I have always been dreaming of 24 hours (and more) parties. When I have finished the 40 albums series I would like to have a party chez nous with all those 40 albums playing from start to finish. Can be filed under utopias.

The possession aspect of mp3s. The more you own, the richer you are. When you download more mp3s than you have time to listen to greed has taken over. There is a capitalist (usually without capital involved) root to the notion of having physical mp3 files on your hard disk. It also reminds me of genetics. Downloading files is perfect cloning. Mp3s and other music file types are enhanced by the iPod.

Audio streams on the other hand are sort of communist. You don't get a physical copy, you get the pure music. Instantaneously. The "original" can be shared by thousands at the same time. It is like Jesus feeding the five thousand with one bread! There is no propriety.

Therefore I am much more interested to transform mp3s into streams than vice versa.

P.S. I have just realized that Miami came out in 1982 (it said copyright 1984 on my CD). As it is too late to change the poll now I suggest here that instead of the Gun Club album there should be the Cocteau Twins Treasure. If you want to vote for it just tell me in the comments.

The poll In the reader's poll it was a draw between Portishead's first Dummy and Nirvana's last Unplugged. Both of those albums gave me the chills when they came out. But somehow they didn't stand the slightest chance against the chef d'œuvre of one of the most original eclectic bands of the 90's.

Number mysticism I am 41 years old now. 41 is also my minimal pulse. When you rotate the digits in 1994 by one position you get 4199. 41 is the title of Swell's third record. Named after the address of the warehouse where they recorded this album (and the two before) in San Francisco. 41, Turk Street in the sleazy Tenderloin district.

Chez Swell The record is constructed as an aural visit to this place. It starts with some street noises. Then we hear a key turning in the lock, the main door opening and being slammed. Someone is going up the stairs. The door of the room is open and there is a faint rising guitar sound which becomes the melody of the first song, Is that Important?. A slow adequate introduction into the captivating world of David Freel (guitars), Sean Kirkpatrick (drums) and Monte Vallier (bass) who called themselves ironically Swell. Like a husband says "oh that's swell" when his wife announces that his mother-in-law is about to come.

Nirvana went nowhere. Where did Swell go? In a way they anticipated their commercial failure with this name. John Peel invited them to a BBC session and called them the next big thing after Nirvana and Pavement. 41 was their first album on a major (Warner) but the label prevented them from ever getting big by not releasing their next record. There is a song on 41 I wrote about before called Don't Give having a ringing phone in it which nobody ever picks up. It is like a metaphor for their successlessness. Maybe this was the call which would have settled everything. But they didn't answer it. Instead they made great mesmerizing music around a phone ringing in vain.

What is so special about Swell? I think it is the guitars. There is an acoustic folky guitar playing the sunny hook lines and a noisy fuzzy electric guitar in a Jesus & Mary Chain vein creating the dark undertow. Those two guitars blend the two sides of San Francisco. The mild warm climate and the fog obstructing the light. Or the laid-back and easy going way of life and the gloomy world of drug abuse and criminality. There are a lot of other characteristics which contribute to their dense sound. Kirkpatrick's restrained precise but powerful way of drumming, David Freel's cool dry baritone, Monte Vallier's jazzy way of playing the bass, the intimate room atmosphere coming from the lo-fi recording technique and their use of long pauses to augment the tension of the songs.

Genealogical music tree There is a lot of different music Swell have integrated into their trippy sound. Joy Division for the occasionally menacing ambiance. Dream Syndicate for the psychedelic guitars. The languid dreaminess of Mazzy Star for whom they opened at their first gig in San Francicso. A bit of the Weltschmerz of Mark Eitzel's local American Music Club. Plus a dash of Ennio Morricone's lush ambient western soundtracks.

Going underground It all finishes with the guy leaving the room going down the stairs and going outside. He buys a ticket for the subway, takes it and an old guy reads all the lyrics while you hear the doors of the train opening and closing every minute or so. We are back in real life after an hallucinating visit to the rehearsal room of one of the most unique sounding bands of the 90's in the most beautiful city of the world.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part IX was this post.

Further links:

• Mp3 of the last song It's Time to Move on
• Lyrics
• AMG review
• David Freel's history of the band
• Setlist of their concert in the Oetinger Villa in Darmstadt on May, 20th this year. Unforgettable for me but not only because of the music.

 
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November 20, 2004 at 3:57:00 PM CET

[music, songs] November 20, 2004 at 3:57:00 PM CET


Somehow I have the feeling that Julie Delpy sings Mr. Unhappy (mp3 over at the suburbs are killing us) to me. Okay, she doesn't know me but if I was her boyfriend she'd surely leave me and write this song about the relation afterwards. By the way a question to my native English readers: is there an age limit for being a boyfriend?


 
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November 17, 2004 at 9:12:00 PM CET

[links] November 17, 2004 at 9:12:00 PM CET


The faces, mutilated bodies and corpses of war




Fallujah in Pictures Pictures from Fallujah that probably won't be on your television.

i believe the american people are decent and not without humanity. they have not seen what is being done in their name. maybe we don't live in a world that can do without war. i do know that people need to know what war means before they decide.

 
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[music, polls and quizzes] November 17, 2004 at 8:02:00 PM CET


40 years, 40 albums poll 1994




Which of the following is your favourite album? My 40 albums project has to be finished before Dubya takes down the internet.

Laurie Anderson - Bright Red

Blumfeld - L'Etat et Moi

Diabologum - Le Goût du Jour

Flowerpornoes - red nicht von Straßen, nicht von Zügen

Luna - Bewitched

Nirvana - Unplugged

Portishead - Dummy

Swell - 41

Alan Vega / Alex Chilton / Ben Vaughn - Cubist Blues

Weezer - s/t

Vote Results

 
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November 16, 2004 at 11:30:00 PM CET

[music, albums] November 16, 2004 at 11:30:00 PM CET


VIII: 1976 Keith Jarrett - Sun Bear Concerts




Ask me about the ten records I'd take to the notorious island, give me ten seconds and because of insufficient time to seriously think about the answer I will say the five improvised piano solo concerts Keith Jarrett gave in Japan in November 1976 (actually ECM recorded 8 gigs but released only 5). I got those records more than 25 years ago and listened to them more than to any other music in my life. Especially during the last three years of my school days.

The sun bear is the smallest bear. It lives in East Asian woods and "is often tamed as a pet when young but can become bad tempered and dangerous as an adult" (Encyclopedia Britannica '81). Taking Jarrett's character and temperament into consideration it doesn't really come as a surprise that he liked to call his giant live album box after this little "grizzly" from the East.

Jarrett is known to be a rather difficult performer especially when improvising on his own. He aborted several concerts in the 70s as the audience didn't keep quiet and disturbed his trance-like concentration. Fortunately this didn't happen with the attentive Japanese listeners on his tour in November 1976. They participated in the creation of possibly the most eclectic and transcendental performances in the history of improvised piano music by just staying perfectly silent until the end.

Why is this thing about the audience being in total awe and almost erasing itself so important? It has to do with the fact that Jarrett is only the medium, the vessel, the instrument. It is not him playing. It his him being played. He is driven by something greater than himself. There are classical echoes of Schumann, Chopin, Satie and Ravel, there is jazz like e.g. Cecil Taylor and there is a force fusing all this into a unique musical cosmos.

Jarrett empties himself completely before a concert. He lets loose and sees what happens. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When it does work like in the Sun Bear Concerts, it is like watching a couple making sex. Jarrett starts slowly, often with a leitmotiv, accelerates, passes a cacophonic desert, accompanies it with a lot of groaning and comes to a first melodic climax around 15' into the concert. The piano and its player become one.

I never met anybody who possessed those records. I am not sure how important it was for me that this music did not get shoved in my ears. There is something about discovering music totally on your own. Maybe that is the only music in which you really feel at home.

Ich fühle mich aufgehoben in Keith Jarrett's Anschlag, in seinen Pianotrips.

It is still great that I can almost anticipate every tone in these close to seven hours of piano heaven and hell. I hope reading this post won't turn off anyone of discovering Keith Jarrett.

I never listened to the Sun Bear Concerts on headphones, I think. The music needs space. It has always been a great inspiration to me as background music triggering my phantasy. To write romantic love letters in my adolescence e.g.

There is one image I can't forget. After school I had left Germany for good (I thought) and my parents were looking for me. Of course they also asked my only friend about my future plans. No idea what he said but he stayed one evening in my room and listened to these records. Going on a brain trip on our mutual music drug while I was on another, a real trip.

It is difficult to say which are my faves here. Maybe Kyoto (the 1st concert) and Nagoya which finishes weirdly with an ostinato becoming softer. Sapporo used to be my beloved one but I loved it to death. It is the easiest (most melodic) and closest to the Köln Concert. Osaka is pretty much perfect. Tokyo has some very disharmonic passages but is phantastic as well.

These concerts are almost too long to listen to them from start to finish. I have been used to listen to them on vinyl and changing the sides three times. On CD I am almost forced to listen to each concert in one sitting though the CD as a medium was too short for three of the five concerts (haha). As the encores didn't fit and had to be put on an extra disc.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part VIII was this post.


 
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November 14, 2004 at 10:00:00 PM CET

[films] November 14, 2004 at 10:00:00 PM CET


Story of a relation in 5 episodes from the end to the beginning




In most films I go to see the people never laugh about the same scenes as me. And it really annoys me when they laugh about some shitty slapstick or word play and don't laugh when I find something funny. Yesterday in François Ozon's 5x2 it was different. People did hardly laugh at all. And there were quite a lot of funny scenes. Like when her parents are with her at the hospital after she has given birth to her son. And her mother says to her that her father wasn't at the hospital neither when she had a miscarriage. And then the grandparents start to argue loudly. This is funny because this is life.

I love that the women are always the stronger sex in Ozon's films. It was the same in Truffaut's movies.

I fell in love with Géraldine Pailhas who is playing his girl-friend before he met his future wife like I fell in love with Fanny Ardant 25 years ago.

The soundtrack with Italian singers like Paolo Conte is phantastic. There couldn't be a greater contrast than between the schmaltzy music and their totally fucked up relationship solely focussed on sex without any romance. From a moral perspective they agree though. The music and the relation are totally false.

The film seems to get better the longer ago it dates back and the longer I think about it. When leaving the cinema I thought it was an exaggerated film about the disillusionment in certain relations between men and women. Now I don't really think about the film as depicting reality anymore but more about the scenes itself. For example the last one (within their relation the first) where the two of them swim into the ocean towards the setting sun. This is the kitschy beginning of their doomed relationship. Someone who didn't appreciate the film wrote that he would have liked them to drown in this scene to make the whole film story undone. I think that they did drown in this scene. But the drowning took several years up till the divorce. It was painful to watch but it was fascinating at the same time.


 
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November 11, 2004 at 9:19:00 PM CET

[music, links] November 11, 2004 at 9:19:00 PM CET


Chan song




Cat Power, Speaking for Trees DVD:

It's like she's busking for squirrels.

 
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