Ben Harper

Last summer we went to the Nice Jazz Festival both so that we had a good excuse to go to the South as per usual but more importantly to catch the best live act this side of the Atlantic: Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite. We saw some live music in Grenoble but not a lot; it's kind of a small place and there wasn't much to choose from (but The Cranberries did do a show at the Stade des Alpes in November 2012). Anyways, after attending said Nice Jazz Festival, it was reinforced upon us that Ben is certainly an act that's worth re-visiting. So, tabs were kept on what might be next in this aspiring artist's touring repertoire. All of a sudden, as I was surfing through www.benharper.com/tour, I noticed the name of a small city that I once called home: Grenoble! For some crazy reason, this cat is playing one of his only 4 shows in France (the other 3 are all in Paris) on this summer's European tour in that teeny tiny place where we no longer live. Craziness! So, this seemed like as good an excuse as any to arrange a trip to the old homestead, say hello to old friends and colleagues, eat a baguette or two, sneak in a Vercors mountain-summitting bike ride, and, of course, experience the thrill of another edition of one of contemporary music's hottest live acts. But then, woe is me, (as Job might say), when all seemed to be falling into place, Mr. Harper went and let all of his Grenoble show tickets sell out before we could get our grubby little fingers on a single pair of them! Total suckage. But, if you'll remember a few lines up, it is a European tour, and though we'd love to fit in all that biking and colleague-visiting, all was not lost yet. It seemed that Ben, his tour manager, and whomever else may have been involved in the decision making related to such a large-scale touring event, felt like they really wanted to see Italy this time around. Granted we've never called anywhere in Italy a home, but we have enough connections and memories there that a trip due-south of here into the promised land could involve more than simply a concert attendance. We perused the proposed Italian docket, and hit upon the perfect parameters: show in Florence, mid-May, landing on a Saturday. Can't ask for much more, right? I made the appropriate network set-ups and soon the new plan was all but assured and all that was left -- essentially -- was to mark it down in the old iCal for posterity, reminding-purposes, and next year's Christmas Card. We would stay with friends in Florence, attend the concert with them following an aperitivi at one of Florence's hipper locations, and cap off the night with a visit to the infamous night-time swimming pool as we once did in a time far removed from today (2007)

I wonder if it's still there?

Everyone was on board, the flights made sense, we could taste the Campari. But just then, something that I wouldn't have expected happened: those tickets were sold out too. Man! People must really like this guy! But we were not licked yet. When some people are knocked down in life, they stay down. If they do get up, it's only much later, and their spirit has been broken. They are weak and easily breakable now, like an Ikea wine glass. Not us, though. This experience only made us stronger and further fuelled the burning desire that we held to attend another Ben Harper concert. Come Hell or high water, we would spend an average weekly salary to push Live Nation's executives that much further into the one percent. So what did we have left? Rome? Sold out. Milan? Turin? Sold out, sold out. Geneva, Lucerne, Brussels? Sold out, sold out, sold out! But wait, what's this? Padua? THE Padua? The setting for Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew? One and the same. Could we make it there? Was there a train? Did it matter? Would I continue to ask myself questions that I would in turn answer immediately afterwards? And most importantly, were there really tickets still available? Yes, Yes, Probably, Unfortunately, and YES!

So, come Friday May 9th (if indeed we can find the right train tickets), we will set off on an epic journey from the Ostbahnhof, through the Bavarian and Italian Alps, stopping briefly in the town made famous by Romeo and Juliet (though I guess it was probably famous before then [Verona, of course]), and then slightly changing direction to continue east and little bit northwards, we will find our way to Padua (Padova), to the Gran Teatro Geox, to An Acoustic Evening with Ben Harper, and to our salvation. Amen.

Canadian Christmas Vacation 2

Pemulis has seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Speed 2, Batman & Robin, The Lost World, the Matrix sequels (if they actually existed but we're supposed to pretend that they don't), and though he's never seen Sex & the City or Sex & the City 2, he's sure that they're both terrible and that they found a way to make #2 even worse. Therefore, he knows that sequels are difficult. You should know that too.

Pemulis wakes fully rested after another luxurious 9-hour sleep in his brand new bed. If he felt any itchiness or noticed any strange rash on his side it couldn't be from bed bugs or mites that traveled through the mattress of his bed in his furnished apartment because he has his very own bed, thank you very much, and the mattress is brand new and affords him with luxurious 9-hour sleeps, and thankfully, there is no itchiness and there are no strange rashes so there is no zona, no powerful anti-viral drugs, and there are no pain killers. There's no time to swim so the no-zona thing doesn't affect that, there's no more ping pong tables around, and there are even less baguettes.

A comfortable plane ride with no screaming babies ends in record time and lands without delay between a plane-delaying decade-defining ice storm and an airport-shuttering century-defining polar vortex-induced deep freeze (cf. Le Grand Froid, but for real). Pemulis and Joelle are chauffeured home to a grandiose feast served with wine and the finest organic produce. They are warmly welcomed by the family dog Bow. Someone or something is missing, Pemulis feels, but he can't put his finger on who or what that might be. At first he thinks it might be one of the evil cats but later sees them both scurry by in a most non-evil way. He chalks the feeling up to jet lag.

Speaking of jet lag, Pemulis and Joelle simply retire at an appropriate hour and wake somewhat earlier than average to greet the glorious sunshine and circadian dysrhythmia seems to hold little sway upon their lives. Waking up early, Pemulis sits with Bow and reads about the trials and tribulations in Emma's and Matthew's lives. To hammer home the point that people never seem to learn, the protagonists again visit the high-school Christmas-time get-together but lo and behold, it actually turns out to be a lot of fun. Even LaMont makes an appearance along with Jay-R and good times are experienced by all involved.

Christmas Eve is in London and all the family is there. Presents, Rum & Egg Nog, Christmas Dinner, Bernie Nichols Wine (or was it Mark Messier?), and the World Juniors only two days away. Christmas is at CIA HQ and again all the family is there, Pemulis thinks, but things still feel somewhat awry. Who knows, there's a lot of good food and a lot of booze again so that must be it.

Pemulis makes his second annual bus trip to Toronto but sadly this time there are no young entrepreneur/philosophers to distract and enchant him to help the time go by. LaMont and Pemulis plan again for food in the hipster style but the "Singapore street fare" is a 3 hour wait (just about right to keep up the hipness factor) but that's just a little heavy on the waiting side for this night so kind-of-hip Phó it is.

Pemulis and Joelle remain in remarkable health with help from the Chartreuse monks age-old vitality elixir. It's Avril's 60th birthday and the paparazzi are out in force at Edward's on the Seine. Sporting the newest fashions from Milan and Paris, the family dines on gourmet food and fine wines while surrounded by an adoring public. There is little time for autographs but Facebook lights up that night with posts by Pemulis's fans commemorating the event.

Time goes by and all of a sudden they have a couch and Pemulis has a functioning green Brompton folding bicycle, and soon will have a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon turntable, a Rotel RA-11 amplifier, and Tannoy Mercury V1 speakers. And a bookcase. And then he'll have to move them all to some other city...

Click Bait: Three Simple Tricks that will help us get more clicks

The WMDGrenoble blog has been stuck in the high 2000's of page views for a while now and we're just not going to make it over that 3000 page view milestone if we don't start employing some tricks-of-the-trade. To begin, we will be employing some simple click-bait headline tactics. Following in the innovative footsteps of businessinsider.com, our titles will now be more along the lines of "EXCLUSIVE: Apple Has Destroyed 490,000 American Jobs" (http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-has-destroyed-american-jobs-2012-5) and cetera...

But I guess we also need some content here so here are some pictures from Christmas time. (Tell your friends! -- and click twice!)

The Darling Christmas Tree with a bunch of loot

Christmas Day at the Schmitters

Aero "Wiener" Schmitter

Happy 60th at Michael's on the Thames

Scarves

Back in Munich and drinking beer as we're supposed to...