Life

Well, I'm sure Isaac Brock wasn't too happy about his injury. Yesterday I heard that because of his injury the Modest Mouse concert in Frankfurt in June had to be cancelled, which would have taken place during my holiday. Instead, the concert now took place yesterday at the Batschkapp, and I was even able to get a card via eBay. Yes! The concert went quite well, although the Batschkapp was completely sold out. The warm-up band was pretty bad, but Modest Mouse hit the roof, although they were aiming for ... you know. What I learned during the show was that I like the songs from "Good news ..." more than the ones from "We were dead ...". This is of course an over-generalization, e.g. "Dashboard" is certainly among the best songs of MM, but overall the songs from "Good news ..." have more variation and also more life in them. But, hey, I felt almost like the protagnoist from How soon is never?, seeing Johnny Marr. Now I only have to find out from which LP that song is that they played after "Float on". Update: Some good soul from the forum on plattentests.de said it was "Tiny cities made of ashes" from "The Moon& Antarctica" and indeed, I recognized it was. However, played live, it sounded quite differently, much more powerful. And something else I forgot to mention: after the Trail of Dead in 2005, this was the second concert which featured two drummers and just as with ToD, this had a terrific effect on the sound.

Heute gibt es einen Geburtstag zu feiern, den ich vermutlich noch nie wirklich wahrgenommen habe: Das Grundgesetz wird 58. Aber leider ist der Grund, warum ich das dieses Jahr mitbekomme, genau der Anlass, warum es dieses Jahr keinen Grund zum Feiern gibt: Beim aktuellen Stand der Dinge kann man schon auf den Gedanken kommen, dass zumindest wesentliche Körperteile des Jubilars gerade von einigen Leuten zum Ausschlachten freigegeben sind. Aktuelle Beispiele gefällig? Wie wäre es mit Geruchsproben von wahllosen Verdächtigen, was etwa dem Guardian die Gelegenheit gibt, diese Stasi-Methoden auch international (oder evtl. doch auch national) in Erinnerung zu rufen? Oder mit Hausdurchsuchungen aufgrund verdächtiger Suchen?

Das eigentlich Tragische daran ist ja, dass all dieser Wahnsinn untergeht in den Medien, weil irgendwelche Irrlichter denen mit solcherart bekloppter Brandanschläge (dazu Harald Schmidt heute in seiner Sendung: "Völlig sinnlos, Kai Diekmann saß ja gar nicht drin.") prima Ausreden liefern, warum man gar nicht inhaltlich über irgendwelche Globalisierungskritik oder sonstige Protestaktionen berichten braucht. Alles Chaoten, die darf man als Bürger gar nicht ernst nehmen. Dazu hat Toje genau den richtigen Ton getroffen: Danke, ihr gewaltbereiten Trottel, dass Ihr den Scharfmachern die Ausreden liefert, mit der sie dann unser aller Rechte einschränken. Not!

Der Satz des Tages stammt von Heribert Prantl in einem Artikel in der SZ:

Heute werden alle sicherheitsbedrohlichen Erkenntnisse mit 11, mit 9 und mit 2001 multipliziert.

Der Kontext sind die Razzien bei den G8-Gegnern in Hamburg und anderswo.

Well, this post was due since quite some time now, so I'll stop babbling and go for the latest additions to my CD archive (yes, I'm an old fashioned user of those tiny discs).

First of all, I did a review of The Mission "God is a bullet", currently to be found at plattentests.de. It's nice in it's old fashioned guitar-oriented wave, but also not to convincing. Perhaps I've just become too bored with this old stuff. (5)

The Queers new album "Munki brain" also landed on my shelf for a review, but at the time there were to many better other records. We're also not exactly a punk store, so that explains the omission. The record is what you would expect from a number umpteeemth album, and I'm sure every surf punk is going to have a great time with it. Me, I'm not a surf punk, and these days only rarely a listener to punk. (5)

The nicest addition as of late is from Modest Mouse with "We were dead before the ship even sank". It provides so much niceness and comfort that you'll feel as floating around, only to trash you to the ground a mere split second later. Any fan of indie rock will probably know that legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr has become a member of the band, which hasn't exactly hurt the sound. The compactness of the songs is sometimes just stunning and mostly brillantly instrumented. I do have some complaints about the drums though, but nethertheless a fantastic record. (9)

I have my share of problems with The Arcade Fire and "Neon bile" is no exception. There are a lot of good tunes on the album, but sometimes it's just too pathetic. (6)

I'm more and more bored by indie dance pop, like e.g. made by Maximo Park, whose new album I've only dipped into but refrained from buying. But I couldn't resist to buy "Ten new messages" by The Rakes for no particular good reason. Indie dance pop, all the same, though sometimes a little bit rougher, i.e. more like The Dogs. (6)

Finally, there is "Myth takes" by !!!: Just like their last record, this is dance music made for the indie discos or maybe just the other way round. Again, there are some fantastic songs on it (Heart of hearts, for instance) but then again, I may be just too old to learn to dance to this disco sound. (7)

In the category "Yesterday", I finally have "13 Songs" by Fugazi, so I can now assign a name to those songs I knew it would know. Brilliant punk rock and a must buy for anybody. (9)

Zwei mal Politik, zweimal Freiburg, und doch keine Lokalpolitik: Man fragt sich ja wirklich, wohin unsere Politiker gerade unterwegs sind. Zum einem ist da ein Ministerpräsident, dem man die Nachhilfe in Geschichte bzgl. eines seiner Vorgängers nicht nur einfach nur geben, sondern schon aufnötigen muss und der damit beweist, dass der schon etwas ältere Spruch "Wir können alles außer Bildung" auch bzgl. seiner eigenen Person zutrifft.

Aber das ist ja vergleichsweise harmlos, könnte man meinen, denn das betrifft ja "nur" die Vergangenheit. Viel schlimmer sind da die aktuellen Ideen des anderen "Freiburgers der Woche", wobei ich mir recht sicher bin, dass diese "neue" kreative Idee das Unschuldsprinzip außer Kraft zu setzen nicht auch schon in Deutschland durch "prior art" belegt ist. Schönes Schlagwort dazu im Netz: Nach Web 2.0 kommt Stasi 2.0.

Wobei ich ja mittlerweile geneigt bin, zu vermuten, dass die beiden Dinge in Verbindung stehen: Vielleicht hat sich da einer bei der CDU gedacht, der Oettinger, der kann mal schön einen Sturm im Wasserglas veranstalten, und wir ziehen parallel mit viel weniger Aufmerksamkeit noch ganz andere Sachen durch. Und wenn man sich das doch eher geringe Medienecho anschaut, dann hat das doch ganz gut geklappt.

No, I didn't stop listening to music, I just forgot blogging about it. But, hey, I remembered today.

So, der Sturm ist, was mich betrifft zumindest, erstmal weitgehend vorüber. Aber gestern abend war Bahn fahren endlich mal wieder spannend. Erst sah es ja so aus, als würde es sehr öde werden: als ich um 18.10Uhr am Bahnhof ankam, war der 601er, Abfahrt 18:36, noch nicht einmal als verspätet gemeldet. Das änderte sich dann kurze Zeit später: erst hieß es 10 Minuten Verspätung (zwanzig Minuten zum normalen Eintreffen um 18:24), dann 15 Minuten. Und als es dann 18:50 war, kam dann die Ansage, dass nun gar nix mehr in oder aus Richtung Frankfurt gehen würde. Nächste Fahrt nach Karlsruhe sollte dann mit der RBB um 19:10 sein. Hmm. Und dann hieß es, der 601er würde doch noch kommen, sie würden ihn "in Kürze erwarten". Effektiv war es dann so 19:40 endlich da. Wir haben dann noch auf den Zug nach Stuttgart gewartet. Als es dann endlich los ging, kam dann die nächste Überraschung: "Wir haben zur Zeit 85 Minuten Verspätung. Das wird sich auch noch erhöhen, da wir leider nur eine Erlaubnis haben, mit 50km/h durch die Gegend zu zuckeln." (OT Zugchef). Gott sei Dank ging es dann ab dem Tunnel wieder schneller. Wenig komisch für viele andere im Zug war natürlich, dass die ganzen Anschlüsse ausfielen. Dafür haben Sie dann für den 601er beschlossen, dass er dann in Müllheim und in Bad Krozingen(!) halten würde -- ein ICE im DB Regio-Einsatz. Ich hoffe, die Leute sind sicher nach Hause gekommen.

The readers's poll on plattentests.de is over. "Good evening, Germany. And here are the results of the German (readers) jury." "Sorry, could you repeat that?" "Yes, here are the results of the German (editorial staff) jury." "Thank you, Germany!"

Here's what I voted:

Looking for a present, I recently stumbled upon the book "How soon is never?" by Marc Spitz. In case you liked the band The Smiths some twenty years ago ... No. Let me try to put it otherwise. Around 1986 there was no one listening to the Smiths, you would have been hating or loving them. So, if you happened to love the Smiths, "How soon is never?" is interesting as it tells the story of some ex-Smiths-fan-become-rock-journalist's life. If you like to check out what your life might have been like in case it had not provided to get over the Smiths, that is. Or perhaps you know that already.

Anyway. Naturally reading the book led me to dig out my old CDs (I own only "Louder than bombs" on vinyl. It was the first Smiths album I bought - in 1987, I think - , although that doesn't really explain it, as I think that I already owned my CD player, which btw. is still the same today). It's true what Marc writes, also in 2007 that music is still worth listening to. Similarly for my favourite other band of that time, the The Woodentops -- their live album from 1987, "Live Hypnobeat Live" is still unbelievable wrt. its intensity -- and speed, of course. I did some web searching and discovered that they seem to have played some concerts again, last year, surprisingly. If they were to play in Germany again (I saw them in 1987 in Oberhausen), I would probably travel quite some distance. There is even a new website (Woodentops portal) on which one can download MP3s of old material, including raw live material.

Da hat man mal endlich ein bisschen Urlaub, die Skier sind gewachst und dann ist es am Jahresende so warm, dass man im T-Shirt durch die Stadt laufen könnte (okay, fast). Aber mit dem neuen Jahr scheint endlich auch der Winter ein Einsehen zu haben -- aktuell sagt der Schneebericht vom Liftverbund Feldberg, dass 30cm Schnee liegen würden. Nicht viel, aber mal sehen, was draus wird.

Yesterday, I voted for Tool as the best live band, although I hadn't seen them yet, as the concert was tonight. Well, they didn't let me down, they easily did win the price as the best live band this year [1]. The concert hall, Mannheim's Maimarkthalle, was a particular disappointment. Or in fact it wasn't, it was just the horrible surrounding I've expected it to be.

The warm-up band, Mastodon, was also a nightmare. Usually, I don't care about bad warm-up bands, but this time the sound was so loud you couldn't ignore them. The loudness was really a problem. Sometimes I felt it was just too loud although I brought and used a pack of ear protectors. Apart from that, Tool were great, especially the light show was the best what I've seen so far.

[1] It was only the fourth concert for me this year. Tomte has been great, Til Brönner (my first Jazz concert ever) was very nice, too, and The Horror The Horror, this years' best newcomer in my opinion, played a nice concert, too (although they had to fight a rather tiny location, Freiburg's Jos Fritz cafe and its ridiculous time table). But Tool was way more exciting.

Jahrespoll auf plattentests.de. Lauft los und versucht Euch ein Paket CDs zu sichern.

After about sechs years of XMMS usage, I think I'm finally done with it. Playlist handling is a major pain. And I usually just shuffle my way through my collection. But don't even try to find a song in that long, long way down south ... sorry, down the playlist.

I've tried Rhythmbox, but as it is to closely bound to Gnome (and gstreamer, in particular) it doesn't work for me (I'm using WindowMaker without Gnome on my workstation at home). And no, I don't have any KDE libraries installed and yes, I like it that way -- although I've heard quite a lot good things about amarok.

Dear Lazyweb, please what kind of audio player might fit my needs? I just need a little more functionality than XMMS. Selection by album, artist and/or genre would be nice.

Wow, it's been quite some time since my last records review. Not too bad, there's not that much new stuff on my desk. I'll give a quick tour.

Isotopp hat eine schöne kleine Übersicht, warum man diese Petition unbedingt unterzeichnen will.