One of the greatest rock albums of all-time. In the States they didn't realise for a long time how amazing this band from Boston was. It was the same with the Wipers almost ten years before. Concerning Giant Sand, Swell or Idaho it is even worse: they never got those. Maybe American ears are not made for ingenious American music. Whatever. Charles Thompson IV aka Black Francis aka Frank Black must have come from a black hole in a galaxy a million light years away. Born in sunny Long Beach in CA in 1965 he formed the Pixies in 1986. Kim Deal who had just started playing the bass answered an ad by Thompson looking for a bassist liking Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul & Mary. Via the drummer of the Throwing Muses the Pixies got a contract with 4AD. The British label of ethereal otherworldly music. Not exactly how I would call their unpredictable blend of punk, indie rock and surf pop with a penchant for Spanish lyrics.

how could i forget about their brilliant music? the simple infectious magnificent bass lines of kim deal. joey santiago's guitar squalls. black francis voice ranging from falsetto to david thomas scream to lou reed's coolness. they were the roxy music of around 1990. every song had at least three different songs in it. hardly any one was longer than three minutes. they had the gift of melody and punk of the buzzcocks.

debaser opens the surreal circle of noisy pop. when kim deal joins in black francis heavy breathing on tame: je t'aime moi non plus seemed to have been for puffs in comparison to those perfectly synchronous sex sounds. the energy. the intensity. david lovering's drums in the vein of maureen tucker. throwaway but effective. wave of mutilation is more standard anthemic rock music-wise. not everybody drives his car into the ocean and rides away on a wave of mutilation though. i bleed is the first climax. a slow start with the bassline. guitar squeaks come in. restrain. total self-abandonment. here comes your man is the sunny side of life. a gorgeous almost countryish melody. dead does not betray its title. abrasive. more like their first two releases. difficult to love. a cooler song follows. this monkey's gone o heaven. 5-6-7. number mysticism. mr grieves is weird. starts like a kind of reggae but it changes to something else. falling apart and holding together like every good pixies song. the infernality and speed of crackity jones. and on la la la love you lovering sings so much better than ringo starr. what a nice whistling song. number 13 baby (if someone's interested this is the mp3 i would put up) is knocking me out. i am there on the floor, the referree is counting me out and i love it. what a beautiful way to go down. there goes my gun sounds like a song of a drunken sailor. hey is reviving my spirits. the singing on silver sucks but there is kim's slide guitar and joey's guitar fuzz. gouge away mentions marihuana and kim sings "la la la". enough to be utterly classic. altogether the best road and drinking music around. i haven't tried it for sex but it can't be bad in this setting. the better party album would have been mlah though, i guess.

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

ingredients: some tobacco (a gram is enough), one cigarette paper, an almost empty lighter.

recipe: take the paper in your hands. between the two thumbs and the two forefingers. touch it. turn the paper in that way that the glueing side is on top pointing away from you (my way, there are three others). take a lump of tobacco with the right hand (or left but then i don't guarantee for the rest) and put it on the paper. hold on to the lump with your left thumb. distribute the tobacco fibers with thumb and forefinger of the right hand while the left thumb assures that the tobacco stays on the paper. put your two forefingers on top of the tobacco. make sure that the two fingernails touch each other (part of the magic performance). press the side of the paper in front of you with the thumbs against the forefingers which are on top of the tobacco inside. take away the forefingers. put them behind the paper (on the side of the paper pointing away from you). roll the paper over the tobacco with your thumbs. once. twice. not more than three times. this is the difficult part. no more explanations. this is magic. the paper is embracing the tobacco now. lick the glueing part with your tongue. push it with your forefingers against the paper so that it all sticks together. seal the deal. take away the parts of tobacco sticking out of the front and rear of the cigarette. you are almost done. the cigarette is ready now.

finish: put one end of the cig in between your lips. take the lighter. try to light it by turning the small wheel by about 90 degrees with your thumb. it doesn't work. try again. no luck. try and try and try. after about twenty times the lighter lights up. and either the cigarette is not close enough to the flame or you are not prepared to inhale to make the end of the fag flame up. that is the meaning of life. you know it is there. but you can't grab it. you are never there at the right time to hold onto it. it's a flash coming as fast as it is going away.

p.s. after all this shit i need a fag. and i have another full lighter. fahck the meaning of life.

From the ILM thread Who is the Piano Man?

John Cage's 4'33'' performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra (38.5 MB movie from Ubuweb).

I wrote about this piece before. When I saw the film of the performance at London's Barbican Centre 4'33'' suddenly reminded me of an excerpt from a church service. I mean the moment when the pastor has finished his explicit prayer and when he says to the fold:

For maybe ten seconds everyone tries to be silent now and I have always felt an extremely oppressive atmosphere in these few moments. I could never pray for anything and somehow this gave me a bad conscience. I know now what I would pray for during a performance of 4'33''. That the bloody thing should stop immediately. And the greatest about this prayer is that it will finally even be answered.

The funny thing about the performance is that the people seem to feel quite similarly. The applause after the piece is extraordinary long and frenetic. The audience enjoys the clapping much more than the applause after a conventional piece of music. It is the release from the false silence. Come to think of it, 4'33'' culminates in the applause of the audience.

P.S. I very much wonder about Momus calling Kracht a friend. Politically they are light years apart, I guess, and the passage above is the most tasteless fashion garbage I have read for a long time.

I temporarily suspended the javascript version of my blo.gs blogroll as it seems to slow down the site considerably. Blo.gs is about to be sold to a new owner. It is supposed to continue as before but maybe I have to change to blogrolling or another service. Proposals are welcome.

Orthographie: Les Négresses Vertes bien évidemment.

The self-titled Beatles double album is my favourite release by the fab four. There are at least three main reasons for this choice.

Firstly it is the most varied record they have ever made. 95 minutes full of sparkling ideas going into all kinds of directions. Ranging from surf pop echoes to ska, bluegrass, hard rock, experimental sound collage, film music, folky fingerpicking, several slow ballads, lots of blues and some weird unclassifiable bonusses. The main advantage of this record compared to the others is that it never gets boring, that the succession of songs never ceases to surprise, that there is so much to discover. Behind the versatility of the White Album lies the fact that it is their most collective effort. Calling it The Beatles was rather adequate. Everyone contributes at least one song, even Ringo though Don't Pass Me By is the weakest of them all. Ringo sings on the nicely sugary arranged dreamy lullaby Good Night which closes the album. George Harrison is responsible for four songs of which two are ingenious: While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Eric Clapton playing the phantastic lead guitar and Savoy Truffle which is the most funky (what a great fat saxophone section), psychedelic piece on the album. Paul plays drums on Back in the USSR and Dear Prudence. Here of course the paradoxon that they were a band slowly falling apart comes in. Ringo and Paul had had an argument and Ringo had left the studio for a while.

The second reason I like this double LP best is of a more technical nature. The music still sounds fresh. I hadn't heard most of the 30 songs before I discovered the White Album at the end of the 80's. Only Revolution was a single. And only three other songs (Back in the USSR with the falsetto choir nodding to the Beach Boys, the early ska-ish dance hit Ob-la-di, ob-la-da which I used to hate but like now and While My Guitar Gently Weeps) are on the blue double album comprising the best of their late years. Most Beatles songs may they be as gorgeous as e.g. Strawberry Fields Forever suffer from having been played too many times on the radio. They have become clichés and I can hardly appreciate them anymore.

Finally there is another almost metaphysical cause for my predilection. The Beatles had been in Rishikesh during February/March of 1968, listening to the lectures of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi known for his Transcendental Meditation (TM). There had been frictions in the band and a disappointment of the spiritual trip. First Ringo went back to England, then Paul, finally John and George. But over-all they had calmed down after the LSD-drenched craziness of the Magical Mystery Tour. In Rishikesh they met Donovan who according to legend taught John finger-picking. Of course they couldn't live without making music in India. But they were forced to concentrate on basic, simple music as they had only brought their acoustic instruments. Almost half of the songs on the White Album have either been written in Rishikesh or have been influenced by the meditative atmosphere there. It was as if they had come back to their roots. Before going back into the almost symphonic rock of their last studio record Abbey Road.

Sidenote: Let It Be was a slighter work in between featuring the cosmic(!) Across the Universe as a stand-out. A song written by John under LSD which pointed towards Eastern philosophy.

Two songs on the double album refer to the negative aspects of the Rishikesh experience. Lennon's great, melancholic Sexy Sadie on the extra lessons the guru supposedly gave to the females and the sardonicly titled phantastic rocker Everyone Has Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey which without the monkey part according to Harrison is a quote by the Maharishi.

My absolute favourite on the record is Julia. The most tender and touching love song I know. John is on his own here with his acoustic guitar and he sings about his mother Julia and about Yoko Ono (Yoko = ocean child in Japanese. The seashell eyes are hers.) who had just stepped into his life. John had lived with an aunt and had lost his mother whom he worshipped from the distance when he was 18. Yoko who was seven years older than John was just about to become his ersatz mother and lover at the same time. The way John starts this song whispering

is the most personally direct he has ever been in a Beatles song. For an outsider like me it is like listening to an intimate, private love letter only destined for the beloved. The poetic imagery of this song to which Yoko apparently contributed is breathtakingly beautiful. The tune is soothing and yearning at the same time. Every time it spins on my record player I have to listen to it attentively, I cannot avert my ears from it. It is so intense.

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

P.S. The last song, the lullaby Good Night which nobody would have expected after the chaotic sound collage Revolution 9 namedrops (;-) the title of this weblog:

My day falls into two parts. Before and after the first cigarette (guess what I did a minute ago). It is like I could not bear the blissful, relaxed state without nicotine for a whole day. I need to smoke that first cigarette not to lose the stupid addiction I cherish so much. It is completely irrational. By the way I still manage to not light my first fag before leaving off work during my working days.

L'enfer c'est moi-même.