barcelona through the cracks of a touring session drummer’s diary
it’s funny how some cities don’t just rub against your guitar picks but dig their knuckles into your fingertips. barcelona does that. i checked my phone and it’s a crisp -1.58°C, but feels like -5.05°C because the wind here doesn’t care if you’re a session drummer with a gig in 12 hours. humidity clings like a sticky bass drum head, and the streets smell like old bread and rebellion. neighbors? they’re just ghosts here-maybe a drunk anarchist from 1936 muttering about factories in the back alley, or that aunt who owns the botiga next door and judges my beat-up roland TR-808 like it’s a vinyl LP from the ’60s.
playing live in places like a repsol gas station or some dive bar with warped flooring? sure. but there’s this place, café de plata, where the owner plays avenged sevenfold on loop and throws olives like confetti. i heard a local say, ‘don’t bring your fancy kit here-they’ll steal your pedals.’ yeah, guess he meant me. woke up to a cracked cymbal and a note that said ‘j/a.’
got invited to drop a set at a punk squat last night. the kids there handed me a ziplock bag of instant noodles and said, ‘play us something that ain’t garbage.’ thing is, i didn’t. i just stared at my drummer chariot snare and asked them to guess why it was named that. 10 tries. no one got it. the truth? it survived a train crash in 2005.
stellungen, barcelona’s version of a ‘beach bar,’ is a neon-soaked mess where taxidermied cats wear cowboy hats. dragged my mic stand over to the roof terrace just to yell verses to a flock of pigeons-tasted like victory. heard something about a protest at the museo maritime? guess the guards told me to stay away after one of their bouncers mistook my blackstar speakers for a grenade launcher.
if you’re bored, madrid’s a 2.5-hour train ride away. keep driving and you’ll hit madrid, then besides where no one speaks english, and the fast food places have fries shaped like cameos.
friends say i’m overthinking this. but here’s my stupid gear list for december in barcelona:
- blackstar pedal platform (half-frozen)
- eric johnson dj200 amp (humming like a angry bee)
- 1994 boss gravity pedal (still smells like a smoke filled van)
if you see a drummer playing a set in a park under a plastic sheet, that’s me. i’ve got a new project: ‘barcelona streets as trap kits.’ send tips to along.
p.s. the only thing worse than the cold is the lack of good vegan empanadas. tried a spot called el configurer that some yelp weirdo called ‘cosmic fab,’ but their almond milk latte tastes like defeat. link to that tragedy: http://somefakeyelp.com/empanadas
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