There is a scene in the second part of No Direction Home where the young Bob Dylan is in a station wagon and outside there are the masses pressing around. First he has his sunglasses on and peeks out of the window where he sees all those people staring at him like at a beautiful, rare species. A male fan shouts "Bobby". He takes the glasses off and faces the camera with his head leaning against the window pane. For a moment he almost grins. An angel lost in reverie. Looking stoned. Outside behind him are girls who knock on the window and want to touch him. At the same time he is the most popular and the loneliest person in the world.

Did you know that Thurston Moore played in a band before Sonic Youth? I didn't. Over at krlx radio there are five songs from The Coachmen's 1979 demo tape and some info on their history. Quite listenable garage rock à la Modern Lovers and VU with a dash of Talking Heads. Funky.

The latest Yo La Tengo album is always the best. Any other band where this is true? I doubt it.

I don't know what happened to her. Maybe she finally has defeated her demons. I hope so. She is on AOL now. A 39 minute interview and performance is downloadable on their site.

That's truely a cumbersome band name but who cares when the music is that exciting. After New York City art rockers Lansing-Dreiden which infatuated me in January this is only the second new band I have fallen in love with this year. WFANFC are four lads from Manchester who incorporate at least as many influences in their psychedelic sound as the equally eclectic Lansing-Dreiden from the other side of the Atlantic.

Take for example So from their myspace page. It's a dark and brooding spaced out guitar song including some electronic wizardry in the vein of new Radiohead with a shoegazer vibe à la Pale Saints. Or the heavy, groovy, bass-driven Dead Fingers Talking from the same place which has a baggy sound evoking someone like the New Fast Automatic Daffodils. Innocence from the Blowout site mixes The Orb's Fluffy Clouds with Amon Tobin's beats. Troubled Son from Pitchfork's Infinite Mixtape section is another monster dance track which could have been from a Screamadelica played by The Chemical Brothers.

Altogether great varied stuff and I am rather perplexed that they have neither been mentioned on ILM nor in the mp3 blogs which feed the hype machine.

Their self-titled debut is supposed to come out on melodic on October, 16th.
 
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[music, artists] September 29, 2006 at 3:01:00 PM CEST

When Dylan says he never wanted to be the voice of his generation I can only laugh. That's part of his publicity plan. Always has been. I mean he is a well-made man now and he could bloody take that little bit of responsability instead of hiding in an obscure corner and acting like a poor busker. Every time I see him in a video/interview these days I dislike him more. There is always this mystery sphinx thing going on, the "it wasn't me, I am just a nobody." And anyways almost everything he has ever done was stolen from someone else. Traditional music with a different voice and clever lyrics which according to him don't mean a thing. Word games. Ramblin' Jack Elliott was the better Dylan but he never made it because of no/bad marketing. That's the way it goes. Strangely enough I like the new Dylan record. Probably it's more complicated than I am able to put into words right now.

Und David Berman ist sowieso der größte Liedermacher unserer Generation. Und besser als Dylan, der natürlich auch seine Momente hat. Weil lakonischer, weil origineller, weil mehr er selbst, weil er sich nicht hinter Masken versteckt, weil er Lebenserfahrung hat und die in Musik umsetzen kann. In Lyrics, die dich umhauen, für die du keine Verbildung brauchst. Beispiele? Aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen und trotzdem gut (mainly taken from here), muss man hören, gelesen delivern sie nur die Hälfte der goods:

• Brain Eno (phantastic typo) - definitely a review in Die Zeit. I cycled to Duisburg to get the record. Before and After Science. The girl I was in love with at the time was impressed. The closest I got to her was saying how beautiful her hands were.
• Nick Drake - a review on the Fruit Tree box by Franz Schöler in Die Zeit around 1979. He must have mentioned something along the lines of pure, naked songwriting.
• Keith Jarrett - Not sure. There was an ad of the Sun Bear Concerts in Der Spiegel around 1980 but I suppose I read something in Die Zeit (or Der Spiegel) about someone playing ecstatic jazz piano improvisations grounded in classical music beforehand.
• Joni Mitchell - Around 1985. Summer time. South of Munich. Pilsensee. On top of the hill there was a house where Hejira was playing on the stereo. I was mesmerised. Thank you Jani, where ever you camp right now. I never found out if you knew or even liked Joni.
• Rickie Lee Jones - Somehow I got hold of a tape of Girl at Her Volcano at the Munich library, not sure if it was already the Gasteig. What a voice.

obsessesed by joy div. repercussion or something. when brits and germans meet. heavy, for sure. wagner for the new age.