Adorno könnte eventuell der Nietzsche meiner zweiten Lebenshälfte werden. Mal sehen. Am Liebsten mag ich seine Widersprüche. In der Musik ist er extrem elitär und lässt Pop und Jazz nicht gelten, da sie Musik für die Massen sind. Andererseits ist er überzeugter Aufklärer. Adorno braucht man glaube ich nicht zu widerlegen. Das hat er selbst schon ausgiebig getan. Und genau deswegen ist er auch heute noch relativ aktuell.

There are two ways of writing a song about child murder and/or child abuse. You can stay general. And address the Holy Spirit, God and the whole country. That’s what Sinéad O’Connor did in A Prayer for England on the last Massive Attack album 100th Window:

Some albums by bands I have hardly ever listened to at all up till now but which have been praised by some connaisseurs. What is essential, what is overhyped? Any tips?

• Dead C - Trapdoor Fucking Exit
• Merzbow - 1930
• Boredoms - Super Ae
• Mr Bungle - Disco Volante
• PIL - Metal Box
• Disco Inferno - DI Goes Pop
• Stockholm Monsters - Alma Mater
• Bark Psychosis - Hex
• AR Kane - i
• Slint - Spiderland
• Seefeel - Succour
• Piano Magic - Low Birth Weight

Ich habe dieses Buch der beiden AMICA-Redakteure, die auch privat ein Paar sind, geradezu verschlungen. In der S-Bahn zur bzw. von der Arbeit hätte ich gelegentlich fast meine Ausstiegsstation verpasst, so hat mich dieser leicht und locker geschriebene Roman über die fürs Fernsehen inszenierte Weltreise eines Mannes und einer Frau, die sich in einer Singlesshow durchgesetzt haben, gefesselt. Das Buch ist wesentlich interessanter als die kreuzlangweiligen Fernsehshows, die Pate gestanden haben. Praschl und Winnemuth schreiben mit der aus ihrer Doppelpack-Kolumne bewährten Methode: ein Kapitel von ihr und das Nächste von ihm. Hierdurch werden die Perspektiven beider Geschlechter und besonders die psychologischen Aspekte berücksichtigt. Zudem kennen sich beide Autoren recht gut mit Trends und Moden aus und lassen dieses Wissen auch ins Buch einfließen ohne dass es zu sehr nervt. Es ist von vorneherein klar wie die Geschichte enden wird, aber das macht überhaupt nichts, die Spannung zwischen den Geschlechtern wird ziemlich lange durchgehalten. Einziger winziger Kritikpunkt: als es dann so kommt wie es kommen muss, wird noch ein Weilchen weitererzählt obwohl die Luft wirklich völlig raus ist.

I’ll begin this series with Out of Season, the new album by Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man. As usual when I start these kind of projects it is very unclear if there will ever be a second, third, nth part. Probably I won’t even finish the first installment ;-). The idea is to write about one favourite track of a CD or record I have recently purchased. I will not mention the title of the track. Ideally I will write about all CDs I buy from now on. We are going to see if this will work out. An important aspect of this series is the participation of the reader(s). I’d like you to guess which track I am writing about. And maybe to discuss on that track or your favourite track on the album I cover. Enough preliminary words now. Off we go.

I like this song as it doesn’t jump at me. It gives me the choice. Either to ignore it and treat it as background music or to concentrate more on it and delve into its mysteries. Not sure if there are any mysteries actually. I didn’t find them in the lyrics. Which are fine but pretty general and imprecise I find. The song is like a woman without make-up. Who does not ask for my (male) attention. A woman who has got a lot of charm without knowing it or without using it consciously. A discreet unobtrusive woman. Who knows exactly what she wants. Who sings naturally without changing her warm and tender voice.

It starts with a couple of chords played on a guitar. Reminding me of a harp which sounds like the first drops of a small source of a mountain creek coming out of the earth. And is then progressing slowly in the plain like an ever widening river. Flowing past enormous stones embodied by the bass in the riverbed of the drums towards the ocean delta where the women choir singing and stretching „whooo“ almost eternally joins in. This angel’s choir has got a haunting and enchanting quality and is used in almost every song on the album. Sometimes it sounds like a theremin. This is a sad song but it’s not sad as in depressive. It is more self-confident. Strong through its calmness. Emanating an aura of serenity and power. It is the only song on the album which I haven’t played out yet.

As so often with Beth Gibbons and/or Portishead most songs lasted for two or three listens and have already crumbled to dust. They seemed so phantastic on first listen but they exhausted themselves almost immediately. Like a hundred meter runner who tries to sprint a marathon. After a kilometer he drops dead. As so often I am probably exaggerating here. But one thing is for sure. The new Massive Attack album is about a million times more exciting than this.

Tell me in the comments if you know which song this was and if you like it or if you prefer another one on this album.

Words are so vain. Sometimes I ask myself why I still use them. I seem to be drowning in an ocean of words. And they are not even mine. I think what I love most about music is that it does not need words. Music is immediate. More true than talk and writing. It is unfiltered by rationality. At least the music I fall for seems to be. Is there an autistic quality to the music I like? What a load of meaningless generalities. Just words...

P.S. I somehow really sympathize with the idea of writing the whole blog crossed out from now on. It's only as I don't want to lose my last reader that I won't. Just imagine that everything I write should be crossed out immediately after having been read. Words really should destroy themselves after having been written down...

first guitar, a Silvertone:

The writer Martin Amis in Tuesday's Guardian about the perverse logic of this almost inevitable totally pointless war:

P.S. Slate magazine's Saddameter indicating the probability of a war against Iraq is on 99% right now.

Sunday afternoon we went to see this unspectacular film on the life of an insurance mathematician after his retirement. It was a rather slowly paced affair which had the advantage that I could follow the conversations almost perfectly. Very often American films are difficult to understand for me. People mumble a lot in a speed making my 39 year old brain dizzy. Not here. There wasn’t even a soundtrack (except Satie when Mr Schmidt drove with his mobile home). My attention went to 100% to Jack Nicholson who played the pensioner. Let’s be honest. Warren Schmidt’s life hadn’t exactly been exciting before the retirement and is neither after. Warren lives in Omaha, in the Midwest. In another blog by someone from Omaha I read something funny about Western Kansas. It is supposed to be the only place where you can fall asleep driving a car and after the car has left the road it will only stop when the gasoline is out. Whatever. Let’s move back to the story. Warren is married and has a daughter. His relation to his wife is a typical relation I’d think. He thinks she has never understood him after 40 years of marriage. Not that it is really clear what there is to understand about Warren. He is a very average, very normal person. But he is a very real person, an archetype if you want. We are surrounded by Warren Schmidt’s in this world. And if we think about it there is a Warren Schmidt in everyone of us. Warren Schmidt is a character out of a Beckett play. Sorry, I didn’t tell you anything about the plot of the film or any scenes. There are some scenes where I laughed tears. What I really loved about the film was its amazing realism. I saw myself and my environment in it. And it was very funny. Especially the sad scenes. By the way Kathy Bates is a genius. She was perfect in Misery but here she is godlike.

Frank from Chromewaves has listened to the four CDs of the Flaming Lips Zaireeka on four CD players and writes about the experience.