I was very impressed to shake the hand of Chuck D. of Public Enemy yesterday afternoon at a Belgian rock festival. The way he carried himself dignified him against the other people in the backstage area. I didnt sleep at all after we got to Brussels, I stayed up all of the night, programming my personal organizer to do useless things like make retarded patterns on the screen through a nice set of buttons. I threw away a whole nights sleep there. On the flight over, we had a delay and missed our first flight to Brussels from Atlanta. While we were waiting, we ran in to all of the Flaming Lips guys, who were on their way to the U.K. for similar festival type business. Very strange coincidence to see them again so soon after leaving their tour. They looked tired and not exactly ecstatic to see us. A little too soon for a real reunion I guess. I was happy to see them. At Pukkel Pop, I saw a very great Belgian person named Hendrix, who I had met once before, years ago. I dont know him very well, but like him a whole lot. It turn out that he teaches advanced internet courses and writes for two websites, and also has a band called 'the portables', who sing songs about computers in Flemish, English and in the programming language PERL. A very smiley laughing fellow, who I cannot explain my immediate liking for, except to turn to mysticism and declare the possibility of their being a reincarnation type situation at hand, and that I might have known him in another existence where I was a rock, and he was a tree in a forest in a far away desert, sarcastically quipping at the sand. Yesterdays highlight was definitely Chuck D. Shaking his hand, and noting that he looked us each square in the eye while greeting us. He is a gentleman. It really brought to light the ridiculous nature of the scared and insecure nature of rock and roll attitude. Talentless, yet well dressed, hair conscious little brats. Beating out their brains to try and make sense of the phenomenon of having everyones attention for a few minutes a day, and making up wrong reasons for themselves about why they are worthy of the attention. Chuck D.'s attitude puts them all to shame. While everyone else desperately trys to portray themselves as floating above the ground, Chuck walks with both feet planted firmly on the earth. Simply a man with good ideas, and a sense of the big picture. It was a relief to get relief. Today we are headed too Reading for their dirty little festival. The day after that, we play Leeds and then home after that. Not that I am entirely clear where home is for me at this point. Kelli has gone and signed us up for a completely different path. Moving us to Brooklyn in a heartbeat at hearing about a strange job offered by a man who is a dealer in rare Portuguese books. The move almost didnt happen when Kelli went to collect our dogs and pig in Louisville, where her cousin was house sitting for us. The place was trashed, furniture destroyed, piss and poops all over the place and all kinds of furniture and stuff chewed to bits. It was hard to tell exactly what had happened, but whatever it was it didnt look very good. Kelli was understandably upset at finding out that her animals were probably not very well taken care of and that her recently re-upholstered couch and chairs were basically ruined. She thought that it might have been a "sign" that the whole idea of getting out of Louisville was a horrible mistake. Thankfully, the opinion was again reversed... I was hearing this all on the phone from various Belgian locales, and wondering what would happen, and where we would be living. We sat in traffic for a hell of a long time today on our way to Leeds for our third and final festival gig. Traffic was so stalled that Stevie killed the engine for about 15 minutes, and then when he restarted it, it took 1/2 an hour or so to get past the accident which I still am morbidly curious to piece together the events leading up to the point where an entire car was shoved through a meat grinder, and deposited on the side of the road. Someone had definately lost their life in the car, they had a big blue tarp all across the side of the highway and over the shoulder, blocking the view from one side, but the view wasnt blocked at all one you got past it, and I could see the whole mess. The mangled car made its surroundings of median and grass look so natural in comparison that it seemed almost as if the car had just spontaneously imploded. There was no evidence of a struggle whatsoever. We finally got to the festival site, and after navigating a seriously convoluted series of winding dirt roads with like five 'checkpoints' along the way, we backed the van up to the mainstage to unload, we heard someone bellow through the p.a. 'thanks alot, we're the Pharcyde!'. We were supposed to be the next band up on stage! So, we loaded our stuff up the ramp and on to the stage real quick, tuned and then began to play a very loose, fun set to some very docile people. I managed to break a bass string as well. I played 'flame' without it, and then Stevie McDougall appeared with Mark Ibold's bass, which sounded alot better than the Rickenbacker apparently, cause everyone was saying so. I defend that bass for no good reason except it feels good in my hands and had been about as reliable a friend to me as any instrument ever has. The other basses sound better for some things, but just dont feel right. I feel like I am holding an oar from a rowboat. I went and watched Kevin Rowland, who was apparently the singer/leader of Dexy's midnight runners, you know, 'come on eilene' and all that. He seems to be making some sort of an attempt to do something again, a comeback of sorts. He comes onstage and sings to a tape of his new material, which is very hard to put in context with what is going on in music at the moment, or perhaps any moment. A very out of touch sort of fellow who's heyday was in the dreggyest part of the eightys, comes back in 1999 wearing black leather buckle shoes with white leggings and a very whispy sort of a nightgown or a slip or something. In addition, where were two women dressed very lightly writhing on either side of the stage, and would come and grope him in unison at obviously choreographed points in the 'set'. His opus seemed to be his rendition of 'The greatest love of all' which was really super hard to get into for anything but the creepy feeling it was giving me. The last note of the song started off awful, and from there his voiced just sort of arched out of tune dramatically. At the same time a 1\2 full plastic bottle of water arched right over the top of his head, bearly missing him. The girls approached him from either side of the stage, he kissed them and walked off. Absolutely a spectacle of weirdness of the highest order. I had to appreciate it for being such a uniquely out of place kind of addition to the usual festival crap. While I was watching the spectacle that is Kevin Rowland, Lou and a couple of the fellows from Pavement were bungee jumping from a crane that was parked across the field. I was kind of in awe of the whole idea that they had the guts to do such a thing. I couldn't have done it. I wished that I had seen it go down. So to speak. Everything I have seen has been reasonably dismal, excluding Pavements stellar form and Public Enemy's show, up to the point where Flava-flav starts talking about HIS new record, and HIS new single and www.flava-flav.com, where you can download the latest single. He was really going for it with the crass commercialism, he went on babbling for 10 minutes or so. I dont think that many people in the audience of Belgians could really tell what the fuck he was talking about. Between his slang, the P.A., the outdoors, and the fact that English is everyones second language, if at all, I doubt much of it really came across. Besides Pavement, who are playing even better than the last time I saw them, everything else I have seen on the main stage can blow me, the other tents are the only hope really, musically. All these other fart-heads are playing along with tapes and samples and shit. I dont have the stomach for it right now. I cant give it a break. I am kind of tired of this festival shit right now and have been hanging out in the van which has been good, camping out in here with the door open, sipping a beer and taking a little respit. We fly home tomorrow, this trip has been a pleasure for the most part, but I am looking forward to finding out where I live exactly...