Chan Marshall has one of those voices I fell in love with at first listen. Although I love all her previous albums I am looking even more forward to the new one, The Greatest which will come out in January of next year. She seems to be heading towards a place where I want to go too. In the past her music had an introspective, sometimes painful aura around it. Of all female songwriters I know she came closest to Nick Drake. Judging from the two songs I have heard of the new album (the other one being the title track available on the site of her label) she has chosen a different path of life. Living Proof is exactly what it pretends to be. Chan is opening up to the world like a rose in full blossom. There are still thorns but the fragrancy is evolving to a point where the sweetness overshadows the bitterness. Sadness bye-bye. There is a life after death.

Ich hoffe ja immer noch, dass der Sofa Blogger nur hinters Canapée gerutscht ist und dort im Dunklen sein opulentes subversives Comeback vorbereitet.

I just noticed that Fred Solinger, another old school music blogger, has been posting audio files on vain, selfish and lazy for about four months now. He accompanies the one or two daily songs with insightful commentary with a very individual touch. Reading what he has to say about the mainly new music usually makes me curious about it and I then download the tracks from bands I sometimes have never heard of. Concerning the posts of the last week (he uses yousendit where links expire after seven days) I was rarely disappointed of what I heard and enjoyed the music even more when rereading his witty synesthetic reviews. His taste covers quite a wide spectrum with a predilection for well-crafted pop and rock. Recent posts with mp3 links still online were on Liars, John Lennon, The Spinto Band, Freddie Scott, Mystery Jets, Leonard Cohen, Franz Ferdinand, Low, The Strokes.

augen zu und denk an deutschland

Aus den Kommentaren zu einer älteren Frage über das Onanieren davor aus dem Sexblog, die ich damals irgendwie völlig verpasst habe.

Gestern mir noch einen IQ von 150 (in der 4. Klasse hatte ich knapp 130) von diesem Test (via hotel mama) bescheinigen lassen. Heute einen persönlichen Depressionsindex von 50 erreicht (Verdacht auf Depression). Ebenfalls weit über Schnitt, der im deutschen Jammerland in den letzten zwei Wochen nur bei 27,7 (Normalbereich) lag. Ab sofort mach ich zur Selbstbestätigung nur noch IQ-Tests; irgendwann wirkt sich das dann bestimmt auch positiv aufs Gemüt aus.

Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

When you are down there is nothing more comforting than a Neil Young song. If you like his voice that is. I hated it as a teenager. I love it now. It's not frail at all, it only sounds like being frail. Deceiving first impressions.

Not really surprising but there were a couple of punk songs in his box of seven inches. When rearranging the singles in chronological order this is when it gets interesting if you ask me. The Negatives (never heard of them before, Google seems to be pretty useless as well) are featured with their 1979 release Love Is Not Real. Straight and to the point. If it was real it wouldn't be love, no? Unbelievable how this kind of direct, primitive music by people who didn't care about virtuosity still sounds totally enthralling. It takes you by the guts, the balls if you are male. No bullshitting, no fucking around, just a "we are there, fuck you all". Punk was the late musical execution of the liberation the late 60s paved the way for. The LSD-drenched music of the times (is there anything more awful than a jam of the Grateful Dead?) was a blind alley of self-obsession. Punk will never age. A fountain of youth.

Lyrics:

Winter has arrived in Frankfurt. Tonight I went out with two friends. We had some nice dark Czech beer and goose with a very tasty crust. When we left the pub everything was covered in white. It was snowing like crazy. The wind was blowing the snowflakes into my ears. We trudged through the snow to the station, I took the train and trudged through even more snow the fifteen minutes home.

The music which warmed my heart at home was Coronation St by Izzy Royal. A reggae/ska instrumental from 1983. What a great lyrical trumpet line. Making a glorious sun rise in our little kitchen. Excuse the surface noise. I guess this has been played a couple of times already before it found its way into the digital age.

I have to get up early tomorrow. There will be some snow shovelling to do.

Two blues/rock guitar legends passed away recently.

On November, 5th Link Wray, aged 76, died in Copenhague where he was buried in privacy on Friday. Link Wray started playing western swing after the war and got famous in 1958 with Rumble, a blues instrumental with a powerful, menacing riff. The first known use of a power chord (fuzz tone) in rock music. Apparently Wray punched a hole into his amp. At least ten years ahead of its time. Jimi Hendrix is unthinkable without him. Neil Young acknowledged Link as one of the big influences on his noisy guitar style. I found a live version of Rumble from 1977 on this ILM thread on Wray which he performed as a member of Robert Gordon's band at the Loeb auditorium in NYC.

Chris Whitley died on Sunday from lung cancer. He was only 45 years old. Most pictures on his website show him with a cigarette in his mouth. Chris had a very intense and personal way of playing the guitar. To me it often sounded as if he was expressing his darkest and deepest feelings through his blues guitar. Listen to Can't Get Off from 1995's Din of Ecstasy. A heavy-riffed blues with soulish almost funky vocals.