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May 17, 2004

i bought an air compressor from blixa bargeld.

the subject says it all, but i'll tell the story, since i imagine you'll insist, and besides, i want to.

i had mixed feelings about this trip to asheville to see einsturzende neubauten. i've had several bad experiences in asheville in the last few years, i always get really lost there, and the trustafarians really bug me. the timing was bad too-- it's only a month before i go to roswell. but i knew i'd want to see neubauten.

i met up with jason and laurie at the hotel (which jason had found, and it was fabulous!) we headed out for an early dinner and wound up at a sushi restaurant with the nicest and most adorable sushi chef ever. i don't eat sushi; i think it's something i need to give more of a chance to, but that didn't seem like the time. he kept trying to get me to eat his sushi but i refused. however, laurie was vocally appreciative of his work and that made him really happy, so it was all ok.

we moved on to a couple of bars, had some beers, met up with some people, and all in all my feelings about asheville were experiencing a turnaround. hanging out with cool people makes all the difference. as we were walking up to the orange peel, i spotted an old van-- a mercedes, as it turned out-- and we all went to have a look. it was amazingly cool. old, but extremely well cared for, with a nifty two-tone paint job and industrial looking billet aluminum fuel filler cap. i pronounced my positive feelings about asheville to be rising.. rising...

the orange peel, as you may have heard, is probably the nicest venue in north carolina. it's smoke free, with an old warehouse feel, and it's just super clean and swanky. the women's room was hands down the nicest club bathroom laurie or i had ever seen, and the bar is like something out of a movie about jet-setting scandinavians. with many many many good beers on draught.

after perusing the bar, i wandered up to jason who was talking to a couple i didn't recognize, a man with no hair and a tall, pretty japanese woman. jason turned to me and said, "lisa, do you know jeff?" and the bald guy turned to me and said, "ohhhh yes, lisa and i have known each other for a very long time." it was jeff jung, who was my best friend's boyfriend in high school! golly. i realized at some point during the show that it was jeff who turned us all on to neubauten back then, so it made me extra happy to see him there.

steve burnett came up around that point and started telling us that, since this was the last show of the tour, they'd be selling off their air compressors at the end of the show. jason turned to me and said, "you know, if you want to work on that van, you're going to want an air compressor". the wisdom of this was immediately apparent-- not only would it help for, say, removing the wheels and other mechanical things, but it would be essential for the custom paint work i want to do. we talked about the practicality of it-- how big they are, how much they cost new. i decided that it was totally doable.

early in the first set, blixa announced that they'd lost something like $10k on this tour and that they'd be selling things off-- including the air compressors. i decided to go for it. i went up to the merch counter and gave them an offer of $150, which the tour manager accepted.

now-- lest we forget the music, i should say that this was a phenomenal show. it was being recorded and cd's of the show were being instantly produced on site to be sold at the end of the show in a very limited edition. they played essentially two sets, with blixa announcing the end of CD one in between. i recognized a few things from the new cd, and very little else. georg, i can tell you with fair confidence that they did not play anything off of halber mensch, including yu gung-- i've got that one good and memorized and i know i would have recognized anything off of it.

there was one song which blixa said was from 1982. he said that while they were in london recording recently, they bought a fetal heart monitor from a medical supply store so they could get the real sound of his heart to use as the beat of the song. "zis is vhy ve are still a very poor band," he said, smiling. it was a really fantastic song, the heartbeat was both horrifying and exciting and totally amazing to use as the beat of the song.

shortly after my offer went in on the compressor, blixa announced on stage, "ooh, ve haff 150 for ze little one!" for that reason alone, i'd love to get a recording of the show :)

i was struck by how immensely charismatic he is. keep in mind that for a long time he was a scary, scary looking guy. this is a picture of what he used to look like, when i first started listening to the band.

now he looks like this. exactly like this, suit and everything.

in the absence of mufti (fm einheit), i have to say that he's pretty damned hot. but einheit was always my favorite and i'm very sad that i never saw the band with him. here's my favorite picture of mufti with two rocks.

it was also very enjoyable to watch alexander hacke n.u.unruh at work. he's the one who really has all the fun toys, like a spinning cylinder of large, open-ended bottles which he "played" with the air compressor. it made a great sound. and a large group of empty metal cans, on long ropes, which he swung around and banged on the stage.

i think their music has matured in a really wonderful way. some bands seem to get tired and lack ideas as they age; neubauten instead seem to just become better and more sophisticated song writers; funnier lyricists (when you can understand them); and to produce more beautiful sounds although they are still using industrial materials for much of the percussion and punctuation.

they played one song which blixa called "a hex"; a "floor piece", in which they all get on the floor and play little homemade instruments. the original intent of the piece was to put a hex on a man who holds the rights to some of their early music and will not give them royalties which they are due. not to make him die or anything drastic, just to make him pay the money or give up the rights.

after the second set was finished, they left the stage. the crowd began clapping and we quickly went into synch with each other, most people clapping and stomping single time, but with a decent minority clapping double time, and people yelling and crying out over the rhythm. it was quite exciting. they let this go on for a good while and then came back out on stage and blixa told us that we were a wonderful audience. which we were! NC kicks ass!!

after the first encore we thought it was over, but their stage manager immediately carried out a large black device of some kind and was obviously setting the stage for more music. they came back out, and blixa was carrying a box. he said that the cd recording was over, but they would play a little more, which would not be recorded. he explained the box contained cards with instructions for music-making. i looked at jason excitedly, because this was an idea we'd used a couple of times back when we did an audio collage show on xdu. i think it may originally come from brian eno, or possibly john zorn, or both of them. i'd never seen it used live by anyone but us.

each band member took three cards which they did not show the others. then blixa pulled one card which he said would be the "general attitude" of the piece. when he pulled it, he began laughing and showed it to the others who laughed too.

then they tore into it and-- they were using our beat, from when we were stomping! it was fantastic, one of the best and most exciting songs of the night, and i would so love to hear it again. it ended with the trademark blixa screech, then he had each band member explain which cards they had and how they used them. "i had the card 'chain', so fortunately we carry a chain with us and i used the chain against the mic." then he told us what the "general attitude" card had said-- STOMPING! of course!!

at some point between the encores, he said that they'd be selling a lot of stuff but could not take credit cards. d'oh! i didn't have $150 on me in cash-- but steve burnett, jason, and laurie totally came through. i wouldn't have been able to pull it off without them. between the four of us we came up with all the cash.

the merch counter guy had me follow a fast moving man up on to the stage-- i think he was the poor tour manager. i remember hearing a few people yell out my name when i got up on stage. i wasn't sure what to do with myself once up there-- so i walked up to one of the compressors, and dazedly realized that the man hunched over it, signing it, then smiling up at me, was blixa. "are you the one buying this?" he asked me, and i told him i was. he gave me a huge smile and shook my hand vigorously, and asked me what i'd use it for. i think i said something about restoring a van. he seemed very pleased that it would be put to good use and gave me a little speech about how "this little compressor started it's life off on the stage playing music and it is a very cool air compressor". it's kind of a blur. i told him the show was amazing and he thanked me and i thanked him, but he was off shouting that not everyone had signed, and where was alex?? alex needs to sign. i was very thankful because i particuarly wanted alexander hacke to sign. i wanted to meet him, too, but he signed and was on his way very quickly and i could never catch his eye. (wait-- now i realize that was unruh that i couldn't catch.)

i turned around and n.u.unruh (i believe) alexander hacke was standing right behind me. he looked like he had no idea what to say to me, and i didn't know what to say to him either, but i think i said something and i remember we shook hands.

i did meet the guy who was buying the other, larger compressor, and he looked even more dazed than i did.

i got jason and laurie up on stage because it's quite large and heavy (fortunately, it's on wheels) and they helped me wrestle it down after i paid the stage manager who joked about my offer being $250, not $150. i guess they are really hard up for money. but then, i guess i did what i could to help with that situation!

we stood around with the thing for a while, sort of enjoying our moment of notoriety. most folks assumed that one of my male companions had bought it and had to be corrected. it was somewhat understandable since jason is a striking figure and he'd been up on stage wrestling with the thing. jeff jung walked up to me with this huge grin on his face (HE knew it was me who'd bought it), he asked me if i had a use for it and i said, OH yes, and he said, yeah, i figured you would. he looked very happy.

then jason and laurie were totally wonderful and helped me walk the thing many blocks back to the hotel. jason spotted a guy videotaping laurie and i wheeling the thing out of the club, i am hoping i can get on a message board and get in touch with him to get a copy of the tape.

by that point, it was quite late on a sunday night and the only people out in downtown were random packs of neubauten fans. we had a few beautiful moments as we'd walk by a group and they'd realize what we were carrying with us. one guy saw us coming, pointed right at ME, and said, "DUDE! you SO BOUGHT THAT THING!!!"

while jason and i were waiting around outside the hotel with it, while the front desk person brought the spacepod up from the parking area, a car drove past us, parked nearby, and a guy in a faded EN shirt got out of the car and kind of meandered up the street past us. he'd gotten almost all the way past us before he realized what he was seeing and he pointed at us and said something like, "THAT THING! YOU GOT THAT NEUBAUTEN THING!!!"

we wrestled it into the spacepod, where it fit perfectly. then we were tired and footsore, and decided to call it a night. i took a bath in the jacuzzi tub in my room. awww yeah.

as i said to laurie and jason as we were walking back to the hotel-- this completely makes up for every bad asheville experience i've ever had.

Posted by lisa at May 17, 2004 03:40 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Georg just told me about the air compressor! wowie wow wow! I tell you, 9 Westy is shaping up to be the coolest air car evah.

Posted by: Sarah on May 17, 2004 07:01 PM

duh, that should have been "coolest ART car evah."

Posted by: Sarah on May 17, 2004 07:01 PM

the whole experience made me consider the sonic possibilities of the van...

Posted by: lisa on May 17, 2004 07:22 PM

OK, now I've had time to actually read the entry and I have to say, I don't even like Neubauten and you made me wish I had seen that show.

Posted by: Sarah on May 17, 2004 08:33 PM

obviously the experience made me very elated! but i think even without the compressor and meeting some of the band, we would all have been quite elated.

it's one of the longest shows i've been to, yet i did not feel fatigued. i think being in a really nice, smoke free club has everything to do with that. the band has more energy and the audience has more energy, because we're not bathing in poisons all night.

Posted by: lisa on May 17, 2004 08:45 PM

score!
i was thinking at 1st that the floor piece must be "grundestuck" from Perpetuum Mobile, but that doesn't have any lyrics so it must have been something else.
i'm positively chartreuse with envy but i expect i'll get over it eventually...
the EN compressor might be a bit much to drag to events but there are probably other interesting ways to add a sonic element to 9 Westy. other than Sashimi Tabernacle Choir, I can't think of any art cars that do much with sound

Posted by: georg on May 17, 2004 09:06 PM

where's the pics?

Posted by: georg on May 17, 2004 09:15 PM

We drove past Orange Peel last time we were there & it looks like a really nice place. Glad to hear that it lives up to first impressions. Now why doesn't the Triangle have a club that nice?

Now that you don't hate Asheville anymore, you have to try that restaurant Salsa's. That's our favorite place there.

"other than Sashimi Tabernacle Choir, I can't think of any art cars that do much with sound"

Could it be that Georg has forgotten the zebra car and its incessant Hakuna Mattatta-ing? Also, Bill Stevenson's vanagon has speakers for sound effects. Mostly cat noises as I recall.

Posted by: Sarah on May 17, 2004 09:51 PM

ooh, it sounds like you had a blast!!

how big is the orange peel, and how many people were at the show?

Posted by: christa on May 17, 2004 10:16 PM

georg, you could be right about the 'hex' song-- it didn't have any lyrics. i'll re-listen to that and let you know if it sounds right.

i have pics stuck on my phone cam. looks like my phone to email relay is again non-functional. i'll give it a day and if they don't show up i'll take a bunch of good pics with the digicam. looks like i got three signatures: bargeld, hacke, and unruh.

jason and laurie were also raving about salsa's, i'll have to try it!

as for the sonic possibilities of the van, i wasn't thinking of carting the compressor around; more things like tuning the car in different ways to produce sounds, like having things rattling around in the hubcaps, or belts a little loose and sqealing, or whistles that blow when the wind blows through them... stuff like that.

Posted by: lisa on May 17, 2004 10:58 PM

oh, re: sound, hopefully i'd find a way to do it that would not be astoundingly annoying and repetitive.

christa, the peel is about the size of the 9:30 club but with no balcony. i'd say that it was 3/4 full? full enough to be a good crowd without being packed and nasty.

Posted by: lisa on May 17, 2004 11:04 PM

Great story!

I rode by the Orange Peel all the time when I was a kid growing up in Asheville, but I never had occasion to go in. Was it a nice place in the 70s, too? Or did it get nice only recently?

Posted by: Phil on May 17, 2004 11:44 PM

phil: uhhh... i dunno. i only started hearing about the orange peel in the last couple of years and i thought it was new-- the bar and the bathroom are clearly new. so i assume it was heavily renovated sometime in the last few years.

as for what it was like in the 70's, heck, i dunno!

Posted by: lisa on May 18, 2004 07:47 AM

I think, perhaps, you took a picture of myself and two friends with Blixa Bargeld.
does this sound familiar?
email me. maybe you still have the pic.

thank you.

Posted by: blackjosh on July 13, 2005 10:02 PM

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