In the land of K and D
It was in some Mediterranean country, Portugal I think, that Martha and I were flipping through a tourist brochure of things to do. On one page, in big bold letters, was the word ‘Tosca.’ I pointed to this listing and said, “Wicked. I can’t believe those guys are playing here. We should totally go and see them.” I was sure Martha would be into it too. After all, we really enjoyed the Kruder & Dorfmeister show at last year’s Montreal Jazz Festival. It would be wicked to catch some of Richard Dorfmeister’s dubby beats once again.
“Um,” started Martha, “It’s opera.”
“Martha,” I said knowingly, using that don’t-mess-with-my-vast-musical-knowledge tone, “I don’t think Dorfmeister has branched into that realm of music. Sure he’s Austrian, where you receive classical training in the womb or something, but he’s stoned all the time and opera is probably too ambitious for a—”
“No Matt,” Martha said with waning patience, “Tosca is an opera.”
“Oh,” but I wasn’t done yet, “I haven’t heard of it. It’s probably by some minor hack, right?”
“Puccini.”
So, eventually we made it to Vienna. It’s the first German-speaking country I’ve ever been in. I needed to get used to the German tip. Every time I saw the word neu on a billboard or a sign, I thought of the sweeping guitars of “Hallogallo.”
Walking around Vienna, Martha and I came across a poster that had ‘Tosca’ in big bold letters.
“Wicked,” I said, “We should totally go see them… Wait a minute… Is that—”
“Yes.”
“Damn.”
So I went off about how this time it was an honest mistake. After all, Dorfmeister is Austrian and he probably lives around the corner and this Puccini guy is like Italian or something so what are the odds that he’d be on tour in Austria after we saw his poster in Portugal. Oh. Right. Puccini’s dead. Well, then for sure my money’s on the Tosca guy who’s alive…
So we took my uncultured ass to see Dutch and Flemish masters right from the art collections of the Hapsbourgs. We then chilled in the Museums Quarter to the music of two DJ’s/performance artists. They started their set playing tennis with electric guitars. Most of their music was made by blowing into latex gloves and rubbing fingers and rocks on a board. All of this was framed by arrhythmic beats and bleeps. It’s just what you’d expect from a Germanic duo with electronic gear—oh so three-in-the-morning Brave New Waves. Then we went to a modern dance performance. Xavier Le Roy “wants to dissect trite and cliché body movements conveyed through and by our mass media.”
I now call that day, “Die auf Kulture.”