (Friday) at a Drum and Bass club called The Cantina a few blocks down from our apartment. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that we have a paid gig at The Rusty every Wednesday evening now. Okay, so this gig tonight is going to be quite a new experience. We were basically invited to jam with a fairly well known DJ at this place tonight. We had a rehearsal this morning and I can't wait. My jaw dropped when I heard what this guy plays. 100% drum and bass. Uughhhhh soo incredible.

We also have a gig on Sunday at a new place. If we do well there, it looks like we'll have that slot every week as well. It also looks like we're going to have another weekly paid gig at The D'Lis? I don't remember how to spell it.

We're going to have a chat with Matt, the drummer we played with at the MBC, on Sunday and see if we can't get a weekly gig there with him on drums.

What has me completely in awe is the fact that these amazing professional (and famous) musicians that happen to be in town all want to play with us. It's unbelievable.

Again, I apologize for how incoherent I am right now, I'm still settling into our new place and in shock of how much is going on for us in such little time.

Right this moment I'm in this private club across the street from our place called The Clubhouse. I got a membership card from one of Elisa's friends which was really nice of him. It's a hardcore dance club by night but it's complimentary tea and whatnot and WiFi for members by day. And Four Tet just came onto the radio!

Love it here. Miss home quite a bit though.

Benjamin

Where do I begin??

I think I'll begin with the part where the owner, Gary, of the MBC introduced himself as a Car Dealer from Detroit. Last night was probably the most frustrating and relieving nights of my life.

I arrived at 7:30. Our gig was scheduled for 9, so I drop my bass off with one of the bar tenders (who were amazingly nice) and have a pint with Damien, a nice guy who happens to like Elisa like just about every other guy in the town. Anyway, Elisa shows up at about 8:30. 9 comes around and guess what? It's open mic night. And guess what else? Gary decides he's going to jam for an hour and a half. Meanwhile, we've invited half the town to see us play at 9 including Elisa's parents who're currently quite angry with her, and some local bar owners that could potentially hire us for weekly gigs. Now you may be getting some sort of idea as to how frustrated I was by the time they stopped playing at 10:30...

However...

We were introduced (to my surprise... I actually didn't think we were even going to play) and brought up on stage. From then on was a blur. Matt (I think he manages the music for the MBC) said he was willing to play drums for our set which was incredible. He's quite talented. We opened with a cover of "I Will Survive" by Cake. After a few seconds there was absolutely no room in the bar to move. It was completely fucking packed. I couldn't believe the response we got. To top it all off, Matt told us not to leave town, and Gary told us to come back and play any time.

I'm not sure how many rounds were bought for us, but it was too many. Luckily Greg was able to snap a few photos before we finished our set.

The future...

We have another gig this upcoming Wednesday at "Rusty's" (I think it's actually called Rustica or something of that sort), it's an italian restaurant/bar. Can't wait.
I miss you all! Oh and Sam, we're mostly playing as a duo, but might do a few gigs with a drummer once in a while. It's all up in the air at the moment.

I get a call yesterday from Elisa in a panic and somewhere in her attempt to speak English I heard the words 'first gig.' So we rehearsed yesterday for quite a few hours getting our set list ready. This is the big one. It's at the NBC? or is it MBC? I don't know. It's a really popular bar/club in downtown Cham that will determine how well we do these next few months. We've invited all of the bar owners in town to see us play so we get our names out there. Wish us good luck!

If we do well tonight, we'll basically be set for quite a while. I'm freakin excited and freakin nervous. We only had one day to rehearse, not to mention the fact that Elisa knows all the songs we're playing and I had to learn about 10 new ones in one day.

So I went down the street to a petrol station and spoke my first real sentence in French and felt really good. I asked where I could purchase a telephone card and she said up the street so I went up the street and went into this shop and the guy was like 'telephone card?' and I was like 'yeah!' and he was like '10 euros' and I was like 'okay!' and it turned out to be the wrong thing. I can't use it on my mobile, but I can use it in a phone booth. Meh.

If you want to contact my mobile, though, you can do so very cheaply with a calling card (a penny a minute or so). My number is 0670626189. But calling from America you dial 0033 (remove the first zero) 670626189. It doesn't cost me anything to receive calls, but I'm definitely for sure this time going to buy the right type of credit.

Oh and it's supposed to snow 2 meters on Tuesday. Yay!

At the moment I'm just trying to describe the events going on, but I'm really looking forward to writing about the culture and the country as soon as I have the time.

Thank you everyone for everything!

Benjamin

This is the view from outside my apartment in Argentiere, France. Despite my buying a mobile phone yesterday, I can't use it until I buy more credit. I was, however, successful in contacting Wells Fargo and getting my bank cards to work here.

I wish I had more time to describe the amazing places I've seen and people I've met, but that will come once I move into our flat in downtown Chamonix. I guess that won't be happening until the 31st, though.

Tuesday was hockey night. A friendly match between Chamonix and England. Absolutely incredible. The score ended up being 9 - 3, Cham. I was pretty much overwhelmed the entire time. Pretty much everything was in French. Pretty much. I decided I needed to pick up my handy France guide and start learning. I ordered the sandwich I'm eating right now at the internet cafe in French. Yeah, I'm awesome like that.

My battery is running low since spent a lot of time e-mailing eeeeveryone.

It would be really really really great if whoever reads this left a comment here rather than anywhere else. Once again, I'll be able to get back to everybody much more quickly once I move into our studio.

Love and miss everyone!

Benjamin

It's technically day 3 of my journey to France. This is the first quiet moment I've had in 72 hours to sit down and semi-relax. I'm in an apartment, a cozy 100 square feet in size, about half a kilometer outside Chamonix, in a little group of buildings that apparently make up the town of Argentiere. As my eyes sting more with each blink, I decided I should probably make some attempt at keeping track of what's happened so far.

Day one: no sleep that night. Plane leaves Portland Airport at around 8:20 am.
Three and a half hours and two very interesting people later I find myself in Chicago, feeling inspired, happy, and slightly energized. Keeping track of every hour and every task I had to complete during this world transit kept me calm; I had about 5 hours to kill before my Swiss flight to Zurich, Switzerland.

38A. A window seat. The first one after my four flights to and from England.

I remember walking down the the terminal hallway thinking to myself: “I have no idea what Swiss Air is going to be like, but I bet this is going to be either the worst or best 10 hour flight of my life.” It was exactly that. Sleeping about 4 hours and watching two pretty decent movies in a window seat with no passenger next to me made me feel spoiled. As we approached Zurich I decided to run the tasks through my head again: Exit Terminal 3, catch the tram to Terminal 1, get through security, board at Gate A03 30 minutes later. One thing I know very well about myself is that I despise being crunched for time. By the time we landed I had 15 minutes to get to my gate to catch my connecting flight to Geneva, Switzerland. Skipping all the details, I ended up skipping normal security and booking it for the gate, where a small transport vehicle took me to the runway where my plane was. If I had taken 2 minutes longer at any point I would've completely missed it. Massive stress relief.

Two crying babies, a packed jet, and 40 minutes later I was in Geneva, Switzerland, ready to take on my new set of objectives. Get my luggage, get to the international arrivals gate, depending on if I had time make a phone call to Greg, my new mysterious roommate I'll be staying with for 3 days, look for the man with the sign with my name on it, take the transfer to Chamonix, France where I'll be dropped off at Greg's where hopefully he'll be waiting for me.

Every single one went wrong. Every one.

I see my suitcase of clothing right away at the baggage claim and wonder where my bass is. It doesn't arrive. I file a missing baggage report and move on to the next task at hand: find my transfer. He isn't there. I wait for an hour. I even ended up calling the number they gave me to contact him and apparently they were closed. Lovely.

I'm getting too tired to go into this much detail, but one bus ticket, two invalidated credit cards, and a couple dozen phone calls later and I'm in Chamonix waiting for Greg to pick me up from the bus station. Done. Took a one person elevator (never seen one of them before) up to his floor and now I'm here. Elisa stopped by to say hello which I really appreciate.

Oh yeah, they found my bass and paid for a taxi to drive it to the apartment tonight. Never in my life have I been so glad to see a large plastic case.

Hopefully we'll go into town tomorrow and get a mobile phone that I can use while I'm here. I'm nervous about a whole new slew of things now, but that's another story.

I haven't even met anyone and I guess there's some pretty well known musicians in town looking forward to playing with me?

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I'm actually publishing this entry in an internet cafe 5 minutes outside Greg's apartment, and I'm running low on battery. It's Wednesday and I have a load more to talk about, but I'll get to it when I have the chance.

No pictures yet, but I promise some next entry.