Jan's and John's Peripatetic Adventure

The Tate Boat

Meanwhile, back in London Jan says...

Today Linda and I went to The Tate Gallery. It was full of gorgeous art, room after room of exquisite paintings. The landscapes are probably the best I've seen anywhere. We had lunch at the gallery and then took The Tate Boat up the Thames to the Tate Modern gallery.

Wow, was that fun. It goes past Parliament, stops at the London Eye and then concludes at the Tate Modern. We were too tired for more gallery wandering so we decided to skip it. It started seriously raining as we left the boat but I decided to throw caution to the wind and walk home. So we walked along the south bank to Waterloo Bridge and over to Covent Garden. Below you will see Linda in front of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre which looked really neat. While walking you can see St. Paul's Cathedral just across the river. It ended up being a fun walk, just a little wet, and Linda got a perspective of London you usually don't see.

Tubin' and Shoppin'

Today Linda and I went shopping. First to Marks and Spencer to stock up on groceries for lunch and light pre-theatre dinners.

Then we went to Harrods because I need many sets of sheets for the Artemis band members who are coming to stay next week. OMG, the cheapest sheets we could find at Harrod's were £49 per sheet! That is just too crazy so then we took the tube to John Lewis where they were a reasonable £12 each.

In the evening we had a light dinner at home and then went to the theatre to see... Guys and Dolls with Ewan McGregor and Jane Krakowski! It was the second time I saw the show and wow it was as good as the first time. In fact, Ewan McGregor was better this time. Jane Krakowski still stole the show, she was incredible. This was Linda's first London theatre experience and she totally loved it. The dancing, the polished production, the great acting... all fabulous.

A Visit from Linda

Meanwhile, back in London Jan says...

My friend Linda arrived this morning!

We haven't seen eachother since we met on a trip to Switzerland a couple years ago, although we chat on Yahoo IM often. It's really fun having her on this side of the webcam.

We're going to have a great week with lots of walking, dining and theatre!

John in France, day 3 (tuesday) - Cannes and Antibes

Leaving Saint Paul in the morning, our first stop was at the Fondation Maeght, an amazing mostly-outdoor exhibition space with tons of Miro sculptures. To the right is a typical Saint Paul street (our hotel's in fact) in the morning, when the tourists have yet to arrive.

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Many, many photos of Fondation Maeght follow, as it was truly wonderful. The building itself is a lifeless 1950s concrete and glass building, much imitated now by American public schooling buildings, but the grounds were the memorable part

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We then went to Antibes, which my guidebook said was nice but was actually horrible. Very touristy, homeless people all around (hanging on the parking meter, telling me that I could leave the parking for free as they'll trick the ticket machine, if I give them a tip) not to mention the graffiti, the awful stores... ugh. I took two photos only of Antibes, to give the general flavor.

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My original plan for the day was to go to the Iles Des Lerins, which are two islands that are reached from Cannes. They're basically national parks, where one can walk for a few hours. Since I've been to Cannes before, when exhibiting at the trade show MIDEM, I knew that Cannes was far superior to Antibes (even though it's very touristy as well).

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Here are some pictures from the dock of Saint Margerite, the larger of the two islands. Not much to look at -- looks like the same greenery you'll find elsewhere. We were perplexed the large group of American accented 12 year olds walking through the park on a school tour. Shouldn't they be in school in America this time of year? The puzzle was solved when the teacher spoke perfect french to them and they replied in French. With Sophia-Antipolis nearby, which is the Silicon Valley of France, these must be kids of American geeks, getting a bilingual education.

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Finally, at night we had a great rustic dinner at a restaurant near the entrance to St Paul, and I took a picture of the wonderful cat sculpture at night (made in 2000, surprisingly), which is at the entrance to the Medieval ramparts.

A Visit from Artemis

Meanwhile, back in London, Jan says...

Today, Artemis arrived with bandmember and boyfriend Ben.

They're here for just one night and then they go off to Europe for a bit before returning for an extended stay while the band does a tour of the U.K. She is so talented and a fabulous person. I really enjoyed meeting Ben who is incredibly nice, intelligent and fun. I'm looking forward to their coming back in a couple weeks with the rest of the band.

Their web site is gorgeous and even has a blog with tour photos. Great music, great people and great fun!

John in Southern France, day two

In the morning, on my way out of the hotel, I walked through the Nice market. At the desert-stand, there was a large quantity of something intriguing, and it was 2/3rds sold out. I asked the woman what it was, and she said it was a "Tourte de blea" which didn't make much sense to me (blea sounds like ble, which is wheat, or a wheat tarte). However, after I bit into it, and fell over in delight, I examined the contents, and found that it was a filo-like pastry stuffed with a mix of swiss shard, shallots, raisins and pine nuts, with a slight amount of powdered sugar on top. Truly, amazing. Blea, my British-authored guidebook to Southern France tells me, is a local spinach-like green leaf, local to this area, which is similar to Swiss Chard.

The picture to the right shows the main commerce street in Nice, which you can see is all dug up and a mess. They're in the middle of installing a high tech light rail system all through Nice, so there are lots of large construction zones throughout the city. I'm sure it'll be fab when it's done, but for now, the residents are annoyed.

I was supposed to pick Victor up at the airport at 10:30, but his flight was doubly-delayed, so I ended up waiting for his call at a little town just south of the airport called Cagnes. It's not the most exciting city, and being Sunday most things were closed. I parked near the market hall / pedestrian zone, which is pictured to the right.

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Yes, unfortunately it is possible to have a mediocre-to-bad meal in the South of France. There was little open to chose from in terms of restaurants, so I picked the only thing open in the pedestrian zone. I ordered the daily special, which was an italian salad, a mixed-grill-with-french-fries, followed by cheese and desert. These salad was a perfectly ok few pieces of lettuce, some mozzarella and some gassed tomatoes. Not to bad. The main was a pan-fried-and-quite-chewy piece of chicken breast, with the same idea in beef form, and some fries. Some oily, bland ratatouille accompanied. Edible, but not great. Oh well, now I know what to look out for, and I know in hindsight that if a place looks bad, *order* *the* *pasta*. The setting was pleasant, though.

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Next was the medieval castle of Hauts de Cagnes. Not much to it, as it's very, very small, but there was a nice terrace at the top of the hill, next to the castle, along with 3 restaurants. I sat down, ordered the special-desert-of-the-day, which is one of my favorite things, a still-warm Tarte Tatin, and a cafe-au-lait. Children were screaming and crying in the terrace, so on went the iPod and noise-cancelling-in-ear-headphones, and I achieved iPod bliss. Beautiful sights, great weather, good food, and I was completely oblivious to the little bratlings around me. Ah.

The parking lot in Hauts de Cagnes deserves mention. It's a "parking silo", which is a a kind of jukebox-for-cars. You pull up the the door, put on your parking brake, and get out. The floor moves under your car, pulling it into an elevator, which then drops down as far as 12 stories, placing it into a space automatically in the silo. In the photo above you can actually see the central silo, along with the lines designating some of the spaces your car goes into. The whole thing is run by computer at the top of the parking, by one guy, who just types a number in to retrieve your car. I think you're in big trouble if you lose your parking stub!

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I reserved rooms for Victor and me in the medieval town of St Paul, which is 20 minutes inland from Cagnes, about 30 minutes from the Nice Airport. It's a mostly-car-free medieval town of alleys where all the construction is of white rock, and the hill-town is girdled by a still-good-condition 16th century rock wall. A little touristy, but under control, the alleys are mostly art galleries, with the occasional restaurant. There are only two hotels in the town, and we're in the St Paul (clever name), which is a "Relais et Chateaux" participating hotel. Above is a photo of the wall painting above my bed as well as the very-mirrored bathroom and the view of the restaurant terrace out my window.

Not many photos on the next day (day 3) as Victor is recuperating from his 36h flight. However, on the way to lunch, we did walk by "Slow Food Yo Yo", an Asian (Chinese?) restaurant. Victor was puzzled by what "slow food" meant in this context. Are they really part of the Italy-based, high-end-cooking movement known as The Slow Food movement? No, I think it's more simple, that Chinese food is usually "Fast Food" in France (yes, they use the English words) and this restaurant was simply trying to show that they were not fast food.

That's it for today...

More Effing Plastic Hangers

Meanwhile, back in London...

In anticipation of having many guests shortly, and several house concerts/parties, I realized I needed more clothes hangers. I went to John Lewis where I got our current very nice hangers but they no longer have those and have the most godawful plastic hangers I've ever seen.

So then I went to Selfridges where I had intially found plastic hangers on my quest last year. Selfridges had none; they only had wooden hangers (that take up too much space). No one at the store was able to tell me if they were simply out of them or no longer carry them, since they just work there and you can't expect them to actually know anything and are visibly annoyed at you for interrupting their conversation about their upcoming holiday or problems with their car. Whatever.

I went back over to John Lewis and bought the ugly ones. At least they're plastic instead of wood. I think I'm going to have to bring a large quantity of the nice, incredibly cheap, available everywhere, plastic hangers from California next time so I don't have to hunt for them anymore.

(Update: In my ongoing quest for nice plastic hangers, John Lewis seems to have them in stock the most often. They got rid of the ugly ones and have the nice ones. For now.)

In happy news, the Apple Store finally got the new 4GB iPod Nano so I bought one each for John and me. Wow, it's so small! It's half the thickness of the iPod Mini and holds as much as the original iPod Mini did. It's significantly smaller than even my mobile phone. I love Apple.

John reporting from France Vacation

This is John reporting from day 1 of my France vacation. I arrived in Nice this morning, flying in from London. Tomorrow, I'll pick up my friend and Magnatune artist Victor Stone and we'll go driving elsewhere -- I'm thinking of the coast between Nice and Italy, as I'm told there are several beautiful small villages, and that the islands off the coast make good day trips. My hotel is on the water, just outside the hill where the old castle and park stands. There is an entryway, and an elevator that goes one floor up, but that's actually the equivalent of 6 stories up!

After arriving at the hotel, I had a few hours to kill before my lunch appointment with Magnatune artists Curl, so I scaled the hill to the castle, taking these photos on the way up:

	France is full of ancient ruins and so of course, on the castle hill we find:	Then coming down the castle hill on the other side there were many drainage paths for water, some of which are quite artistic, just as this stone-fish concept:
	As I came down to the old town, the first store I happened on had crazy glass and plateware. The glasses were two glasses in one, and you flip them to do the opposite, such as a merger of a brandy sniffer on the bottom face, and a champagne glass on top. Also interesting was the plate set, which were all perfect rectangles which fit together like tiles, and the food-containment shapes reaching out of the rectangles (you can't see it so well in the photo, sorry!)
Saturday is market day in old Nice and I happen to love crazily authentic and diverse markets like this one	Beautiful bread/pizza assortment	Cookies!
I love these fruit candies, especially the fruit pastes, which are made by boiling down the fresh fruit juice of real fruits, and mixing the concentrate with a loose gelatin. Better than jelly beans!	An amazing stand with dozens of fresh spices	Sweets are far as the eye can see.
This is funny: giant squash, which the vendor sells by slicing chunks off and selling the pieces by the pound.	Finally, another hour spent walking the narrow alleys of old Nice:
My lunch appt with Curl members Frank and Christelle went well - we all fell in love with each other! We spent all afternoon listening to their music, in their fabulously cool studio (best mood lighting ever, fabric hanging off the ceilings, a wonderful creative space!) Unable to say goodbye, we decided to have dinner together as well, and chat late into the night. And the best thing of all is that Frank and Christelle are very much in love, what an adorable couple!

Inflated

This morning John flew to southern France for 2 weeks to drive around with his friend Victor.

So, once again, I'm abandoned in London. I'm not really complaining; I decided not to go because I'm a destination/schedule oriented person and don't enjoy wandering around a foreign country in a car looking for an open restaurant. John loves it. So it's perfect that Victor wanted to go too, and I can stay home.

John is thinking of blogging his trip while on the road so you may see some entries from him mixed in with mine which will be really fun.

But this time I won't be alone the whole time because my friend Linda is coming to stay with me for a week! I'm so excited to see her, it's been a couple years. I have tickets to a few shows so we're going to have a great time!

I have other guests arriving the day before Linda just for one night, so I needed to get the inflatable mattresses out since the guest suite has only one real bed. John left without showing me how to inflate the mattress so I had a moment of panic before I realized I'm not completely stupid and could probably figure it out.

I hope our guests don't mind the sound of rubbing two balloons together every time they roll over but, hey, it's free accommodations. It looks a lot more inviting with the sheets and duvet.

The next thing I did was go to Marks and Spencer and buy prepared food because I can't cook. Yes, John does all the cooking. He's the perfect husband, what can I say. So, I'm particularly lost, and hungry, when he's not around. Thankfully, Marks and Spencer has great salads, pasta and sandwiches. And I do need to lose 5 pounds.

Living in the Future

We got new mobile phones!

And this time, they're great. The phones we got last year when we first moved to London were difficult to use. The service itself is great but the phone interface was complicated and we never really got the hang of it.

Technology is progressing so fast that I thought they must have better phones now and wow do they. We just upgraded to a new model Sony Ericsson K608i. It's like we live in the future. It does amazing things, like make video calls, send video messages, take photos, take video, bluetooth, play video of current news broadcasts and, an incredible feature: maps. If you're lost, the phone knows where you are and shows you a street map or you can select a destination map. Truly incredible.

Finally, beautifully designed technology that actually works as amazingly as it promises. Beam me up!

An Evening with Lady Jessica

This evening we saw "Epitaph for George Dillon", a revival of the 1958 play by John Osborne and Anthony Creighton, starring Joseph Fiennes and Francesca Annis!

As always, I was stunned to see such famous people on stage but was particularly excited to see Francesca Annis who played Lady Jessica in Dune and "Lillie" on Masterpiece Theatre! She was very good and is still really beautiful although the unattractive 1950's hair style and clothes were not flattering on her. Joseph Fiennes was pretty good but playing a jerk doesn't seem like a difficult role; yelling isn't acting. The play was sometimes hilarious, sometimes serious, somewhat dated but very enjoyable.

Dinner with a Rose

This evening we had dinner with Alison Crum and her husband Roy Marks, who are members of the Rose Consort and other ensembles as well soloists. The Rose Consort will be playing at our upcoming house concert in December and we're really excited about it.

What a delightful evening! We've known Alison for a while (since we moved to London last year) and this was the first time I met Roy. They are both very talented, interesting and, best of all, a lot of fun. Of course, we started the evening with our favorite Pinot Noir Champagne (see photo) and then dinner at Le Deuxieme. It was our first dinner there this trip and it was great to be back.

A fun and delicious evening!

Celestial Flute

This evening we went back over Waterloo Bridge to South Bank Centre for a concert by Indian classical flutist, Hariprasad Chaurasia.

We have at least a dozen cd's by him and have loved his music for many years. The concert was astonishing... truly magical. Normally I would not be able to sit through anything for 2 and a half hours without a break but it was not a problem this time. His playing is like nothing we've heard and John and I were both excited and amazed by the performance. The percussionists were also incredible and there were many jaw-dropping moments during the concert. An amazing musical experience.

Sunday with Dufay

This afternoon we went again to Queen Elizabeth Hall at the South Bank Center, this time to see The Dufay Collective.

We've been fans of their music for years and are excited and delighted to have two of their cd's available at Magnatune. Their performance was extraordinary and included beautiful set design and stage direction, a different and innovative approach for a classical music ensemble. It was stunning.

Afterward we went back to the green room to say hi to Dufay members Susanna Pell, who we've known for a while, and Peter Skuce (photo bottom right). It was also great meeting the other musicians, they're so talented. A couple days ago, John had lunch with Peter who is an enthusiastic Magnatune fan.

John and I hung out briefly with Peter and then went to eat because we had another concert at 7:00. That concert was by Akademie fur Alte Musik, Berlin. I've never been fond of this orchestra because they play way to fast on their cd's.

Their performance was excellent, although there was a fair amount of frenetic sawing. One of my pet peeves: the director takes a very loud intake of break a split second before starting which is really obnoxious. Get a grip, buster.

Speaking of getting a grip, note in the photo here a gathering of a few musicians who felt they are so special that they must come out on stage before the concert to tune their instruments. Oh, puleeze. If it is not possible to tune your instrument backstage then why isn't everyone on stage tuning? I've seen this before, sometimes a single musician will stroll onto the stage to tune their instrument and then leave. I can't help but think it's yet another version of "look at me" which I find totally pathetic.

The solo violin performance by Midori Seiler of one of the Biber Rosary Sonatas was incredible. Sitting in the first row gave me the opportunity to catch every nuance of her performance and I was moved by the obvious emotion in her face after she finished. A great day of concerts!

Phantastic

This weekend is the Early Music Weekend at the South Bank Centre and John got tickets months ago to see some of our favorite musicians in concert.

Today we saw Phantasm. They were perfection, a truly beautiful performance. We've known Larry Dreyfus for years so we went back to the green room and got to meet the rest of the musicians which was really great. Then we went up the foyer and had drinks and hung out for a while. I had a long, terrific conversation with Wendy Gillespie who I've wanted to meet for a long time. Fabulous!

Bike No More

This morning John rode his bike to Bloomsbury to attend the Lute Society meeting. While he was at the meeting his bike was stolen. Yes, that bike, the one he bought on July 7 to ride back to London the day of the tube bombings. Yes, he had one of those super-duper locks. The only way the bike could have been stolen is if someone had the "special tools" that are required to completely disassemble the bike. Even then we can't figure out how they did it. But they did. Bastards.

Washington to London

Yes we're back in London! This will be our longest stay yet (3 months) and there's lots planned including: four, yes four home concerts, a trip to Paris Disneyland and a trip to Marseille, France. So stay tuned.

The trip to Washington, DC was a lot of fun. Before The Future of Music conference we walked around the city a bit and took some photos of the usual monuments. Yuck. Patriotism and politics are two of our least favorite mental conditions. The only really positive aspect of Washington is the Metro (subway), it's really beautiful.

The conference was one of the best ones John has attended and even I thought it was good, although sometimes it was a little long-winded and the panelists were a little too evil. I'm not very good
at sitting for hours listening to jerks pretend they're nice people. But overall it was very interesting and I learned a lot about the music industry.

We met some great people there, including Derek from CD Baby (bottom left photo) and Steve from Weed. We also got to hang out with Rob from Music Brainz (bottom center photo) who had so kindly helped us move to our new house in London last Spring.

There were several famous people at the conference including Mike Mills, the bassist for REM, who seemed nice and talked to a lot of people after his panel discussion (I chickened out since I'm not really fond of REM but he really did seem like a nice guy). There was also a guy named Joe Henry who seemed to think he is really famous but no one I talked to ever heard of him. He was on two panel discussions and was so obnoxious that I'm sure I'll continue to never hear of him. Apparently he wrote a song for Madonna but I couldn't find anyone who knew the name of the song. That totally cracked me up.

One of the other members of John's panel (see bottom right photo) was Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads. Interestingly, he was on our plane from Oakland to Washington and dropped some stuff on my head while trying to put it in the overhead bin.

It was fun seeing John on stage for his panel discussion and it may have been the first time I've been in the audience for one of his talks. Afterward many people came up to us to talk about Magnatune. One of the exciting things about Magnatune is that whenever John speaks, for days afterward, people always come up to him to express their enthusiasm for Magnatune and this time I got to share in some it.

The Plane, The Plane

After the conference we flew from Washington, DC to London. What a nightmare. We usually fly Virgin but they use their crappy planes at Dulles Airport that don't have the flat beds (and, shockingly, for the same price as the planes that do).

So, we flew Business Class on British Air which is not my favorite airline after what they did to us in Italy last spring but we thought we'd give their transatlantic service a try.

It was one of the worst flights we've been on, ever. Even though the chairs went "flat" it was difficult to sleep because of the crowding and the noise. And "flat" doesn't necessarily mean comfortable. On Virgin it does, but not on BA.

Unless BA also uses their crappy planes at Dulles in Washington and has fabulous Business Class elsewhere. We'll see on our return trip to San Francisco in December. Regardless, it seems that the choices to fly from Washington to London are all uncomfortable so we won't be hurrying back there any time soon.

Update: Virgin says they are currently upgrading their entire fleet with the flat beds. Yay!

Out of the Garden

Tomorrow we fly to Washington DC for the Future of Music Summit and then on Tuesday we leave Washington DC for... at last, London!

We're going to miss our California friends very much and I'm going to miss Clyde terribly. Worse, he's going to miss me and not really understand why I don't let him in to play every day (sniff).

We'll also miss the tranquility of California, including our garden pictured below. But, of course, we're excited to be returning to London and already have tickets for some great shows. See you next week!