The Journey Itself Is Home

As I have said before a lot of people work for Björk, not just musicians. All in all we are about thirty people travelling together. I have mentioned some of them here, such as our tour manager, Shaun Martin and our production manager, Peter van der Velde, as well as our front of house sound engineer, Kevin Pruce. But there are others. Here below is a picture taken by Damian of Bob Lopez, who is the monitor sound engineer responsible for what we, the musicians on stage, hear in each particular song. I love you Bob!

We have now arrived in Geneva and I have an excellent room with a view over the Lake. It is wonderful to have escaped the scorching heat in Italy, which was of the infernal variety. When we came to Udine we couldn’t do anything except sleep or spend the afternoon in the hotel swimming pool. I chose the latter.

On the next day we had our concert in Villa Manin. We again rented a harpsichord, which came all the way from Rome. This time I made doubly certain that it was tuned right. So everything went well. I played a lot of songs on the harpsichord, Venus As A Boy, Aurora, Hunter, Pagan Poetry, All Is Full Of Love, Hope and Vökuró.

It was nice to once play a “real” instrument with a character of its own. The top notes were slightly out of tune after a few songs, but it just added to the charm.

There were no sexy skeletons this time!

We will have a few days’ rest now, for our next concert is on Wednesday. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with my daughter here - we’ll see.

I read somewhere on Björk.com that Björk had sung Pagan Poetry a capella in Madrid. That means our front of house sound engineer, Kevin Pruce, killed the harpsichord while we were performing it. Thanks Kevin. You are a god!

Here he is:

It has been said that a harpsichord sounds like a couple of skeletons making love on a tin roof.

I’m sure the harpsichord I played on in our last concert in Spain, this time in a huge bull ring in Madrid, sounded just like that.

Björk told me two hours before the show that she wanted a real harpsichord, not the fake harpsichord sound from the Yamaha CP200. So she decided to rent one, just for the concert. It was brought on the stage after we had had our sound check. And then it was tuned.

I don’t know who tuned it, but he didn’t do a very good job. When I started playing Pagan Poetry I immediately heard something was horribly wrong. But since the sound level of the harpsichord in my ear monitors was too low, I couldn’t figure out exactly how far away the instrument was from the correct pitch. So I was unable to do anything about it.

The result was terrible.

Pagan Poetry was the fourth song on our set list and after this dreadful experience I was in a rotten mood right until we performed Mother Heroic. I think that was pretty good. Björk was amazing, it was definitely our best performance of it so far.

There was another surprise in store for me later during the show. Sometimes when Björk sings Earth Intruders, she wears an exotic headdress, which she then throws away after she has finished with the song. Well, when we were performing Declare Your Independence last night, Damian suddenly took up the headdress and put it on my head! He told me later: “I saw you and I saw a headdress… and I saw a connection!”

What could I do but dance with Björk’s headdress like an idiot?

After the concert we went back to the bus and had a great party. Mark Bell was the DJ. This time we created a slogan: “It is impossible to dance on a bus. But Mark Bell makes you do it!” And then we sang: “Ring Mark Beeeeeeeeeeeell, ring Mark Bell!”

After a long drive tonight, we have now arrived in Marseille. It has been a pleasurable day. My daughter (who loved sleeping on the bus) went with Björk, Matthew and Isadora to the beach, while I did some shopping. And tonight we continue our journey, this time to Italy.

Here are a few photos that Damian sent me, as well as a couple I took. The last one is of Damian on a shopping spree in Copenhagen.

I’m in Alicante now, but will be going back to Madrid today. My daughter arrived last night - it was great to see her! We have just had breakfast and have discovered that she has no hairbrush with her. So the first order of business is to find a place where I can buy one. Hmmm…

Damian just sent me tons of photos and I intend to publish most of them in the next few days.

We gave our concert in Segovia last night. It was quite different to what we are used to. For starters the audience consisted of 1200 people, which is the smallest crowd we have played for so far. And the people sat during most of the show, which is rather unusual - it was only in the last few songs that people started dancing. Nonetheless, it was a very amicable crowd and they seemed to like what we were doing. Björk was very powerful and I was told afterwards that the sound was extremely good.

The setlist was also unusual. I don’t quite remember it now, but we didn’t start with Earth Intruders. Instead, our opening act was Síðasta ég. This is a new version of the song that I made for a harpschord and it was the very first performance of it. Björk and me have never rehearsed it and even though one or two things about it didn’t go quite as planned, it was fun playing. I look forward to performing it again.

In the bus back to Madrid, where we are currently staying, we had a great party with Mark Bell DJ-ing. Mark is a wonderful DJ and we couldn’t help dancing, even though dancing on a bus isn’t very easy.

When I came back to the hotel I started packing, since I’m going away to pick up my daughter, who is flying to Spain tonight. But just as I was finishing, my phone rang. It was Damian, who said: “Jónas, if you come to room so-and-so, you will find a most WELCOMING crowd.” So I went there and, in addition to Damian, I was met by Mark, Chris, a few members of The Wonderbrass and Björk, who handed me a half-eaten apple, which I finished. The party continued in the room, until someone started knocking - I guess we were a bit noisy.

We will have a rest now until Wednesday, when we will give our final concert in Spain. And then we are off to Italy!

The infernal heat in Madrid made me forget to mention that I played the ReacTable yesterday! After we had performed the first encore of the evening, Oceania, and had just started the second one, Declare Your Independence, Damian yelled: “JÓNAS! COME PLAY THE REACTABLE!” So I stood up and went to the center of the stage and began hammering the ReacTable under Damian’s direction. I must confess feeling somewhat self-conscious jumping up and down with Damian - and DANCING, but it sure was fun!

Our concert in Bilbao went well. The audience was most enthusiastic and it was great having flamenco dancers supporting us. I took the photo below from behind the stage.

I didn’t sleep too well on the ride from Bilbao to Madrid tonight. The road was so bumby! I don’t think I fell asleep untill five…

I have had a pleasant day nonetheless. My friend, Jón Egill Bergþórsson, who worked with me on twelve TV shows on classical music in Iceland last year, is in Spain at the moment and we met today. We walked around the center of the city and I stood on the shield in the sidewalk which apparently is the very heart of Spain. I think there is a story to it and I vaguely recall Jón Egill telling it to me, but it is completely gone now. The heat was so terrible (37 degrees Celsius I believe) that it simply scorched my brain.

I think I’ll just have a mindless evening and watch a DVD…

The dog I mentioned yesterday is Jeff Koon’s Puppy. I had no idea! This is from Wikipedia:

Jeff Koons was “commissioned in 1992 to create a piece for an art exhibition in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The result was Puppy, a forty-three foot (thirteen meter) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure. In 1995 the sculpture was dismantled and re-erected at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sydney Harbour on a new, more permanent, stainless steel armature with an internal irrigation system.

“In 1997 the piece was purchased by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Before the dedication at the museum, a trio disguised as gardeners attempted to plant explosive-filled flowerpots near the sculpture [1], but were foiled by Bilbao police. Since its installation, Puppy has become a noted icon for the city of Bilbao. In the summer of 2000 it travelled to New York City for a temporary exhibition at Rockefeller Center.

“Media mogul Peter Brant and model-wife Stephanie Seymour have an exact Koons duplicate of the Bilbao statue on the grounds of their Connecticut estate.”