FREE BLOOD

FREE BLOOD AT THE MARKET HOTEL (with Tussle)

No sooner had we recovered from our flirtation with the 7th Avenue set, we loaded up and headed down to Bushwick. Here, on the corner of Broadway and Myrtle, lurks the infamous Market Hotel. Once the site of what seems to have been a grandiose and distinguished flophouse, it now has a second (or third) life as a barebones d.i.y. all-ages venue. This was truly the intrinsic opposite of the Tribeca. Shadowed by the JMZ elevated train, the building seemed to creak and buckle under its own weight, the vague musk of beer and mop water lingering in the air. An almost-full trash can lurked on stage catching the rain water leaking through a hole in the ceiling right above where the drummer would sit (if we could find a drummer!). Fortunately, Free Blood got there early so we had time to set up our old PA, (which had been in the safe keeping of Todd P, and sat lonely and unused in the corner) in order to create some onstage sonic thrust. That is, if the plywood stage didn’t collapse unexpectedly.

After a rudimentary sound check, we split for food and costume changes. We returned to find we had missed the first band (Hearts Of Darknesses) as did all but twenty or so kids wandering around the massive space. Tussle was up next, so we settled in for a drink from the homemade bar in the back. The polite kids behind the card table (who looked to be barely of legal drinking age) served strictly PBR and liquor in industrial sized plastic bottles. The inflated price mark-up mirrored that of the Tribeca Grand, proving that everybody (Manhattanite, Brooklynite, fashionista, hipster, aging punk) is willing to be ripped off to get a little tipsy.

Tussle is, as I remembered them, a pile of drums, bass and weird noises, all clanging and clamoring and climbing over each to get the top of the stairs, only to willfully throw themselves back down, tumbling and rumbling and fumbling loudly the whole way. Their set seemed to start in strange fits of piercing sampled loops and absent twiddling on hihats and woodblocks, and we all took it in as really abstract minimalism until it became evident that they were just doing a line check. The line check seamlessly bled into actual songs, all of which built up the frenzy on stage and around the room to point that I spotted kids doing The Strangle (old punk dance, pretty self-explanatory). I’d love to see these guys in a song battle/collaborative jam with Holy Fuck. By the end of their set the thick cloud of musk kicked up by the spazzers stung the eyes. Free Blood hurried on stage before it got a chance to settle.

We sped through an abbreviated set, since Madeline was dealing with pain that made it difficult to speak, let alone sing. Again, the stage gave us a view of the room’s freak factor, which all told was not that different from the night before. Lots of interpretive dancing/sweating, texting, making out (this time mostly girls), feel-copping, no Val Kilmer though… We worked it extra-manic, exorcising the remnants of the rainy day’s nausea. The room quickly reminded us that Summer was having its last word, turning the musk into mug and then into pure murk. This from someone who survived 22 Arkansas Summers. After our five songs pushed the limits of the room (the power to the main PA cut out twice due to a faulty power strip, luckily the stage PA kept right on banging), we said our good byes. Then something happened that I don’t think has ever happened…they wanted an encore! A first! I looked to Madeline, who had sweat her heart out despite the pain. She realized we wouldn’t be allowed to leave the stage in one piece unless we gave into the mob rule. She won the prize that night. We burned through Parangatang and called it a night. Exit left, us, damp and clammy, yet with our dignity intact. Part of me savored the the familiar textures and aromas of the Market Hotel, knowing that our next show would find us in the most alien of atmospheres….JAPAN!

FREE BLOOD AT FASHION WEEK!

At the Eleventh Hour we were asked to perform in the basement of the Tribeca Grand Hotel aka Batman’s Jungle Palace. This being Fashion Week, the joint was sure to be packed to the gills with designers, djs and celebs..or at least people who dressed like they were one of the above. The basement was carpeted (except for a wood-paneled dancefloor) and at any other (squaresville) hotel it would function as a conference room, but tonight it was the most exclusive club in Manhattan, where one could not walk from one end of the room to the other without getting caught between at least a dozen air kisses.

In lieu of a backstage, Free Blood was given a room to accommodate us and our entourage. This felt kind of like prom night, when one of your friends gets a nice hotel room, and you and nine friends sit around on the floor (there’s only two chairs and a bed) wondering how you’re going to get drunk, because the minibar is like $5 for a bottle of water…Eventually, we received our requested vodka and tequila, with a bottle of champagne thrown in for good measure. Yeah! Seniors!!

We hid out in the room, leisurely sipping our cocktails watching Project Runway (what? it was fashion week, people!) and Golden Girls (what? it’s like Sex In The City:The Retirement Years). Our room was right above the lobby bar so an added bonus was hearing Eric Duncan play “Heaven’s In The Backseat Of My Cadillac” through the floor. Finally, our presence was requested on stage. The basement was packed with folks shuffling around each other with drinks in the air, either dancing or trying to get to the side of the room Val Kilmer was hanging out on. XXXchange was rocking the tables and I was determined to at least be louder than him (see Norway). Of course we came on with our quietest, most experimental song, bringing the festivities to a conspicuous halt and sending all the Kilmer-watchers to the other side of the room. However those who stayed, got down with the ethereal what-the-fuckness of it all, and were rewarded with a proper dark disco pose-a-thon. At one point bottled water (in GLASS BOTTLES) was brought to the stage, and I knew we were in a seriously classy situation. From the stage we could see all manner of activity: interpretive dancing, texting, making out (mostly boys), feel-copping, voguing, Spencer Product giving us the devil horns, fashion luminaries who would not appreciate their names mentioned in this lowly blog, people yelling “Who is this?” in each other’s ears even though I said “If you’re just joining us, we are Free Blood.” between every song, etc….We closed out the set with an improvised version of “Swooning”, a doo-wop song that flirts with extreme scorched-earth noise. This was masterfully blended into the dj’s closing set.

We secreted ourselves back upstairs, dodging errant air kisses as the party slowly whittled itself down to the hardcore fashionistas and fashionasties. Meanwhile, we were in our semi-suite whittling down our bottles with a babbling gusto. Somehow we just could not finish them, despite our best efforts. Luckily, just as we were all retiring, I got a message from our long-departed sound engineer/wizard Jonathan K, who was requesting whatever leftover booze we could spare, for his own afterafterparty on the seventh floor. Relieved the dregs would not be wasted, the spirits were spirited up to the room where a proper hang session was just settling in for the long haul. Again, imagine prom night, nine of your friends crammed in a really fancy hotel room trying not to drink the minibar. We dropped off the dregs and retired for the night.

The morning after we slept in HARD, for we were due back in Brooklyn for another show at a hotel….The Market Hotel.

FREE BLOOD IN NORWAY!

This was our first trek into the Nether Regions of Scandinavia, and we entered into it with the true spirit of American pioneership. We knew we would be entering a realm where the name “Free Blood” held no cultural currency and the words “American dollar” held no monetary currency, so we kept our heads down, noses clean and pennies firmly pinched. Norway is one of the few non-Euro entities and their Kroner is apparently as pungent and strong as a sardine breakfast platter (more on that later). I had trouble with the quick conversions in my head I was doing every time I went to pay for something. It wasn’t as simple as just doubling the amount or moving the decimal point over. It was like dividing by five then calculating 12% and then reversing the first and last digit…or something. Shit, I think I got ripped off on those fish oil pills…

At any rate, we were being well tended to by the Ekko Festival, who had invited us to play along with such familiars as Black Dice, Planningtorock and The Norwegian Fergie. We were met by our artist contact, a pleasant fellow named Leonard, who met us in the hotel lobby upon our arrival in the beautiful seaside town of Bergen. After we had slept off the disturbingly long flight (with a layover in Amsterdam where normal-looking, non-gutterpunk people drink lager for breakfast), Leonard came and fetched us for the dj gig that night his collective We Are Borg were putting on, as an unofficial pre-fest afterparty for volunteers working at Ekko. We ended up playing disco, funk and weirdness for almost four hours to a bar of appreciative, yet conspicuously-seated lager-sippers. Songs that got favorable feedback were Chaz Jankel “Get Yourself Together”, Patti Jo “Make Me Believe In You”, and of course George McRae “I Get Lifted”. Since Norway is very strict about where and when it serves beer, wine and liquor (it’s complicated), I only had two glasses of wine. As I was polishing off the second one (as the final song ran out), I felt a seventh wind in the works. It was jet lag fucking with me! With no afterafterparties around to fuel this wind, we adjourned to the hotel, where three pages of Dreams From My Father later I was fast asleep.

The next day, we both slept hard into the afternoon. We walked around Bergen vaguely looking for brunch, but only found a fish market that also sold seal and reindeer pelts. Eventually we gave up and went to the hotel restaurant. By then it was time for sound check so Leonard came by and whisked us away just as we were getting down with a coffee refill. The festival was being held in a complex called a culture house, which is like an arts center with little bars sprinkled throughout. The place was a maze of rooms and miniature venues within venues that meant a lot of showing your pass to a smiling collegiate every time you walked through a door. We were playing on a small stage in the corner of the main stage room, which felt very open mic at the coffee shop…which is perfect for us, because it means more intimacy and less pomp. We went on at the very end of the night after The Norwegian Fergie had rocked the main stage. As folks silently filed out we sputtered to life, immediately springing off the stage and into a throbbing pile in the middle of the floor. For a festival of electronic and dance-related acts there had been very little movement on the part of both performers and audience (but maybe they were just getting warmed up). Most of the movement we inspired in people that night was girls clutching their purses and boys spilling their beers in an effort to avoid colliding with Free Blood. All told, people seemed to enjoy it. The guy who had confessed a personal revelation while listening to “Make Me Believe In You” the night before, gave us kudos afterwards. Very book.

Back at the hotel, we were both feeling our fourteenth wind and tried to enlist Planningtorock (who regretfully told us the next morning she had dozed off fully clothed before she could make it to our room party). Failing this we enlisted room service (Norwegian kroner be damned!), who regretfully told us he was the only one manning the front desk and couldn’t get away to make us salami sandwiches, but perhaps we would be willing to come down to the restaurant, where we could help ourselves to the extra-early breakfast buffet free of charge…Five seconds later we were in the restaurant with our whiskey goggles on, gasping at the massive fish-themed spread (as mentioned earlier). All kinds of sardines, herring, kippers, pates, chutneys, mustards, and strange mixtures of all of the above crowded the length of the table. We went to town. Madeline was really into the meat paste (like the fanciest spam ever) while I preyed on the various pickled items. This was probably the most decadent moment of the trip. The next morning I had something like a fish hangover, but a dollop of coffee put me right. We bid Bergen “tak” and headed to the airport for our Oslo gig that night.

Once we landed in Oslo, we carted our cumbersome equipment case onto the train which took us to Central Station, where we were met by our Oslo contact Einar. He walked us over our hotel room, and we napped briefly before sound check (Free Blood likes to nap, so you’ll be reading a lot of exhaustive documentation of our intricate napping schedule). The venue was in a building that housed what seemed like multiple bars, clubs and private party hovels. Food vendors set up in the alleyways flanking the building, and a giant (GIANT) chandelier hung outside over the entrance. We played to a small but (again) appreciative audience who listened intently and put down their lager to clap for us (which is significant, trust me). A gaggle of been-drinking-since-breakfast (probably Dutch) kids romped with us by the edge of the stage, but kept running back to the bar for more drinks before we could fully seduce them. We came off stage, happy and wet. The aftershow dj immediately cranked up to blistering volume, making us feel like a bucket-and-string band. Ah, the magic of Serrato! That night Madeline adjourned to the hotel early, while John hung out with Einar and Tuli (sp?) listening to early 2000 hip-hop played at ear-splitting decibels. Reminded me of my stint at Boogaloo Bar playing Mystikal and Trick Daddy for cokeheads. I returned to the hotel on foot (after getting lost and put on the right track by a Nepalese man studying in Oslo), listening to the spectrum of frequencies ringing in my ear (maybe due to a combination of Serrato and left-handed cigarettes).

The next morning, we caught a plane back to NYC without the aid of personal viewing screens (what is this? 1995?). I slept like a whole cabin of logs. Madeline forced her way through Atonement (the in-flight movie) between bouts of The Omnivore’s Dilemma (the book). Back in America, we were confused as to what time zone we were operating in. By the time we figure it out, we’ll be flying to Japan! See you next time!

So, in an effort to give the reader/listener an in-depth, behind-the-backstage-bathroom-door no-bars-held view of Free Blood and its intimates we will regularly be reporting on shows immediately after-the-fact, hence our new feature “Post-Show Wrap-Up”.

August 22 we played a free show at the clunkily-titled Music Hall Of Williamsburg (formerly the succintly-titled North 6) with the unflappable Professor Murder and Philadelphia bell-crackers Pink Skull (featuring the guitarwork of Little Rock, Arkansas native Sam Murphy). Kingdom manned the CD decks throughout the night, soundtracking the slow migration of folks from the lazy summer streets into the cool, purplish environs of the club. This was a free show, so the night had a take-it-or-leave-it vibe that seemed to permeate every corner of this miniature Bowery Ballroom. It was as if whoever operates as the parental figure at the club had taken the night off, and everyone from the bouncers to the bar backs were happily goofing off. Not in a “fucking around not doing your job” way, but just a laid-back joke-cracking with your co-workers way. Free Blood likes a relaxed atmosphere. It means people have their defenses down and are ripe to get pounced on when the singers flop into the audience. And flop we did. Both John and Madeline left Eric to his own devices (notably guitar and computer), and created a traditional Soul Train strut line in the crowd. This is always our favorite part of the show, mostly because we get to interfere with the people who are chattering with their friends not realizing that the band they are trying so hard to ignore is creeping up behind them with a sweaty microphone clutched in their white-knuckled fist. Sorry, don’t mind us, please continue, I’m just going to drool a little bit over here while your friends pretend they don’t know you. We also like this part of the show because it gives us an opportunity to hear the magic our secret sound engineer (Mr. Scott Adamson, on loan before he is whisked away on multiple tours) is wielding through the house system. It always sounds like a different planet completely on stage, so it’s refreshing to get some insight into what the audience is hearing. Someday we will invite you all on stage and give you an impression of just how deaf we will all be in ten years. You might also note the lovely carpeting on stage, that, while adding a comfy den-like atmosphere (and cutting down on drum kit slippage), leaves a harsh rug-burn on the knees, elbows, forehead and any other body part one happens to be grinding against it. When you get down to it, this Hall Of Music Of Whatsit is a just a big living room. Decorated by Lex Luthor and his “life partner” Black Manta.

Free Blood was happy to leave our proverbial wet spot on the night ( not mention the piercing feedback ringing in your ears ) after which we peddled our wares in the atrium. Tonight we had leftover T-shirts from tour and fresh, homemade soap cooked up in our kitchen that very afternoon. The soap is organic and infused with blood orange essence and black pepper oil. Each soap is shaped like a heart (not heart-shaped mind you, but shaped like a real human heart) which can be confusing for folks who look at the shrink-wrapped hearts and think we are peddling black market organs. No, we are just trying to keep you clean. You smell. If you are interested in purchasing some official Free Blood merchandise, keep your modem dialed to this page. In the meantime we will have some available at the next show.

That’s it for this first installment of “Post-Show Wrap-Up”. Join us next week for the second installment: Free Blood in Norway!