Kings Cross Thameslink

The guy on the platform just missed the train, and he chased after it for a bit when he realised. I would love to say he caught his trousers in the train door and then ran into a sign, but real life is never that good.

Once I got past the picky x-ray crew I found that my flight was delayed:

Scrolling LED sign with inaccurate flight information

The fight was first delayed for only 30 mins, then 1 hour, the 1.5 hours. But we actually took off 2 hours later than schedual. This sucked big time, and big disrespect to EasyJet for not keeping us informed or putting on a caberet performance to keep us entertained. I myself played Gauntlet on my Gameboy, but I sucked big time and didn't get past level 17.

By this time I was pretty pissed off and vowed to write a thousand letters of complaint to EasyJet. But then I actually got on the areoplane.

The most fantabolastic aeroplane engine shot yet!!!! Check out the amazing definition on those cooling ducts.

Of course I tried to chill out and concentrate on the EasyJet safety spiel... No chance. For just such an eventuality I had sneaked a MiniDisc containing illegal Happy Hardcore on to the plane. I turned it up as loud as possible and looked out of the aeroplane for the whole journey. I was pretty ecstatic and wanted to sing out all the cheesy lyrics. Hehehe 'no raving whilst the seatbelt lights are switched on' ;-> The cabin crew didn't offer me any over-priced food or drink, but I didn't care.... the clouds outside the plane were too trippin'.... somehow like an old-skool computer demo:

'I was sent to outer space to find another happy place, now I'm left here all alone - million miles away from home, floating through the galaxy, all the stars in front of me, now I'm left here all alone - million miles...' FEEL MY BREAKDOWN GONE!

Listening the most amazing hardcore, watching the sunset over these beautiful clouds, considering the possibilities of the next few days, it was a pretty nice trip.

We took a train into town, and then walked to the hostel where the micromusic massive was to be staying. This place turned out to be something of a dive, and the owner could speak no English at all, and it seems even certain Spanish words were too much for her. I dumped my bags and then we hooked up with Wanga and local promoter Mia for a few drinks and a curry. Mia was uber-cool and I really enjoyed talking about the underground computer scene and ethical hacking with her. Of course I knew Wanga and the rest of the boys from chats on line, and it was especially nice to met them face to face. Wanga turned out to be the most chilled guy I ever met, dealing with performing, his family, a bad hostel and an temperamental art installation! As a big up I brought him a chocolate flavour pretzel.

These pieces were made from rapidly rotating machinery and looked pretty impressive

Then we passed through a bar and into the main part of the exhibition!

Of course I am bias towards micromusic, but I felt that their installation was the best in the exhibition. It consisted of 4 terminals sychronised together so that operators could collaborate to produce music. The system was pretty simple to use:

Maybe this system will go on tour soon....

After trying out the system I toured the rest of the installations. All of the exhibits were interactive in someway, which I think is important. One thing which sucked were PlayStations on too lo-rez LCD screens, which were impossible to use. A text adventure caught my eye as being my next favourite installation:

As you can see the exhibition was pretty dark ;->

I also spotted this heavy duty foot swicth as being useful for my amigo kingkas.

Rugged, highly durable construction... mmmmm

I'm sorry

about the

poor image

quality in

these pictures

wanga, teamtendo, multivitamin, monsta, manou

After lunch we all wanted to do different things. Teamtendo wanted to eat and sleep, Wanga and the possee wanted to return to the exhibition. Somehow this didn't suit me and I decided to try out some of the local ice-cream parlours. Good flavours turned out to be 'milk and cinnamon' and 'honey and almond' but you can never beat chocolate for that quick fix. I was feeling pretty spaced out after all that ice-cream and decided to go for a stroll along the sea for a bit of excercise.

If you are an owner of an ice-cream parlour in Barcelona then big-up because you are in the ice-cream parlour capital of the world (as far as I know!).. But you take my advice to expand your range of flavours and at least include waldmeister, otherwise your selection is a bit too much like Butlins.

Somehow everyone got back together, and the C-Men also showed up too! We searched the streets of Barcelona for somewhere to eat. In the end we found a restaurant which looked like a student canteen. However this place rules! We got cheap authentic food and good service, plus it was a really great atmosphere to talk to each other and exchange news and gossip. By this time we were a pretty large party, so to complete the hall of fame, here is the C-Men:

Easygroove/SJ/Sjors (he has so many k3wl names) and Poke (just having one cool name)

After moving onto a few bars we were all feeling pretty wasted so we got some rest ready for the gig the next day.

The street outside the hostel had tiles like this

Sometimes buses like this would stop opposite

All my gear was inside and I didn't want to miss anyone leaving so I just had to wait. After about an hour a resident opened the door and I slipped in and chatted to the C-Men who were just waking up. They were proper geezers and didn't mind hosting me for a while. We talked about the possibilities for the gig, our equipment and Psygnosis computer games.

Pretty soon Wanga was awake and, being able to speak Spanish sorted out my room problem. Then whilst everyone had a shower I had a quick nap, and while everyone had breakfast I had a shower. After everyone was prepared I joined Wanga and his family in the search for a new hostel. I took all my equipment on this little excursion which was a big mistake because it got so heavy - luckily Poke from the C-Men helped me carry my stuff towards the end. With a new hostel found we went straight to the venue.

Iron Maiden style stadium rock!

All around the hall were set up PS2 demo stations, and also in the entrance hall. These added to the high tech look of the night.

Manou and I shared the same setup because we played after each other and had the least equipment. It didn't take too long to plug everything together. My setup looked like this:

Kingkas' mixer looks so phatt in photos

I had to plug all my budget fleamarket gear into these chunky professional DI boxes. The aluminium casing reflects the light in a big way.

The sound guys were very professional and the sound system we had was truly amazing - loud and clear, the best I have heard for a few years! They also set up my monitor speaker perfectly for guitar feedback. I was pretty impressed.

Even though the stage was pretty big in the end everyone had their own little corner. Teamtendo explained to me how their live set works. They use Gameboy Cameras and special Gameboy drum machine software in a kind of DJ Battle. Alot of thought had gone into how the setup worked live, and its also completely foolproof!

I also looked at the C-Men to see how they were doing, and also to borrow wire cutters (which I forgot... again!). Unfortunately one of their prized Amiga 1200s got broken on the aeroplane. Luckily only the keyboard was damaged, and was still usable for VJing. I snapped a picture of the battle scars before they healed:

Shit!

A mic, minidisc and guitar is fast to sound check, and I did not want to wait around the venue until the gig. It was time to check out some more of Barcelona. So far I had been in town for 2 days and had not see any beautiful horizons at all. Was the Freddy Mercury song a lie?

Luckily the venue was situated on the edge of town, and at the bottom of the hill - by climbing to the top I would be able to test the matter once and for all!

Yes, the horizon is so beautiful that even Gameboy panorama mode cannot capture its full glory

I gotta say that the view is worth singing about, it is something everyone who visits Spain should go and see.

I stayed a while to take in the vibes, and watch the sun set over the hills. A cigarette mellowed me out even more. How was I supposed to pretend to be really agressive on stage in this kind of reflective mood? Of course it was going to happen. I would liked to have stayed longer, but dinner as almost ready and I didn't want to miss it.

Just before dinner I ran into Cory from Chicago's Beige Records who was bumming round and eyeing up my Flying V. Of course I had to let him have a strum. It was to coolest to g33k out with him about the rock scene, guitars, 8-bit Ataris and all that stuff. In Munich I didn't really get the chance to chat properly. We introduced each other to some people and it was nice. Later in my show I put out 'Radiation Hazard' to him.

He gave me some 'advice' and about how to look more rock!..

"Listen gwEm, all this British less-is-more attitude is just not rock. You gotta jump around and stand on tables! Hot diggity!!"
"But Cory I'm not in some yankee grunge band"
"You've got a long tradition to up hold right? Way to go!!"
"Exactly. I'm just going to stand, look moody and people will think its because I'm playing my guitar really well"
"I can't believe you're not taking my advice. Hey, us Americans invented Rock'n'Roll."
"But we Brits invented heavy metal."
"Yeah but it was really slow and boring - you have to give people a show. Can't you stand on the table just a bit?"
"Maybe I could could put my foot on the monitor sometimes...."
"wowser!! - you are toooooo rock dude. Excuse me while I cream my tight fitting leather pants....... I DON'T THINK!! Why don't you just wear that V as high as possible like your in a bad country and western covers band and have done with it?"
"Come on man lets have a beer and some food...."
"Great idea... once I tried this sweet-as Les Paul...."

But later I spoke to Cory on line and he remembers it happened this way:

gwEm: hey, what kinda strings do you use?
cory: D'addario, 9
oh yeah?,...i use 9 on the high strings, and 10 on the low strings! That's so I can riff harder
wow. i never though of mixing strings to increase riffage. You English people are so funny.
Yes, I riff the hardest. If I didn't use strings as thick as telephone cable as soon as I started playing due to my completely intense british influenced riffing my guitar and strings would break immediately. oh and by the way, thats called rock and roll in my part.

The dinner laid on included the usual buffet stuff, but with a Spanish twist. There was some nice tapas, and an amazing mushroom and pasta salad. I think everyone agreed that it was really good. I went back for seconds, and then thirds. I think there was dessert, but I'd obviously had too much to drink because I can't remember what it was, except that it was perfectly delicious.

I'm not sure if the set list was optimal but this is the order we ended up playing in:

• experimental art acts
• Manou
• gwEm
• Teamtendo
• Wanga/Monsta
• Alex Martin (amazing C64 guy resident in Barcelona)

A Master of Ceremonies 'Kandinski' introduced the show, and then the intermediate acts. I spoke to him before and he seemed like a very confident guy, with good communications skills, but of course its hard to judge in a 5 minute conversation ;-> I saw him again the next day, and he was again very poliet. I guess he must do a job with the public in normal life, or maybe he is a professioanl MC.

Manou did a very professional set, with a new stage look and rountine... Which I won't spoil, you will just have to go to her next show ;-> Her performance was filled with total confidence and she even sang in Spanish for her last track. Although I felt her material was pretty dancable I noticed that the crowd were not dancing.... But it was still early for the Spanish at 1am. Later in the set I noticed that certain groups of people had started to dance. The best part of Manou's stage show is the way she entrances the audience in between the songs, and the Playtime crowd were no exception.

At the start of my set I slowly tuned my guitar whilst smoking gently on a cigarette... I was very nervous just before, but as soon as I went on stage I did not think of that again. I had a sudden change of heart and started with the song I was going to play as an encore, having wished Barcelona a good evening. The order of the rest of my set also totally changed from my plans to try and spice the crowd up... They seemed pretty hard to work - and could not be enticed to the front of the stage, and by and large they did not dance.... But they did make an impressive noise ;-> They also clapped loudly when I said 'everybody clap your hands..... LOUDER!' I guess they were into it after all. Usefully the track they were most enthusiastic about was a special new cover version I wrote just for this show. I really enjoyed the gig but all to soon it was 'Goodnight Barcelona!' and over to Teamtemdo.

I had never seen Teamtendo live before, but of course I'd heard all kinds of stories about 2 freaky Gameboy characters who smoked cigarettes and jived around onstage. I thought a certain crowd interaction element was missing from their set, but having said that this is probably why more people danced to Teamtendo than anyone else on the bill. The slightly abstract stage presentation being more like a dance act. The Spanish crowd was more into their experimental side, so professionally they tailored their set accordingly.

Wanga and Monsta played a more chilled out show than everyone else. Wanga sat on an easy chair and played his Gameboy while looking after his daughter. Monsta cut grooves over and between his tracks. From a distance it looked really space age, with Wanga's see-through blue easy chair reflecting the neon stage lights and banks of everyone elses equipment. I think this look was a success. Again the Playtime crowd enjoyed the experimental sounds, and the more rave minded of them were extravagently boogie-ing around.

Throughout the micromusic part of the show (except Teamtendo) the C-Men were controlling a giant video screen with the most amazing Amiga generated visuals. I can't big them up enough, I heard they did special rock visuals for me, and I saw the visuals they did for Manou were more melacholic and spot on for her emotive material. Of course for Wanga and Monsta they could really get more abstract with some MicroAd animated GIFs and other weirdness. It looked like a demo gone wrong!

I did not stay to see all of Alex Martin. He was excellent though, with a special C64 derivative machine, and way impressive demo_style visuals. Being a local guy the crowd knew his stuff and he obviously had some fans (with good reason). Maybe I will one day meet him online, I hope so anyway!

I was tired out after carrying my guitar around all day I decided to get an early night, leaving the club at about 5.30. The others stayed for another hour or so to see the end of the show. As always I could not sleep - reflecting on the nights show, thinking about my friends and the adrenaline. Of course there was alot of room for improvement in my act, some tracks had been better than perfect, some had had mistakes. Overall I thought my stage show was still not what I had been aiming for, and the response was not what it could have been. But just like after anything you do you get ideas for changes and improvements. As a whole micromusic proved their class and diversity!

After this civilised lunch we went back to the Micromusic exhibition for a few hours. My flight was due to leave in a little while so I made the most of the company. Everyone I met was a fine person, Wanga, his wife and daughter, wild eyed Monsta, considered Multivitamin, the totally cool and laid back Mia, not forgetting the people I had already known - Manou and the C-Men, who seem like old friends now.

I said goodbye to the guys, and had a last slice of cake with Manou before catching a taxi to the airport - which was uber cheap!

Unfortunately the flight was delayed 45 minutes, and I got a crap seat (grrr EasyJet!) but it didn't matter - the flight was comfortable and I was soon back in Luton.

join our trip to this weird place

(c)gwem 2002
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