Search - Dan Bern :: World Cup: A Sort of Travel Diary (book and CD)

In the past decade, few songwriters have proven as prolific, and at such a phenomenally high consistency of quality, as Dan Bern. Here we have the opportunity to glimpse into his method and madness, as every witticism and whim unfolds, as both the sour and sublime moods hit, and as he ultimately undergoes the process of birthing and molding all those amazing songs. That, at its core, is what World Cup provides. World Cup is a travelogue, "A Sort of Travel Diary" that follows our intrepid guide, armed with a well-traveled acoustic guitar, a notebook, and strumming partner Slim Nickel, on a short two-man European trek?through London and Spain, Italy, Switzerland, France, and The Netherlands?in support of the previous year's "New American Language" CD. The book is ostensibly about international soccer, World Cup fever having overtaken the continent at the time, as well as the delights and frustrations of touring. But more fascinatingly, it is a journey through the mind and imagination of one of rock & roll's preeminent creative artists. Through bits of lyrics, offhanded jottings, flash aphorisms, off-the-cuff sketches, and snatches of conversations, intoxicating portraits of the artist and the summer gradually take shape. In the cracks between, we are treated to some indelible flights of fantasy: carefully wrought set pieces during which Pablo Picasso's father becomes a pigeon-sketching artist, or Dan imagines himself as a spirited old Catalan bricklayer, or Mozart stars in a stand-alone time travel story, with a walk-on role for the ghost of Hitler. Best of all, Dan treats us to five pristine new songs?intimate, acoustic, troubadour tunes, simply recorded and decidedly somber, but in the romantic, mooning, starry-eyed mold of mythic old Europe.