DENMARK
What you’d expect from a watery place beside the sea: low clouds, chill autumn winds, a spit of rain from nowhere, clouds hiding behind parapets and mermaids and windmills and light filled cafes. Fun to fall in line in the bike lane in love with all the dapper Danes whizzing from Paper Island to King Christien’s castle with all those dopey portraits of the hero king in preposterous poses. And that nose!!!!
And yet he was wise and brave and clearly loved his people. There is no cookie cutter- only effort.
There’s a small forest on Paper Island tagged with wishes from around the world. Yoko Ono sponsored it and participants wrote what they hoped for on a tag with a little string attached for fastening to tree limbs. The personal inscriptions hung like leaves from the tiny alders outside the Paper Island food court and fluttered in the wind. Some were rain damaged but the effect was not dampened. (Quickly, about the food court: it will sadly be vacated December 12th to be razed then sleekly updated. The people should demand it be preserved! The old hangar or warehouse or whatever it is, grew as fungus on a tree trunk a motley colony of food booths inscribed with small is beautiful owner/operator spirit. One guy selling small batch beer out of a hand hewn storefront yakked at Kat and me about building a raft and sailing down the Mississippi over a period of six months. Thirsty people cued behind us but he rambled on with his story untroubled by the rigors of commerce. But about the Yoko Ono notes to the universe: inspiring to read epigrams summoning goodwill for peace, faith in the power of love, fellowship with humanity, and oneness with the planet. Not all is rotten in Denmark after all.
Now spread the word on the wind and the rain that falls on all flawed heads. Tell ‘em peace ate you every inch.
Wednesday when we checked into Hotel Denmark I spied a jazz poster in the lobby advertising a trio. An international trio. There was as short bio for each member. The drummer was named Victor Jones. I spotted him, sport coat off, tuning his drums in the small room off the hotel lobby which was a mini (if you could believe it) version of Demitiou’s in Seattle: just a few seats and booths- boutiquey? maybe- but quaint and slightly eccentric, as a jazz club should be. He walked into hotel reception where I was sipping a free happy hour wine. He asked for one too- white wine- which seemed weird to me. I was just sitting and he was just sipping and so I asked “Are you playing tonight?”. I already knew. He kinda looked down his nose and answered blasé as a jazzer when not drumming. In time I threw in some jazzy bon-a-fides from the Icons Among Us films I directed and he took note. Kat joined me and she’s good at dragging stories out of people and she kept priming him and he loosened leaning back again stretching and crossing his long legs. He was from Newark, lived in Copenhagen, last lived in NYC, married three times, his true love marriage to a sane Danish girl we soon met, Anne. She was the practical one and they spread their love around the room like a a rose and turpentine perfume. Turns out he liked us and we made a plan to crash his late night gig the next night- a gig different from the Hotel gig. See, he got hired to drum for “The Stones Project”- the love child of mastermind sax player, Tim Ries, who played sax with the Stones alongside Karl Denson, band leader of Tiny Universe, and Greyboy Allstars. The idea behind the project was to jazz up Stones tunes and take ‘em to the people. In clumsy hands this could have been corny but Ries lives in real time committed to the gods of spontaneous ideation in progress we call jazz. Following form with content he picks up players on the fly wherever he plays. Usually plays in cities where Stones play the day after shows and sometimes the day after the day after. In Copenhagen they played three nights at the grand old museum across from the slick Denmark Hotel. The show started late, after the trio, Victor included, finished at the Hotel. The museum gig was the hottest ticket in town- no shit. We first heard about it at the Stones show from a couple who told us their relationship story in a nutshell. He was on the run from Boston and sailing around the globe looking for a third chance at life and she was grieving for a failed marriage when they met on a romantic island in the Mediterranean and fell for love. Or was it the Azores? Anway they told Kat and I about the museum gig and the scramble for tickets. At the time, of course, everyone thought the Stones might show up and get jiggy with the claves hidden in their hooks. And of course they didn’t- though Victor thought Charlie Watts would show right up to showtime. But that’s ahead…
Next night, when we’d talked about seeing Victor and his trio and maybe the Stones Project afterward, I was loopy tired. Jet lag, the enervation and emotional discoveries the epiphanies and pratfalls of travel all take their toll. It’s hard to sleep. It’s high life and you sometimes sleepwalk through with wonder, wondering if a nap might play better. Sometimes you do too without even knowing it- nap. I nappped a bit watching Victor and his Danish pianist and excellent French bassist (a madman who contorted his face while playing frantically up the screechy short end of his strings. Wow, could he hold a crowd). They played with spirit but I was pooped and dreamt my way through. I sat in back with Kat so Victor couldn’t seen us and at the end when he made his way through the crowd he came over and gave me a big handshake and said, “My cousin!”. He was totally warm and absolutely cool. Then he pulled me in and said, “I’m going to freshen up for 7 minutes. Meet me right here. I’ll bring up a pair of cymbals and you can carry them in. I checked this all out last night…”. In 7 minutes he was incredibly there. Three minutes later he waved aside the gatekeepers at the museum entrance, brushing an arm of introduction at me and Kat, his other arm hooked through his tux jacket slung insouciantly over his shoulder. He said “These guys are with me…”, never stopping never looking back. He was regal and funny and the gatekeepers knew the con and basked in it. We bought three beers and walked through the green room nodding to everyone, including Tim Ries, who smiled as he would all night as the most gracious groovester who ever grooved. He and the band including joyous Victor and the jazzy Stones tunes swung and cried and broke free of the originals with sometimes subtle sometimes startling vitality and rattling velocity. But that is another story. I wanted to tell you about Victor
who loved life and drummed emphatically and smuggled us through customs because we cared about art and cared about him and each agreed to play the paradiddle strangers play- when open hearted- together differently.