Day 30: Barcelona
Nau mai
Yesterday we played at Razzmatazz in Barcelona.
Shower Door Daily checks in today from Castillon-du-Gard, in southern France. Simplicity was the name of the game with this design, a single fixed pane that divided the wet zone from the dry. I liked that the access was easy and there was no step to trip on. I could just stroll in if I wanted. The ceiling-mounted rainfall shower head meant that all any splashing or spray generated by user movement stayed safely in the closed end of the wet zone. As a side note, this was a slick tiling job - a generous amount of fall towards the floor drain meant that there was no water making its way to unwanted areas.
“⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”
Breakfast came in a bag from the village boulangerie. As we cruised through down the narrow country lanes on our way to the highway I chewed on a croissant and admired the neat rows of olive trees in their stone walled fields.
One of the great things about staying in the town of Castillon-du-Gard is that it happens to be right next to a really good bridge called the Pont du Gard. This structure is a masterpiece of engineering, a 300m long, 50m high stone aqueduct that has stood across the river Gardon since the 1st Century AD. This thing was colossal when you got up close, enormous blocks of red limestone as big as a coffin, cut precisely, and somehow transported and lifted into place to create these towering arches. It felt satisfying to use bullet points yesterday so I might keep doing it; it also feels like this would be a good way to convey a few bridge facts. From the deft pen of Jonathan Pearce here are the three best facts about the Pont du Gard.
The Pont Du Gard is both inefficient from an engineering standpoint, and a marvel of engineering precision. The aqueduct’s stacked arches use far more stone than a cement-reinforced column design would, yet the engineers achieved the necessary, astonishingly precise length-wise fall of 2.5cm in 456m - a gradient of 1 in 18,241.
The water-bearing channel of the Pont Du Gard was painted with olive oil, then covered with maltha; a mixture of slaked lime, pork grease and the viscous juice of unripe figs; this typical Roman formulation was the Belzona 3131 of its time.
Inscriptions have been found on many of the stone blocks, such as the terrifying “fronte sinistra”. Translated as “the devil’s fountain”, it may be a warning from an enslaved soothsayer, or possibly it means “front left”. We can never know which.
The drive to Barcelona was not unpleasant, a few hours of smooth dual-carriageways that took us gently southwest, occasionally getting close enough to the coast to catch a glimpse of the water. It was sunny, and everyone was in good spirits, especially after receiving the gift of a good night’s sleep.
Jonathan takes a catch while waiting for the van to be fueled up.
We arrived in this great Catalan city to find our venue situated in a quiet neighbourhood on the eastern side of town. Dateline arrived a few minutes after us after an hours long battle with a parking building, a battle that they had won but a Pyrrhic victory in the scope of things. From the minimal amount of research I have conducted I can tell you that Razzmatazz self-identifies as a rollicking nightclub - “Beer & whiskey are served in this cavernous, rollicking nightclub that has concerts & DJ sets”. This was confirmed when we loaded in, rolling our gear out of the elevator on the third floor into a long, dark room that was as cavernous as they come. The Estrella signs on the wall and the bottles of spirits lined up ready for service told us all we needed to know.
The cavernousness of this room turned out to be quite a hindrance once we fired up the PA system. As I played a low note on my Ibanez Blazer my body was pulverised by the subwoofers under the stage. Fifteen metres away at the sound desk I saw Gabe blur in my vision as the vibrations hit. In those kind of soundchecks you just do what you can and know that it will feel different with a room full of people. We trusted in Gabe, and in the rollickingness of this venue to get us through the evening.
Jon inspects his pickup gluing job on the new Martin 00-15 as it is readied for service.
The room was about half full when we began playing a few hours later. It would seem that Barcelona is a late town; the room had been nearly empty when Dateline kicked off at 8pm and people had gradually dribbled while they played. I heard afterwards that the mix sounded great from in the audience but it felt tough up on stage for us and I silently cursed all the hard reflective surfaces that this room contained. It is hard to get annoyed when you are having such a great time playing music with your friends though. Despite this being The Beths’ first headline show in Barcelona since 2018 we had a great crowd show up that partied and sang along to the songs.
We had a disco loadout afterwards. I guess the club Razzmatazz wanted to rollick at a level we couldn’t provide, and so we had an hour to clear out of the building. It was a good excuse to knock out a couple of hundred kms of the journey to Madrid so at 11:30pm we said goodbye to Barcelona and began our journey west.