I arrived in Germany yesterday. Here's the schedule of talks I'm doing:•May 26, 2010 7:30pm - Frankfurt, Zendo - Verein für Zenmeditation Frankfurt e.V. Galgenstr. 18 Weitere Infos:regina@dogen-sangha-frankfurt.de Fon: 06101 813 383
•May 27, 2010 7:30pm - Bielefeld, J.Kamphausen Verlag & Distribution GmbH Buddestr. 9 - 15 Weitere Infos:dirk.grosser@j-kamphausen.de Fon: 0521 560 52 12
•May 28, 2010 7:30 pm - Berlin, Dharma Buchladen, Akazienstr. 17 Weitere Infos:info@dharma-buchladen.de Fon: 030 - 784 50 80
In mid-June I'll be returning briefly to Germany to do another talk in Wuppetal. I'll get that info up in a couple days. As usual all info for the European tour is at http://web.me.com/doubtboy/Site/BookTour_2010.html.
How about a run-down of some of the stuff I did while I was in Warsaw...
Lemme see. Yesterday I visited several of the record stores of Warsaw guided by my Brad-sitter, Kaja. That was her designation by the folks at ELAY, my Polish publishers. Luckily she is as big a record store fanatic as me and was eager to take on the task.
First we went to Megadisc. In spite of a name that conjures up images of a Amoeba Records style superstore, Megadisc is actually a tiny little shop situated in a courtyard between some big buildings. You go through an entrance way, look around, get confused, go back to the entrance way to make sure you did see a little sign that said Megadisc on the wall, go back into the courtyard, look around some more and then you spot the store owner putting a little sign out in front of a ramp leading into the little basement room that is the store.
It's tiny, but well stocked with psychedelic and prog rock reissues. You can sorta tell what kind of store you're in by seeing what they do with The Beatles section. This place did not even have one. Which shows that they are far too hip to carry anything as passe as The Beatles.
I purchased a copy of The Moving Sidewalks' "Flash" album on CD with 5 bonus tracks from their early singles. The bonus tracks are essential. This is a fantastic LP, but you must have the early singles to complete the picture. Some CD reissues don't include these.
For those who do not know, The Moving Sidewalks were a Texas psych band fronted by Billy Gibbons who later became the bearded guitarist of ZZ Top. They toured with Jimi Hendrix who, it is said, was highly impressed by Gibbons' guitar style. And you can tell from the album that he was equally impressed by Hendrix. Fave track: Reclipse, a psychedelic sound FX collage in the manner of Revolution 9.
I also spotted Time to Suck by Suck an early 70s hard rock band from South Africa. As I went to pay for this, Kaja snatched it from my hands and purchased it for herself. Darn her to heck!
Next we visited Muzant. This one was also impossibly hard to find. It was in the basement of what appeared to be one building of a large apartment complex. There was no way in Heck you'd ever spot it from the street. The stock was all used. They seemed mainly focused on jazz and blues, though the rock section was pretty good. The prices were great. I got the double disc reissue of Motorhead's Rock'n'Roll for 30 zlotys, which is like $10.We also visited a place called Hey Joe, which looked very cool from outside, but the organization was really bizarre. The CDs were displayed in these weird bins with metal cages on top. So you could flip thru and see what was in there. But you couldn't pick them up and look on the back at the track listings. Annoying. Plus I couldn't work out any sort of order. Was it alphabetical? By genre? Completely random? I could not guess.
Last we visited a chain book and CD shop called Traffic. As we walked in I thought there wouldn't be anything much in the place. It looked like a Barnes and Nobles or something. I was very surprised to see they had a selection of psych and prog rock reissues to rival even Megadisc. Plus you could listen to anything in the store by scanning its bar code on one of the conveniently located listening stations throughout the store. I played The Jody Grind, The Legendary Pink Dots, Blue Cheer, Road (with Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience) and a Hawkwind compilation before they came to take me away.
And where did they take me away to? To a rehearsal by the band Kryzys, Poland's very first punk rock act. Their drummer Magura came to the Zen retreat I led in Warsaw and asked me to jam with him and one of their two (!) sax players after the rehearsal was done. Groovy!The rehearsal was held in the basement of a big ugly industrial building in central Warsaw. There were people inside washing massive mountains of dishes, but there didn't seem to be any restaurant nearby. Could it be that restaurants sent their dishes to this place to be washed? I don't know. Outside the place were flags for Solidarity '80, who, I was told, aren't actually the "real" Solidarity but a more radical offshoot group. Like all punk rock rehearsal places it was dank and dark, filled with musical equipment, junk food wrappers and discarded furniture with egg cartons nailed to the walls in the usual futile attempt to provide some kind of sound-proofing. Just like back in Akron!
Earlier in the week, as I mentioned in a previous entry, I had been the guest on a radio show hosted by Tomek Lipinski, who had been a member of Brygada Kryzis, which was an offshoot of the original Kryzis. Though Lipinski is better known for his band Tilt.
After the rehearsal we went and saw Men Who Stare At Goats, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But the drive back to the Bodhidharma Zen Center was the real entertainment for the evening.
I don't know if they're reporting this outside of Europe -- when I searched on CNN I couldn't find a word about it -- but Poland is getting flooded like crazy. The water under the main bridges throughout Warsaw was almost up to the tops of the pylons. We had to drive back along a whole bunch of detours since several main roads were closed. Eventually we were driving on a dirt road through the forest. But we made it back alive.
Oh and the Zen? Philip Kapleau visited in the 80s and established the center where we camped out for the last 5 days of my stay. We held a 3-day retreat there, which was attended by 10 people. Pretty much par for the course Zen-retreat-wise. A lovely time was had by all.
The folks from the center who attended were more used to the Rinzai style of shorter sitting periods but more of them and koans. But they did fine.
This little traveling Zen circus I'm putting on all over the globe these days is kind of fun. Hope to see a few of you at the talks!
