click images for full viewHi all - Today we have a special entry. It's an excerpt from the forthcoming memoirs by my former bandmate (and Judita's husband) rock photog extraordinaire (and Cold War Kids' producer) Matt Wignall about the UK portion of his touring with the Cold War Kids. Enjoy the blog and fancy photos.
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MATT & MATT VS. PORTUGAL PIGLIANO AND THE COWARDS OF BELMONT SHORE
by m.wignall
We left Dublin after 24 hours of literal traveling insanity. I met the Cold War Kids at their London hotel at 10 at night when this all started. Maust, Beeman and I went to a pub and had crappy food that we kept saying was surprisingly good, mostly on account of the price. We had to wake up at 4 am to fly to Edinburgh Scotland for T in the Park music festival. This was a special kind of drag as I had just come from 9 days of not getting enough sleep with Mando Diao in Sweden. We drove in BMW's with suit wearing drivers to Gatwick airport which seems as far as France especially at 4:30am. We got to the gig after a flight on Easyjet which we now refer to as cheesy jet, idiot jet and any other number of names that seemed more clever at the moment, if you've flown them you'd understand. Scotland was rainy, and the band lost their room to someone called Razorlight who had a larger entourage than us (I being the only one in the CWK entourage). I've learned that these UK festivals largely consist of mud, and people living in it. The bands for the most part live in their buses only exiting onto a metal ramp where they are whisked onto stage. The Cold War Kids are not big enough for a bus as they are still a pretty ma and pa organization, they have something like a bus, and while not living in squalor, they sure don't live like the people called Razorlight. So we spent the day in Scotland looking for places to lay down and get free food both of which were graciously available in the main hospitality tent. There was little contact with mud, and the gig went famously, right after Sinead O'conner in fact, who we all agreed is looking very hobbit like these days. That evening, having already been at Gatwick and Edinburgh airports, we headed back to Edinburgh in our jalopy, which I have failed to yet mention, and boarded our 2nd jet for the day to Dublin where we would basically repeat the aforementioned scenario. Our jalopy, driven by our rough and tumble british driver was acquired through the company Blah Blah Blah. They are the cheapest way to travel as a band in the UK. The wheels are vintage Mercedes plumbing truck or some such work vehicle, and the trailer was a horse or donkey trailer with a tarp tied over the open top, that had a very suggestive female printed around 6 feet high on the back of it. The driver was cool and I spent most of the time in the jalopy sitting next to him in the front seat as I tend to get car sick any where else. I asked a lot of questions about the UK, as I had never been. The boys sat in the back on the wrap around leopard skin couch which was either based on, or the inspiration for, a leopard print tattoo on the drivers forearm. I loved the whole thing as I like people with character and this whole scene was just dripping with it.
Outside of eating late at some variety restaurant in Dublin where an asian lady that ran the place eyed us with hate and scorn as we danced to gangsta rap music being played unnecessarily loud, we had a largely uneventful time, I acquired an unnamed quota of good photos of the band and it was off to London in morning where we would begin to move our different ways. Matt Maust and I would stay in London with our friend, financial tycoon Nate Rose, and the rest of the band would head to Portugal to visit Matt Aveiro's relatives on an island where they eat coconuts and have no or very few cars. This is where things began to get exciting.
Getting onto Cheesy Jet is problematic if you have more than a fanny bag. We all had a lot of crap, especially me with all my photo gear, at check in we had to combine, rearrange and condense to save money and not have to check in said photo gear. The color photo of "dangerous materials" are the items that for whatever reason did not make it into the collective check in bags of Maust and myself. A lighter, a knife, and various containers containing a who's who of dangerous substances hidden within hair re-growth shampoo and conditioner bottles that are way too big to fit in the plastic bags. I speak for Matt and myself when I say sneaking this through Dublin's bag screening was a thrill the likes we rarely see. We figured out over the course of many flights, that by buttoning or zipping up a jacket, it becomes a shirt in the eyes of the screeners. It can't be a heavy jacket, you'll get popped every time for that, but a wind breaker, a blazer, buttoned, no problem, walk on through, unbuttoned, you have to strip down, red flags galore. We had an apple which was to be our diversion, and pockets riddled with our precious booty. I held the apple aloft and loudly asked, can I bring this through the beeping arches? Everyone is now focused on the apple, me and Maust walked quickly through, David Blaine and Criss Angel would have been proud, in relative terms we just made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Sadly, our brand of magical diversion was so flawlessly executed that only we could revel in its brightly burning glory. Every instinct I had was to turn around and say, "Ha! We have just infiltrated your shoddy system, we know the secret, that it is all a show, all wound up in political correctness and self importance and continuing under estimations of our clever foes." The crowd at the screening area would have been in awe, we would have been the object of envy and secret flatteries. I looked down, swallowed my pride and clutched my precious survival lighter and knife. Matt had his herbal hair regrowth shampoo, and we knew we were more than just men lost among the oceans of human beings traveling the world. Anarchy in the UK indeed!
At the airport that day we all hugged and said our goodbyes. I have surfed for most of my life though I try to keep it a secret, being an artist and having an alter ego called Matt Death in tow, it looks pretty bad to my public to be hanging out in flowered shorts getting a tan and engaging in happy sunny beach activities (ironically, I have little to no public to worry about and any public I have is purely delusional). For this and other reasons I was and am insanely jealous of Matt Aveiro (Portugal Pigliano), Nathan, Johnny and Beeman. Portugal is fabled to have some of the best surfing in Europe and they were to be on some island with the same name as a crumby town in the central valley of California. I knew they were going to Portugal but they kept saying they were going to Madera I think, and I kept wondering why they were so excited to go to that crap hole not realizing it was the island's name. Having that all cleared up, Maust and I decided to stay in London as he needed a break from traveling and I was on my way to Africa to photograph the installation of charitably funded water wells in remote villages. After 2 weeks of European work and travel, sitting around financial tycoon Nate Rose's Notting Hill flat was sounding pretty grand.
RIGHT-ON BRIGHTON JULY 10
Maust had this picture of him and Nate in front of the burned down pier in Brighton, and based on this feature I suggested we go out there and do some proper photography. Maust is great at wandering aimlessly around whatever city he is in and usually is traipsing around looking at stuff and doing whatever he does. We decided that Brighton would be a great day trip and we would feel like we were on vacation, and would live large, and would have a far better time than our brothers eating coconuts on the island in Portugal. On the train, we repeatedly discussed how Nick Cave lives in Brighton and in our little worlds this may as well have been the Queen's palace we were going to see. It is funny the people and things that strike us as royalty: Nick Cave's part of town and a burned out pier fouling up everyone's view. I was in heaven. Me and Maust took beautiful photos and mentioned a handful of times how we should have had the whole band there to photograph. It really is such an amazing area. I resolved to take the best portrait of Maust that I had ever taken in my life just to stick it to the our brothers eating coconuts on the Island in Portugal (view picture at the start of this page for said portrait). We came across a big dumb happy dog and a ferris wheel and it was all very sad in a happy and nostalgic kind of way. That kind of sums up Brighton in my thinking.
We met a guy with a handle bar mustache from the Rumble Strips, he was touted as one of the nicest people Maust had met in Europe and after he bought us a round of Guinness and poorly executed Irish Coffee I was in agreement. Over a pint he told us the story of two Welsh men, who with a GPS tracking system and months of gear, boarded a pink peddle boat and peddled their way to America. When they arrived some months later, with no clothing in tact and full beards, they were arrested and deported. He said this kind of behavior is to be expected from the Welsh. I think I like the Welsh.
We got back to London and did more sitting around in financial tycoon Nate Rose's flat. We occupied ourselves for hours with his stupid Internet connection and the 40 some odd wireless connection signals that were every last one password protected. Not very sharing the Brits. I was supposed to photograph this band the Ettes who I very much like. They have a fabulous girl drummer with big hair and dark eyes, a cute and friendly girl singer, and a strapping, ascot wearing bass playing young man who may or may not be involved with the singer. I photographed them once before and it was great and we hung out and talked about Strangers With Candy, a very funny show which is obscure enough to create an immediate bond between people in the know. We were to meet at the millennium bridge, which I find overstated, and the big communist looking museum. I was tired from 3 weeks of photos, me and Matt wanted to see a movie, and they were 45 minutes late so we split. I couldn't get a phone to work right anywhere in Europe so we couldn't call, and I was feeling more self important than usual in regard to the respect of my time. With a lot of travel behind me and what would become an African travel cliche of self realization and epiphany to come, it was a welcome break to my sometimes crazy life behind the camera. I left my cameras at financial tycoon Nate Rose's and Maust and I went to see Elvis Perkins and his goons. They put on a fine show and it was nice to see some faces from our side of the pond. The next day Maust carried my bag for me to the train station, listened to me bitch about petty problems and complaints about my failed music career, and saw me off to Heathrow Airport where my 2 weeks in Africa would begin. I never found out what happened to Portugal Pigliano and the Cowards of Belmont shore.
