mp3 download with sixteen songs from the show at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee, June 13th, 2003 (via kingblind). Still one of the most amazing live bands in the world if you ask me.

Patti Smith in einem langen Interview mit Willi Winkler in der Süddeutschen.

Translation: Drugs have always been something holy for me and should therefore be used in the manner the Indians used them and not only for fun.

Exhibition of her drawings and poems in the Haus der Kunst in Munich up to February, 29th: Strange Messenger.

Wolf im Schafspelz Pelz im Wolfsschaf Schaf im Pelzwolf

Wolf im Pelzschaf Schaf im Wolfspelz Pelz im Schafswolf

Wolfsschaf im Pelz Pelzwolf im Schaf Schafspelz im Wolf

Wolfspelz im Schaf Schafswolf im Pelz Pelzschaf im Wolf

Sehr schön beginnt Alexander Gorkows enthusiasmierende Rezension von Stephen Duffy's neuer Platte Keep Going in der Süddeutschen:

Vor zehn Jahren hat Duffy schon einmal ein Kleinod des britischen Kammerpops abgeliefert, das opulente Music in Colors mit dem Geiger Nigel Kennedy, welches mir an frühereren Winterabenden das Herz so erwärmt hat. Ich bin daher geneigt, Gorkow auch das Epithet epochal abzunehmen, das er für die neue Scheibe verwendet. Im All Music Guide meint der Rezensent gar, dass sich ein mittelalter Nick Drake so anhören könnte, wenn er nicht vorher seinem Leben ein Ende bereitet hätte. Ich bin ziemlich neugierig.

P.S. Hier auf Stephen Duffy's Website finden sich übrigens vier mp3s vom neuen Album. Und die Lieder sind ziemlich gut.

Marcello Carlin closes shop again (sort of) and finishes nicely with his fifty favourites of 2003. His number one spot is an album by a band I have never heard of. But I am curious now. Does any of my readers know more?

P.S. So apparently this is a shoegazing album strongly influenced by the textures of My Bloody Valentine from Markus Schmickler with Julee Cruise singing. The snippets at Amazon sounded ok but didn't make me run to the record store.

P.P.S. The wonderful Australian music blog Worlds of Possibility sums up succinctly what I can't help of thinking about this album:

Every morning on the way to work I almost overlook the traffic lights just before this advertisement poster and cause a crash.

Einerseits bin ich sehr stolz auf mich, dass ich gestern statt Martin C. Strong's Great Indie Discography den Spiegelbestseller Simplify Your Life gekauft habe.

Andererseits habe ich nun noch ein weiteres Ratgeberbuch, das ich wahrscheinlich sowieso nicht lesen oder zumindest nie befolgen werde, unseren bereits überbordenden Bücherrregalen hinzugefügt und weiß genau, dass ich der Diskographie nächste Woche sowieso nicht widerstehen werden kann.

After sex all animals are sad except the cock and the woman.

This famous Latin proverb is originally attributed to Galen, a Greek physician from the 2nd century AD who linked the four temperaments sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic to bodily dispositions. Sometimes (without the cock/woman add-on) Aristoteles is named as the author. But maybe it is just a universal truth of collective wisdom which can't be traced back to one single person.

Yes I must admit that I recently had that postcoital blues. It seems to be especially devastating when the sex before was intense and the ascent to the climax took some time.

My theory is that the depression after is linked to the realization that the merge with your partner was just a temporary one and the dénouement works like an invisible wall which is suddenly erected between you two out of nowhere. The result is a feeling of extreme solitude hitting you.

La bête à deux dos (Gargantua by Rabelais, recycled in Othello by Shakespeare: the beast with two backs) turns into two humans with two backs again. It's the painful process of individuation which we have experienced first at birth when pushed out of the warm cosy womb of our mother. The baby's cry is welcomed by the world, the postcoital sadness isn't. It is the deception that the physical fusion which Georges Bataille called la petite mort, is not permanent.

Will the real death be the blissful merge with the universe or will the individual subsist as soul or karma as the religions assume? We won't know in this life for sure and maybe never.

A question to my female readers: did you ever experience the feeling I am writing about here?

Can you please tell me why I should continue buying your copy protected CDs? Not only that they don't play on my computer CD-ROM drive they also don't work on my car stereo. A JVC hifi capable of playing mp3s I bought for about 500 euros two years ago. For once I was almost an early adopter and now this. Thank you EMI et al. You are digging your own grave there. If you want turnover halve the prices and stop this stupid copy protection which drives people into piracy as the free mp3s downloaded via file sharing networks work whereas your expensive CDs don't.

P.S. Is it actually illegal to play mp3 versions of the previously purchased copy protected CDs on a car hifi (using this software for example)?

P.P.S. I own copy controlled (those bloody euphemisms always) CDs by Radiohead and Massive Attack. How could these two politically left-wing bands release their records at a consumer unfriendly label like EMI/Virgin? Maybe they don't want to sell their albums. That would make sense in a way. It's a pity I like their music and I more or less share their political stance but I won't buy any of their copy controlled records anymore.

It's unbelievable how bland Stanley Kubrick's Shining is in comparison to Rob Reiner's Misery. And that's definitely not only because of the terrific Kathy Bates. Maybe it's the story line which is so one-dimensional and predictable. I mean there is this diffuse frightening suspense in almost every scene but somehow this movie does not grip me at all.

What an unconvincing combination evoking pure cliché: Nicholson the psychopathic monster, his wife in the film a hysteric (which actually seems realistic given the circumstances) and their kid gifted with the shining, a capability of communicating telepathically. Near the end I wished that Nicholson would have smashed his wife's skull with the axe just to finish off this tedious nightmare of a film. I must admit though that this scene on the stairs where she swings that bat when Jack approaches her with his axe made me laugh out loud. In any case now I am even surer that I will never ever read a book by Stephen King in my life.