A rose is a rose is a rose The Covers Project has catalogued 11,000 song covers. They are looking for the longest cover chain. A cover chain is something like artist A has covered a song of artist B who has covered a song of artist C etc. The longest chain up to now includes 66 songs. From the Smashing Pumpkins cover of "A Night Like This" by The Cure to The Funkmeister G song "Who got the Fonk?" covered by Cavort With Whores. Never heard of that band so this sounds like a dead-end. But there are surely more covers of Smashing Pumpkins songs (to extend the chain) than the two mentioned here though none comes to my mind immediately. The most covered band are obviously The Beatles (453 covers) and the most covered song is of course "Yesterday" (58 versions). You can add a cover song if you wish.

Some things I don't/didn't like about Amazon

• Some time ago they charged me for shipping though I had placed a shipping-free order. It was their fault they didn't have a CD in stock and my order was suddenly below the shipping-free threshold.
• I wrote a review for Amazon and had to accept their conditions which said (apparently this has changed) that reviews you write for them become their intellectual propriety and they do not even guarantee to cite your name. Of course they can also censor or edit your review. This was one reason to start this weblog.
• When putting a commentary to an album on my wishlist they did not let me use the words "fucked up" as they think this is inappropriate language. "Fucked up" is usually a praise in my book.
• Probably this is not their fault but why can't I find the new Paul Auster The Book of Illusions in English which is already translated into French as Le Livre des Illusions on their site? The plot sounds very promising. Existential in the vein of the New York Trilogy after what I heard.

Howe Gelb: Confluence My contribution to Freaky Trigger's second third birthday in 102 Beats That, 102 words on Howe Gelb's Confluence album from last year: "Howe Gelb has a twisted mind. In his world capacity, dilemma and gazelle are sisters, conformity is a saint and the 'blue marble girl shoves the day into the night'. These surreal lyrics are accompanied by Howe’s bluesy guitar, drums, bass and occasionally farfisa, pump organ and wurlitzer piano. The music is a laid-back blend of country, bar jazz, blues and rock. Its rough charm opens itself only slowly to the listener. In the exemplary lo-fi 'Hatch'delays and breaks lead to the unstoppable pedal steel finish. The album ends in a three guitars desert storm: Howe throws the sand in our ears."

Samos conversation We were walking down from our apartment at Potami Beach to Karlovassi port in the dark for dinner. When passing the military sentry watching the Turkish coast line in the North he asked: He: Do you like Samos? Me: Yes it is beautiful. And you? He: No. Me: I am sorry for you.

The action is at simple things.

Hello from Chios We have been spending the last couple of days in Karfas on Chios island between Lesbos and Samos. The weather was not really amazing, we had a lot of rain and morning temperatures of around 15 degrees Celsius. We stayed at Marko's place. We were Marko's first vistors this year. It is still very quiet around here. Most of the few tourists we met on the island were Norwegians as 1. there is a direct flight from Oslo and 2. Norwegians prefer Greece in spring when the temperatures are still bearable. Chios is quite a non-touristic island. It does not really need the tourists as in the south of the island the resin of the Mastix shrub is collected and Chios is the only place in the world where the mastix yields the resin which is used a lot for chemical and pharmaceutical purposes. We tried to chew the resin but that is something not really to be recommended as the resin sticks in between the teeth and is very hard to get rid of. The liqueur of Mastix tastes quite nice nevertheless. Our next destination will be Samos island, the ferry is supposed to leave in one hour. There we will do some more hiking if the weather permits it.

See you soon Catherine and me are going to be on the Greek island of Chios for the next three weeks. Therefore posts will be sparse. In the meantime I recommend the following daily music blogs:

• Stevie Nixed from Belgium who likes Deus and has a wide eclectic taste.
• Eyes that can see in the dark by Phil who is into more or less progressive music off the beaten track and into chess too.
• Badgerminor from Louisiana who mostly likes the music I like, i.e. music with roots.
• Monkey puzzle my favourite weblogger from Melbourne.
• Blackyellowblack from Oakland where I'd rather like to live. Something to listen to: Ryan Adams live at Manchester covering Wonderwall (free registration required)

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine

• 100,000 CD covers to download including front, back and inlays.
• Adorno and rock music. Kid Adorno by Curtis White (via sofa blogger) who defends Radiohead's Kid A against Nick Hornby's criticism and tries to use Adorno as King's evidence. Samuel Jeffries in Theodor Adorno Meets "Low-Fi" Rock on how among others the Dead C (noise band from New Zealand) escape the "variation-within-a-structure" that rock usually is and which Adorno sees as "directly interpellating the listener into the 'false consciousness' of capitalist ideology". I don't know the Dead C and hardly know Kid A and have always been intellectually too lazy to dig into Adorno's music theory and those articles didn't rise my interest neither. I hear music with my ears and feel it in my guts if it makes an impression on me. Amnesiac did exactly that. What I heard of Kid A didn't.
• I only publish the results of this quiz as I happened to be the beatnik I wanted to be (without cheating):

You are Jack Kerouac
The "Which Beatnik Are You?" test was created by livejournal user aglaea. Take the test here!

P.S. There are errors on the page. Probably the comment system YACCS doesn't work anymore. I am fed up and will definitely move soon to antville now. After the holiday that is. First week-end of May.

Excuses I really wanted to write something on Patti Smith's On Land tonight but it is too late now and I have to postpone to tomorrow. In the meantime some other link worthy net programmes:

• Jess Harvell has never been a fan of the Modern Lovers but he has seen the main man behind live and was converted on the spot. ILM discussion: Jonathan Richman: is this guy a class fucking act or what?
• Dr. C asks at ILM about That Melodic Thing in Scottish Pop: "There's often a reluctance to telegraph a big chorus, a sort of shy restraint which can often mean that a gorgeous melody takes time to uncover and fix in your memory."
• Marcello Carlin with a long piece on Gillian Welch's album Time (The Revelator) at ILM. I guess I have to relisten to this. The first time it sounded too plain, too barren, too basic for my ears. Her voice reminds me of Michelle Shocked a little which is a very good reference for me.
• Monkey Puzzle, an excellent indie music blog from Melbourne I mentioned before (thanks for the backlink cos) on one of my favourite Lloyd Cole records Easy Pieces. One of those perfect pop albums I listened to a lot back in the summer of 1993.
• P.S. Califone: They sound like a more focussed and less emotionally intense Sparklehorse. The singer's voices are quite similar especially when distorted. Somehow I cannot believe that Califone come from Chicago. Their music has got this laid-back desert feel a little bit like Giant Sand. I would have situated them either in South California, Arizona or New Mexico. Further reading: 10 questions for Tim Rutili from Glorious Noise.
• Dandelion Wings (pseudonym) of Living Code on Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan. A good short introduction into Brautigan's twisted but realistic mind. Summary: "A whole town gets involved in a massacre (with humorous elements to it) without really knowing why they are fighting. I would say this is fiction if reality was not so much like it. Now I am not sure."
• The nicest webcam views in a world map.
• Active discussion (189 comments this morning) at kuro5hin: Burning a book before it's printed. The book in question is on the "right" of children to have a sex life. Here political correctness shows its ugly face: totalitarian censorship. What frightens me even more is that almost all commentators want the book banished. I think this subject should be discussed and the more it becomes a taboo theme the more child abuse we will have. Positive thinking in the last contribution: "Nice to know that efforts by religious and governmental groups to squelch this before it could be published just brought more attention to it"

Linkage

• Discussion at lost for life: Why Chan Marshall sucks live. One reason seems to be that she takes acid before her shows. I saw Cat Power twice. The first time it was the Moon Pix tour and it was a phantastic trip. Dirty Three's guitarist Mick Turner accompanied her and had a very stabilising effect on her perfomance. When she sang she was completely gone but Turner's slow guitar playing absorbed her. The second time she was on her own with her guitar and piano and it was the Cover Songs tour. We saw her in a very small venue about the size of our living-room and it was painful. She didn't hit the right tones and almost ran off in the middle of the set.

• Another one of those damned quizzes. It has got to do with music and is short (five questions only) though:
  The Band Quiz By Rahel