The return of Kevin Shields:

What the hell is Shipbuilding about?:

Are there any Joy Division songs that are not in a 4/4 time signature?

Pere Ubu is

• not now nor has it ever been a viable commercial venture.
• to Devo what Arnold Schoenberg was to Irving Berlin.
• a funeral rite for humanity after the catastrophe: there is the anguish of an inescapable fate, there is the agony and the ...
• a rock band.
• David Thomas: vocals Tom Herman: guitar, organ, backing vocals Robert Wheeler: EML synthesizer, theremin, piano Michele Temple: bass, piano, ...
• the central character in a series of absurdist plays by Frenchman Alfred Jarry (1873-1907).
• inevitably coloured by the shadow of their classic first album, 'The Modern Dance', which was key in showing the way music ...
• not easy music, though, with their well crafted pop hooks, they are more ...
• just kidding around with me, I can make my own decision about what their material means to me, can'tI?
• the most consistent band I can think of, especially considering they've been around since the mid-70s.

unf:

• teltarif.de Forum: hiptop 2 unf mms?
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• Urlaub unf Ferien zum Tiefpreis
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• Was heißt "Beurteilen unf Fördern"?
• Reduktion von Aminosäuren mit Diboran (in situ aus NaBH4 unf H2SO4)

Die VHS-Cassette von diesem Film habe ich heute vom Regisseur, der ein Freund des Rennfahrers war und fast mit dem Filmemachen nach dieser Tragödie aufgehört hätte, geschenkt bekommen. Ich glaube ich ziehe traurige Sujets an.

Andrea Strunk vorhin im Deutschlandfunk über die Eltern (und Angehörigen) der in Beslan getöteten Kinder, die hunderte verstümmelte Kinderkörper ansehen mussten, um ihre Kinder zu identifizieren. Andrea Strunk hat ein Buch über das Massaker geschrieben. Es heißt Beslan, Requiem.

The Chess Mind by Dennis Monokroussos. Best chess blog around. I especially enjoyed the Evans Gambit post (giving material to gain space is an obsession of mine). ChessBase is ace to replay games. I haven't played a game of chess with a human for ages. On Friday I had an encounter with this program. It creates lines of thought which look like pop art paintings. The game never finished as the program stopped moving about three moves before it would have been mated. Like in the old times when those grandpas just kept on thinking and didn't move anymore when they were lost. One of the reasons why I stopped playing chess in chess clubs.

I could listen to this for the rest of my life. There is a whole life buried in those piano chords. A life which cries for a repeat.

p.s. the file is glitched in a bad way. i suppose you have to buy the cd then. massive attacks's danny the dog. it's the last track.

Not my album of 1978, I have changed my mind. I started writing on it as if it was though. Here is the beginning of that futile attempt.

This is definitely not the most adventurous album by Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart. That would probably be the mythic double album Trout Mask Replica from 1969. Where the delta blues meets the avantgarde. I have never passed the litmus test of listening to that album attentively in one sitting. It's very far out, I did appreciate 1970's Lick My Decals off, Baby more. Maybe because of the shorter songs. Shiny Beast is more varied and more listener friendly than both these innovative experimental albums.

Why did I choose the Captain over Pere Ubu who debuted in 1978 with The Modern Dance? First there is the voice. It is extroverted. And it has got the blues. A blues rooted in the deep sunny south. Don van Vliet sings like a demon on acid coming from the desert. Whereas David Thomas muted vocals sound like from outer space. Someone (in the Spin record guide) compared his voice to a cry of a bird. It must be a huge bird. An albatross who has landed in the industrial winter landscape of Cleveland.

Then there is the music. Shiny Beast is full of trombones, slide guitar and percussion. The songs are ragged, change direction in the middle, stop and go on somewhere else. The Modern Dance is dominated by that powerful sound of the bass. Which I like but which hasn't got the life-affirming sprawling playful energy.

And the lyrics. Something like

on the wonderful calypsoish Tropical Hot Dog Night - a perfect song for a summer party - is a bold statement I cannot not love.

What else? On the instrumental Ice Rose the trombone and the marimbas meet for an impressionist still which turns into an expressionist havoc. The almost conventional ballad Harry Irene is the starting point for many successful Tom Waits songs. Sorry Tom but the Captain was first. And he could whistle as well! When I See Mommy I Feel Like a Mummy is rocking this house.

sp: Keith Jarrett, of course.

October 1986. I was on the Greek cyclade Naxos where I met a black English guy who was deejaying in a club in the main town. He was ranging his LPs as the season was over and he was about to go back to rainy England. Before he played a single for me. A song by a band from the whereabouts of Manchester I had never heard of. Called The Smiths, a name I instantly loved for its modest ubiquitousness. The song was called Panic but it took me at least seven or eight years before getting that title. From the beginning on I thought it was called after the chorus at the end, Hang the DJ. A two minutes and something pop song which didn't impress me much at first but which somehow stayed in memory. Which became a token song for nostalgia. I don't know how many times I asked deejays for this song. Usually because they only played music which didn't say anything to me about my life. Sometimes they played it (as they liked the song themselves but didn't realise why I asked for it), many times they didn't. This song starts the wonderful compilation of singles, b-sides and 12'' extra songs called The World Won't Listen (how could I not love that title) which came out in early 1987. Whatever Panic is about (e.g. riots in England and radio deejays who pass stupid songs on the public radio after Chernobyl has happened a couple of hours before), it has a feel of power which in the end becomes so totally overwhelming and irresistible (that kid's choir is angelic). As if changing the music could change the world. That's what I always liked most about Morrissey. He always incarnated the romantic side of revolution for me.

Three members of The Smiths were born in the same year I was born. I always thought of them as The Beatles of the 80s. My Beatles as that band was about the distant past. An in-between generation, not my parents who were into baroque music and thought that Beethoven was almost too modern for their taste. The Smiths were about feeling uncomfortable. About being unhappy with the world. You realise that the world is not ideal and you escape into music. They were a singles band. Preferring and excelling in the small format of seven and twelve inches. They were so prolific in their short life-time from 1984-87 that their genius could not be captured on albums. That's why I chose a compilation. Three of the best songs of The Queen Is Dead are featured. The autumnal flow heading towards calmer songs is perfect. Not like on these terrible singles compilations or the expanded American version Louder than Bombs which was released shortly after. Hatful of Hollow is almost as strong, probably more urgent in an adolescent universe. If you want the mature, grown-up Smiths The World Won't Listen is more like it though, I guess.

I wanted to offer you Oscillate Wildly, an instrumental worthy of its title. Unfortunately neither yousendit nor antville-files nor my ftp upload program works. Sorry folks. Maybe tomorrow.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XXXVI was this post.

P.S. I started a disappointing discussion (no surprise, really) on I Love Music by reposting the review there.