Miss Massive Snowflake
Queen’s Headache European Tour
April 16, 2008
On train from Milano to Roma

Today is a bright and sunny day; one of the few that I have witnessed on this spring tour. I have seen lots of rain and lots of snow. The train is just pulling out of Milan and I am excited for the 4 and a half hour train trip south to Rome. I have been busy and have not had a chance to update this journal in a while, so now I will give a recap of the prior days events.

Saturday the 13th was spent relaxing, chatting, and eating with Alan, Eleanora, and Eleanora’s family. We went to her mother and father’s house for lunch and spent the time trying to converse in broken English and broken Italian. This was our second meeting. We first met when Miss Massive Snowflake did a small tour of Italy in 2006. Marianne from Rollerball and I were over here because we had two art shows of our paintings in Milano and Varese that were organized by Alan. There was a ton of snow then also. I guess that the name Miss Massive Snowflake is even more fitting here in Europe.

That evening some friends came over for an excellent meal. Eleanora made a roast with potatoes and Alan’s aunt made lasagna entirely from scratch (even the noodles were fresh). My old friends Paco and Serina were there, as well as some new friends that I had made the previous evening at the Capoiera class. There was also a wonderful man/musician there who goes by the handle “Mr. Henry.” We all sat around the table, having course after course of food, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and talking about music, art, and, of course, politics. Sunday was the day to vote and the discussion got heated (it was often punctuated with the wonderful curses of “catzo!” and “minchia!”)

Berlusconi is once again running for president here in Italy. He is a very, very rich man and besides being a politician he also owns the TV stations, Milan’s soccer team, and has the other politicians in his hands because he pays for the apartments, clothes, and lifestyles of these men’s secret girlfriends in Milan. He is a close friend of President Bush and his policies are on the far right. The evening reminded me so much of when Bush was running for his second term and all the young people on the left were angry/scared but were hopeful that he would be defeated. We all thought that the people were not dumb enough to stand behind this stupid man who started wars and lied to the public. Well, Bush won anyways and even though all the people at the table that Saturday night voted the next day, Berlusconi still won the vote on Sunday.

While the people of Italy voted, I boarded the train to Bologna for a show on Sunday. I arrived around 3 and walked to the Lokomotiv Club. No one was there when I showed up, so I spent around two hours sitting in the park adjacent to the club watching soccer games between young men. I strummed guitar, drew some pictures, and relaxed in the sun for the first time in a while. Paolo showed up and opened up the club around 5. It was very large and very nice. The video screen on which I showed my projections was around 20 feet tall. We went next door to a bar to get an espresso and I was completely surprised to find Bruno there. Bruno booked around half of the shows I did on this tour and I last saw him in Berlin two weeks ago. We had said our goodbyes because he was going on tour with Jason Molina and then recording a new Bacchi di Pietra CD in Firenze. He had decided to come and check out my show on the way back to Berlin. We discussed our respective tours and talked about some big personal changes in his life. We went back to Lokomotiv and did the sound check, ate pasta, drank beer, and enjoyed the rest of the night.

The stage at Lokomotiv was huge, so I took advantage of it and did some serious dance moves. I was doing all sorts of breaking, popping, locking, and even some floor moves. I even tried a back flip, but didn’t land it. (My body is acquiring quite a collection of bruises, scabs, and pains). I am excited to get back home and get a massage from Torria Lee, my personal masseuse. After the show, a guy who runs a label in Italy approached me and we began the discussion of possibly doing a CD together. This would be great. Bruno and I spent the night in the back room of the club on some soft futons and woke up early for a train to Milan. When we arrived we had some focaccia and an espresso and said our goodbyes. He was off to do some errands before he had to catch a plane to Berlin that night to see ?Alos perform with Baby Dee at the Volksbuno. I took the long succession of trains out to Malnate and spent the rest of Monday afternoon sleeping/snoring on Alan’s couch.

Alan:

Monday evening came and Alan and I went to Mr. Henry’s to record some music. The two of them have a band called Luche Libre, so I was invited to do some recording with them. We began with some acapella improvisations and finished with an absurd fairy tale that I made up about a small bear (“Orzetti”) and a gay Viking. Part of the story was in my horrible Italian and part in English. We laughed and laughed and had much fun. We are going to do some more recording on this upcoming Saturday before my last show for this tour in Milan.

When Alan and I arrived back at his house around midnight, Eleanora was watching the election results and they were sad. Berlusconi and his far right party, who are racist, anti-immigration, and trying to split Italy in two between north and south, had won. Not a single left-wing candidate was left in parliament. I feel the pain that the young people in Italy and the left wing are feeling right now. I was so pissed and depressed when Bush won his second time. The right wing always has that soft air of fascism and hate, but they somehow know how to make the common people vote against their own best interests. They use patriotism, fear, religion, and the phrase “family values” to breed hate and make the divide between the rich and poor an ever-increasing gulf that may never be filled by a downwardly mobile middle class.

Tuesday, I awoke and slowly got ready to head to Milan from Malnate, which translates into English as “badly born woman”. I met up with Gigi, the promoter, for the show that night at Biko. We went to his flat and he showed me some films he’d made. He is an excellent cinematographer and I was really impressed with his work. He set up a small area in his kitchen and I performed a couple of songs on guitar for his camera. We also did an interview. He is a promoter and has a web site where he posts a series of musicians performing solo in his kitchen along with the interview. Around 6 we went to Biko club for the sound check. The main topic on everyone’s tongue right now is the elections. People are pissed off and sad for their country. It has been different to tour as a solo musician as opposed to touring in Rollerball. One of the most fun parts of touring is being in new situations and areas all the time and sharing these experiences with your good friends. I have spent quite a bit of time alone with people who barely speak my language and since I don’ t have the option to be in an insular environment with good friends, I find that I am forced to speak to others and that has made this tour really special. I have had way more conversations with new people then I usually do, and with what is happening politically in Italy right now, most of those conversations have been centered around governments, politics, social change, and unrest. People here are not happy with what just happened and they want to talk to me about what I think. This is wonderful because I usually start each concert with the phrase, “I am an ambassador of peace from the United States of America”. Many of my songs from Queen’s Headache have politically and socially based lyrics in them. This is what I want to do with my music and life. Through talk and action we can make change and I am doing what I can with my art to spur debate and thought. These are troubled times and we need artists and people to address what is happening in the world head on.

My set is timed with the projections that I use and aside from the first couple of shows, which were around 50 minutes long, my show has been clocking in around 42 minutes long. I don’t do encores but last night the mood of the room was so involved with my set that as soon as I was done with my last song, I went directly in to two more numbers. The crowd was ecstatic and I really feel that I affected each and every person in the room. The laughs and applause were huge. I sold quite a few CDs, and my T-shirt supply is nearly depleted. This is a good thing. I want to take as little back to the US as possible. The end of the night was spent speaking with people about — you guessed it, the political situation of the world and Italy. They are realizing that they have five more years of struggle against the right wing. I wish all my Italian friends and acquaintances good luck and may your country not crumble like my own is doing currently. Salute and Chin Chin.

Links:
Miss Massive SnowflakeSpace

More photos at hairrorist.blogspot.com