Am typing this backstage at Debaser Slussen, Stockholm. Fosca are due to go on at 10.30pm. We are three: Rachel S, Charley S and self.
Arrived at Heathrow thinking something was missing. Racked my brains…
Passport? Check. Plectrums? Got that. Wallet, cash card, guitar pedals, pedal connector leads, guitar leads, laptop, laptop audio lead, laptop power lead, mobile phone, mobile phone power charger, European plug adaptor, toiletries, make up, shirts, ties, clothes brush, underwear, socks, contact lenses, lyric sheets, notebooks, pens, reading matter…
Ah. Guitar. Oops.
So I now have to borrow a Swedish guitar for the gigs, turn it upside down, and be careful not to knock the volume knob while strumming – the lot of a guitarist who learned to play left-handed but with the strings reversed. Still, if I’d learned to play a normal left-handed model the right way up, emergency instrument borrowing would be so much harder.
It’s a third rather obvious sign that my subconscious is trying to tell me something, what with my missing one rehearsal altogether, then arriving over an hour late for a second (having overslept in the afternoon – woken by Rachel calling from the rehearsal studio). I definitely am not meant to be doing Fosca any more. Just as well it’s our last gigs.
Email today:
From: venice italy
Message: Dear Dickon, as a fan of fosca may i ask you if a day you and your group will come to italy?
Ah well. Sorry. Perhaps in a different incarnation.
Another email posits one possible reason why Fosca have a following in Sweden:
From: Gothenburg/Stockholm
Message: Dear Mr. Edwards,
Why Sweden? you ask.
I know.
We are always sad, we are always a bit confused, we always long for something more beautiful, more real, and we always want to dance. And you seem know the soundtrack of that feeling.
See you tonight.
Stockholm is snow-covered, but thawing. God bless the staff of Debaser Slussen: food and drink for soundcheck, then a proper dinner. And they even found Charley headache tablets. Bar has cocktails named after Pixies songs.
Charley Stone, on stage clothes: I think tonight I’ll be Nick Rhodes, but with breasts.
Me: An upgrade!
Ah, time to go onstage.
Tags: Fosca, Stockholm, Sweden
