Not a lot to say about this concert yesterday at the Mousonturm. Marie Frank, a Danish singer/songwriter opened for Howe. Very blue eyes, very blond hair, very charming smile and very irresistible voice. She was on her own with an acoustic guitar and voice-wise she reminded me a lot of Juliana Hatfield. In one song she sounded as innocent and natural as the early Dolores O'Riordan from the Cranberries. After a couple of songs Hans Anders joined her on electric guitar and lap steel. I really dug his understated and concentrated way of playing the guitars. The lap steel added the mystery feel. It sounded almost like a theremin.

Howe arrived with two more musicians from Aarhus, a drummer and a classic bass player who resembled Joey Burns (Howe's usual bassist in Giant Sand, now busy with Calexico) quite a lot. Marie and Hans Anders stayed most of the time so that there were five people on stage. Howe played his solid new album The Listener (audio) almost completely. He spent a lot of the time at the Steinway grand piano. Inside the grand there was a small monkey figure with a red electric guitar who seemed to move occasionally. Howe did his usual cd-deejaying. The overall feel of the music he played was quite jazzy, free-flowing. Altogether I found the bulk of the songs a little bit too slow and at the end I suddenly got the impression that Howe always does the same song. That had never happened to me before. I must have close to thirty records of his. The concert was still great but I was missing the outstanding tunes. The captivating intimate No Reply from my favourite Giant Sand album Chore of Enchantment was an exception. Someone in the audience had asked for it and it was interesting to see that Howe played the first minute or so on his worn acoustic guitar on his own as his Danish band apparently did not know the song well enough. But then Hans Anders on guitar and the bassist and the drummer joined in. A very good backing band. I also have to say that I prefer Howe with a band than on his own. Last year's concert on the Cover Magazine tour was a little bit disappointing as he did everything (piano, guitar, singing, deejaying etc.) on his own. The band sound is something very important for his music. I also had the impression that Howe was very happy to play with younger people (he must be around 45 I'd guess). Several times he referred to his fellow musicians as his home.

Before the concert I bought the excellent Italian live album Infiltration of Dreams of Giant Sand, a new Down Home 2002 release by Howe and the last remaining Chore of Enchantment T-shirt.

Nick Southall in the Stylus Magazine Blog. Somehow I suspected something in that direction. Assuming that this is not a concoction...

Yo La Tengo seem like a profane Low. A bassist and a couple. She is on drums and he is on guitars. Both of them sing. Her singing is better. Nowadays their songs are usually slow and tuneful (Yo La Tengo used to do noisy rock). Two of the best and most intense live bands in the world. Last but not least both band leaders have a lot of humour though Alan Spearhawk's is drier.

And now I understand better why Tom Liwa announced Low as the best band in the world. Liwa is a practising Christian and they are definitely the best Mormon band in the universe.

My theory about the band name Low goes like this: they wanted to call themselves "Slow" but when they stuck the letter magnets on the iron board the "S" sank down as it was too heavy and they had to call themselves the remaining word. But they had to keep to playing very slow music. It was destiny.

By the way Low can also rock hard and loud. They are heavy metal fans I think.

My first visit to the Mousonturm in Frankfurt-Nordend was a pleasure and it won't be the last considering that Howe Gelb, Evan Dando and Cat Power will play there soon. Everyone's favourite indie band from Hoboken, NJ was great as ever. It was the fourth time I saw them live. And they surprised me again by not only performing the rather slow and soft (but mostly perfect) songs from their last album Summer Sun but by mixing them with older, harder material. The tour for their previous album And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out from 2000 had been a little bit of a disappointment as they had played the whole sleepy (albeit phantastic) album from beginning to end.

The support act was M. Ward of whom I only knew that he had released an album at Howe Gelb's label Ow Om Records. He reminded me of the two guitar heroes Ben Harper and Chris Whitley. His voice was pretty irritating and quite similar to Ben Harper's without the warmth. It took some time to get used to it. It was hoarse and high at the same time. He seemed to whisper. His play of the acoustic guitar was quite violent. The fingers of his his right hand looked like the fast moving tentacles of an octopussy when they hit the strings. Musically there were some folky influences but altogether M. Ward sounded original and unconventional. Though I must admit that I wasn't overwhelmed.

When Yo La Tengo came on stage one of their first songs was Today Is the Day. My fave of Summer Sun, sung by Georgia, which they deconstructed totally. It was pure noise and hardly recognizable. Another phantastic guitar-feedback song they played was Flying Lesson with the guitar loop looming in the background like a fire siren from 1995‘s noisy and catchy Electr-O-Pura which is probably still my favourite album of theirs. Season of the Shark was even better than on the new album. Ira started coughing when they tried playing it for the first time. A girl in the audience shouted Hanky Panky Nohow. And that was what they played after James had nodded to let Ira's voice recover. Georgia sang the John Cale classic standing in front. To my surprise the instrumental Georgia vs. Yo La Tengo was James playing the drums, Ira the keyboards and Georgia distorting on the synthesizer. Other songs were: Big Day Coming, False Alarm, Yellow Sarong, Sun Ra’s Nuclear War, their remix hit Autumn Sweater which was never a fave of mine. James and Georgia were drumming on that one. They played most songs of the new album except Let’s Be Still.

I was quite jealous when I saw that Ira got a seductive Weißbier for his first encore. I only had some shitty bottled beer. For the next song in the program a little joint would have been nice. Strange but for the first time at a YLT concert I did not smell any good stuff. Blue Line Swinger was like slow sex. It took Ira about ten minutes before playing the riff. His guitar was meandering around continents of noise no-one had ever been to. It was like as if he tried to withhold an orgasm. He was kneeling on the floor when mistreating his guitar. This song is still one of the most hypnotic in their repertoire. My ears were so numb after the song that I could not hear my own clapping anymore. The beautiful end was Stockholm Syndrome which had been proposed by someone in the audience. The song about the hostages sympathising with their captors. James sang on it.

Yo La Tengo play with the expectation of the listener. They destroy and deconstruct their own songs so that you can hardly recognize them anymore. I am sure they also do this as they have become bored to play the same versions of the same songs again and again. They are permanently reinventing themselves.

After the show I added another T-shirt to my Yo La Tengo T-shirt collection and I purchased the EP Merry Christmas from Yo La Tengo with three songs and a cartoon about a guinea pig and his Xmas present. The joke is that the guinea pig is Jewish.

P.S. Andreas war übrigens auch da. Und hat über das Konzert in seiner bewährt knappen und kondensierten Form geschrieben.

One day Mr F. met the chess player. Six weeks before the chess player had stopped smoking. He told F. how easy it had been for him to give up on this bad habitude. Mr F. had tried to abstain from cigarettes for the last three years but he had never fully succeeded.

The chess player said that his future plan was to only smoke the good tasting cigarettes and to skip the huge majority of cigarettes which were awful and which in the past he had only smoked because of thoughtlessness. When Mr F. heard this he smiled. He knew how to play chess but against the chess player he would not have stood the slightest chance. Mr F. continued the conversation with a question.

Mr F.: Have you ever made a bad move in chess?

Chess player: Of course I have. I make many bad moves. Most of my opponents make even worse moves though.

Mr F.: But wouldn’t it be more clever not to make any bad moves anymore? In this way you would even win more chess games.

Chess player: You are right, Mr F. The problem being that the quality of a move usually is not clear for me when I make it. Only the course of the game can show a posteriori if a move was good.

Mr F.: Do you really think that you will be able to distinguish the good from the bad cigarettes when you cannot even tell the difference between good and bad moves in chess? Actually when rethinking about your plan: just go on. You are already following it.

• Goldfrapp's new record Black Cherry is a little bit of a disappointment. It is not because of the change of style, from sentimental schmaltzy cinemascope soundtrack to electro-dance music. No, the new album has some tracks with cheap embarrassing beats which I have to skip after 20 seconds of listen. And the whole album is not organic. It is just a collection of songs. Allison Goldfrapp's voice is sexy as ever but the song material is simply too disparate. Lots of different influences: I hear Kate Bush and Shirley Manson from Garbage.

• I just listened to Kat Onoma's Black Session on Bernard Lenoir's radio program. Absolutely brilliant. Of all bands I do not have any records of Kat Onoma is the band I need an album of most urgently. They are from Strasbourg and have been going for well over ten years. Their music is dark, bluesy, messy and powerful. The meeting point of Joy Division and Gallon Drunk. With an electronic touch and some tape voice experiments (Deleuze's voice could be heard at one point). Rodolphe Burger sounds sometimes very much like Bashung. Actually Bashung sang at the concert as well. Apparently one song on Bashung's latest Fantaisie Militaire is even written by Burger. I ordered Kat Onoma's latest Digipack together with Benjamin Biolay's first quite orchestral album Rose Kennedy.

Einsam und allein Einsam ist ja noch zu leben Hier ein Ich und dort die anderen Kann durch die Alleen wandern Und auf Aussichtstürmen schweben

Einsam ist noch nicht allein Hat noch Augen, Ohren, Hände Und das Spiel der Gegenstände Und die Trauer, da zu sein Doch allein ist alles ein Ist nicht da, nicht dort, nicht eben Kann nicht nehmen oder geben Leergelebt und allgemein

Dieter Leisegang (1942-73)

It is a strange phenomenon but I tend to change my appreciation of high, close to falsetto male voices in pop music over time. There are voices I used to dislike or even hate like Neil Young or Thom Yorke which I love now.

When I first heard Neil Young around 1975 (I was 12) I felt that he was a puff, a wimp. His voice is probably the least masculine in rock. I rediscovered him around 1987 when my first girl-friend left me. And I instantly fell in love with him on second sights on After the Goldrush. A consolation by someone who had experienced a similar loss.

I am not sure if Radiohead's Thom Yorke did change his voice from Amnesiac on. Before I could not take his whining which made me think of a squealing mouse. Abominable. But now I have really come to appreciate the intensity and purity in it. There is a despair in his voice which touches me and makes me shiver.

On the other hand there are voices I used to like or even love which I cannot take anymore. Which I have got allergic to. The only one I can think of right now is Damon Albarn from Blur. I liked the cheekiness and Britishness in his singing on the first two albums. But now I find his style stilted. His voice has not evolved or it evolved in a direction I dislike. Maybe it is just that my ears were overexposed to his singing whereas in comparison I still have listened to much less Radiohead than Blur. I don't know. But I doubt that I will get Think Tank after the excerpts I listened to. And this is not because of the missing guitar, I swear.

Das hier geschilderte unvergessliche Hörspiel der Zikaden habe ich genau so auf Kreta im Sommer 1982 erlebt. Aus dem Lesbos-Kapitel in Erhart Kästner: Griechische Inseln, 1944 geschrieben und 1975 bei Insel veröffentlcht:

"Die Zikaden, in Ölbaumkronen versteckt, sangen ihr mittäglich erregtes, eintönig gesteigertes Lied. Tausendfach kleine Freundschaft, mir lieb, übers ganze Land! Ich geriet aus einem Schallbereich dieses hymnischen Sangs in den andern hinein.

Göttlicher Lärm der Zikaden! ich lief über die einsamen hellheißen Fluren Griechenlands und war umtost von ihrem Geschrill. Es gellt so stark, daß es schmerzt. Man weiß nicht, woher der Ton kommt, er ist zu hoch und zu schwirr, als daß der Sinn die Richtung meldete, aus der die Wellen dringen. Sie sind wie Ohrenbrausen mittäglicher Fiebergluten der Erde. Sie sind das göttliche Außersichsein der Landschaft im Sommerrausche, im Rausche des Mittagslichts. Denn Sie singen nicht wie die Grillen des Abends, sondern nur bei wolkenlosem Himmel in den heißesten Stunden. Dem Apollon sind sie heilig, die Kleinen, und von dem betörenden Sturm seines Lichts stammt ihre Kraft. Davon sind sie ein winziger Teil. Ihre Musik trifft wie Pfeile, die der Mittag versendet. Ich konnte nicht anders, als kleine Beterinnen in ihnen erblicken, Rasende in ihrem begeisterten Tun.

Sie leben von Baumsäften, heißt es, die sie sich erbohren. Aber der gärende Saft hat sie wohl trunken gemacht. Während ich dahinschritt, selbst außer mir in der Mittagsglut, ward es von Mal zu Mal still, wie auf den Schlag. Dann erzeugte das Ohr aus sich selber den Nachhall des Lärms. Und wie auf Befehl, schmettern sie wieder, von allen Seiten, ihren Sonnengesang in ergriffenen Chören."

Das war eine der schwersten Reisen meines Lebens heute. Der Busfahrer war ein Letzebuerger später Fiftysomething und schmookte eine Fluppe nach der anderen. Das Fenster war auf. Daher störte mich das kaum. Als Radiosender hatte er SR1 (Saarländischer Rundfunk) gewählt. Es war wie ein schlechter Alptraum. Wurlitzer time machine minus 26. Es ging los mit Josie von Peter Maffay, dann kam By the Rivers of Babylon (Bagdad wir kommen) von Boney M., dann Rocky (haben wir geweint) von Frank Farian, dann Jeans On (die erste Single meiner Schwester) von David Dundas. Es ist mir bis jetzt ein unerklärbares Wunder, wie ich das überlebt habe. Die Siebziger waren musikalisch noch viel viel schlechter als in meiner Erinnerung. Kein Wunder, dass ich der Popmusik bis in die späten Achtziger nach diesem präadoleszenten Schock erst einmal völlig abgeschworen habe.

Und dann fährt der Busfahrer auch noch einen Mega-Umweg über Mondorf. Als ich ihn in Schengen, wo wir bezeichnenderweise ewig an der Grenze stehen, da dort eine Baustelle ist, darauf anspreche, meint er auf der Remicher Strecke wäre noch mehr Stau. Das halte ich eher für unwahrscheinlich, insbesondere wenn man bedenkt, dass wir am Ende für die ca. 100 km etwa eindreiviertel Stunde brauchen und um die 10 Minuten Verspätung haben.