sax and sunshine

2002-10-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

There is no one here anymore
My new blog is called close your eyes. I hope it loads faster than this page.

2002-10-08T05:07:00.000-07:00

A sign of life
I am about to move to antville. Please stay tuned. Details and link later.

2002-09-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

Awesome cover page of Libération today
A projection.

2002-09-11T14:01:00.000-07:00

Most American Bands
Excerpt from a discussion on I Love Music from today, September, 11th, 2002:

The most Un-American band would probably be The Dead Kennedys, I guess. They used to be 15 years ago at least. (alex in mainhattan)
How so? They sang almost exclusively about America, and their sound is based firmly on Garage Rock and Rockabilly, American music. Jello even made a C&W record.
What you're thinking of is "anti American", which the DK's weren't, either (unless you think disapproving of Reaganomics is anti American, in which case Springsteen is anti-American, too.)
-- Daniel_Rf (daniel@cul...), September 11th, 2002

All right then Daniel, but you must admit that they are not a band you would associate with American patriotism, American consumer society and American roots music. They stood apart. I always heard their music more as punk than as c&w.
-- alex in mainhattan (alex63@big...), September 11th, 2002

"Patrotism" has become a really idiotic word after 9/11- it's now synonymous with "following your government blindly and beating everyone up who disagrees". The cynic in me would now say that this is, indeed, very American, but America also has a great history of protests and interest in social change. The DK's sang about what they thought was wrong with their country and tried to do their bit to change it. I think that's very patrotic indeed.
As for the roots music, you're right that the Dead Kennedys stuff isn't C&W (I was talking about a Biafra solo album where he went Country), but:
1- Punk's roots lie in American roots music (Sex Pistols -> The Stooges -> ? & The Mysterions -> "I'm A Man" by The Yardbirds -> "I'm A Man" by Bo Diddley -> "Mannish Boy" by Muddy Waters)
2- The DK's brand of Punk was a lot more brutal and less melodic than the classic UK Punk bands.
The fact that the other members of the band have now sued Jello because he didn't want "Holidays In Cambodia" used in a Levi's ad also places them smack dab in American consumer society, but really, does one have to be a symbol for that to be "Most American"? I think you're selling your country short.
-- Daniel_Rf (daniel@cul...), September 11th, 2002
...
All right then Daniel, but you must admit that they are not a band you would associate with American patriotism, American consumer society and American roots music. They stood apart.
Bush's (and Reagan's) versions of American patriotism & consumer society -which I think are the versions that you're saying the Dead Kennedys are in opposition to- are not the only versions. Daniel's point is excellent about reading what "patriotism" means today.
-- lyra (lyra63@spe...), September 11th, 2002

I think you're selling your country short.
???
I am German, so this doesn't really apply.
I am using the word American in a very lazy way. It is more the image America gives to the outside world I was thinking of.
But I 100% agree, Daniel, that this is only a part of America and that there is a tradition of protest, free speech and social movement. Unfortunately it doesn't show too much nowadays. Especially for the Europeans. Maybe we are a little blind on one eye concerning America.
-- alex in mainhattan (alex63@big...), September 11th, 2002
...
I am German, so this doesn't really apply.
You are?? So am I (albeit living in Portugal)! Sorry, I misread your user name for "Alex in Manhattan". Mea culpa.
I insisted on this point because 20th/21st century popular music has always represented to me everything that's good and righteous about America, and I think that it's tragic how Americans are led to believe that being proud of their country must always go hand-in-hand with a jinogiostic, right-wing nut attitude.
-- Daniel_Rf (daniel@cul...), September 11th, 2002

2 germans (one in portugal) good-naturedly arguing over who the most american band is! the ILM global village rulez!
-- Fritz Wollner

2002-09-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

Dandy Warhols
I have always liked this eclectic band from Portland. Though the singer is supposed to be an arrogant asshole on stage and their drug consumption shows in their psychedelic music. They do lots of drones, they have a certain relaxedness and coolness around them I adore. I am listening to five mp3s which were available on their site recently:
- Hells Bells: great AC/DC cover on sleeping pills, in the melodic Dandy version which uses a nice horn section this song reminds me a lot of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.
- Ohio: one of Neil Young's most popular and best songs, in a synthesizer-heavy version, with the usual detached mumbled vocals. Rather spooky.
- Bohemian Like You: grooving instrumental, weakest of the 5 tracks.
- Dub Song is a chaotic hypnotic dance track reminiscent of The Happy Mondays in their heyday. Primal Scream's Screamadelica comes to mind as well.
- Retarded: nice powerpop tune, sparkling and light, Beach Boys meet Velvet Underground.

Unfortunately only Retarded and Dub Song are still in the mp3 section of the Dandy Warhols homepage but there are eight other songs which I didn't listen to yet:
Head, One, CCR, White Gold, The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald (Gordon Lightfoot), Free For All (Ted Nugent), Kinky and Phone Call.

2002-09-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

A music quiz game I just came up with
Squeeze your nostrils with the fingers and try to hum the melody of a song through your nose. A little bit like Bob Dylan does. The people you are playing with have to guess the song. Then it is their turn. You get points if people recognise the song you have performed and also when you find out which tunes other people have interpreted (you need more than two people for this game, otherwise it is always a draw). It really is fun. Especially when done as a drinking game. I would suggest you have to drink for each point you win.

2002-09-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

Question
I ask myself more and more which is more rewarding: to listen more closely to old classic songs of which I know that they are important and meaningful for me or to check out what is going on now, to listen to the latest trends.
And the answer becomes more and more evident to me. A lot of the old songs I know and like I don't REALLY know. I have never understood the lyrics (in most cases I just didn't try), I have never tried to dig deeper. They appealed to me on a superficial level but not more (because of my laziness). Concerning new music: though I am a sucker (a terrible but succinct American word) for new sounds I feel I either have reached a saturation point or there is simply nothing exciting happening in music today anymore. The only genre of popular music where there seems to be a little something going on is electronic music. But that doesn't (and never did) bear a lot of interest to me. Purely electronic music for me is in the last consequence robot music, music which could be made by machines, non-human music. And my love for music refers to the human imprint on music. A certain intelligence and emotion which I hardly find anymore today.
But there are exceptions and I would like to write about them here. A song like Time (The Revelator), the opening track of Gilian Welch's last album with the same name. Gilian Welch's music has been described as bluegrass, a modern songwriter-oriented version of it which is nevertheless rooted a lot in the past. In this song like on most of the album there is only Welch's voice (which I like a lot) and two acoustic guitars. I won't write anything more on this tonight as words fail me for the moment. But this song (from last year) is my favourite song I have discovered this year.

I would really love someone to prove me wrong on my conclusion. Please tell me how great new music is and why!

2002-08-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Feedback would be nice
I am still there and I had planned not to write before I get a comment to my last post but as you see my plans never work. Sorry if the following seems like a little bath in self-pity but sometimes I feel like that (I made a similar post a while ago). By the way the music which fits quite well to my current mood is Down Colourful Hill by the Red House Painters.
When I started this weblog it was intended as a therapy, a daily exercise to put into words what I hear in music and what moves me in general. I also wanted to practice my English a little which I forget more and more. During my seven year stay in Luxembourg I spoke English every day but now I only read and write. After a while I gave up the discipline of daily posts, I have always hated routines, my work is full of them and I don't need too many of them in my free time. After a while some people started to read this blog and I got some feedback via e-mail and comments. I really appreciated that. Since then the aim of writing this blog has significantly changed. Now I write not only for myself anymore as my main intention was in the beginning but for others who have a similar music taste or similar thoughts. And with whom I would like to discuss, to exchange ideas. Somehow it doesn't seem to happen. I know that I will never get as many comments as not.so.soft for example (link is in the sidebar) as I don't write too much about personal, everyday stuff and I don't write well, but still I am a little depressed about the current situation.
So instead of blogging which does not seem very interactive in my case I just posted an answer to the music forum I Love Music concerning a question by Tom Ewing on "profound music". And guess what happened? Shortly after the ILM site stopped working. Is this a conspiracy or what? In any case I repost the question and my attempt of an answer here. Maybe we can discuss here, who knows?

Q: Andrew's search for profundity on ILE inspires me to ask this - tell me about some records you think are profound. It's common for people to dig at bands and songs for not being 'deep' but an actual claim of psychological or philosophical depth is much rarer - and yet surely that's what's being implied in any criticism of bands for being shallow or meaningless. (Some ILM writers - Marcello most notably, but also Anthony and I think Sterling - aren't afraid to invoke ideas of profundity and claim that the music they're talking about is meaningful, others shy away from the notion.)

A: I am very ambivalent towards the use of the word profound to describe music. The word profound in itself is rather problematic I find.
Somehow profound seems to imply meaning but something meaningful is not yet profound. Concerning music the most obvious thing which could be meaningful are the lyrics. Concise lyrics which describe universal truths or situations could be profound. Like maybe the lyrics of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Joni Mitchell. The lyrics of New Order would mostly not qualify to be profound in this sense and probably neither in the other sense mentioned in the next paragraph. But their music could well be profound.

On the other hand profundity seems to suggest something difficult to grasp, a meaning which we don't get immediately but which we think is hidden behind. Something almost mystic, rather unclear. This connotation of profound can be applied both to the lyrics and the music itself.

The first band which came to my mind when I read the word profound in your post, Tom, was already mentioned before: Joy Division. Their dark, powerful music seems to hide a secret. The same is true for their lugubrious lyrics. Of course Ian Curtis suicide adds to this.
Another band which I occasionally find profound are Godspeed YBE!. Their last double album Lift Up Your Skinny... as most their music had this apocalyptic, foreboding feel both in the music and in the few spoken word samples.

Profound and shallow are often not very far apart. The Flaming Lips have been mentioned upthread. When reading what Wayne Coyne wrote about his last two albums on his (or the record company's site, I don't remember) it gave me the impression that his music and lyrics (or the story they tell) are very well thought out. On the other hand when I recently listened to The Soft Bulletin I had the impression that this is really the most bland and empty record on earth. Grateful Dead, Yes and other progrock bands also walk on the edge of both extremes. It seems profound in the beginning but then it is just noodling, bombast and kitsch.

People have said before that their relation to certain music is profound and they hesitated to call the music itself profound. That shows that this term is problematic when used outside our direct experience.

I'd prefer to use the terms complicated or difficult instead of profound as they are more easily measurable and less subjective.

P.S. I know that my blog often loads slowly and that is another reason I plan a move.

2002-08-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

Cherchez la femme
Yesterday Neu!'s first self-titled disc from 1972 arrived in the post with some other CDs which I couldn't listen to properly as I was too much immersed into the six tracks on the Neu! album. How could I miss out on that album before? It is absolutely stunning and didn't age at all after thirty years. A propos 1972, I just saw that cos from monkey puzzle is currently listening to Giant Sand's 62 seconds guitar freakout 1972 from their last real disc Chore of Enchantment. A song I didn't get neither but probably like because of that. When checking the database with my albums I found out that I had 36 (!) records from that year. 1972 was an amazing year for music:
there was the first Big Star, Nick Drake's Pink Moon, Neil Young's Harvest, Lou Reed's first self-titled and Transformer, Genesis Foxtrot, Little Feat's Sailin' Shoes, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, Joni Mitchell's For the Roses, Oregon's Music of Another Present Era, the first Modern Lovers, which was released three years later, the first Roxy Music, Exile on Main Street, Paul Simon's self-titled, Sun Ra's Space Is the Place and Velvet Underground's Live at Max's Kansas City was released.

Back to Neu!. What I said about Autechre's version of Weissensee a couple of days ago still holds nevertheless. The original which may well be the weakest track on the album doesn't grip me as much as the cover. It is extremely slow and sounds like dark ambient. Additionally there is the beginning of a sugar-sweet melody at around 1:20 which kind of destroys the track for me. It comes back later as well. That alluded to tune reminds me of Pink Floyd but I wouldn't know which album (maybe from Dark Side of the Moon? which came out two years later). I am pretty sure that this melody comes from Michael Rother, who became quite popular in Germany later with the romantic instrumental guitar/synth album Flammende Herzen and who didn't really fit into Klaus Dinger's Neu! with his rather conventional guitar playing. What actually is missing on that track is Klaus Dinger's endless constant drumming which became Neu!'s trademark and can be heard in all its trancelike glory on the 10 minute opener Hallogallo. It has been referred to as motorik but Dinger sees it not as machine-like at all but rather as a human beat. He talks about it in the extremely enlightening interview he gave to the Swedish magazine Pop in 1998:
Instead I called it "lange Gerade" or "endlose Gerade". It's a feeling, like a picture, like driving down a long road or lane. it is essentially about life, how you have to keep moving, get on and stay in motion. (lange, endlose Gerade = long, infinite straight line)
It wasn't by chance that Dinger gave one of his rare interviews to a Swedish magazine. Apparently Neu! and the Neu! beat were inspired a lot by a love story (actually the love of his life) Klaus Dinger had with a Swedish girl called Anita which started in the summer of 1971, to whom he also sang the last song on the album Lieber Honig (dear honey, but in German we don't usually use Honig as a term of endearment). It is one of the strangest vocal deliveries in music history. I couldn't find out what he sings (impossible to understand the words by listening only, they sound like children's gibberish). There is a later version on La Düsseldorf's last album Individuellos where the words are different. Dinger's voice on the Neu! version is hoarse and extremely high at the same time. It reminds me a little of Chet Baker singing but much less accomplished, more crude if you want. I found it hardly bearable at first listen as it is rather disembodied and false in places but I am getting used to it. At the end of Lieber Honig there is the sound of a rowing boat which can also be heard on Im Glück (In Happiness) including some people talking. One of them is Anita and the song tries to retain the moment of perfect harmony and bliss Dinger experienced in that Swedish summer in 1971. The long road trips in Sweden are probably also responsible for the Neu! beat in Hallogallo and Negativland.
The second piece Sonderangebot is a sound collage with gong sounds and features the most avantgarde noises on the record.
The outstanding track of the album for me is Negativland which later gave the name to the ironic experimental media music collective and foreshadows Einstürzende Neubauten with its drill sounds and probably the whole genre of industrial music. It is the hardest rocking song on the record.
What I like about Neu! is that they were not the typical Krautrock outfit like Amon Düül with their long stoned collective jams à la Grateful Dead or Tangerine Dream with their purely electronic soundscapes. Both these bands haven't aged well whereas Neu! as the name implies did something new. Their music is the missing link between Krautrock and what was later to come. The bridge between the then and now. They integrated an almost tribal but still modern repetitive rhythm into their music which is as fascinating now than it was then. And all songs on the first Neu! album are distinctly different and each one almost spawned a new genre of pop music.
Further reading: Junkmedia on Neu! and Neu! 2. Michael Rother interview and Music for Mind & Pants ("The Shock of the Neu!") from Perfect Sound Forever. An interesting list with Julian Cope commenting on his 50 krautrock favourites and the feature The Guitarists of Krautrock.

Meta: By the way the Google search often leading to this site finally dropped to #27, Google seems quite unstable in its results after the dance, so though I intend to move away from blogger one day this probably won't happen too soon as I am much too lazy to do a new page somewhere else. Phil Ringnalda with a round-up of Blogging Ecosystems, i.e. programs which analyse the link structures in between blogs.
In the ILM thread Plug your Blog you can find enough music blogs to read for the rest of the summer.

2002-08-21T15:31:00.000-07:00

Some Google stuff
- Apparently the Google Dance is going on, that is the monthly crawl of Google. You can see this when results of identical queries on the three Google servers www, www2 and www3 are different. The new results are on www2 and www3. After about five days they appear on the Google main server www. I checked the infamous "s*x"-query for which I was #4 two months ago with the Google Dance Tool and found that my blog dropped from #16 to #23 on www2 and www3. Funny that the query for "sax", part of the new name, went up at the same time from #23 to #16. Even though I am happy about this development I would like to ask all people (and there are still 20-30 or even more) who use the anchor text "s*x and sunshine" to link to my blog, to change it to "sax and sunshine" so that I drop even further for that query. I am still using a redirect script for search engines arriving to this blog to get less dubious visitors. They are deviated to my old home page.
- A minimal Google search interface which returns 100 results with only the titles and the descriptions when you move your mouse on the titles here.
- An interesting article on the central Google concept for evaluating the importance of web pages: Pagerank. Google's PageRank and how to make the most of it by Phil Craven (via ho). There I learnt that linking to another site without being linked back decreases your PageRank (PR). It's logical. As your PR is distributed via your links to other sites, a new not reciprocated link decreases the PR of the linked pages who do link back to you which in turn decreases your PR you receive from them.
- A PageRank Calculator which seems to be more theoretical.
- Parallax View links to an article on Google I am not going to link to (I would if there would be negative links which decrease the PR of websites). The article is called PageRank: Google's Original Sin and is by a webmaster who is apparently unhappy about the low PR of his sites. He cites Google on their PageRank system:
"Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important."
and then he writes:
In other words, the rich gets richer, and the poor hardly count at all. This is not "uniquely democratic," but rather it's uniquely tyrannical.
I have never read such rubbish about Google before. This guy should be sentenced to use Altavista for the rest of his life.
P.S. The Google Dance wasn't good to me at all, finally. I am now #9 for this bloody query. And the Atomz site search which doesn't work very well anyways is also redirected towards my old home page. I am fed up. I will move to antville soon.

2002-08-20T14:09:00.000-07:00

Knives Out again
I wrote about the Flaming Lips version of Knives Out by Radiohead they performed at Morning Becomes Eclectic a couple of days ago. I could not imagine that at least five other weblogs would take this up and comment on this cover. Fluxblog, Badgerminor, Stumblings in the Dark and Virulent Memes like the new version by the Lips. Only Clive from Somnolence who writes one of my favourite well thought out music weblogs doesn't appreciate it too much. He misses the pain in the Lips version, he finds that they at least partially missed the point but writes that it is still a good effort.
When I first listened to the original on the radio, time seemed to stand still for the moment when I heard Yorke's voice joining in after that almost serene guitar theme. It was absolutely devastating. I didn't listen to the lyrics really. But his delivery moved me in a way only very few singers do. It moved me so much that it almost became unbearable after subsequent listens.
I must agree that the Lips version is almost an entirely different song. It is another take on the song. Less grim and less despairing. But rather creative and innovative. They add some extra spices like piano, distorted guitars, epic synths, siren sounds and take away the monotony a little. I think great songs need great covers and great covers have to change the original. If they copied the original one to one they would miss the point much more. I guess I immediately liked the cover as it made me remember what a wonderful song Knives Out is, a modern classic if you want, and that there is more in the song than the original reveals. Or more precisely that it also works in an extrovert version.
By the way I am not a fan of the Lips. I have got Soft Bulletin and when relistening to it recently I found that it is a bland empty record. Bombast pop with one or two appealing tunes but no depth. I have seen them live as well and they have a great show but it really was more gimmickry than anything else with these strange video projections and the enormous gong Wayne Coyne hit every minute or so.

2002-08-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

Montgolfier Brothers - The World is Flat (Poptones)
was released yesterday. Their first album Seventeen Stars was one of my favourite records in 2000. In its intimacy and delicacy it conjures up the mood of Nick Drake's first album Five Leaves Left with more open space in it. Via DJ Martian I found a striking announcement of the new album by Pinnacle Entertainment:
"Like its predecessor 'Seventeen Stars' (Poptones first ever release), The Montgolfier Brothers' second album 'The World is Flat' combines six vocal songs with four instrumentals, and was recorded and mixed in various flats in Manchester and Salford. Those after reference points might try Michael Nyman, Johann Pachelbel and the Durutti Column for the music and The Smiths, Momus and late 60s Sinatra for the lyrics. Hardly an album you'd reach for at a party, more one you'll visit when everyone else has left you alone and gone home."
The new album has also been praised (by doomie who writes for the NME) at I Love Music.

2002-08-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

Weissensee
I have never been a fan of electronic music. Electronic music always seemed too mechanic too short-lived for me. I mean that I usually got bored very soon of it. There is something lifeless in most of electronic music. When I was in my teens there were these bands like Tangerine Dream or Kraftwerk or electronic hit producers like Jean-Michel Jarre around. Their music never did anything for me. I was more into prog (or is it artock?) like Genesis, some Pink Floyd or Eloy, a forgotten German band but that's another story...
Recently I got a little more into new electronic music which is usually labeled IDM standing for intelligent dance music. That's a ridiculous term: what an arrogant assumption that normal dance music is stupid! It is even more misleading considering that to dance to e.g. Boards of Canada seems to me a rather unworldly idea. The starting point was an mp3 I downloaded from filepile I think called Everything You Do Is a Balloon by Boards of Canada. I wrote about it here in this blog, a gorgeous impressionistic ambientish instrumental with discrete beats and dreamy synthesizer soundscapes in the second part. I then bought Geogaddi, Boards of Canada's latest offering which couldn't live up to that song. Recently I got their first LP Music Has the Right to Children which has a nice flow but still some tracks I almost hate. It nevertheless is the best electronic album of the last ten years I know (I hardly know any though).
I also bought Autechre's latest record Confield but I must admit that I never got past the first track. What I heard was like a dentist's drill and that was enough to put me off. I will certainly try to listen to this album one day but I am not yet ready for it. In any case Autechre seems to be one of the most important bands in the IDM genre. Therefore I listened to a couple of mp3s from them I had downloaded from the web. And I found that their music was exactly as I remembered electronic music: dull and soulless.
But then I stumbled upon their version of Weissensee, a track from the first album of Neu (a Kraftwerk-offshoot who pioneered punk and techno). And I was totally blown away. Weißensee is a city in Thuringia (in the East of Germany) who used to be the capital of Thuringia and Hessen (the Bundesland where I live) long ago. They claim the oldest German Reinheitsgebot (beer purity law) dating from 1434. I am not even sure if this Weißensee inspired the song but this is a nice connotation anyway.
Autechre's version is almost nine minutes long. It is one of the most hypnotic songs I have ever heard. The beats sound like African slow-motion drums announcing a war, tribal and dark. Extremely powerful. They are garnished with some scratching sounding like duck cackle, bird's chirping or the squeaking of rusty doors. The synthesizer layers add a floating spherical flair to the song. If you want to know what trance is listen to this. I can't refrain from dancing to the beats with my buttock in my fully mobile office chair at home when listening to the song on my computer. What a perfect marriage of ambient and refrained dance beats.
There is a 30 second real audio snippet on this page. The original seems to be less successful according to the snippet here. I nevertheless ordered Neu's first album from 1972 to check the full version.

2002-08-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

The Search for Meaning
Some pointless ramblings on an old philosophical question, probably THE philosophical question.
- Couldn't it be that when you come up with this question (what is the meaning of life?) you have lost it already? There was a meaning before when you were innocent and didn't ask yourself these kind of questions. Asking this question is maybe being too nosey like biting into the sweet apple which triggered the expulsion from paradise. Or like opening Pandora's box which released all evils.
- If there would be ONE meaning of life AND we would be able to find it we were all robots. Life wouldn't be unpredictable anymore. Everything would be clear. There would be no mystery anymore. Life would be boring. We would all be striving towards that meaning like the moth flying towards the light and getting consumed in the flame. The multi-facetness of life would be lost. Therefore when we speak of meaning here we actually should use the plural meanings. Everyone has to find his own meaning. Only one meaning for all would mean totalitaristic ideology. Actually we had that, last time it was called communism. I think the word meaning is just a placeholder for something else and this something else is something different for everyone. A little bit like the word God. And some smart people don't use the words God and meaning of life anymore as they don't mean a thing.
- Another approach leading to the same result: What does this question mean? What does meaning in the context of life mean? Originally meaning relates to words. Words in a foreign unknown language have no meaning for me. I can't understand them. I don't know what the words stand for. Applying this line of thought to our question: wouldn't it be hubrus to assert that one has understood life? I'd guess someone who says this actually proves that he has not understood life. The meaning of life is a meta question which doesn't lead anywhere. It only leads to paradoxons like the one of the Cretan who says "All Cretans lie".
The meaning of the word life is something I can maybe try to understand (where does life start etc.) but not the meaning of life itself. The question simply doesn't make sense.

2002-08-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

Some good music to download
Planet Claire is a radio programme of the French private station Aligre FM 93.1 from Paris with live radio session songs in mp3 format by Piano Magic, Radar Brothers, David Grubbs (real audio), Jane Weaver, Kat Onoma (the French Joy Division), 16 Horsepower, Mary Timony, Kings of Convenience, Cat Power, Field Mice (10 tracks) etc.

2002-08-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

When It's Over
I decided to delete this entry as it was too personal.

2002-08-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

The Mathematics of ... Auctions (via a&l daily)
Going Once, Going Twice
By the time an auctioneer shouts "Sold!" most bidders have already gone too far
The phenomenon that bidders in auctions pay too much can be seen at Ebay every day. The irrational behaviour of bidders is probably an important reason for Ebay's success. Another striking example were the state-organised UMTS auctions in Europe for the new mobile telephone technology networks where many companies paid much more than they will ever get back from future clients. The Nash equilibrium which implies that there is only one optimal strategy in a competitive game assumes rational participants knowing that their opponents are rational as well and cannot explain this. A new approach by the economist Thomas Palfrey called quantal response equilibrium takes into account that people are risk averse in the sense that they prefer to bid too much to losing the item altogether. The last paragraph of the article illustrates the problem of predicting what the other bidders think strikingly:
"Even the most rational people can be predictably irrational, Palfrey concludes. In some business schools, professors make an exercise of auctioning off a dollar to their students, stipulating that both top bidders will have to pay. The best strategy is simply not to bid, Palfrey says. 'But then it's tricky, because if everyone else realizes this, then why don't I bid 10 cents? It would be irrational for anybody else to bid 11 cents. Well, the problem is that some clown out there is going to bid 11 cents.' Once the bidding gets going, he says, often only the professor can stop it."
Further reading: The 29 page scientific paper Quantal Response Equilibrium and Overbidding in Private-Value Auctions for the geeks.
Could the exaggerations (in both directions) at the stock market also be explained using this theory? In a bull market stock prices usually go up too much and in a bear market they go down too much. The efficient market hypothesis which states that all the information available now is in the current prices never convinced me. Not only that it is tautological and does not really explain anything, it also does not take into account misinformation and irrational behaviour which is very common. There definitely is an irrational hysterical element here as well. People don't want to miss the boat when prices go up (men are greedy) and hop on the train when prices are already too high and they sell their stocks when prices fall so that prices fall even more and even more people sell. The stop-loss limits which are nowadays carried out by computers even enforce this phenomenon. I have to dig deeper into this.

2002-08-10T02:33:00.000-07:00

Resurrection
The Flaming Lips did Knives Out (mp3 via elasticheart) at Morning Becomes Eclectic on Thursday (whole show in real audio). This brilliant bleak song had almost been killed for me by too much listening to it. Thom Yorke's mumbling detached sad voice is something I can only take in small doses. After a while it starts to annoy me. And Radiohead's original version of the song is too polished, too stream-lined for my taste. Though the guitars have an unbelievable fluid lightness about them which collides heavily with the grave singing. The Flaming Lips give the song a fresh touch. After the piano intro the drums join in and some nice squeaking distorted guitars which are all over the song. Wayne Coyne's voice which isn't too far from Yorke's fits well and is much more intelligible. He sings to us and not to himself like Yorke. What probably irritates me most about Yorke is the coldness of his voice which sounds like he is singing out of his his own grave. At the end the cover becomes a soundtrack to a film not yet directed. About the beauty of alienation or something like that. The spacey keyboards take over and repeat the musical theme of the song. The song finishes with guitar feedback sounding like slow sirens. Bliss in a post 911 world.
By the way John Darnielle aka The Mountain Goats wrote some interesting stuff about Knives Out on his site Last Plane to Jakarta.

2002-08-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

Link sidebar update
This was long due. For now I only did the music blogs. In detail:
In
- waking ear with good concise writing on music I like, e.g. Wilco, Sonic Youth and Interpol.
- vain, selfish and lazy: Fred Solinger with some interesting condensed link rich posts.
- monosyllabic: a mixed bag of private and indie music posts. Excellent reader-friendly design.
- shazam: David Howie needs some more readers.
- technicolor: Jess Harvell with a new blog on indie. He has been posting like hell recently.
- no rock and roll fun: Loads of music news daily, mainly pop.
- the rub: page title - the unbearable lightness of boring. The post length is perfect for my attention span.
- restate my assumptions: Dan Emerson is 17 and from the UK and writes on music and film.
- stumblings in the dark: Australian blog on electronic music mainly.
- double americano: Brandnew blog by Wendy K on UK indie, alt.country etc.
- land of a thousand dances: Mike Daddino currently listens to Merzbow.
- flaskaland: Barbara compiles the best online articles on music.
- fluxblog is a return to form. Radiohead seems to be a favourite.
- popshots fakebook: Sometimes I am an idiot.
Out
- alacran: sorry I don't speak Dutch.
- listen missy: not my cup of tea really.
~~- popshots: what happened to the music David?~~
- mostly music: I never read this classical music blog from Brazil with loads of private stuff.
- the modern age: Strokes, White Stripes, Sigur Ros etc. are bands I almost hate.
- den of ubiquity: the posts are too long, my attention span is too short.
- musicrag is on summer holiday.
- instant enemy is an empty page.
- gygax is coming soon.
- soft music for stupid people doesn't update enough.
- jiffysquid, quicksilver shapeshifter, in review, let's build a car, sink and collating bones are on hiatus.
I hoped to have less music blogs in the side bar than before the operation and it worked! They are even in alphabetical order now, like my CDs. There are 55 of them. Keep on bloggin'!
P.S. Most of the music weblogs (plus some other non-pinging music sites) can also be accessed via my handy blogroll powered by freshblogs (last updates on top).

2002-08-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

Mineral Waters of the World
"mineralwaters.org is a non-profit consumer web site that offers information about and around bottled water. Over 2'500 brands from more than 100 countries are presented with their contents. Have a look a the list of brands, sorted by country or sorted alphabetically. Alternatively, search the water that fits your needs in specific mineralisation. "
Evian is the most viewed water but the most controversial as well. Some people think it is the best water in the world, others hate it. My favourite comment: "I wouldn't piss on this if it was on fire. Trash." It only gets a user rating of 3/5. It took me some time to get used to it, compared to German waters like Gerolsteiner or salty Apollinaris it lacks sodium and minerals in general. Definitely a good water for babies.
The argument some people bring against waters with lots of minerals and sodium that they do not go with wine is convincing. Or do you like wine with salt? On the other hand in some cases like when you sweat a lot mineral rich waters make sense. And they have more taste. Nevertheless a water like the Spanish Agua de Carabaña with 26,882 mg/l sodium and 54,980 mg/l sulphate is probably fine for a bath but I would not drink such stuff.

2002-08-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

Julia
My interpretation of the lyrics I posted three entries below.
The song starts low-key with the singer on the left and the guitars on the right channel: "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it just to reach you Julia" is a rather mysterious opening line. The singer makes clear that he does not sing the song for the big audience but to reach one person, a woman called Julia. Everyone else trying to find meaning will be only half successful (I'll try nevertheless). But why and how can Julia be reached with words of which only half are meaningful? Something about this Julia is bizarre from the beginning on.
After this introductory verse the two channels are melded (mixed) and the volume goes up. The following tune is a soothing lullaby. Simple, calm and extremely tender. Melancholic and wistful. A dreamy very intimate song.
Julia has been calling the singer (how she did that is not explained) and he replies with a song of love. She is everywhere where he looks, in all three elements: water (oceanchild, seashell), earth or matter (moon, sand) and air (sky, cloud).
In the middle of the song the serene melody is interrupted: "Her hair of floating sky is" and then higher "glimmering" and higher again "shimmering" the pitch going down again "in the sun". These lines indicate that Julia is ethereal and high up in the sky.
In the next and the second last verse the singer wants Julia to touch him. But she is far away like the moon and the clouds. The descriptions "sleeping sand" and "silent cloud" make clear that Julia cannot speak and therefore cannot reply. The verse in between those two "When I cannot sing my heart. I can only speak my mind" points again into the direction that words are not so important but the singing and therefore the tune come from deep inside.
P.S. Julia Lennon died in a car crash in 1958 when John Lennon was 17 years old. He wrote Julia for the Beatles White Album in 1968.
P.P.S. With Yoko Ono who was eight years older than Lennon he had found a lover who also served as a mother ersatz and apparently participated in writing the lyrics to Julia.

2002-08-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

Referral faking
According to my Sitemeter people came visiting my site via Cornered Whispers and
(title pending). What leaves me puzzled is that none of these sites has a link to mine, not even a random link like via the Indieblogs webring or via Blogsnob textads. I can really live without these fake referrers. They are worse than spam. I look at them, search for the link to my blog with no avail and usually can't refrain from reading a little to see if they are interesting. Needless to say most of them aren't. What a waste of time. Actually wouldn't it be a good promotion for my weblog to link to hundreds of others weblogs, to click on all the links and then to remove them again?
The titleless blog from above had at least a nice motto by Aldous Huxley: "Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."

2002-08-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Further reading
- Five IQ Tests (via daypop top 40). If you score 126 or more in one of the tests you can become member in the elite club called International High IQ Society.
- Great idea to connect blogs and to understand where they came from: BlogTree.com - Weblog Genealogy. My inspiring parents were Robot Wisdom, not.so.soft, wherever you are, josh blog, badgerminor, Wortwerkstatt and sofa blogger (via daypop top 40). As I just found out on my blogtree page I already have a child: largehearted boy.
- videos.antville.org: links to cool music videos (via daypop top 40)
- A stupid question Beatles: Classic or Dud?
- Which obscure band are you? (via parallax view) I was Mouse on Mars, to which I have hardly ever listened.
- Some very good writing on music at Waking Ear (via Stevie Nixed). My favourite of Murray Street was as well Rain on Tin. The concert version was especially brilliant and went on forever.
- An open knowledge project like everything2 but music centered is rootnode (via waking ear). Another good open internet music site where everybody can contribute is - The Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music organised by artist which I found when looking for Robin Holcomb who was compared to Joni Mitchell in the book I read about her.
- The Church Of Me (scroll down the entry is called Who's a Liar, Marcello's permalinks don't work) on the postpunk band Gang of Four of which I still haven't got any of the early albums. The album to buy seems to be A Brief History of the Twentieth Century (The EMI Compilation) which apparently contains everything interesting they have ever done.
- Better late than never. I discovered Mark Sinker's interesting long essay on noise & music: The Noise Piece (Director’s Cut) and The Noise Piece (Director’s Cut Part Two)
- Recently I mentioned a story in German about a physics exam with Niels Bohr as the clever candidate. Apparently it was all false according to Urban Legends Reference Pages: College (The Barometer Problem)
German:
- Ist Pi völlig "normal"?. Höchstwahrscheinlich sind die Nachkommastellen von Pi gleichverteilt. In der interessanten Diskussion geht es darum, ob Pi als Zufallszahlengenerator brauchbar ist und darum, dass alle Werke der Weltliteratur incl. meines Weblogs irgendwo in Pi vorkommen.
- smi ist ein sehr lesenswertes Metablog. Die Posts sind häufig recht lang und zitieren meist aus vielen anderen Weblogs, da steckt eine Menge Fleiß-, Surf- und Lesearbeit dahinter.

2002-08-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

The song I'd like to listen to now:
"Half of what I say is meaningless
But I say it just to reach you
Julia,

Julia, Julia
ocean child calls me
So I sing a song of love
Julia

Julia
Seashell eyes, windy smile calls me
So I sing a song of love
Julia

Her hair of floating sky is shimmering
Glimmering in the sun

Julia, Julia
Morning moon touch me
So I sing a song of love
Julia

When I cannot sing my heart
I can only speak my mind
Julia

Julia
Sleeping sand, silent cloud touch me
So I sing a song of love
Julia

Hum, calls me
So I sing a song of love for
Julia, Julia, Julia"

2002-08-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

Discontentment
As so often when I try to write about philosophy when rereading my thoughts I am unhappy about them. In hindsight my conclusions often seem too unsubtle, too undifferentiated, too simplified, too arrogant and the statements are too sweeping. My pessimism concerning mankind which I uttered yesterday is probably more based on man's hubrus (mischief) than its mediocrity. And on the other hand there are moments when I am more optimistic about our future. But I still feel something has to change maybe more inside each of us than from outside so that future generations can live on the planet earth. Man can do it, we can do it, but we cannot continue as before.
Actually my Nietzsche obsession dates back from my adolescence (I am not the only one) and it has faded long ago. Nevertheless I still feel I have to defend Nietzsche as he was so dear to me when I was young. I couldn't refrain from writing yesterday's post as I am subscribed to the Philosophical Quote-A-Day Service newsletter which yesterday included Nietzsche's Übermensch statement. Additionally I read in a German biography of Joni Mitchell (my favourite songwriter) that she has started to read a lot of Nietzsche recently.

2002-08-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

Today's Philosophical Quotation
Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist etwas, das überwunden werden soll.
Nietzsche: Also sprach Zarathustra
Translation:
I teach you the ~~Overman~~ Superman. Man is something which shall be surpassed.
These are some of the most famous words of Nietzsche, they are extremely ambivalent and provocative and the term Übermensch has been trivialised, misunderstood and discredited by the Nazis in Germany's dark age from 1933-45. I'd like to explain a little how I read them.
In contrast to what most people associate when hearing this quotation I think Nietzsche does not think about race or even master's race (Herrenrasse) here. Those words do not appear in Also sprach Zarathustra. This is a statement of modesty and farsightedness. Man is not the crown of the evolution as the bible implies. And the evolution which lead to man does not finish there. Man is just a stage, not a final state of evolution. The big question is how the overman can be reached. Probably Nietzsche thought the overman can be bred (by man), but here I really have my doubts. That sounds like Münchhausen's paradox/dilemma (to draw oneself plus horse out of the mud by oneself's shock of hair) to me. But I think mankind can only survive long-term if man surpasses himself. If mankind stays on its current mediocre level it will be doomed soon. A good starting place to get a grasp of Nietzsche's thinking is his short essay from 1873 (when he was 29 years old) Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne. English-only readers should either use Altavista's Babelfish translation service or look for the English translation "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense". That essay illustrates the problematic limited nature of the concept of anthropomorphism.

2002-08-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Song lines
This morning I listened to Giant from The The's third record Soul Mining. I didn't remember how good this song was. The percussion play peaking in the second half is absolutely addictive. African tribal rhythms plus synthie plus "iyeai-yeai-yeai-yea-aa". And Matt Johnson sings "How could anyone know me. When I don't even know myself?". That is logical but I immediately thought the reverse is true as well: How can I know myself when I haven't looked at me from the perspective of a stranger?
In one of her few covers Joni Mitchell sings "How do you stop before it's too late" on Turbulent Indigo. I have to relate this to smoking, Joni's voice has gone down at least one octave in the last 15 years because of all those bloody cigarettes. I don't know if she has stopped now but I know I have to stop and I hope that it is not too late. At the moment I switch between one/two days on and off all the time. And the next day after a slip I usually waste the tobacco which is left. Ridiculous, no pathetic is the word. The best part of a cigarette is putting it out. That is like stopping smoking. A release. At least it gives me the feeling of how it would be to stop this bad habitude. In my twisted smoker's logic I restart smoking only to stop it again. And as I love to stop I have to smoke again to stop again. A vicious circle.

2002-08-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

Why I don't post right now
Regular readers of this blog must have realised that I got a little bit tired of writing here. One reason is (I have to admit) that I don't really have to say anything. Another is that a lot of my energy in the last couple of weeks got into (you won't believe it) trying to learn inline skating. I must be the worst skater in the world. When Catherine, me and some friends skate around Frankfurt I am always the slowest and last. I sweat like hell and I think it is not because of the exercise but because of the fear to fall. I never did roller skating, downhill skiing or ice skating when I was young. I am fascinated by the challenge to roll on eight wheels. It is like starting to walk the only difference being that I didn't realise how difficult it was to walk on two feet when I was one or two years old.
What else did I do recently? I started the following two threads at I Love Music:
- Free music for music webloggers (an interesting but I think doomed idea, applications are closed for now)
- Ministry. S&D.
And I participated in the following discussions at ILM (because right now I prefer to talk to others than to blog for myself):
- The The: C/D, S&D
- What Do US Pop Musicians Have That UK Ones Don't?
- ABBA: Classic Or Dud?
- Jacques Dutronc
- Satie's Trois Gymnopedies: Classic or Dud?
- ILM Snapshot: The Last Five records you bought pt 2 (The one-year anniversary edition!)
- Interpol - Ian Curtis reincarnated?
- neneh cherry's homebrew: isn't it better than overrated raw like sushi?
- After The Goldrush
And some others which I don't want to remember now.

2002-07-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Links
- The new Aimee Mann album Lost in Space can be streamed at her home page until the release date August 27th (via elements of surprise). Bachelor #2 was one of my favourites in 2000. Aimee Mann always reminds me of Joni Mitchell whose subtle melodies and personal lyrics captivated me a lot during my studies in the 80s. When I heard Aimee the first time I thought she was Joni reincarnated only twenty years younger, a similar crystal clear warm voice and the same looks: slender, fragile with long blond hair.
- Tom Ewing writes on the best-of 21 Singles by The Jesus and Mary Chain. I never really got into that band but I loved the trashy primitive guitar sound very much influenced by the Velvet Underground around White Light/White Heat.
- Strange Fruit has some news on Austin's American Analog Set splitting up as their singer Andrew Kenny is going to attend grad school at Columbia University. Their gig in Frankfurt a couple of weeks ago was my favourite concert this year up to now. Even the Sonic Youth concert in Cologne could not come close to that intense mind-blowing set.
- Ten songs Radiohead played at the first gig of their European Tour in Lisbon on Monday of which the new ones were described as more 'immediate and melodic' than their stuff on Kid A and Amnesiac as mp3s here: punch up at a wedding, myxomatosis, we suck young blood, i will, sail (you) to the moon, karma police, up on the ladder, scatterbrain, there there and lift (via parallx view).
I also found Joseph Tate's on-going investigation of the music and art of Radiohead in the form of a weblog: pulk-pull* (via eclogues).
- German: Bekenntnisse einer Frau, die es liebt Männer im Mund zu haben (kam mir anfangs wie ein Fake vor, ist aber in any case lesenswert).

2002-07-23T22:22:00.000-07:00

Some lame jokes on a band I don't care about
At I Love Music there is some Grateful Dead bashing going on. I found the following jokes there which possibly give an idea of the band and especially their fans:

Q: What do Grateful Dead fans say when they run out of drugs?
A: God this band are shit.

Q: Where do you hide your money from a Deadhead?
A: Under the soap...

Q: How can you tell a Deadhead has been at your house?
A: They're still there!

Q: How many Deadheads does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None... they just wait for it to burn out and then follow it around the country.

Jerry Garcia and Eric Clapton are captured by cannibals one day. Before they are about to be cooked for dinner they are granted one final wish. Jerry says "hand me my old guitar and let me play Dark Star one last time...". Eric says "please kill me before he starts".

And to finish off this not so serious morning post a programmer's joke I found at jc-log:
"There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't."

2002-07-23T14:27:00.000-07:00

Unhappiness (DE)
Das größte Unglück ist nicht zu merken, wieviel Glück man hat. Wenn einem das erst einmal klar geworden ist, dann ist man schon einen Schritt weiter. Unglücklich zu sein, obwohl ich alles habe, was ich brauche, ist ein Luxus, auf den ich gerne verzichten würde. Und doch finde ich, dass man gerade wenn es einem materiell gut geht trotzdem das Recht hat, unglücklich zu sein. Es ist geradezu so, dass man nur unglücklich sein kann, wenn gewisse Grundbedürfnisse befriedigt sind. Jemand, der nahezu verhungert oder verdurstet, kommt gar nicht dazu unglücklich zu sein, da seine Gedanken um andere elementarere Dinge kreisen als Glück oder Unglück. Es dürfte nach dem Geschriebenen unschwer zu erraten sein, dass ich unglücklich bin. Aber was mich im Moment antreibt, ist herauszubekommen warum. Irgendwo ist da die naive Hoffnung, dass wenn ich erst einmal den Grund gefunden habe, das Unglücklichsein verschwinden wird. Aber will ich das überhaupt? Vielleicht bin ich ja gerne unglücklich? Auch das ist möglich. Logisch stringent ist das alles nicht. Aber ich musste das jetzt mal loswerden.

2002-07-22T13:18:00.000-07:00

How to keep track of weblogs
I have found what I was looking for. Call it a weblog monitor, a blogroll or a weblog watchlist. I am talking of a tool which organises the weblogs you read in a chronological way, i.e. the last updated ones on top of the list and the lazy guys & girls who didn't write anything recently on the bottom of the list. Up to now I have been using blo.gs. It worked fine but it had the disadvantage that it only took into account weblogs pinging to weblogs.com and some other monitor sites or to blo.gs directly. I found freshblogs (via smi) which tracks any site even if the site does not ping. This is my current watchlist with music sites. None of these weblogs/sites pings but I can still keep track of the last updates this way. A small step for mankind but a big step for the weblog community (or at least for those webloggers like me who are not able to program a weblog monitor themselves).
Freshblogs can still be improved, e.g. the possibility to immediately open new windows from the monitor would be nice but I am sure new options will come soon. Another improvement could be a more frequent update check as I have got the impression that the list order only changes about once every three to six hours. A problem seems to be that websites showing up on top of the list do not always contain what I'd call new stuff. According to the discussion thread How Does Freshblog track sites?:
"When freshblogs has to scan a site it downloads the page pointed to by the URL. Freshblogs calculates an MD5 checksum from the page and stores this checksum in the database.
Unfortunately sometimes people's web sites have dynamic elements that aren't really new content. The checksum dutifully reports the changes, but this isn't necessarily what is wanted. What is needed is a "fuzzy" checksum that tolerates slight differences. This will always be a best guess though and never as realiable as people "pinging" weblogs.com to notify updates to their site."
Therefore I still would like people to manually ping weblogs.com whenever theý have added new content to their weblog. An easy way to do this is by using Phil Ringnalda's Weblogs ping bookmarklet constructor (you just have to input the name of your site and its url once) after every new post. The bookmarklet can be dragged to the Links Toolbar (in Internet Explorer) and is only a click away.

2002-07-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Nick Drake
Via my referrers I discovered the weblog letting loose with the leptard with a transcription of a monologue Nick Drake had spoken into a tape recorder in 1968 after having been to a party. I couldn't have put the analysis of Drake's words better myself:
"I posted the Drake monologue yesterday because I'd heard it for the first time the day before. Sitting down and listening to it was something of a revelation. First impression was that there was something faintly eerie about it, but that's only because I'm a fan of Nick Drake. To anyone else hearing it, they'd probably take it at face value: a young man, well spoken and well educated, having come home from a party a bit buzzed, staying up to play a bit of piano (as you do!) and watch the dawn come in, finally rambling into a tape recorder at five in the morning, enjoying the view. Even as he's sobering up he minds his p's and q's. And so to bed...."
Discovering people with similar interests who can write better about them than myself is always a revelation for me. That is what I like so much about the internet. That it connects my brain with other brains out there. And even if I am not able to write about the music I love as I would like to I at least often can find someone on the internet who can.

2002-07-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

From the link archives, pt. 1
- Maybe I should try this. Another way to stop smoking: YPL: Nicolaxx Nicotine Anal Suppositories (via ap-project).
- The Big Book of Sign Language by rotten.com's The Gaping Maw (via daypop).
- Google Zeitgeist now with the most popular searches broken down by country: the UK and Spain were recently (about a week ago) obsessed with Big Brother (Gran Hermano) whereas France looked for Britney Spears and Germany was into the Muttertag (mother's day) (via Mefi).
- Slashdot discussion on Two Books from Haruki Murakami (via monkey puzzle).
- A nice new feature at the New York Times (free registration): audio music reviews (via fimoculous). The critic reads his review in between music extracts.
Examples: Sonic Youth - Murray Street and Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
- Did I already link to Strange Fruit, a rather new well-written music blog I discovered via badger?
- Mefi: info and links concerning Harry Smith , who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music, which saved traditional American music from oblivion and influenced so many musicians to come. Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes are unthinkable without the Anthology.
- [parallax view] (July, 10th) on Cinerama's (not so new band by Chief Weddoe David Gedge) new album Torino:
"But rumours of a return to form, a darker more guitar-oriented sound and Steve Albini helping out on production tempted me to try out Cinerama's third album 'Torino' and I glad I did. It's basically The Wedding Present 'with strings attached' and the guitar squall on tracks like 'Starry Eyed' could have come off 'Seamonsters' (hmm...now there's an album that merits inclusion in my soon-to-be-resumed Lest Ye Forget series)."

2002-07-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

Do Make Say Think live
When we arrived in the KoZ (Kommunikationszentrum) on the Frankfurt University Campus at 8 o'clock last Wednesday we were greeted by a wall of noise. The band was still on rehearsal. Around 9:30 when the concert was supposed to start there were hardly twenty spectators. Around 10 when the places started to fill the seven band members enter the stage and the bass player utters the only sentence of the evening: "We are Do Make Say Think from Toronto". They begin their set with "Classic Noodlanding", the first track on their last album & Yet & Yet. A promising slow starter introducing us to dense hypnotic droning soundscapes. The following pieces are noisier with guitar and other freakouts. The repetitive tuneless tracks start to grate. After a while we move from the front to the bar at the back of the room. The overall sound and especially the two drummers are too loud. The music resembles progrock and is very heavy. The musicians change instruments often. At one point there are two saxophones and two trumpets. The main trumpet player looks into the audience with a big smile whenever he pauses. Later on I understand why he grins so much. His muffled but still crystal clear trumpet sound makes me think of Miles Davis. A guy next to us rolls a joint with one hand and I suddenly think that that's it: dope music, music which can only be properly enjoyed under drugs. The guitarist is extremely thin and looks a little like Nick Cave. His guitar is way too big for him. After the concert I talk with the trumpet player who is extremely relaxed. I tell him that I am going to see Sonic Youth in Cologne the next day and it turns out that they play Cologne on the same day. Apparently they had also played Berlin at the same day as Sonic Youth and therefore didn't have a big audience. I mention my beloved Cowboy Junkies (dope music par excellence) as another band from Toronto and he tells me that at their concerts you can hear a needle fall (German expression) as the public is extremely attentive and silent. Margo Timmins languishing voice is simply irresistible. Though the concert was not really that impressive I still enjoyed it. At concerts with unknown bands in small places I feel more comfortable and closer to the music than listening to big names in big venues.
P.S. All Google searches (and some other engines as well) leading to the front page of this weblog are now temporarily (until the next Google crawl) deviated to my old home page at Geocities. I took this rather strict measure to be able to read my referrer logs again. The visitor numbers have already dropped by two thirds. Hooray!

2002-07-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

Feeding the mice
- David Keenan's 100 essential albums. On first looks an interesting wide-ranging selection. The first ten records are: Springsteen's Nebraska, Throbbing Gristle's Heathen Earth, The Stooges Funhouse, Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister, Kiss Destroyer, The Boatmen's Call by Nick Cave, John Coltrane's Meditations, Odyssey and Oracle by The Zombies, Sonic Youth Sister and Liege and Lief by Fairport Convention (via douze lunes).
I own 25 albums of the list. There are several under those I mainly got as they were on other best of lists. Of those there are some albums I never listen to as I find them rather dull and overrated, for example Nico's Marble Index (depressive in the worst sense), Van Morrison's Astral Weeks (ok, but no masterpiece, except maybe for the lyrics which I don't understand), The Incredible String Band's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (unlistenable and annoying) and Grateful Dead's Live/Dead (aimless dated noodling). Neither Joy Division nor New Order feature on the list. And where are two of the foremost songwriters: Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake? For you to judge...
- Long ten page interview with Thurston Moore at Nude as the News on Murray Street, the album, the street and the studio. Other topics are the way Sonic Youth compose, what Jim O'Rourke adds to the band etc. (via fluxblog)
- I participated in a thread on Nick Drake on I Love Music where the thread poster asked for good reasons why Nick Drake is considered so highly. I lost the URL as ILM is down again. The skeleton of a new ILM forum outside of Greenspun where posting is possible already is here. For ILM discussion on mainly technical issues concerning the new ILM there is the Yahoo! Group 12 ft lizards (free registration required) which is quite active when the Greenspun hosted ILM is down.
P.S. The Nick Drake thread is here: Nick Drake: why???
- Stylus Magazine's Chris Smith writes on each song on the Nuggets box (via badger). By the way after the Sonic Youth concert last Thursday an acquaintance made me discover a wonderful almost forgotten late sixties psychedelic band from Boston: Ultimate Spinach (AMG entry). I think they recorded three albums and disbanded because of drug problems. I listened to their 1968 album Behold & See which is somewhere in between Jefferson Airplane, Love, The Strawbs and Fairport Convention. In view of this crossover between West coast psychedelia and British folk-rock the label Bosstown sound referring to Boston makes a lot of sense. The stand-out track is called Mind Flowers and when listening to it in the right mood you can watch the flowers blossoming in your brain.
- The music weblog vain, selfish and lazy is back after an 8 months hiatus, Fred Solinger starts with his 100 fave albums.
- Two music weblogs I found via Wisdom Goof: modern music from the UK which is indie-oriented and more or less daily. It features news, links and personal opinions. Swordfight from Halifax, Canada is full of humour and offers you the phantastic blogrock feature. You link to Swordfight, e-mail Philip and he makes a song about your weblog which you then upload on your site.

2002-07-13T00:27:00.000-07:00

Just two links
Sorry I am in a hurry. The concerts were great. I'll write about them later. Thank you for the feedback.
- There is a long article plus discussion at kuro5hin on Go: Life Itself:
"There is one board game that stands above all others. The most beautiful, most ancient, most strategic, most subtle. The king of games. A game which teaches as much as it entertains, whose enthusiasts number tens of millions and which has often been compared to life itself."
I never played Go though I was very much into chess. But Go has always fascinated me. Especially the "strange" space logic in it where you don't take the opponent's pieces directly but you try to isolate them and you try to dominate the board in terms of space I found appealing. A game for an overpopulated world where the battle is for anthroposphere and not so much for material wealth.
- Salon on Mission of Burma:
"The undeniable truth about Burma
Mission of Burma recorded 21 songs, helped invent post-punk, and left a legacy that resonated from R.E.M. to Moby. More than 20 years later, no one will let the band die."

2002-07-09T22:26:00.000-07:00

Tired of the internet
Somehow I am suffering from information overload these days. I don't know how many blogs I am following but I suppose it must be more than a hundred. Then I read a couple of news sites and my extensive weekly paper. And a Sunday paper. It is all too much. Sometimes I would just like to shut myself in without any connection whatsoever to any media. I don't find the time to blog and to think about myself and my life. Though I have a lot of ideas of themes I could write about. But blogging seems to be such a futile exercise in the moment. In the last weeks I forced myself to post something every two days but I usually posted links as I didn't feel like writing something. The strange thing is that finding worthy links takes much more time than writing something yourself. And it is much more frustrating as you have to go through such a lot of boring stuff, you don't have the satisfaction of creating something yourself and there is hardly any feedback. Yes, feedback is the magical word. I didn't get too much in the past weeks and I would be grateful to know if anyone cares for this weblog. There are almost one thousand visitors per day but how many readers are there and how many people are regulars? Sorry for this boring and depressive post. Tonight I will see Do Make Say Think (thanks for the tip Wortmetz) from Toronto who are on the same label as Godspeed YBE! at the university and tomorrow Sonic Youth who will play in Cologne. And I am very much looking forward to those concerts. So I guess I will have something to write about soon.

2002-07-08T22:28:00.000-07:00

I Love Music threads
- 'Marquee Moon' LP is overrated: Me too I think that Television's debut is a little overpraised. It has its moments but there are not enough of them to fill an LP.
- Their voice gets in the way on rock singer voices people can't stand.
- Forthcoming Albums - Second half of 2002, What you looking forward to?: a very long list by dj martian which is completed by the ILM contributors.

2002-07-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

Business as usual
- Discussion on How to Read Quickly Without Really Trying at kuro5hin. Some tips on how to accelerate your reading skill and how to read more efficiently.
- FilmWise is a site with a weekly quiz on movie stills. You can guess eight movies per week, the persons are taken out of the stills so that only the clothes can be seen. Quite surreal with the dresses hanging in space and rather difficult (via dekaf).
- Review of Sheila Hale's book The Man Who Lost His Language on her husband John Hale: "When a great historian lost his speech to a stroke, what remained of him?"...
"The mystery is that the huge physical insult to his brain seems to have changed everything about him except who he was. His spirit, as we might once have called it – or his "personality" if we feel we no longer can – survived the general devastation." (via wood s lot). Another review of the book in The Economist.
- ILM discussion What's up with hating on the Doors where I tried to defend the music of The Doors and Jim Morrison against a huge majority of Doors dispraisers.
- Via the excellent music weblog Wisdom Goof which is updated daily now and featured the Doors reunion on Friday I found a great music blog called Slow Thrills with another review of Yo La Tengo's Sounds of Science score to the old underwater short films by Painlevé. I'd like to read more of Slow Thrills but a bright font on black background is so awful to read... That really is an attack on my sensitive eyes. Catherine's pita and the Stylus Magazine's blog (in an incredibly small font) are doing the same. How can someone choose a dark colour background scheme? Something to do with Netscape? I use Internet Explorer and these pages turn out almost unreadable. Or are these people night cats?
- Monosyllabic :: the rotation is an indie music blog worth your attention (via badger).
- The Rub is another music blog (via somnolence who has redesigned).
- German: 40.000-Zeichenerguss über den Aufenthalt in einem Swingeretablissement.

2002-07-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

Le Livre des Illusions
I got an interesting comment from Stuart Pilkington, a fan of the writings of Paul Auster who is responsible for the excellent Paul Auster (The Definitive Website) which is appropriately enough based in the UK:
Here's something from my FAQ page for you: "I e-mailed Paul Auster's assistant and she said "Yes--The Book of Illusions is absolutely wonderful. But I have no idea why it came out earlier in those countries." So I e-mailed his French publishers, Actes-Sud, and they said "Indeed, "The Book of illusions" has been published in France before its coming out in USA and GB. In fact, Actes Sud has a very close contact to Paul Auster as the French echo of his work has highly contributed to his international success. Our editorial direction got the manuscript directly from the author without having to wait for its publication in English language. Therefore, the schedule of each publishing house, from one side or another of the Atlantic or the Channel, are completly independent - and we were so enthusiastic about this new novel that we were especially eager to offer it to our readers as soon as possible!"" Cheers Stuart

2002-07-04T22:56:00.000-07:00

L'Amour
Etre
Le premier venu.
René Char

2002-07-04T15:09:00.000-07:00

Connecting
- After Napster its successor Audiogalaxy bit the dust as well. But there is no reason to worry. Loads of other P2P services are ready to take over. Who will win the race? Pitchfork: How To Survive Without Audiogalaxy: A Guide to File-Sharing Alternatives. The competition will be fierce as the other side is not sleeping neither: Music labels go after song-swappers.
- Very good Keith Jarrett site with questions & answers
- Did you know that Camper van Beethoven covered Fleetwood Mac's album Tusk, the follower of their biggest selling record Rumours, in 1986 (via robotwisdom)?
- I started the still almost virgin thread on Michelle Shocked: Search and Destroy on ILM. I also write in this thread: Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. According to the fellow forum participators I am stretching the Wilco-Beatles comparison a little.
- Douglas Wolk, who usually reviews music, writes in Salon on the classic bestseller Joy of Cooking written by a supposedly terrible cook
- A board game blog from Salisbury, UK: nimrods. I still haven't found a chess blog.
- You want to meet fellow bloggers near you? Try blog.meetup.com!
- Times Online on Alain de Botton's new book The Art of Travel on how travelling and literature can fecundate each other (MeFi discussion on the perfect combination of a book, a destination and a way of travelling).
- New fast indexing search engine with cache: openfind (via dj martian). It comes from Taiwan and is still in the beta phase.
- German: Revolutionslieder und Protestsongs wurden gerade beim Sofa Blogger diskutiert.

2002-07-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

Clevere Geschäftsleute
Gestern beim Aufruf der Seite eines nicht ganz unbedeutenden Onlinehändlers, bei dem ich gelegentlich schon eingekauft habe, traute ich meinen Augen kaum, ob dieses genialen Vorschlags:
"Alexander FRITZ, verdienen Sie EUR 217,70
Verkaufen Sie Ihre Amazon.de-Käufe bei Amazon.de. "
Wollen die sich jetzt zur stark überteuerten Onlinebücherei entwickeln, oder was? Einmal an einem Kunden verdienen, reicht wohl nicht mehr, um bei der Bilanz in die schwarzen Zahlen zu kommen. Aber immer noch besser als Bilanz fälschen, oder?
P.S. Au weia, um so viel Geld für Secondhandzeugs zu kriegen, muss ich aber schon ganz schön Kohle bei denen gelassen haben.

2002-07-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

Deutscher Blogeintrag des Tages
Es war einmal... in København:
Das nun folgende war wirklich eine Frage, die in einer Physikprüfung, an der Universität von Kopenhagen, gestellt wurde:
Beschreiben Sie, wie man die Höhe eines Wolkenkratzers mit einem Barometer feststellt.
Ein Kursteilnehmer antwortete:
"Sie binden ein langes Stück Schnur an den Ansatz des Barometers, senken dann das Barometer vom Dach des Wolkenkratzers zum Boden. Die Länge der Schnur plus die Länge des Barometers entspricht der Höhe des Gebäudes." (wie es weiterging und wer der Prüfling war bei da-tom)

2002-07-03T22:58:00.000-07:00

Coming back
- Josh blog is back: Ideas for an unwritten review of the new Tom Waits CDs
- Two years after their last album Yo La Tengo released the underwater movie soundtrack The Sounds of the Sounds of Science recently. You can only order it via their website for $10 plus shipping. It consists of eight instrumental tracks to eight short films on underwater life by Jean Painlevé. The evolution of Yo La Tengo from Post Paisley Underground to noisy drone rock and then to the warm and mellow songs on And then Nothing... seems to have come to a logical end here. Yesterday morning I tried to listen to the new CD in the car but realised that it is definitely evening or night music. Too slow, too impressionistic, too soft (except the noisy "Liquid Crystals") in the morning. Some tracks are close to ambient but the drums always play an important role though Hubley's drumming is refrained and unobtrusive. When you think about it it seems quite a challenge to make music for a film on a world of silence. I think Yo La Tengo have succeeded here. The album is still growing on me. Yo La Tengo played the score live on tour last year while the films were screened. A live review is here. The album is reviewed in the Dusted Magazine. A long interview with the band about the project in the Independent Weekly.

2002-07-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Meta
- People who read my blog using a weblog monitor like blo.gs or weblogs.com should update their weblog list in case they want to continue reading me. From now on I ping the weblog name "sax and sunshine" to weblogs.com instead of "s*x and sunshine" with the "*" standing for the most common letter in the alphabet.
- Google has finished its' monthly crawl. Unfortunately my page rank went down from six to five and I am now no. 4 (not counting websites twice) for the infamous "s*x"-query. I can't believe it. I suppose the number of visitors per day will exceed the one thousand mark soon. The measures I took to repel people looking for smudgy stuff will probably only take effect after the next crawl.

2002-07-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

Miscellaneous
- Marjorie Kelly's critic of capitalism and especially the shareholder value becomes more and more relevant in view of the falsified balances of Enron, Worldcom, Xerox etc.: The Divine Right of Capital
- The European knowledge test (via prolific). Not very difficult as I got 19/20.
- The new Flaming Lips album is streamed on their site (Mefi discussion).
- Everett True on Ed Kuepper, the great rather unknown Australian songwriter: The Cornish Arms - Artists' Biographies (via monkey puzzle)
- Tom Ewing on the Talking Heads Fear of Music and Remain in Light and the Byrne/Eno collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (I have to relisten to that album. In my memory a brilliant experimental record): It's nearly Africa (ILM discussion)
- I Love Music: did we ever have a Keith Jarrett thread?
- 'Deep in a Dream': A Life of Chet Baker, the Popularizer of Cool. Extract 'Deep in a Dream' (free NYT registration required)
- 'Anything Goes' (free registration required), the new novel by Madison Smartt Bell is about a 20-year-old traveling with his band across the South. Excerpt:
"Kurt Cobain was teaching me how to play "Lithium." One of two songs off that record I ever liked well enough to care to learn it. How the changes were just so brutally stupid, like they went out of their way to pick the exact wrong chords. The funny thing was I was playing guitar. Kurt was explaining to me–you got to keep it rough. Which it seems like rough was built into the chord progression anyway but maybe it wasn't quite so simple as I thought. So he was reaching for the guitar to show me what he meant but somehow the guitar sort of went tilting away from both of us and that's how I woke up." (via wood s lot)

2002-07-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

German - deutsch - allemand
- Kollektive gemischtgeschlechtliche Besäufnisse: "Drei befreundete /bekannte Paare meinereins haben sich beim gemeinsamen Kotzen nach zuviel Alkohol kennengelernt.":
- Interessante Diskussion über die Ablehnung des internationalen Strafgerichtshofs in Den Haag von den USA bei hirn&verbrannt.
- Glückwunsch an Brasilien. Es ist selten, dass die Schönheit über die Effizienz siegt. Ausgerechnet ihr bestes Spiel bei der WM verlieren die Deutschen, soviel Ironie hätte ich der Mannschaft gar nicht zugetraut. Zudem wissen wir nun, dass Kahn auch nur ein menschlicher Torwart ist.

2002-06-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

Deutsche Links
- Zum einen das komplette in realiter fast zentnerschwere Grimmsche Wörterbuch im Internet, dessen Javascript aber nicht überall funktioniert. Zuhause unter Windows 98 ging es, wenn auch sehr langsam, unter Windows 2000 im Büro klappte es leider überhaupt nicht. Habe die Artikel zu dem Begriff "Gott" nach Word kopiert: Unglaubliche 139 Seiten!
- Etwas verspätet, aber eigentlich immer aktuell: Die Abmahn-FAQ V. 1.2. Das Betreiben eines Weblogs ist vom Juristischen her immer ein Risiko. Da die Server von Blogspot an der kalifornischen Westküste sind und ich meist sowieso auf englisch schreibe, hoffe ich, dass ich von derartigen Nuisancen verschont bleibe.

2002-06-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

Musical links
- The documentary film A Skin Too Few - The Days of Nick Drake according to Pitchfork does not reveal anything new about the most gifted suicidal songwriter of all times. The memories of his sister Gabrielle seem to be the most interesting part.
- Article in the LA Weekly on a big fan of The Doors who happens to be one of the foremost rock critics: Richard Meltzer (via freezing to death)
- Pitchfork on Sonic Youth: Murray Street. Rating wise from zero for their last album NYC Ghosts and Flowers to 9. Only the Flaming Lips going from 0 for Zaireeka to 10 for The Soft Bulletin have received the two opposite extreme ratings from one album to the next at Pitchfork. Though I ask myself if those two numbers were not confused.
- Another positive review of Murray Street by Marvin on the ~~Aussie~~ site Delusions of Adequacy. My review on this phantastic album is in the makes, promised.
- There is also a positive review of Pere Ubu's latest St.Arkansas by Patrick at DoA. I loved the last album Surf's Up of David Thomas and Two Pale Boys. Truly great haunting and weird atmospheric stuff.
- Jim O'Rourke who seems to be the bête noir behind most great albums this year (Wilco and Sonic Youth) has been releasing loads of albums himself recently. The five releases I'm Happy, and I'm Singing, and a 1,2,3,4, Insignificance, Halfway to a Threeway EP, Eureka, Bad Timing and Happy Days have been reviewed very positively at Tiny Mixtapes Gone to Heaven
- I even started a thread on ILM: Jim O'Rourke S/D. Forget what I wrote on Tortoise's Djed there.

2002-06-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

Unmusical links
- Interesting LSD discussion at kuro5hin: My Lysergic Acid Diethylamide Life. From the introduction text:
"Acid has the strange ability to make all of the parts of your mind that make you who you are, dissolve away, and you can see your pure sort of essence. ...
Acid made me happy. ... I never thought that the human mind could think as fast as I have experienced on acid. Imagine that you catch a glimpse of your finger, the tiny ridges on it, and while pondering the implications of fingerprinting technology, and the injustice that is the FBI and federal government, you see the blood vessels in your finger, which, in your imagination, you can sort of travel down, and seeing that blood indeed permeates every part of you, you become aware that everything you intake, air, food, water, does indeed permeate every part of you also. These thoughts, spiraling faster, take you back, when you blink, realizing that you have been thinking for about a faction of a second."
- Four page Haruki Murakami story: Airplane in The New Yorker. Murakami is like a mix of Kundera and Carver to me. The obsession with the physical and psychological relations between men and women from Kundera, the austerity, simplicity and open-endness from Carver. Only less striking and dense than those two.
- Big Brother is watching the US: FBI checking out Americans' reading habits / Bookstores, libraries can't do much to fend off search warrants (via wortlog)
- The hardcore version of this blog: sax and sunshine. mainly a farting music blog. (via s*xblog)

2002-06-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

Beautiful losers and/or good public relations?
The German Samsung headquarters are in Schwalbach about 500 meters from our house. Coming back from work in Frankfurt today by car I saw a German flag and a big banner in front of the Samsung building.
It said: WM 2002. Glückwunsch Deutschland.,
in English: World Cup 2002. Congratulations Germany.
If there is a football god on Sunday I will write Felicidad Brasil here.

2002-06-23T23:03:00.000-07:00

American Analog Set live
The concert took place last Thursday night in the small Dreikönigskeller in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen. We had been waiting for almost 1 1/2 hours before the support act Don Lennon, a young singer/songwriter from Boston started around ten o'clock. He sang with a pleasant baritone and articulated the words of his often rather trivial lyrics centering on himself, on parties and girls very well. I thought the song in which he repeated his name in three languages was ingenious as it prevented me from forgetting it as it happens so often to me with support acts. His last song Dance Music was outstanding. He finished it without guitar just humming and making other strange noises with his mouth. That reminded me a little of Bobby McFerrin.
Around 11 o'clock the five guys of the American Analog Set from Austin, Texas arrived on stage and started tuning their instruments while Murray Street, Sonic Youth's excellent last album was still playing on the stereo.
AAS music is almost purely instrumental, the singing is subordinate, soft and rather high, more like a background effect, the lyrics are quite difficult to understand. Though AAS have existed for more than seven years the guitarist/singer seemed to be very young. He was extremely sympathetic and laid-back. Somehow this guy was so sweet that he radiated sunshine. He even apologized for playing a song they had performed six months ago when they had already been at the same venue. His guitar playing technique is rather economical and careful. At the end when his band already had left the stage he asked if there was a drummer in the audience to continue jamming a little. Of course there wasn't.
The drummer was the motor of the music. He provided the frame to fit in for the others. His drumming was very focussed, mostly rather energetic, sometimes more restrained. The peculiar thing about him was that he sticked out his tongue while drumming.
I can think of the following adjectives concerning the music: hypnotic, addictive, psychedelic, warm, mellow, serene, tender and tuneful. Many songs are rather minimal and repetitive. Some explose in a small crescendo. Besides drums and guitars there was a bass, keyboards and percussion (often xylophone). I had the impression that the keyboards sometimes played the same notes as the xylophone but with a small delay. The effect was like a kind of echo. During the second half of the concert I often closed my eyes to concentrate and enjoy the music better. The musicians did the same. For one song the guitarist used a black box which he stroke over the strings. The resulting sound was very low and full. Almost symphonic. In another song there was only drums and xylophone. I had difficulties to hear the bass. The bass player always turned his back on us.
Overall I loved the concert and bought their singles compilation Through the 90s: Singles and Unreleased after. It seems that they have changed their style slightly on the last record. The keyboards which have been dominating on many older singles have been pushed more into the background whereas the drumming has become more prominent. To me this is like a shift from psychedelic (keyboards) to hypnotic (rhythms). On the other hand it could be that this impression is mainly due to the concert where the drums have been louder than on the records.
- Genre: Drone-pop (due to AMG)
- Similar bands: Yo La Tengo, early Stereolab, Luna (for the singing and mood)
- Mp3s: "The Kindness of Strangers"(3.2 MB) and
"The Only One" (2.1 MB) from their latest album Know By Heart and
"Weather Report" (2.7 MB) from the album The Golden Band.

2002-06-19T22:45:00.000-07:00

Goose pimple voices
David Thomson in The New Republic on Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker by James Gavin: My Unfunny Valentine:
"In the early hours of a May morning in 1988, a body was found on the street outside the Hotel Prins Hendrik in Amsterdam. Its skull was crushed from having landed on a spiked post; the body seemed to have fallen from a window of the hotel...
...Chet really had only two things in life: playing the trumpet and doing drugs."
One of the most touching things in Jazz is Chet Baker singing. When Chet sings he sounds like a ghost, like a spirit. His voice is celestial and unbelievably sad at the same time. There is only one other singer who moves me as much as Chet Baker. That is Billie Holiday. A good place to start with Chet is the excellent documentary Let's Get Lost which came out shortly after his death. But be prepared Chet's life was more about self-destruction than anything else.

2002-06-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

I have changed the name of the blog again, the pronunciation is the same
- Longish account of Brian Wilson's concert in Nottingham by Mike from troubled diva. Apparently a great concert after a difficult start. A moving performance in between karaoke and sincerity.
- ILM discussion: Which other music is similar to "Unicorn" by Bel Canto and "Heaven or Las Vegas" & "Ivo" by Cocteau Twins?
- Ein Hamburger, der inzwischen tibetanischer Mönch ist, läuft zu Fuß durch Europa, er ist gerade dabei, die österreichische Grenze zu überschreiten, nachdem er Deutschland hinter sich hat und schreibt darüber im Internetz (via mosaikum). Das Ganze ist ein Friedensmarsch und soll dazu dienen, den Leuten in Europa das schwere Schicksal der Tibeter näherzubringen. Noch ein alter Reisetraum von mir. Zu Fuß um die Welt oder zumindest ums Mittelmeer.

2002-06-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Links
- Think positive. Only good news on the Good News Network. A good example: Palestinians and Jews. Working Together.
- ILM: A seemingly thorough interpretation of Gillian Welch's latest album Time. The Revelator and its refutation.
- Where's a good place to start with Wilco? After having read that thread I still don't know which will be my second album of theirs. The eclectic double album Being There or Summer Teeth full of violins?
- PLAYLOUDER | review - Murray Street by Sonic Youth:
"The way they manage to weave the songs into the whirling improvisational playing, like on 'Disconnection Notice', is seamlessly brilliant, and there is just enough balance between the tune, and the unexpected jazz chords, ear-splitting squeals, and lovely harmonic noises to make it forever listenable. This is unique to Sonic Youth and one of the reasons they have remained so relevant for 21 years. 'Murray Street' is mint."

German section
- Philosophiefragen kann man hier stellen und beantworten: WERTSCHRIFT.NET - das online-tool der philosophie
- Habe zwei Mal vergeblich versucht, mit dem Rad nach Indien zu fahren. Einmal war in Griechenland, einmal in Kappadokien Schluss. Zwei Studenten haben es kürzlich gepackt. Mit dem Fahrrad in die Uni: von Berlin nach Bangalore und weiter nach Seoul (Kurzfassung im UniSpiegel).

2002-06-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry I am going to abuse this blog for some personal advantage for a while
I'd really like a cigarette now. Wouldn't it be a nice marriage with the Erdinger Weißbier I am drinking right now? Of course it would, but I can't have everything. That's what I tell me anyways. I just post this for the Google spider, ok? God, this must be my most embarrassing post ever. And off it goes.

2002-06-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

The nicobeast is a rodent
I am in the blog hole but I am not alone. There is an animal gnawing inside my throat with its fine, little black teeths. It is the nicobeast. And it whispers into my ear:
"I stop gnawing at you if you just have one puff of a cigarette. Just one microgram of nicotine and I will leave you alone."
And I answer:
"No thanks. Been there, done that. Enough is enough. The vicious circle has to be broken. By the way I can hardly feel your gnawing anymore nicobeast. It almost feels like tickling now. I will starve you out little nicobeast. Only a heap of black nicotine will be left of you."

- I have to thank Hot Poop - Zappa News & Other Lumpy Gravy for linking to me.
- Recollections based on the album Doolittle, by the Pixies (long Mefi discussion on music memories in general).
- Sonic Youth interview and positive Murray Street review by Andy Gill in the Independent. Alvin from Nancy (in French) likes the album too.
- Concerts in the Rhein-Main region:
16-6 Midnight Choir in the Nachtleben in Frankfurt: Don't really know the band. They are from Norway and they sound quite epic and dark, a little bit like the early Tindersticks, but kitschier. A goth band with a crooner singing.
20-6 American Analog Set in the Dreikönigskeller in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen: Know by Heart was one of my favourite albums last year. They are from Austin, Texas which is home of a very good independent music scene. Somewhere in between early Stereolab, Luna and Yo La Tengo. The music is more on the bright side but definitely has a psychedelic undertone.
27-6 Calexico at the AstA-Sommerfest in Frankfurt-Bockenheim (free & outdoors): Giant Sand minus Howe Gelb are best without mariachi and when they don't sound like the music to a Western film score. Joey Burns and John Convertino can play music as far out as Giant Sand if they want. Just check their Aerocalexico tour CD from last year. Jazzy improvisations and Nick Drake covers are to be expected.
27-6 Suzanne Vega in the Volkspark in Mainz (sorry Suzanne but Calexico is more tempting).

2002-06-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

I stopped smoking on Tuesday 4 pm
That's one reason for the lack of updates. The other is that I am uninspired and a little tired of my blog. Hopefully that will change soon. The first anniversary is not too far. I have been listening a lot to the first two New Order albums in the last days. Especially Movement is one of those records touching me deep inside. Maybe more on it later.

2002-06-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

I think I will give up the titles soon
- Luke known as Captain Fez in the tiny blogworld has been fired from his job as he blogged during working hours. Blog or job that is the question. And the terrible thing is, a blog which would be paid and could replace a job wouldn't be a blog anymore.
- I don't have to write my review of Wilco's phantastic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot anymore. It has been written by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker already:
"But 'Yankee Hotel' is more about things holding together than about things falling apart. The sonic chaos heightens the sense of order that's embodied by the melodies and, ultimately, by Tweedy's voice."
What is so amazing about this album is that despite its refined production with loads of sounds and instruments it is down to earth (how I love that expression) and simple. It is full of surprising bends. It is pop and experiment at the same time. I have been listening to it in my car stereo going to work (about 2x20 minutes per day) for about four weeks now (except one week of Tom Waits interlude) and I am still not tired of it. There is a lot of sun and a lot of darkness on that album. It is like real life.

2002-06-02T23:03:00.000-07:00

More pointers
- Political compass: ca. 50 questions to find out if you are economically left/right (communist/neo-liberal) and libertarian/authoritarian (anarchist/fascist). To my astonishment I turned out to be close to Gandhi. A little less left but more libertarian.
- 1984 comes true in Europe. Big Brother will be watching us soon: Europe votes to end data privacy. I can't believe it.
- I haven't taken this test yet. I probably will turn out buddhist I suppose: belief-o-matic test
- ILM: One of my favourite today almost forgotten indie pop bands musically in between The Velvet Underground's third album and The Smiths: House of Love: unjustly neglected?
- Noch ein Test für meine deutschen Leser: Wie alt sind Sie wirklich? (Focus). Dass ich wieder mit dem Rauchen angefangen habe, hat mich natürlich nicht jünger gemacht. Mehr Sport wäre auch nicht schlecht. Mindestens fünf Kilo sollten runter. Also ich arbeite dran, mein biologisches Alter dem Aktuellen anzupassen. Vegetarier werde ich aber trotzdem nicht werden.

2002-06-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

Feeding the swallows
The weather is too nice to blog today. Just some links:
- PopMatters Music Interview | The Forgotten NYC Band: An Interview with Interpol. They don't think that they sound like Joy Division.
- index magazine interview: Brian Eno. Focussing on sociology and philosophy with a short discussion of Norbert Elias, Richard Sennett and Richard Rorty whose introduction to his book Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity Eno condenses to: "In the end, what Rorty turns out to be saying is that philosophy is just another kind of writing. It doesn’t have any special grasp on the truth."
Concerning the music only My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Eno's collaboration with David Byrne from the early eighties is mentioned.
- Modern classics: Performance Today. Christopher O'Riley interprets Radiohead on piano: Knives out, Thinking about you, Like Spinning Plates. And Nick Drake: Place to Be. MeFi discussion with a link to Brad Mehldau's version of Paranoid Android at KCRW.
- ILM discussion on Murray Street, the soon to be released new album of everybody's darling indie band Sonic Youth.

2002-05-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

Countermeasure or Die Geister, die ich rief, werd ich nun nicht los
Right now I am no.7 for this infamous query in some versions of Google. The number of visitors yesterday was 553. Today I already had 568 and there is one more hour to go. Many webmasters would be happy with a similar "popularity" of their site. I am not. I can't read my referrer logs anymore as they are full of people looking for this one word. And those people never comment on my posts, actually most of the others neither, but still. To stop this I renamed my blog today. The three letter word starting my blog name has been replaced by three letters with each of them separated by a blank coded in a special way in between the letters. I hope in this way Google will realise that my blog is not about that three letter word.
On the other hand I am happy that my Google PageRank (can be seen in the toolbar) has risen from 5 to 6 out of a maximum of 10. That is due to the many links I received from outside (thank you to you all) and that is a measure which I still find useful to rate the importance of internet pages.

2002-05-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

Connecting to the outside world
- Guardian: Face it - punk was rubbish. Sure, it had energy and attitude. But punk's importance has been hugely exaggerated, says Nigel Williamson, who was there at its birth (via wherever you are).
Mmm. Today I received the Warsaw CD with the early stuff of the band later to be known as Joy Division. The last five bonus tracks were recorded in July 1977 and they are punk as hell. Sounding like a garage version of the early Clash. Especially Ian Curtis shouts his head off. Hooky is already playing the tune (if there is one) with the bass. It was all there already. Ok except Morris magic drumming. The only official Joy Division release missing in my collection now is the Live at the Electric Circus EP from October 1977 with At a Later Date plus tracks by The Fall, The Buzzcocks and other punk bands I don't know. Any idea where I can get it? On CD if possible.
- Interesting graphical metasearch engine linking the result sites in a map: kartoo : les cartes de recherche, An example is "music blog" where Josh (unfortunately still busy in school and therefore on weblog vacation) who inspired me starting a weblog and me are on the same map. I don't know any of the other weblogs on that map though.
- German webloggers unite: Neu im Bloghaus: Bloggerkarte, dem Globe of Blogs nachempfundene schöne Darstellung deutscher Weblogs in einer Deutschlandkarte nach Bundesländern und Orten.

In my car stereo: Tom Waits - Alice (still growing on me)

2002-05-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

Why I like depressive music
Sad music has always had the strongest impact of all music on me. I guess it really got started with Nick Drake whom I discovered in the late 70s when his box set Fruit Tree comprising his three studio albums was released in Germany. I made a post on him a while ago (a search should find it but I am too lazy to look it up now). I usually listened to his music on headphones as it was too intimate to be shared with the outside world. He only sang for me with his gentle pure voice and told me about the beauty of life and love and the hopelessness of it all. It was the soundtrack of my growing-up. A 1-1 identification, a comprehension beyond words. After having listened to Nick Drake I did not feel alone in this world anymore. I knew that there had been somebody who had had very similar experiences to my own and who could write and sing about them which I obviously couldn't. It may sound stupid, but he was ~~my teenage~~ the idol of my teenage years.
Later on I listened to Nick Drake with my best friend who was on a similar trip as me. But it wasn't the same anymore. I felt awkward to listen to this music with somebody else. It was almost painful and very uncomfortable. I could not share Nick Drake with anybody else.
The thing with sad music is that I love to listen to it when I am sad and though it does not make me happy it gives me a relief. There is a hidden power in it which gives me strength.
Afterwards I discovered other music in a similar vein but the impression was less intense. Joni Mitchell's incredibly poetic songs, mostly on lost love. The Smiths melancholic tuneful pop songs with their witty and weird adolescent lyrics. Neil Young who made me overcome my first real lovesickness with After the Goldrush. Mark Kozelek from the Red House Painters who sings as if it is his only chance to survive. Idaho's first album Year After Year, another slow dive into darkness. The Tindersticks' First Album full of passion. The Gun Club's energetic psychobilly: Jeffrey Lee Pierce's doomed voice. Joy Division, maybe the climax of it all. Punky and rough in the beginning, gloomy, claustrophobic and atmospheric in the end. I have to stop now, there are so many I have forgotten and go back to the beginning and give the word to
Jody Beth Rosen from Freezing to Death in the Nuclear Bunker who describes the effect of Nick Drake's music better here than I ever could:
"I'm not the most fervent Nick Drake kneejerker, but I've always considered Pink Moon one of those albums -- one of those special, private experiences that signal a communication between someone in distress and another whose ship drowned years ago. It's like drinking tea when you're sick, and you hold the cup to your nose so the steam can come up through your nostrils and make your eyes tear -- that tea is a remedy, it's homeopathy, your best friend when you're grouchy and curled into an antisocial knot left on the sofa to be otherwise choked on by your stupid cat. It's not modern medicine, not a multimillion-dollar miracle of research and development, not shelling out kickbacks to charlatan medics, no apple-cheeked actresses breathing easy on mountaintops as African music zoom-zoom-zooms away. And that's what I find hard to stomach about this Volkswagen business."

To get an impression of sad music just listen to Nick Drake or
Bright Eyes: Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh (whom I just discovered and whose tortured vocals are sadness in nuce)
More on the still quite young Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes here:
- Bright Eyes: There Is No Beginning to the Story EP: Pitchfork Review (7.4/10)
- ILM: Bright Eyes: Worth a damn?

2002-05-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

Linkage
- Joe Panzner from the Oligarchist Home Journal reviews the soon to be released new Sonic Youth album Murray Street (rating 8.5/10). Excerpt:
"The most immediate difference between Murray Street and Sonic Youth’s post-1990 output is the newfound emphasis on clarity, focus, and outright melody. The guitars, which are every bit as likely now to jangle as they are to clang and buzz, are clean, crisp, and recorded bone-dry in trademark O’Rourke fashion."
- Maybe I should check out the new Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots which is Elasticheart's fave album of 2002 up to now. He says:
"The album is a step beyond what the band reached with "The Soft Bulletin" and blends the creativity and experimentation of that album with some of the catchiest songs I've heard this year."
I preferred "The Soft Bulletin" to Mercury Rev's "Deserter's Songs" which came out at about the time and was in quite a similar style as it was somehow less predictable and more glamorously pop. I saw the Lips live at about the same time and it was one of the weirdest concerts ever with the singer hitting this enormous gong every minute or so and bizarre videoclips being projected on a screen.
- Practical stuff: Why Won't We Read the Manual? (MeFi discussion)

2002-05-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

Links
- I found this by googling "music blog". It covers the music genres I love: Listen Up! collaborative music blog, music recommendations, mp3s, reviews, concerts : rock, pop, alternative, blues, jazz, folk, acoustic
- Kate Guay from Toronto has changed the name and URL of her music weblog: thrown askew: formerly quid pro quo
- For people interested in applied statistics: Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (via Monitor on Psychology), a new journal covering the issue of non-refuted null hypotheses. In statistical studies very often null hypotheses are tested. If the null hypothesis cannot be refuted there is no significant result. Usually these inconclusive tests are not published. But they are actually quite interesting as they give future researchers the information which paths have already been explored without results.
P.S. There is a problem with the Bloglet e-mail subscription of my weblog. Apparently it does not distinguish between only posted and really published posts. So when you get an e-mail from Bloglet it can be that there is nothing new in my blog as I have only posted the entry but not yet published it. I will address this issue to Monsur Hossain who created Bloglet. He has been very helpful in the past.

2002-05-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

Amazon.de
scored some points with me today. For the second time they were about to charge me for shipping though I had placed a shipping-free order. It turned out that one of the articles was not in stock, the order fell below the shipping-free threshold of 20 € and in my account it said that I had to pay the 3 € shipping costs. I even tried to change the order and put it together with another open one (with longer delivery time) but it was too late. At eight in the morning I send them an e-mail via their website telling them that I was extremely ~~unsatisfied~~ dissatisfied with their service and that they had lost me as a customer. At ten the excuse e-mail landed in my mailbox and they told me that their system does not handle this case properly and that the 3 € are refunded. Sometimes complaints work. But would they have refunded me without the complaint?

Music link of the day: Short interview with Sonic Youth on the forthcoming release of Murray Street: Sonic Youth Absorbs New Member Naturally (via dj martian)

2002-05-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

Results of visitors poll
A while ago I asked you the question: "How dear reader did you get here?"
Thank you very much for the 61 responses. The results are:
- Via a link on another website: 36.07%
- Had your site in my bookmarks/favourites: 21.31%
- Via a search engine looking for the adult word s**: 14.75%
- None of the above: 13.11%
- Won't tell you: 6.56%
- Don't remember: 3.28%
- Via a search engine searching for other things: 3.28%
- Typed your URL in: 1.64%
- Via an email link: 0.00%
I am happy that so many people came via external links or bookmarks/favourites though I am sure that this poll was not representative as I know that in fact most people arriving here look for the word s** which I do not write out anymore in order to get less of those search engine referrers which make the referrer logs almost unreadable and worthless.

2002-05-22T13:43:00.001-07:00

Site of the day
Fifty word fiction is a wonderful subpage of the excellent Tangents website ("The home of Un-Popular Culture on the World Wide Web.") which centers around indie and other pop music. The idea is simple. Write a story in fifty words. That is enough for a small plot and a surprise ending. Compact prose for short attention span people like me. I'd love to write one myself soon.
The last mini story is Loop by Ben White:
LOOP
"You mean it goes around in a loop?"
"Exactly right, a loop, yes."
I looked around the room. It was very small and very bare.
"There's no way out."
"None at all. We're stuck doing the same thing over and over again."
"You mean it goes around in a loop?"

2002-05-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

Wir backen uns unsere Lektüre selbst
Für meine deutschen Leser ein Link zum FAZ.NET - Mischpult. Da kann man sich durch Angabe der Ingredienzien eine Büchereinkaufsliste backen. Das geht so: Sprache 100% eigenwillig, 0% unauffällig. Stil: nüchtern 90%, opulent 10%. Tempo: moderat 80%, atemlos 20%. Umfang: <100. Ergebnis:
Das Stottern des Dichters des Königs
Und erzähle uns eine Geschichte: Hans Joachim Schädlich über Leben und Tod des Aesop / Von Kurt Flasch
Schädlich, Hans Joachim: Gib ihm Sprache

Sonnen sammeln
Juan Gelman entdeckt sein sephardisches Erbe
Gelman, Juan: Dibaxu, Debajo, Darunter

Kleidsames Hechtgrau mit schlammgelben Sprengseln
Frostgeschärfte Bilder vom Ersten Weltkrieg. Thomas Klings Gedichtband "Fernhandel" · Burkhard Müller
Kling, Thomas: Fernhandel

Na ja. Wohl eher ein Gadget. Aber lustig wars.

2002-05-21T03:37:00.000-07:00

Surfing
- You want to get rid of some of your old CDs and get some "new" ones for them? Try the Musical Swap Shop (via NYLPM)
- Three full concerts as mp3s: My Bloody Valentine [on komakino fanzine]
- 10 mp3 remixes of songs of the last REM album including artwork: R.E.M.ix (both via prolific)

- labs.google.com - Google Demos: "Google labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time." Current demos:
Google Glossary. Find definitions for words, phrases and acronyms (quite useful, even including jokes)
Google Sets. Automatically create sets of items from a few examples (e.g. type in two car brands and Google will tell you some more car brands, not really exciting, does not always work)
Voice Search. Search on Google by voice with a simple telephone call (gadget for people who can't type)
Keyboard Shortcuts. Navigate search results without using your mouse (for the geeks who still hate the mouse, can be useful when your mouse is dead)

2002-05-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

Early Joy Division
I posted the following message to the I Love Music discussion forum today:
"It was a sunny public holiday (Pentecost) today in Frankfurt and as so often on bright days I felt like relistening to one of my fave (not so sunny) bands: Joy Division.
I started with the first four tracks on the third disc of "Heart and Soul" which are identical to the "An Ideal for Living" EP recorded in December 1977. The tracks are: "Warsaw", "No Love Lost", "Leaders of Men" and "Failures" (the weakest of the four songs). And suddenly two things I hadn't noticed too much before struck me:

1. Ian Curtis does not sing in his grave mannered graveyard voice, he sings more "naturally" (one could say human) and
2. Joy Division sound much rougher, punkier and more energetic than on the later studio albums produced by Martin Hannett. There is hardly any trace of this gothic, claustrophobic and oppressing sound for which they became known later on and which turned me off initially when I discovered them about ten years ago.

The following three songs on disc 3 of "Heart and Soul" ("The Drawback", "Interzone" and "Shadowplay") which stem from the RCA LP later released under the name Warsaw produced by JD and others neither have the classic JD sound. The same is true for the first BBC session for the John Peel show from January 1979. Though Curtis has already changed his voice to lower spookier registers on the last song "Transmission". On the live recordings, especially "Les Bains Douches" from December 1979 JD are punkier and more dynamic but Curtis sings low as well.
My question: Does anyone know how much Hannett is responsible for these two major changes in JD's music, namely the lower singing of Curtis and the less edgy, more controlled and more lugubrious sound for which they became famous? How much did Hannett influence the (tragic) direction JD took later on? Looking at the artwork of the two studio albums designed by Peter Saville I ask myself how much it expressed how Hannett wanted the band to be and how much it reflected JD themselves. Especially the cover of "Closer" seems to be very artificial and premeditating. I quote Momus "Thought for the Day" here:
"Already posthumous when released, Peter Saville's sleeve for Joy Division's 'Closer' shows a necrophile scene of sorrowful keening cast in marble. Death becomes part of the album's power, a part of its marketing."
I'd also like to know if there are live bootlegs flying around from before the recording of "Unknown Pleasures" in April 1979. By the way I think I prefer their early, unpolished, thrashier intonation and sound which was probably more intense though maybe a little less unique than their later one."
Answers can be found here.

2002-05-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

Linkage
- Rory from Records ad Nauseam' with a glowing review of Luna's latest: Romantica. Apparently they resume the sound of the glorious days of Bewitched.
- New Order's rather new single Here to Stay another return to form? (by acb from the null device)
- Great long article on the Paisley Underground in PopMatters: Tell Me When It's Over

2002-05-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Discovery
British Sea Power is a rather new band from Brighton I had only heard from hearsay. There are two mp3 tracks on their site (via the Dutch connection prolific). The first one The Spirit of St. Louis is a dark, angry post-punk song sounding like a crossover of Gang of Four and Gallon Drunk. The Lonely is totally different, a tuneful, light and rather sunny ballad in the vein of what the Australian Apartments did about 8 years ago. Apparently their live shows are quite wild . A band to watch. I started a thread at ILM on them. Short Motion review of their three song EP Remember Me.

2002-05-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

One of the best bands in the world
PopMatters Concert Review of Giant Sand at the Knitting Factory April, 12th by Jody Beth Rosen from Freezing to Death... who just linked back to me. Thank you Jody. Quote:"He (Howe Gelb), as headliner, has a certain poise suggesting that even if you're not witnessing genius in action, you can at least see that an elemental layer of bullshit has been stripped away; now we're getting down to business."

2002-05-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

I am so vain
My comments on G. Marcus half-baked review of Wilco's masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot were noticed by Nate Patrin and Andreas Kellers, thank you so much:
- Hipster Detritus (May 11th): "Remember a few days ago at how I sneered at Greil Marcus for his review of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (almost spelled 'Foxtron'- sounds like Rupert Murdoch's world domination robot)? This guy sneers better."
- Wortmetz: "Und auch Hr. Fritz geizt nicht mit Links. Dazu eine Metarezension, die in einer bissigen Verschränkung der Review von Greil Marcus' im Salon mit seinen Kommentaren einmündet." (sorry for the German quote but I think this is not translatable)

By the way has anybody got an idea how to find out when another site links to you and especially to a post on your blog? I study my referrers via sitemeter and check the links to my site from blogdex and daypop who both crawl the weblogs daily or even more frequently but this is not ~~sufficient~~ exhaustive I feel. Concerning sitemeter I can miss a referrer (only the last 100 are stored) or a link may never be clicked on. Daypop only finds links to blogs which have been added (manually) to its index whereas blogdex somehow finds the weblogs itself though I did not yet understand how, but it is not complete neither. The Google backlinks are not so useful as they are always quite dated (monthly update?) and can not be ordered by date.

2002-05-17T15:37:00.001-07:00

I throw 'em, you catch 'em (the links I mean)
- Another weblog concentraing on pop and indie music: Freezing to Death in the Nuclear Bunker
- ILM discussion I joined which went off towards general Americana/alt-country: Wilco, C or D? S D?
- Shakey: Neil Young's Biography. . . (MeFi). One question discussed here: Why are most fans of Neil Young men?
- Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar: I still use the Google toolbar but this little thingy is a serious contender for the throne of toolbars. I like the idea to add (special) characters after the search terms to specify if a search engine, thesaurus, dictionary, telephone lookup etc. will be used. The syntax is easy and searches are fast.
- Die Internetadresse für die Internetsüchtigen: HSO e.V. Die erste Selbsthilfegruppe für Onlinesuchtgefährdete in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Eine Sucht ist eine Krankheit.

2002-05-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

The Morning News - Ten Great Beatles Moments (details there)
1. ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ (1963)
2. The ‘middle-eight’ on ‘And I Love Her’ (1964)
3. George Harrison’s sitar accompaniment on ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ (1965)
4. ‘A Day in the Life’ (1967)
5. ‘I Am the Walrus’ (1967)
6. Side two of the White Album (1968)
7. The guitar lick at the end of ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey’ and the piano melody on ‘Sexy Sadie’ (1968)
8. George Harrison’s guitar solo on ‘Something’ (1969)
9. The Abbey Road medley (1969)
10. ‘You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)’ (1970)

2002-05-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

Philosophy
- Philosophical health check. My tension quotient was a rather low 13% (average 27%). Only two contradictions:
What is faith? You disagreed that:
It is quite reasonable to believe in the existence of a thing without even the possibility of evidence for its existence
But agreed that:
Atheism is a faith just like any other, because it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God
and What should be legal?
You agreed that:
The government should not permit the sale of treatments which have not been tested for efficacy and safety
And also that:
Alternative and complementary medicine is as valuable as mainstream medicine

2002-05-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

Music pointers
- Plattentests, deutsches Musikforum
- interesting French music zine: NEW FORMS - Musiques électroniques alternatives (trip-hop, drum'n'bass, electronica...)
- Rough Guide to Music (found it when looking for a review on the new Edwyn Collins. What struck me was that the review seemed to be honest. It was negative.)
Glorious Noise:
Interview with Jay Bennent and The Jay Bennett track-by-track listing of instruments played on YHF.
ILM discussions:
- Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (nice thoughts by Lou near the end)
- Yo La Tengo - The Sound of the Sound of Science (10MB mp3 available, album is distributed via their site, instrumental soundtrack to underwater documentaries)
- I Love Music/I Love Everything community front page with a search box and links to the weblogs of some contributors

2002-05-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

Daily faves
- Discussion: Plastic: 500 Questions To Ask Before You Ask, 'Will You Marry Me?'
- Online book resource: Blackmask Online organised in a directory (via robotwisdom)
- Book list: Daily Telegraph's 100 novels of 1899 (ca. 50% online, via robotwisdom)
- Quiz: Which Pixies song are you? I am Monkey Gone to Heaven!
- Joke:
How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
How many can you afford?
via (Life As It Happens)

2002-05-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Rolling Stone: New Voices #52
The monthly compilation CD by the German Rolling Stone arrived today. 16 tracks. A selection:
Archive: Numb (from You All Look the Same to Me)
It starts with the drum machine. One guy singing "I put a hole through you. You put a hole through me", the other one repeating "Numb". A track like a "descent into the maelstrom", getting darker and darker. Bluesier and bluesier. Trip-hop meets shoegazing. Massive Attack meets My Bloody Valentine. A whirl swallowing the listener. I am a psychedelic addict.
Breeders: Off You (from Title WK))
Almost ten years after the Last Splash. After several withdrawal treatments the Deal twins are back. From power indie pop to minimal slow-motion guitar pop. Kim Deal's voice more fragile than ever. The Breeders have aged well. A movingly sad comeback like under barbiturates. They have got all the time of the world. "I am the autumn and the scarlet. I am the make-up on your eyes".
Chuck Prophet: That's How Much I Need Your Love (from No Other Love)
Ex-Green On Red guitarist in a Western soundtrack. "If I was a Cadillac you'd be my driving wheel". Sliding into Thereminia. Fuzzy keyboards leading us into an American desert. We don't need water there.
Edwyn Collins: Back to the Back Room (from Doctor Syntax)
Another long time no see. Edwyn the Scottish indie pop crooner is back as well. It was worth the wait. "Operating in the vacuum". Exquisite as always.

2002-05-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

Catching up with the backblogs
- Toddlike's Worthless Music Review Blog on Brian Jonestown Massacre, Merzbow and more interesting music off the beaten track.
- gstring: for the discerning music nut. Music news from Melbourne. Don't look for Britney Spears and Boyzone here.
- Hipster Detritus: A Blog. ILM contributor Nate Patrin's music blog. Nate likes punk, new wave, indie and lots of other good music.
- Nanoblogg, Stefan's German music weblog on electronica and other indie music.
- ::indie tunes. i can't live without music. Jana, 20, studying Philosophy and German language and literature studies (Germanistik in German) in Erlangen near Nuremburg. German posts on Tocotronic, The Strokes etc.
- onfocus.com : Weblog BookWatch with the most linked to books in the weblog world on Amazon. A similar service is offered by Daypop: Amazon Wishlist Top 40.

2002-05-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

Reviewing a review
I received the new Wilco CD from Amazon this morning together with Houellebecq's first novel to exceed the 20 € shipping costs limit. Quite a good performance by Amazon. I had placed the order on Thursday 14h29, they sent it out yesterday 17h53 and it arrived this morning around 10. Even though I was not always happy with them in the past there is no doubt that Amazon is one of the best online shops.
So right now I am listening to Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for the third time. I had very high expectations concerning that album after what I had read in Badger's blog, at Pitchfork and in the German Rolling Stone. And I have to say that I am not disappointed. A rock album with a song mentioning Jesus (cf. the 3rd VU, the first two House of Loves, Cohen's 1st, Big Star's last, Tom Waits' "Bone Machine", Giant Sand's "Chore", Nirvana's "Unplugged" etc.) very often is a milestone. I was afraid that Tweedy's voice which I found a little feeble after 2-3 mp3s and some clips of Wilco songs I had listened to before would put me off but it doesn't at all. YHF is a real album which should be listened to from beginning to end. The last album in a similar vein I know was Blur's excellent somber "13" from 1999. Though YHF is a little softer and I don't know if Tweedy is coming to terms with the end of a relation like Albarn was. YHF is not about sunshine neither and seems very controlled in places. I haven't found a really weak track, the outstanding one after the first listens is obviously the pop gem "Heavy Metal Drummer" followed closely by the sentimental closer "Reservations" which hits a similar chord in me as "~~All~~ Across the Universe" by The Beatles. The record has nothing to do with alt-country anymore which is a good thing in my eyes. It is slightly experimental guitar-driven pop with Jim O'Rourke (from Tortoise who is a full band member of Sonic Youth now) responsible for the mix and electronics.

Actually I am getting carried away here. I didn't want to write a review. How could I after only three listens. I wanted to comment on a review by one of the foremost rock critics, Greil Marcus who subtitled his latest "Real Life Rock Top 10" column in Salon:
Wilco signify something...
I am curious what uncle Greil will tell us about Wilco's long-awaited new album on CD, its message and the meaning of the music.
The cover features photos of Chicago skyscrapers,
Thanks a bunch I thought those were huts in the African bush.
and the first four words, "I am an American,"
That sounds very promising. Like the beginning of an in-depth analysis of the lyrics. Go on Greil.
are the same as those of Saul Bellow's 1953 "The Adventures of Augie March":
Isn't he smart this man? He is not only an expert of rock but also of literature. Chapeau!
"Chicago born," Bellow
The connection to the cover. That's brilliant.
said after a comma: "aquarium drinker," Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy says without one.
That's what I call deep insight into rock. As a rock critic you have to be meticulous. How could anyone take you seriously if you'd skip a punctuation mark? The difference between literature and rock is a comma. It's easy. That must have taken a lot of scientific research. One small annotation: didn't Bellow write that? And didn't a character in the book say it? Didn't know Bellow said it as well. But I trust you Greil. Last question: did Bellow say the comma as well?
But Augie March knew how to walk against the wind on the streets, to go right past you with such force you turned around and watched his back, wondering who he was --
The literature pope speaks. He knows a lot about me. Didn't know I would try to watch the back of Augie March. Usually backs don't turn me on. Never heard of that character neither. Have you? Do you watch backs?
while Tweedy's singing, never strong,
Objection, your honour! That is a subjective statement which is not founded on any evidence. I bet Tweedy sings better than you Mr Marcus. At least you have almost arrived to the object of your review, the music, now.
here recedes into a dithering miasma apparently meant to signify thinking it all over,
What a careful choice of exquisite words in the first half of the quote. I'll try to remember "miasma" for my next review. It sounds very cool and clever. Even after looking it up it doesn't make sense to me here. Plus the key to the interpretation of the record. Marcus can read minds. But isn't too sure. Why "apparently"? If I understand well, according to Marcus with his way of singing Tweedy wants to show that he isn't too sure neither. Of what? Of anything! That's a strong philosophical statement, but a genius like Marcus can't be wrong, can he?
plus sound effects apparently meant to signify the modern world.
That's one "apparently" too much, isn't it? Marcus is losing the ground under his feet. But we are in the modern world. So maybe that's understandable. How old are you Greil?
In other words, it isn't against the law to redo "Revolver",
100% agreement here. That could have been the beginning of a nice adequate praise of this album, but I am a dreamer, I guess. YHF as the "Revolver" of the zero years would have been a little over the top nevertheless, I suppose.
but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Especially if you're an American.
And you record in Chicago. That's missing, Mr Marcus. It would have been so nice to close the circle.

Thank you very much for this amazing piece of critic Mr Marcus. I think you have almost arrived to the perfect rock review here. You could just try to write a little less about the music next time, couldn't you?

2002-05-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Could you tell me something?
On Tuesday I had 291 visitors. Unbelievable. I'd like to know more about you. Could you do me the favour of answering this small little poll? Thanks a lot in advance.

Visitors poll

How dear reader did you get here?

We all come from somewhere.

2002-05-09T02:40:00.000-07:00

The Big Lie
Interessante nonkonformistische Gedanken von Adam Curry (US-stämmiger Fernseh- und Radiomoderator, der in Amsterdam lebt und dort mehrere Medienprojekte gestartet hat) zu Pim Fortuyn und zu der fragwürdigen Medienberichterstattung über seine Ermordung. War er nun ein extremer Rechter oder nicht? Glaubwürdiger als Le Pen, Haider, Berlusconi und Konsorten war er in jedem Fall. Und toleranter als der von ihm angeprangerte Islam wohl auch. Ein Satz wie: "Wie können Sie eine Kultur respektieren, wo die Frau einige Schritte hinter ihrem Mann gehen muss, in der Küche zu bleiben und ihren Mund zu halten hat?" ist zumindest nachvollziehbar, insbesondere von einem Schwulen. Denn Homosexuelle wurden von Muslimen als "niedriger als Tiere" bezeichnet. Fortuyn war sicherlich eine interessante schillernde Figur mit Charisma, die sich getraut hat Dinge zu sagen, die die meisten sowieso denken, die aber nicht immer politically correct waren. Davon gibt es wenige in der Politik und in Zukunft wohl noch weniger. Wäre ich eine, dann würde ich es mir jedenfalls zweimal überlegen in die Politik zu gehen. Politik ist lebensgefährlich für solche Leute. Stromlinienförmige umfragebesessene Typen wie Schröder und GW Bush~~, die ohne ihre Berater Schaufensterpuppen wären,~~ sind da wohl einfach besser aufgehoben.

Edited translation to English from Babelfish:
Interesting nonconformistic thoughts by Adam Curry (television and radio moderator, stemming from the US and living in Amsterdam, where he has started several media ventures) on Pim Fortuyn and the dubious media coverage of his murder. Was he extreme right-wing or not? He was in any case more credible than Le Pen, Haider, Berlusconi and the likes. And he was almost certailnly more tolerant than the islam he denounced. A sentence like: "How can you respect a culture if the woman has to walk several steps behind her man, has to stay in the kitchen and keep her mouth shut?" is at least comprehensible especially when said by a gay. Gays have been proclaimed as "lower than pigs" by muslims. Fortuyn was surely an interesting multi-faceted figure with charisma. He dared to say things, most thought anyways, which were however not always politically correct. There are few politicians like that and probably even less in the future. If I would be one, then I would think twice before going into politics. Politics can be lethal for such people. Streamlined poll-obsessed guys such as Schroeder and GW Bush ~~who would be dummies without their advisor stuff~~ are probably much better suited for politics.

2002-05-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

Those were the ~~times~~ days
How many Eurostat "experts" does it take to change a light bulb?
Twenty-one. One to stand holding it, and twenty to drink until the room spins around.

2002-05-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

Various stuff
- Making Insomnia Fun Again is another good indie music blog. It features a lot of mp3 links.
- I have to read the following discussion at kuro5hin to brush up my knowledge of music theory: introduction to basic music composition (via null device)
- The whole text of a book by Peter McWilliams on how to cure a malady which afflicts me from time to time: Heal Depression. My current treatment of this nuisance is to sleep less. 6 hours are enough I think. It makes me a little psyched and hyperactive but I prefer that to being paralysed in a depression.

2002-05-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

All you want to know about Google
- Today I asked a strange question on the very active and useful Webmasterworld forum about Google:
"My blog is currently #17 on the search query "s e x" (without the blanks) at Google. Unsurprisingly about 95% of my Google referrers and maybe close to 90% of all referrers come to my site looking for the word in question. Therefore my referrer stats are almost unreadable as they are flooded by "s e x"-referrers. Is there a way to tell Google that my site should not show up in the results for the single word query "s e x"? " I didn't get the answer I wanted but I have to say that those people are very nice. If you have questions concerning Google here is where to go.
Via the PageRank Site Value Chart on their site I also found out that my little blog which has a Google PageRank of 5 is worth $1,000-$50,000. The upper limit is quite a lot of dough though I think the value of a blog is closer to the lower limit as it stems mainly from other blogs linking to it and the commercial relevance is rather negligible.
And someone proposed a statistical distribution of the PageRanks: const*exp(-k*PR) with k chosen by the Google guys. Interesting stuff I have to delve into deeper when I am less tired.

2002-05-07T14:34:00.000-07:00

Blogger Insider
I am a little late on the latest round of Blogger Insider questions. The questions from Laughing Muse (the answers to my questions to ~~him~~ her will be on ~~his~~ her site) date from April 17th. But I had a reason. I did not have access to my pop3 e-mail account in Greece. Let's go.

Q1: You're thinking of switching to a new blogging tool - which one, and why? (I ask because I'm one of those odd folks who runs a nonstandard blog script off of her own server.)
A: From the start I have been using Blogger, the most widespread blogging tool available. I used it as it was piss-easy to get started but realized after a while that in the end using it involves a lot of work as there are many features missing in Blogger and I had to get them from other free available sources. Examples are a search, a referral tracker, a comment system, an e-mail notification service, polls, a ping bookmarklet etc. Additionally Blogger is not always reliable (esp. the free version I guess) and pages load quite slowly (maybe because I am in Germany?). Other areas where Blogger has problems: archive links are lost often when publishing, publishing is not always available etc.
I want to move to Antville, a weblogging tool from Austria mainly used by German speakers. To create a weblog there is even easier than with Blogger. You just choose a URL which is still available, a user id and a password and that's about it. Weblogs are hosted on Antville. I really like about Antville that it is much more communicative than Blogger in its design. There is an integrated commentary system and there is a section called "recently modified" in the sidebar which gives you the latest changes/additons to the weblog be them posts (in Antville called stories) or comments. You can also have a completely open collective weblog where everyone registered can write stories (like in Blogger). Additionally you can create topics to order your stories by subject. A search which also searches the comments is integrated as well. The referrers of the last 24 hours are accessible. You can post your own images or media files which reside on Antville. A new feature is the automatic pinging of weblogs.com which is very useful for readers if they use a weblog monitor like blo.gs where they have created their own blogroll with the last updated weblogs on top of the list. Polls are integrated as well. These are just the easily usable features. The layout of the weblog can be changed with the so-called skins. Macros can be programmed (don't know really what they do but anyways).
In one sentence Antville integrates the most important features of a weblog seamlessly whereas Blogger is very crude in comparison and blogs at Blogger become patchworks if you want to have all these options. Antville weblogs load much faster because of that as well. And they are free of course like standard Blogger.
The only two things I would be missing right now are an e-mail notification service for the readers if a new story has been posted and a bookmarklet which lets you post links easily like in Blogger. In the standard Antville weblog you still have to type your tags yourself. The only reasons I haven't moved yet are my laziness and my vanity as "s e x and sunshine" is known in the music weblog circles.

Q2: What's your first conscious memory that focussed on, or included, music? Why the "music blog" focus?
A: Don't remember my first conscious memory of music. Probably a Christmas carol or something stupid like that. My relation to music is almost purely passive. I am a listener but not a composer or interpret of music. I never played an instrument though in my family (including uncles, aunts and cousins) most people play instruments and classical music is quite important. I think with my blog I want to compensate for my unmusicality. As I am unable to make music I want to describe it and put it into words. To grasp it by transforming it into language. Though this is really hard as well and I hardly ever succeed. Maybe the focus is on music as I am an auditive person. Sounds and voices have always touched me much more than images. They have a depth to them which has an immediate impact on my inner self whereas images mostly leave me cold and I usually find them superficial. I really hate TV by the way but I like movies in the cinema.

Q3: "s e x and sunshine" - sounds like a new kind of bar drink ;-> How did you come up with the name for your site?
A: Nice question. My favourite cocktail is "Blue Lagoon" by the way. I think I have answered it in one of the first posts of my weblog: "But actually THE reason for calling this "s e x and sunshine" is that this can be abbreviated to SAS and this stands for at least two totally different things. One of the two can give you a clue about my studies and work. All the above is of course bollocks. I chose s e x and sunshine as name for the blog as I hope to attract much more traffic with such a fancy and slightly frivolous title."

Q4: What's the best personality test you've taken? The worst? (Use your own criteria for this one - just define them a little bit for us.)
A: Another short question which hits the nail. I like that. My favourite was the first one I took on the internet where I happened to be a painting of Monet. Different shadings of blue and a little blurred. Flowers floating on a pond. The worst was probably "Which rock chick are you?". My criterium is the result of the test. If I don't like it the test is bad. I don't care for the questions. They can be stupid as hell. I usually forget them immediately afterwards anyways.

Q5: Reality TV - innovative marketing ploy or sign of the apocalypse? Which show(s) (if any) did you watch?
None. Big Brother was a big thing in Germany a couple of years ago but I already had abolished my tv. I think reality shows are just the logical further development of tv. The tv audience is curious and the actors in the shows are vain. What a perfect combination. It didn't last long though.

Q6:The RIAA - careful corporate citizen, just another business, or rabid bunch of troglodytes out of touch with technology?
That's the music business isn't it? Never cared really but good music can be published anywhere. On a major or at home.

Q7:Do you own any albums in more than two formats? (Not counting self-made CDs or tapes).
Not so many actually as I am a miser. On vinyl and CD I have Nick Drake's "Five Leaves Left" and "Pink Moon", Joni Mitchell's "Blue", "Hejira" and "The Hissing of Summer Lawns". Brian Eno's "Before and After Science", Keith Jarrett's "Sun Bear Concerts" and Giant Sand's "Chore of Enchantment". Maybe some more but those are the most important.

Q8: Was your first language English, or German? Just out of curiosity, why do some of your blog entries appear in one language, some in another (with no translations?)
Thanks for the compliment. I write this weblog in English to practice the language. I always loved English as I found it much more succinct and to the point than German. I also write this weblog in English to conceal how bad my German is ;-). At least in comparison to Goethe's. But I am 100% German. I also hesitate to move to Antville as in Antville I will definitely have to write in German and will lose my small but dear audience I have gained here. But I really want to write in German. But I am afraid that the emptiness of most of my posts will become much more evident in German. The personal sometimes almost philosophical posts here have mostly been in German. I wrote them in German as I couldn't have written them in my poor English. There is Babelfish for that ;-). German is my mother tongue and I can obviously express nuances much better in it. My English will always be superficial I guess.

Q9: How are you enjoying Chiros? We want a post card!!!
Chios is a good place to forget the world around you. Like Hydra was for Leonard Cohen in the 60s/70s. In terms of square miles it is about as big as Berlin, but outside the capital there are maybe 10,000 inhabitants. The Northwest is almost unpopulated. Most villages there are deserted. Chios has suffered a lot of a Turkish massacre in 1822 when 10,000s were murdered. If you are looking for loneliness you can find it there. And sea and sun (the light is very bright) and wind and quite barren mountains of course. Not to forget the cats.

I really enjoyed the questions Laughing Muse. Sorry it's late and I can't hold my promise. I will send you my questions tomorrow. For sure.

2002-05-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

Back from life to reality
Today was my first day at work after three wonderful weeks on Chios and Samos in the East Aegean. The bright light of the sun has been replaced by the glowing monitor. The clear blue sea by the pouring rain (at least on Saturday). The chaotic hooting traffic with zillions of motorbikes and mopeds coming from nowhere by a traffic like a silent movie with actors as disciplined as robots. I was in between Germans speaking my language again after having not met one single German on the whole trip. This has never happened to me before on a holiday. I was taken for a Norwegian by the Norwegians on Chios and the Dutch on Samos talked in Dutch to me which I don't understand. When I entered the gate of my employer with my huge (in comparison to the Suzukis and Daewoos I had driven in Greece) Passat station wagon for a moment I thought what would happen if they had sacked me. A very worrying and liberating thought at the same time. Like the last revolt before accepting the fact that the holidays were over. I am writing this sitting on my new orthopedic "Balance" swivel chair at home. Its seat topples sideways and back and forth which is supposed to be good for my bad back. A strange a little unstable feeling in the beginnng but I am getting used to it and I think the 500+ € were a good investment.

2002-05-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

The origins of chess
I read in Der Spiegel that Renate Syed, an indologist from Munich has found evidence for the theory that chess actually comes from India and originated as a war practice game called caturanga around 450 AD. The pawns were the infantry, the rooks were bronze chariots with archers, the bishops were war elephants, the knights were obviously horses and the queen used to be the minister who only moved one field diagonally like a handicapped king. The Indian king of Kanauj gave the game of chess without the rules as a present in the sixth century to the king of Persia to test his intelligence. The Arabs conquered Persia later on and spread the game of chess around the world. They gave the queen the long radius it has now as their armies were dominated by many fast moving horses and mounted camels.

2002-05-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

A rose is a rose is a rose
The Covers Project has catalogued 11,000 song covers. They are looking for the longest cover chain. A cover chain is something like artist A has covered a song of artist B who has covered a song of artist C etc. The longest chain up to now includes 66 songs. From the Smashing Pumpkins cover of "A Night Like This" by The Cure to The Funkmeister G song "Who got the Fonk?" covered by Cavort With Whores. Never heard of that band so this sounds like a dead-end. But there are surely more covers of Smashing Pumpkins songs (to extend the chain) than the two mentioned here though none comes to my mind immediately. The most covered band are obviously The Beatles (453 covers) and the most covered song is of course "Yesterday" (58 versions). You can add a cover song if you wish.

2002-05-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

Some things I don't/didn't like about Amazon
- Some time ago they charged me for shipping though I had placed a shipping-free order. It was their fault they didn't have a CD in stock and my order was suddenly below the shipping-free threshold.
- I wrote a review for Amazon and had to accept their conditions which said (apparently this has changed) that reviews you write for them become their intellectual propriety and they do not even guarantee to cite your name. Of course they can also censor or edit your review. This was one reason to start this weblog.
- When putting a commentary to an album on my wishlist they did not let me use the words "fucked up" as they think this is inappropriate language. "Fucked up" is usually a praise in my book.
- Probably this is not their fault but why can't I find the new Paul Auster The Book of Illusions in English which is already translated into French as Le Livre des Illusions on their site? The plot sounds very promising. Existential in the vein of the New York Trilogy after what I heard.

2002-04-27T13:31:00.000-07:00

Samos conversation
We were walking down from our apartment at Potami Beach to Karlovassi port in the dark for dinner. When passing the military sentry watching the Turkish coast line in the North he asked:
He: Do you like Samos?
Me: Yes it is beautiful. And you?
He: No.
Me: I am sorry for you.

2002-04-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

Howe Gelb: Confluence
My contribution to Freaky Trigger's ~~second~~ third birthday in 102 Beats That, 102 words on Howe Gelb's Confluence album from last year:
"Howe Gelb has a twisted mind. In his world capacity, dilemma and gazelle are sisters, conformity is a saint and the 'blue marble girl shoves the day into the night'. These surreal lyrics are accompanied by Howe’s bluesy guitar, drums, bass and occasionally farfisa, pump organ and wurlitzer piano. The music is a laid-back blend of country, bar jazz, blues and rock. Its rough charm opens itself only slowly to the listener. In the exemplary lo-fi 'Hatch'delays and breaks lead to the unstoppable pedal steel finish. The album ends in a three guitars desert storm: Howe throws the sand in our ears."

2002-04-22T13:08:00.000-07:00

The action is at simple things.

2002-04-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

Hello from Chios
We have been spending the last couple of days in Karfas on Chios island between Lesbos and Samos. The weather was not really amazing, we had a lot of rain and morning temperatures of around 15 degrees Celsius. We stayed at Marko's place. We were Marko's first vistors this year. It is still very quiet around here. Most of the few tourists we met on the island were Norwegians as 1. there is a direct flight from Oslo and 2. Norwegians prefer Greece in spring when the temperatures are still bearable. Chios is quite a non-touristic island. It does not really need the tourists as in the south of the island the resin of the Mastix shrub is collected and Chios is the only place in the world where the mastix yields the resin which is used a lot for chemical and pharmaceutical purposes. We tried to chew the resin but that is something not really to be recommended as the resin sticks in between the teeth and is very hard to get rid of. The liqueur of Mastix tastes quite nice nevertheless.
Our next destination will be Samos island, the ferry is supposed to leave in one hour. There we will do some more hiking if the weather permits it.