STOCKHOLM, AND MANDO DIAO

So Vern and I have packed it up again, and headed to Stockholm, Sweden to once and for all finish filming the documentary that was started 3 summers ago when I, the humble Mando Diao photographer/art director, was commissioned with the task of filming a "making of" album documentary.  The album documentary quickly turned into something much bigger as the album hit number 1 across Europe, and then finally, took the band all the way to MTV unplugged.  As it happens, MTV in Europe plays music videos, and has a thing called MTV unplugged.  Strangely it's not just girls without jobs, making out with each other in hot tubs, with douche bag white trash onlookers.  MTV, in Europe, as it was in America, is an honor to perform, and can quickly have a profound affect on an artists career.  We were brought here to document this unplugged concert, and the lead up to what will become the high point of our documentary, and perhaps the high point of Mando Diao's career.  Slated to appear are Ray Davies, of the Kinks, and Juliette Lewis, of... well, Juliette Lewis.   Here is a couple snap shots of the band from some of the documentary scenes.  This film has turned into something very special.  I will post some notes on this shortly, once the ideas are sorted out in my head.

Christmas Art Show

Merry Christmas Diane, I am sending you this on Christmas morning because it's the first chance I've had to sit down with a little free time. It's been in insanely productive month. I made a new Mando Diao video for their winter single, "Nothing Without You". This was a break through for me, I've been directing videos for a while now, but this is the first one that I did everything on, shot it, directed, produced, edited. Total pain in the ass. The catch was, they had no time to shoot, so I had to use existing footage from the Documentary Vern and I are making and force it to work. Totally silly request, but have a look at www.vimeo.com/mattwignall and check out that Nothing Without You video. Pretty sweet. I never want to edit again.

Next, I spent a week in Costa Rica relaxing, and preparing a little art for my friends restaurant, www.maryscostarica.com, I also filmed a how to video for my wife's website www.rawjudita.com, on how to make a jungle smoothie. Coconut water, whatever is growing, and a blender. Delicious and healthy. I'll send you that little video soon. It is funny.

After Costa Rica, I dove into 10 days at my studio of working on the Water Wells for Africa winter exhibit. This was to be the best time of my artistic life, working in my new 4th street Long Beach space, making whatever I want. It went great for a few days, then I got food poisoning and my boy Neil Harrison had to put together all my wood hanging mounts while I barfed my brains out. I finished the show just in time, got it hung up, spent 2 days filming a new video for Sherwood which I am directing, and now it's Christmas and no one is calling me any more, and I don't want to see anyone, unless they are bringing me desert. Here are a couple pictures from the show, I am putting a full gallery on my main website. I'm sorry you could not go Diane, maybe next time. Enjoy the pictures though, it sure looked good, I was so happy.

Merry Christmas.

BERLIN, APRIL 09

BIRTH

I like to think my birthday is special. Herein lies my dilemma, I've been called to Berlin by Mando Diao, on the week of my birthday. A week where I would rather do anything other than take an 11 hour plane flight. I hate flying, I hate flying more than Mr.T from the A team. I carry a case full of mostly legal drugs in and around my travel gear at all times, just so I can have back up when facing down an angry and bitter 11 hour flight. But When Mando Diao calls, I, much like Batman when he sees the bat projected into the sky, must take my camera and fly to Europe, birthday be damned. On this particular jaunt, I am going mostly to film for the ongoing docmentary/art film that I am directing along with my co-director and friend, Vern Moen. On this particular trip, I would be on my own. Vern was trapped in reality TV land trying to get the perfect shot of a shirtless fireman, and getting paid well for it I might add, so I packed up my film and moving camera, and my trustworthy assistant Karl Drehsen, and we headed to Deutchland.


Mando Diao playing to a sold out crowd in Cologne Germany in front of my massive photograph of Baltic cranes.


ASSIMILATION

I get sick just about every time I fly more than 6 hours so I generally arrive a day or two before my jobs. My assistant Karl is German, he has not visited the motherland in years so we flew into Frankfurt and took a train to Cologne a day before the band would arrive. The good people of Universal Germany arranged a swanky hotel, and we checked in and began the hunt for food. I love to hunt for food on the internet. I have the hunter gatherer instinct, and locating a good restaurant is what I live for. I decided, after some considerable hunting, on a place called Green Card, the key here is searching words like vibey and arty restaurant. I'm always looking for a place like Moto or Marlo and Sons in Brooklyn, so the place Green Card fit the bill. We arrived after considerable work and damn if the place was not closed. They apparently keep whatever the hell hours they want to keep, and are entirely bohemian. The owner was there and though it was not going to open this night, he chatted us up with perfect english, gave us free glasses of champaigne, and booked us at another restaurant where he explained, if we were willing, the waiter would take us where we needed to go, in culinary terms. We were sad to leave his restaurant as the vibe is spot on, fantastic. The place I wish to be eating my food. The restaurant we hit was great, we ate well and for the life of me I cannot remember its name. We headed back to our hotel, passed out, and promptly woke up at 3 am, took Ambien, and passed out til at least 9am. We put ourselves together, grabbed all my camera gear, and went to the venue to meet Mando Diao.

Greencard

Neue Maastrichter Str. 2
50672 Köln, Germany

0221 5893725‎

THE GRIND



Diane, let me tell you in advance that Cologne and Berlin went without a hitch. We met up with the band and their tour buses at around noon. We said our hello's, and I proceeded to start filming while Karl kept everything in order. The guys were all exhausted after weeks of touring. Bjorn had a cold which I am sure he passed on to me. I was on double duty, photographing and running an HVX digital movie camera. I was still exhausted from the flight, and the jet lag, but I just spent the whole next two days on auto pilot getting it done, shooting at the frantic pace of 12 hours a day. I don't think many people realize how hard bigger bands work. The concert is the least of it, that is what they sign up for. The reality is that before and after each concert there is any number of interviews, photo ops, appearances, meetings, and exhausting impossibilities. Being that I have been commissioned with the task of directing their film, and photographic documentation, I am included in every bit of this chaos, except I have two large cameras hanging from me at all times. Two days of this and my back is destroyed, but auto pilot is a beautiful thing. I have codeine pills from Costa Rica, if the pain gets bad I take them, and I forget, and I shoot. This is the grind, but the manual labor is almost nothing compared to the pressure of making non stop compelling images. My brain works until it too is on auto pilot, and I cannot understand Germans, but I think I like them more than not.


An innovative perch above the back of the stage in Cologne shot by my assistant Karl Drehsen.



Mando Diao dance off.

At night after the shows and interviews, the band has to unwind somewhere. This almost makes no sense to me as my only instinct is to go to sleep, but they need some kind of personal time and this would be it. They drink some beers, and Christian, their road assistant and DJ, spins some tunes. We end up at some really cool places and tonight it was stark and vibey little concrete bar that seems to have been in this dark alley since WWII. Everyone dances, including me, and especially Karl who even stays behind when me and drummer Samuel head back to the bus at 3:30am. They have this crazy Scottish band opening for them and at the bar, where 30 people or so dance and have a great time, he grabs a bottle and attempts to attack someone, presumably because he is drunk and Scottish. He asks if we have his back, indeed we do, to the extent that we grab him and drag him outside. Karl partied until until the bitter end and even watched the Michael Jackson tour video circa 1984 on the bus until 8am. He quicly began riding the line between useful and useless. At the end of the day, I just need someone to carry my gear and check into the hotel so he may as well be my guardian angel to that end.


BERLIN

Berlin is just so Berlin. Do you know what I mean? Karl noted at one point, that as you walk around the massive buildings, and epic streets, you get the feeling that the people who built these things could take over the world. It is stupefying in its grandeur almost like no where else I have been in Europe. I know that Mando Diao feel especially proud to be selling out Columbia hall in this fine city.




Now so many things have happened so quickly, that I will try to recap the best I can.

-We arrived in Berlin after driving all night and half sleeping in the bunks of the bus where as I have already noted, everyone watched Michael Jackson until 8am.

-Next, everyone scatters to find food and personal space, the road crew begins it daily task of unloading cargo trucks full of metal cases containing other cases full of precious audio gear and instruments.

-The band does a dozen interviews and signs everything from a guitar to a boob.

-The back stage begins to fill up with record company types, the drunk Scottish band, caterers and strange stragglers who do not belong there at all but sort of get lost in the fray.

-Mando Diao performs one hell of a concert that I film like a son-of-a-bitch. I am looking for clips, 3 seconds of time to fit in with the narrative, moments that capture the intensity of what they experience from a perspective no one has seen. I am on codeine now and exhausted. I still have jet lag but there is an energy that makes it all fun. No one loves to perform like this band and it is totally evident and I am in my element in as much as there is an element for me outside of a place like Costa Rica.



-After the concert the very supportive people of Universal Germany have arranged these vintage plastic DDR cars to take the band to a club where they will be mostly surprised by a informal and friendly gold record presentation.



-Karl can't get into the gold record ceremony as it is at some swanky pretentious club where they didn't even want to let me in which made for delightful film footage as they tried to put their hand over the camera lens only making my film more exciting. Karl was cool with it though as he had just met his internet girlfriend of 6 months, a Lithuanian girl who was pleasant to be around. She flew out for our two days off. That is another story.



-I am now reeling from 3 days of codeine and Ambien and jet lag. It must be 3am, I stumble back to my bed at my hotel and pass out. I do not leave my bed until 2pm. I do not leave my room until dinner time. I want to go home. I leave for Costa Rica in 4 days. I need to be on auto pilot if I am going to get home ok. I think I have Bjorns cold.

Over and out.

WIGNALL BEATS FEET IN THE MOTHERLAND - EUROPE 07

PART 1
Featuring MANDO DIAO , COLD WAR KIDS and DIVISION OF LAURALEE


DAY 1 IN ROUTE

I'm stuck in a pub in route to staying at a friend Nate Rose's place. He's a friend of a friend who I've met a few times. He recently got some kind of American stock related gig in London so he works screwy hours. Someone was supposed to meet me at his flat in Notting Hill and let me in but of course my flight, the tube, and everything else was running late. I arrived 2 hours late to a locked door so I had to drag all my crap to a pub and wait 3 hours until 10:30pm when Nate gets home. Tomorrow I have to wake up early and get to another plane and train and continue on to Sweden. There are no two ways about it, flying to Europe from LA is a nightmare. I think I barfed on the plane but it could have been a dream. I was all hopped up on Ambien which is not touted to cause barfing at all.

Days 2 and 3 were spent traveling. Photography by its essential design, is a craft which requires a crap load of gear. I have always fought this. I am a 1 pack traveler. I need very little to survive. I embrace the land and the train and the air… and am tied to 2 large bags of camera gear. I now require a large space for me and my inanimate entourage to spread out, not be crushed, and have electricity consumption all around. I have become terrified of the worlds bag screeners, and angry at digital everything. Can someone tell me that it is ok to chuck all this stuff and buy a nice, compact German Leica, 50 rolls of film, and a hand bag much like a non-descript girls purse, but mine would be a man purse full of creative possibility and grainy analog goodness.


self portrait in Swedish kitchen.

SWEDEN

So I’ve got a lot of gear, and each piece does something useful and unique. With this gear and a sore shoulder I am forking over flight overage charges across Europe, 12 kilos at 50 bucks and 2 hours from London and I’m in Sweden. My friend Fredrik, of Flagstone Management, met me at the airport already on his way north to our final destination of Borlange where I was to shoot Swedish rock and roll outfit Mando Diao.


I now know that Sweden is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. We drove for 2 hours North and I eventually figured out I was the farthest North I had ever been, at least as far as Alaska, up by the arctic circle, cold and far away. The whole landscape was filled with the best looking birch trees I had ever seen. They grow in groups like black bamboo surrounded by pines and other vaguely familiar distant relatives to my home town trees. I am coming here to lend my talents for which I have been thanked many times, but I have found myself equally as grateful to this band at being able to experience this country from the inside, face pressed to the window, with the excitement of a child passing McDonald's.

We arrived at our destination, a middle priced hotel called Scandic that I guess is indicative of what mid grade hotels in Sweden are like...a hell of a lot better than American hotels. I would say comfortable but that hardly begins to define the timeless Scandinavian tradition of classy and elegant functional furniture that has lead to this moment where this wide eyed and tired American has figured out that Swedes are better than us at furniture, architecture and design. That night we ate reindeer in the restaurant at the hotel. All through dinner I was distracted by my chair. I have never sat in a more comfortable restaurant chair. They make coffee better than us too.


Mando Diao plays to the hometown crowd.

DAY 5 BORLANGE

My first day waking up in Sweden I am the most happy I have been in a while. I am in the nicest, most effortlessly stylish room I have ever slept in. Hard wood floors, birch twin beds up off the ground without ridiculous bed skirts that are so common in America, a fluffy comforter, and a bathroom with heated floors and one of those showers with no doors. To the average American I am describing the honeymoon sweet at the swankiest hotel in LA but this is just an average room. I think I could live in this room. I am slightly annoyed that I have missed breakfast. Fortunately, better coffee than any American coffee is available everywhere at any hour, it is better than American coffee at home. Because it is so much better than American coffee, I've just had this idea that if I appeal to America's ass kicking ego by making them look bad compared to swedes, maybe they will step it up with the coffee. Unify with me here, we can live in a better world. There can be a better tomorrow. Coffee does not have to taste like it run off the wardens boot.

On day 1 in Borlange, I have photographed Mando Diao for whom I have been shooting an on going series of themed portraits. Today was the most elaborate yet, although there was one where my brother and I had Gustav hanging out of the tree looking like a Croatian mercenary. That took a fair amount of effort. I really am not to be showing these in public yet, especially on the internet, but I may throw a little thumbnail on here just to prove that I am not lying. I never lie.


above, my coffee on a Swedish table, Mando Diao in traditional Swedish dress and a common Swedish toilet, the toilet is a 2 flush model for half or full flush loosely similar to the un released DUOJET 2000 which I invented about 8 years ago. the main difference being the DUOJET has a gear/tank shifter instead of a button. Aftermarket shifter tops would be sold including a dice and an 8 ball.

DAY 8 OR SOMETHING CLOSE TO THAT

Another nice turn of events landed me in Gothenburg were I stayed with the "Swedish Hammer" Carl Blom. He is the lawyer and manager to Mando Diao. I call him this because every story I hear about him involves the Hives or Mando Diao getting out their record contracts, and then receiving lots of money and creative freedom. I have resolved to always stay on his good side. He has the most beautiful, text book Swedish daughters I have ever seen, and a house that is sort of a who's who of Swedish interior design. I really enjoy crashing at peoples houses wherever I go and getting a peek into their every day life. Unfortunately Gothenburg was not all sitting around doing nothing which I am starting to miss. I was brought here to photograph Division of Laura Lee, a viby art punk band who lives in Gothenburg and is working on a new record. The singer and I were both Mike Watt fans and as such got along famously and I'd reckon they got the best pictures they've ever seen.



DAY 9(ish) Today I leave Sweden after a little more than a week. I had a very nice walking tour of Stockholm with Anika and Samuel who were kind enough to play tour guide on more than one occasion. We believe Anika was named after Pipi Longstockings best friend. Having not even heard of Pipi since the late 70’s, I was amazed that in Sweden, Pipi fever is alive and well. I had hoped for a little Dolf Lundgren fever, being that I really enjoy cultural stereotypes like large short short wearing blonde haired muscle men eating Swedish pancakes and meat balls and hanging out with their androgynous woman friends who are called Greta and are experts in Swedish massage. Not surprisingly the guys in Mando Diao have never heard of Swedish massage and are not sure if there are Swedish pancakes either. There are however, boat loads of Lingon Berries, top notch coffee, and some kind of near relative to meat loaf named after some rich guy named Wallenvarger. So I leave Sweden moments from now on a train over a bridge to Copenhagen Denmark with all my heavy photo gear in tow and what will likely be thought of as the future of music photography, and the satisfaction that McDonald's and vallenvarger are making Swedes every bit as fat as Americans. Tubby kids abound. Take that Sweden. I have found a new and elegant way to photograph live music. I do not know where I have found this vision other than to say, 20 years of ignoring mainstream photography and art has begun to culminate into something striking and beautiful. I have been dreaming about photographs, not in general, but photographs I will take tomorrow, and then I take them. It sounds crazy but they are like pre cognitions or something. I intend to change the way the world looks at music photographs, I am learning to demand more of myself. We must demand more from ourselves and our heroes. A final note on the band called Mando Diao. They have just made, I think, one of the great records of today, mark my words. I created the center fold for this recording, and both are worthy of the other. You will see.


a Mando Diao commemorative design for having gone gold in Germany, and the crowd at their hometown show in Borlange, I am not permitted to release other images digitally at this time by mutual agreements and secrets best kept for grander destinies.


PART II
ANARCHY IN THE UK INDEED!



MATT & MATT VS. PORTUGAL PIGLIANO AND THE COWARDS OF BELMONT SHORE We left Dublin after 24 hours of literal traveling insanity. I met the Cold War Kids at their London hotel at 10 at night when this all started. Maust, Beeman and I went to a pub and had crappy food that we kept saying was surprisingly good, mostly on account of the price. We had to wake up at 4 am to fly to Edinburgh Scotland for T in the Park music festival. This was a special kind of drag as I had just come from 9 days of not getting enough sleep with Mando Diao in Sweden. We drove in BMW's with suit wearing drivers to Gatwick airport which seems as far as France especially at 4:30am. We got to the gig after a flight on Easyjet which we now refer to as cheesy jet, idiot jet and any other number of names that seemed more clever at the moment, if you've flown them you'd understand. Scotland was rainy, and the band lost their room to someone called Razorlight who had a larger entourage than us ( I being the only one in the CWK entourage). I've learned that these UK festivals largely consist of mud, and people living in it. The bands for the most part live in their buses only exiting onto a metal ramp where they are whisked onto stage. The Cold War Kids are not big enough for a bus as they are still a pretty ma and pa organization, they have something like a bus, and while not living in squalor, they sure don't live like the people called Razorlight. So we spent the day in Scotland looking for places to lay down and get free food both of which were graciously available in the main hospitality tent. There was little contact with mud, and the gig went famously, right after Sinead O'conner in fact, who we all agreed is looking very hobbit like these days. That evening, having already been at Gatwick and Edinburgh airports, we headed back to Edinburgh in our jalopy, which I have failed to yet mention, and boarded our 2nd jet for the day to Dublin where we would basically repeat the aforementioned scenario. Our jalopy, driven by our rough and tumble British driver was acquired through the company Blah Blah Blah. They are the cheapest way to travel as a band in the UK. The wheels are vintage Mercedes plumbing truck or some such work vehicle, and the trailer was a horse or donkey trailer with a tarp tied over the open top, that had a very suggestive female printed around 6 feet high on the back of it. The driver was cool and I spent most of the time in the jalopy sitting next to him in the front seat as I tend to get car sick any where else. I asked a lot of questions about the UK, as I had never been. The boys sat in the back on the wrap around leopard skin couch which was either based on, or the inspiration for, a leopard print tattoo on the drivers forearm. I loved the whole thing as I like people with character and this whole scene was just dripping with it.




Outside of eating late at some variety restaurant in Dublin where an Asian lady that ran the place eyed us with hate and scorn as we danced to gangsta rap music being played unnecessarily loud, we had a largely uneventful time, I acquired some unnamed quota of good photos of the band and it was off to London in morning where we would begin to move our different ways. Matt Maust and I would stay in London with our friend, financial tycoon Nate Rose, and the rest of the band would head to Portugal to visit Matt Aveiro's relatives on an island where they eat coconuts and have no or very few cars. This is where things began to get exciting.

Getting onto Cheesy Jet is problematic if you have more than a fanny bag. We all had a lot of crap, especially me with all my photo gear, at check in we had to combine, rearrange and condense to save money and not have to check in said photo gear. The color photo of "dangerous materials" are the items that for whatever reason did not make it into the collective check in bags of Maust and myself. A lighter, a knife, and various containers containing a who's who of dangerous substances hidden within hair re-growth shampoo and conditioner bottles that are way to big to fit in the plastic bags. I speak for Matt and myself when I say sneaking this through Dublin's bag screening was a thrill the likes we rarely see. We figured out over the course of many flights, that by buttoning or zipping up a jacket, it becomes a shirt in the eyes of the screeners. It can't be a heavy jacket, you'll get popped every time for that, but a wind breaker, a blazer, buttoned, no problem, walk on through, unbuttoned, you have to strip down, red flags galore. We had an apple which was to be our diversion, and pockets riddled with our precious booty. I held the apple aloft and loudly asked, can I bring this through the beeping arches? Everyone is now focused on the apple, me and Maust walked quickly through, David Blaine and Chris Angel would have been proud, in relative terms we just made the statue of liberty disapear. Sadly our brand of magical diversion was so flawlessly executed that only we could revel in its brightly burning glory. Every instinct I had was to turn around and say ha! We have just infiltrated your shoddy system, we know the secret, that it is all a show, all wound up in political correctness and self importance and continuing under estimations of our clever foes. The crowd at the screening area would have been in awe, we would have been the object of envy and secret flatteries. I looked down, swallowed my pride and clutched my precious survival lighter and knife. Matt had his herbal hair re growth shampoo, and we knew we were more than just men lost among the oceans of human beings traveling the world. Anarchy in the UK indeed!



At the airport that day we all hugged and said our good byes. I have surfed for most of my life though I try to keep it a secret, being an artist and having an alter ego called Matt Death in tow, it looks pretty bad to my public to be hanging out in flowered shorts getting a tan and engaging in happy sunny beach activities (ironically I have little to no public to worry about and any public I have is purely delusional). For this and other reasons I was and am insanely jealous of Matt A (Portugal Pigliano), Nathan, Johnny and Beeman. Portugal is fabled to have some of the best surfing in Europe and they were to be on some island with the same name as a crumby town in the central valley of California. I knew they were going to Portugal but they kept saying they were going to Madera I think, and I kept wondering why they were so excited to go to that crap hole not realising it was the islands name. Having that all cleared up, Maust and I decided to stay in London as he needed a break from travelling and I was on my way to Africa to photograph the installation of charitably funded water wells in remote villages. After 2 weeks of European work and travel, sitting around financial tycoon Nate Rose's Notting Hill flat was sounding pretty grand. RIGHT-ON BRIGHTON JULY 10 Maust had this picture of him and Nate in front of the burned down peir in Brighton, and based on this feature I suggested we go out there and do some proper photography. Maust is great at bumming around whatever city he is in and usually is wandering aimlessly looking at stuff and doing whatever he does. We decided that Brighton would be a great day trip and we would feel like we were on vacation, and would live large, and would have a far better time than our brothers eating coconuts on the island in Portugal. On the train, we repeatedly discussed how Nick Cave lives in Brighton and in our little worlds this may as well have been the queens palace we were going to see. It is funny the people and things that strike us as royalty. Nick Caves part of town, and a burned out pier fouling up everyones view. I was in heaven. Me and Maust took beautiful photos, and mentioned a handful of times how we should have had the hole band there to photograph. It really is such an amazing area. I resolved to take the best portrait of Maust that I had ever taken in my life just to stick it to the our brothers eating coconuts on the Island in Portugal. We came across a big dumb happy dog and a ferris wheel and it was all very sad in a happy and nostalgic kind of way. That kind of sums up Brighton in my thinking.



We met a guy with a handle bar mustache from the Rumble Strips, he was touted as one of the nicest people Maust had met in Europe and after he bought us a round of Guinness and poorly executed Irish Coffee I was in agreement. Over a pint he told us the story of two Welsh men, who with a GPS tracking system and months of gear, boarded a pink peddle boat and peddled their way to America. When they arrived some months later, with no clothing in tact and full beards, they were arrested and deported. He said this kind of behavior is to be expected from the Welsh. I think I like the Welsh.

We got back to London and did more sitting around in financial tycoon Nate Rose's flat. We occupied ourselves for hours with his stupid internet connection and the 40 some odd wireless connection signals that were every last one password protected. Not very sharing the Brits. I was supposed to photograph this band the Ettes who I very much like. They have a fabulous girl drummer with big hair and dark eyes, a cute and friendly girl singer, and a strapping, ascot wearing bass playing young man who may or may not be involved with the singer. I photographed them once before and it was great and we hung out and talked about Strangers With Candy, a very funny show which is obscure enough to create an immediate bond between people in the know. We were to meet at the millennium bridge, which I find overstated, and the big communist looking museum. I was tired from 3 weeks of photos, me and Matt wanted to see a movie, and they were 45 minutes late so we split. I couldn't get a phone to work right anywhere in Europe so we couldn't call, and I was feeling more self important than usual in regard to the respect of my time. With a lot of travel behind me and what would become a African travel cliche of self realization and epiphany to come, it was a welcome break to my sometimes crazy life behind the camera. I left my cameras at financial tycoon Nate Rose's and Maust and I went to see Elvis Perkins and his goons. They put on a fine show and it was nice to see some faces from our side of the pond. The next day Maust carried my bag for me to the train station, listened to me bitch about petty problems and complaints about my failed music career, and saw me off to Heathrow Airport where my 2 weeks in Africa would begin. I never found out what happened to Portugal Pigliano and the Cowards of Belmont shore.