The P. Hux Chronicles Issue Number FIVE
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

IN THIS ISSUE:

* From Russia With Love (I just made that up!)
* First Canadian...Now Russian Idol

Coming soon:
* Denmark we love you
* Better Than OK in the UK

Greetings Chroniclers of Parthia:

I hope all of you are well and thriving. I'll try to keep this brief out of respect for your busy lives, but I expect to fail. Perhaps you can read it in chunks. Here we go.

RUSSIA: UHHH...GREAT.

I went to Russia with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I figured the food would suck, the hotels would suck, the weather would suck, the gigs would be weird but the experience would be "interesting." Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, right. Typical suspicious American lackey dog, am I. The food was great, hotels great, weather great, gigs were great and it was indeed "interesting."

Expectations aside, the tour itself was a test of stamina. Start with an eight hour time difference. Then: four shows, four nights in a row, four different cities, two additional time zones, two overnight train rides (of seven hours and FIFTEEN hours duration), two five am wake up calls for flights. That's the physical part. Add in four different translators of varying abilities, monitor engineers who don't speak English ("More guitar please! as drums get louder...), not enough time for proper sound checks or pre-show meals, sketchy electricity in some cities.... Now you may think I'm about to tell you we didn't have a good time. Wrong, lackey dogs! Despite the insanely compressed and disorganized conditions...we pulled off four sold out shows...and had a really good time.

* In St. Petersburg, performing at an ice hockey arena, we paused near show's end to bring up a 25 piece orchestra for six songs. Great players!

* In Moscow, the Applesin Club (or "Orange Club", go figure) was packed and fully rockin'.

* In Ekaterinburg where they murdered the Czar (tourists welcome) Kelly nearly started a riot when he invited people in the seats-only theater to come down front. A woman in the second row reached forward and smacked a view-blocking punter with her purse. Hard!

* In Ufa, a few women danced in the aisles but the local men who could afford the tickets maintained their dignity, sitting stiffly in their seats, not about to make fools of themselves or act beneath their social status. Man, it was like playing to an oil painting. But they did applaud.

So, Russia was great. But...it's kind of a bizarre parallel universe. St. Pete and Moscow are both HUGE cities, all the kids have cell phones and iPods, there are coffee shops and internet places...but there's not much in the way of--and this sounds silly--landscaping or beautification projects. The apparent capitalist momentum butts up against a crumbling veneer of crappy sidewalks, lousy parks, incomprehensible traffic organization...shortcomings that speak of civic corruption instead of pride. It's a bit odd. Yet the people were lovely and fun. We'll probably go back.

FIRST CANADIAN...NOW RUSSIAN IDOL.

After a brief soundcheck at the club in Moscow, and with just a few hours before our show, we crawled through unruly traffic jams to two different TV studios for our appearances on--ta da--Star Factory, or Russian Idol. First we had a session with the dozen or so remaining contestants--all striking kids--in their "Big Brother" style living quarters. We played songs, talked about music careers (we pretended to have one), etc. My lasting image from that session was Mik Kaminski seated on a wraparound couch with a dozen sparkling, made up youth. He wasn't unhappy.

Then, we drove to another place somewhere in the Moscow Megalopolis, for our onstage performance of "Ticket To The Moon", a song from the TIME album which is HUGE in Russia, like Hey Jude or something. We did three takes with young contestant Alexi joining in. Don't know if it helped him with voters. Hope so. Nice kid. Apparently the audience is about 40 million. That may be why we're probably heading back to Russia in the Fall.

Bonus: my TV makeup was applied by a production coordinator for the show, none other than Gorbachev's granddaughter. Nice, huh?

*****

I meant to get to Denmark and the UK in this issue...but I'm at a public internet cafe in London...and time's running out on this computer. I'll finish up in a day or two. I KNOW you simply can't wait.

Thanks, chroniclers.

Yours in rock. P. Hux