Connecting to the outside world

• Guardian: Face it - punk was rubbish. Sure, it had energy and attitude. But punk's importance has been hugely exaggerated, says Nigel Williamson, who was there at its birth (via wherever you are). Mmm. Today I received the Warsaw CD with the early stuff of the band later to be known as Joy Division. The last five bonus tracks were recorded in July 1977 and they are punk as hell. Sounding like a garage version of the early Clash. Especially Ian Curtis shouts his head off. Hooky is already playing the tune (if there is one) with the bass. It was all there already. Ok except Morris magic drumming. The only official Joy Division release missing in my collection now is the Live at the Electric Circus EP from October 1977 with At a Later Date plus tracks by The Fall, The Buzzcocks and other punk bands I don't know. Any idea where I can get it? On CD if possible.
• Interesting graphical metasearch engine linking the result sites in a map: kartoo : les cartes de recherche, An example is "music blog" where Josh (unfortunately still busy in school and therefore on weblog vacation) who inspired me starting a weblog and me are on the same map. I don't know any of the other weblogs on that map though.
• German webloggers unite: Neu im Bloghaus: Bloggerkarte, dem Globe of Blogs nachempfundene schöne Darstellung deutscher Weblogs in einer Deutschlandkarte nach Bundesländern und Orten.

In my car stereo: Tom Waits - Alice (still growing on me)

Why I like depressive music Sad music has always had the strongest impact of all music on me. I guess it really got started with Nick Drake whom I discovered in the late 70s when his box set Fruit Tree comprising his three studio albums was released in Germany. I made a post on him a while ago (a search should find it but I am too lazy to look it up now). I usually listened to his music on headphones as it was too intimate to be shared with the outside world. He only sang for me with his gentle pure voice and told me about the beauty of life and love and the hopelessness of it all. It was the soundtrack of my growing-up. A 1-1 identification, a comprehension beyond words. After having listened to Nick Drake I did not feel alone in this world anymore. I knew that there had been somebody who had had very similar experiences to my own and who could write and sing about them which I obviously couldn't. It may sound stupid, but he was my teenage the idol of my teenage years. Later on I listened to Nick Drake with my best friend who was on a similar trip as me. But it wasn't the same anymore. I felt awkward to listen to this music with somebody else. It was almost painful and very uncomfortable. I could not share Nick Drake with anybody else. The thing with sad music is that I love to listen to it when I am sad and though it does not make me happy it gives me a relief. There is a hidden power in it which gives me strength. Afterwards I discovered other music in a similar vein but the impression was less intense. Joni Mitchell's incredibly poetic songs, mostly on lost love. The Smiths melancholic tuneful pop songs with their witty and weird adolescent lyrics. Neil Young who made me overcome my first real lovesickness with After the Goldrush. Mark Kozelek from the Red House Painters who sings as if it is his only chance to survive. Idaho's first album Year After Year, another slow dive into darkness. The Tindersticks' First Album full of passion. The Gun Club's energetic psychobilly: Jeffrey Lee Pierce's doomed voice. Joy Division, maybe the climax of it all. Punky and rough in the beginning, gloomy, claustrophobic and atmospheric in the end. I have to stop now, there are so many I have forgotten and go back to the beginning and give the word to Jody Beth Rosen from Freezing to Death in the Nuclear Bunker who describes the effect of Nick Drake's music better here than I ever could: "I'm not the most fervent Nick Drake kneejerker, but I've always considered Pink Moon one of those albums -- one of those special, private experiences that signal a communication between someone in distress and another whose ship drowned years ago. It's like drinking tea when you're sick, and you hold the cup to your nose so the steam can come up through your nostrils and make your eyes tear -- that tea is a remedy, it's homeopathy, your best friend when you're grouchy and curled into an antisocial knot left on the sofa to be otherwise choked on by your stupid cat. It's not modern medicine, not a multimillion-dollar miracle of research and development, not shelling out kickbacks to charlatan medics, no apple-cheeked actresses breathing easy on mountaintops as African music zoom-zoom-zooms away. And that's what I find hard to stomach about this Volkswagen business."

To get an impression of sad music just listen to Nick Drake or Bright Eyes: Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh (whom I just discovered and whose tortured vocals are sadness in nuce) More on the still quite young Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes here:

• Bright Eyes: There Is No Beginning to the Story EP: Pitchfork Review (7.4/10)
• ILM: Bright Eyes: Worth a damn?

Linkage

• Joe Panzner from the Oligarchist Home Journal reviews the soon to be released new Sonic Youth album Murray Street (rating 8.5/10). Excerpt: "The most immediate difference between Murray Street and Sonic Youth’s post-1990 output is the newfound emphasis on clarity, focus, and outright melody. The guitars, which are every bit as likely now to jangle as they are to clang and buzz, are clean, crisp, and recorded bone-dry in trademark O’Rourke fashion."
• Maybe I should check out the new Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots which is Elasticheart's fave album of 2002 up to now. He says: "The album is a step beyond what the band reached with "The Soft Bulletin" and blends the creativity and experimentation of that album with some of the catchiest songs I've heard this year." I preferred "The Soft Bulletin" to Mercury Rev's "Deserter's Songs" which came out at about the time and was in quite a similar style as it was somehow less predictable and more glamorously pop. I saw the Lips live at about the same time and it was one of the weirdest concerts ever with the singer hitting this enormous gong every minute or so and bizarre videoclips being projected on a screen.
• Practical stuff: Why Won't We Read the Manual? (MeFi discussion)

Links

• I found this by googling "music blog". It covers the music genres I love: Listen Up! collaborative music blog, music recommendations, mp3s, reviews, concerts : rock, pop, alternative, blues, jazz, folk, acoustic
• Kate Guay from Toronto has changed the name and URL of her music weblog: thrown askew: formerly quid pro quo
• For people interested in applied statistics: Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (via Monitor on Psychology), a new journal covering the issue of non-refuted null hypotheses. In statistical studies very often null hypotheses are tested. If the null hypothesis cannot be refuted there is no significant result. Usually these inconclusive tests are not published. But they are actually quite interesting as they give future researchers the information which paths have already been explored without results. P.S. There is a problem with the Bloglet e-mail subscription of my weblog. Apparently it does not distinguish between only posted and really published posts. So when you get an e-mail from Bloglet it can be that there is nothing new in my blog as I have only posted the entry but not yet published it. I will address this issue to Monsur Hossain who created Bloglet. He has been very helpful in the past.

Amazon.de scored some points with me today. For the second time they were about to charge me for shipping though I had placed a shipping-free order. It turned out that one of the articles was not in stock, the order fell below the shipping-free threshold of 20 € and in my account it said that I had to pay the 3 € shipping costs. I even tried to change the order and put it together with another open one (with longer delivery time) but it was too late. At eight in the morning I send them an e-mail via their website telling them that I was extremely unsatisfied dissatisfied with their service and that they had lost me as a customer. At ten the excuse e-mail landed in my mailbox and they told me that their system does not handle this case properly and that the 3 € are refunded. Sometimes complaints work. But would they have refunded me without the complaint?

Music link of the day: Short interview with Sonic Youth on the forthcoming release of Murray Street: Sonic Youth Absorbs New Member Naturally (via dj martian)

Results of visitors poll A while ago I asked you the question: "How dear reader did you get here?" Thank you very much for the 61 responses. The results are:

• Via a link on another website: 36.07%
• Had your site in my bookmarks/favourites: 21.31%
• Via a search engine looking for the adult word s**: 14.75%
• None of the above: 13.11%
• Won't tell you: 6.56%
• Don't remember: 3.28%
• Via a search engine searching for other things: 3.28%
• Typed your URL in: 1.64%
• Via an email link: 0.00% I am happy that so many people came via external links or bookmarks/favourites though I am sure that this poll was not representative as I know that in fact most people arriving here look for the word s** which I do not write out anymore in order to get less of those search engine referrers which make the referrer logs almost unreadable and worthless.

Site of the day Fifty word fiction is a wonderful subpage of the excellent Tangents website ("The home of Un-Popular Culture on the World Wide Web.") which centers around indie and other pop music. The idea is simple. Write a story in fifty words. That is enough for a small plot and a surprise ending. Compact prose for short attention span people like me. I'd love to write one myself soon. The last mini story is Loop by Ben White: LOOP "You mean it goes around in a loop?" "Exactly right, a loop, yes." I looked around the room. It was very small and very bare. "There's no way out." "None at all. We're stuck doing the same thing over and over again." "You mean it goes around in a loop?"

Wir backen uns unsere Lektüre selbst Für meine deutschen Leser ein Link zum FAZ.NET - Mischpult. Da kann man sich durch Angabe der Ingredienzien eine Büchereinkaufsliste backen. Das geht so: Sprache 100% eigenwillig, 0% unauffällig. Stil: nüchtern 90%, opulent 10%. Tempo: moderat 80%, atemlos 20%. Umfang: <100. Ergebnis: Das Stottern des Dichters des Königs Und erzähle uns eine Geschichte: Hans Joachim Schädlich über Leben und Tod des Aesop / Von Kurt Flasch Schädlich, Hans Joachim: Gib ihm Sprache

Sonnen sammeln Juan Gelman entdeckt sein sephardisches Erbe Gelman, Juan: Dibaxu, Debajo, Darunter

Kleidsames Hechtgrau mit schlammgelben Sprengseln Frostgeschärfte Bilder vom Ersten Weltkrieg. Thomas Klings Gedichtband "Fernhandel" · Burkhard Müller Kling, Thomas: Fernhandel

Na ja. Wohl eher ein Gadget. Aber lustig wars.

Surfing

• You want to get rid of some of your old CDs and get some "new" ones for them? Try the Musical Swap Shop (via NYLPM)

• Three full concerts as mp3s: My Bloody Valentine [on komakino fanzine]

• 10 mp3 remixes of songs of the last REM album including artwork: R.E.M.ix (both via prolific)

• labs.google.com - Google Demos: "Google labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time." Current demos: Google Glossary. Find definitions for words, phrases and acronyms (quite useful, even including jokes) Google Sets. Automatically create sets of items from a few examples (e.g. type in two car brands and Google will tell you some more car brands, not really exciting, does not always work) Voice Search. Search on Google by voice with a simple telephone call (gadget for people who can't type) Keyboard Shortcuts. Navigate search results without using your mouse (for the geeks who still hate the mouse, can be useful when your mouse is dead)

Early Joy Division I posted the following message to the I Love Music discussion forum today: "It was a sunny public holiday (Pentecost) today in Frankfurt and as so often on bright days I felt like relistening to one of my fave (not so sunny) bands: Joy Division. I started with the first four tracks on the third disc of "Heart and Soul" which are identical to the "An Ideal for Living" EP recorded in December 1977. The tracks are: "Warsaw", "No Love Lost", "Leaders of Men" and "Failures" (the weakest of the four songs). And suddenly two things I hadn't noticed too much before struck me:

1. Ian Curtis does not sing in his grave mannered graveyard voice, he sings more "naturally" (one could say human) and
2. Joy Division sound much rougher, punkier and more energetic than on the later studio albums produced by Martin Hannett. There is hardly any trace of this gothic, claustrophobic and oppressing sound for which they became known later on and which turned me off initially when I discovered them about ten years ago.

The following three songs on disc 3 of "Heart and Soul" ("The Drawback", "Interzone" and "Shadowplay") which stem from the RCA LP later released under the name Warsaw produced by JD and others neither have the classic JD sound. The same is true for the first BBC session for the John Peel show from January 1979. Though Curtis has already changed his voice to lower spookier registers on the last song "Transmission". On the live recordings, especially "Les Bains Douches" from December 1979 JD are punkier and more dynamic but Curtis sings low as well. My question: Does anyone know how much Hannett is responsible for these two major changes in JD's music, namely the lower singing of Curtis and the less edgy, more controlled and more lugubrious sound for which they became famous? How much did Hannett influence the (tragic) direction JD took later on? Looking at the artwork of the two studio albums designed by Peter Saville I ask myself how much it expressed how Hannett wanted the band to be and how much it reflected JD themselves. Especially the cover of "Closer" seems to be very artificial and premeditating. I quote Momus "Thought for the Day" here: "Already posthumous when released, Peter Saville's sleeve for Joy Division's 'Closer' shows a necrophile scene of sorrowful keening cast in marble. Death becomes part of the album's power, a part of its marketing." I'd also like to know if there are live bootlegs flying around from before the recording of "Unknown Pleasures" in April 1979. By the way I think I prefer their early, unpolished, thrashier intonation and sound which was probably more intense though maybe a little less unique than their later one." Answers can be found here.