Seems like this year ends as it started. Just the news arrived that George Michael died during christmas (isn't it ironic that is was his Last Christmas?). I don't have to tell much about his life and music. This will be done by the medias. I remeber one evening maybe 10 years ago I watched him live. I got the tickets as a birthday present for my former wife because she's a huge fan of him. So I joined her, expecting nothing special than a good show. But what happened made me change my mind. I saw a great entertainer blessed with an incredible voice. Listening to sonf he sung acapella made my hairs stand up.
Maybe you know that I got divorced last year and if not it don't mean anything at all. Today my former wife will celebrate her 50th birthday and she'll marry her new love down in Sri Lanka. I wish the best for them and I'm sure she'll go her way leading to the place she want's to be.
If I consider within the scope of this series what was this year importantly for me and how I have felt than I have to say that it was a good year. I spent a lot of time together with my kids watching them growing up and teaching them how to walk. Now they were old enough that we could take small conversations (as good as they are able to). Showing them the world outside our house and the beauty of our country satisfied me so much that most other things got back into second row. Although we only one small budget had we have resolved to drive ourselves with the children on vacation. Our destination was the Italian Adriatic. We stayed there in that so called eurocamp where you can rent a big tent including a fridge and three-leg couches. All you have to bring with was your sleeping utensils. On the whole camping place strict rules have been valid. So for example to be very quiet during the early afternoon and something like that. Not that this is the way to spent my holidays it was perfect for the kids. I remember the laughing eyes of my daughter when she took her first steps into the sea. Before we started our vacation me and my mates took the chance to watch a German game during the UEFA European Championship in England. We grabbed the chance for a cheap flight and a ticket to watch the first German game in Old Trafford against the Czech Republic. It was so much fun to watch football in an English stadium. I know that it might hurt you guys but I have to say a few words to the semi-final between England and Germany. England got a damn good team these days with the fantastic Paul Gascoigne (remember his great goal against Netherland), Alan Shearer, Paul Ince, Steve McManaman and Gareth Southgate. It was a very good game and for me these teams should play the final. But like many times Germany had a little more luck at the penalties.
Some records that I remember that was released in 1996:
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die: Even if only because of 'Djeld' a perfect composition of dub, krautrock and understated guitars
Tocotronic - Wir kommen um uns zu beschweren: German guitar music and the start of the so called Hamburg school
Fugees - The Score: A record many people could agree to
Lighthouse Family - Ocean Drive: Nothing special but good pop music
Everything But The Girl - Walking Wounded: Two great voices with good songs
Belle And Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister: Because I love most of the ting they did.
Some songs they perform duties this year:
If we had time to go to the movie we watched this:
The English Patient: Great drama with fantastic pictures
Fargo: Sensational crime movie by the Coen brothers
The People vs. Larry Flint: Fantastic biopic about about the Hustler
Michael Collins: Liam Neeson plays the Irish revolutionary leader very well
From Dusk Till Dawn: Robert Rodriguez shows us Mexican vampires
White Squall: Nothing more than a great movie
Before and After: Another superb drama with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson
Mars Attacks: Weired movie about aliens finally killed by music
Brassed Off: Superb movie about what's important in life.
Some things that happened in the world this year:
Jacques Chirac announces the so called definitive end to Frensh nuclear testing // Chess computer 'Deep Blue' defeats world chess champion Garry Kasparov for the first time // Dictator Robert Mugabe is reelected as the President of Zimbabwe // IRA bombs again especially in Manchester // Germany wins the UEFA Euro 1996 in England against the Czech Republic by the first and last sudden death goal // Dolly the Sheep is the first mammal which is cloned from an adult cell.
Kruder & Dorfmeister were an Austrian DJ- and producer team well known for their remixes of pop, Trip-Hop and drum and bass songs. Their style reaches from Downtempo and Dub to Electronica and Trip-Hop. For me it was another step into a new musical era - and I never missed it. I grew up with that classic Rock and Roll and followed other music as you might know when you followed my little series. Their music gave me the kicks to search more music like this. It is one of those records I can listen to from start to the end and it always gets me down when I came home from work after a busy day. Most of the songs are timeless and after all I have to admit: It is a classic in this genre.
As said we started last year to play football for our favorite pub. We used to meet once or twice a week in the late afternoon to play with other football-mad lads on a public playground for a match. During the weekends we played a lot amateur competitions that took place in near era. Finally there were four teams that dominated these competitions - ours was one of them. Throughout the following years we had a lot of great games at different places. Many times we won the competitions and we used to play the semi-finals as a minimum. I remember the evenings when we celebrated our success in our local pub. One evening I took the chance to move to the turntable to present the audience my musical taste. One hour later another mate from our team wanted to go on put some records on by his own choice. This was the start of our DJ-circle - long before the DJ-cult started. From this time on we were six lads and we used to play our music alternately on Friday and Saturday. It was a wide spread of music that reached from Funk and Soul over classic rock and rockabilly onto the new and older stuff from Britain and the USA. Every DJ grabbed his own records and played it for five/six hours. One day the owner of the pub mad us an offer that each of us could buy a few records each month on his calculation when we play them in the pub. That's one of reason I my record collection expanded this days.
1984 was also the year I first fell really in love with a girl. After some affairs all over the last years I met Susanne who was a close fried to a female college. She knew me from playing my records in the pub but was to shy to get in contact with me. So she took the way over her girlfriend. We got really quick in contact and fell in love to each other. After a short trip to Italy we decided to life together. A few month later she pulled to me. It was the start of another chapter in my life. More next.
And here again a small choice of songs that dominated the charts or mean a lot to me::
George Michael - maybe the smoothest song of the year in the charts (or was it Stevie Wonder with I just called to say I love you?)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood - with a big bang and attitude from Liverpool
Ultravox and their version of the last day on earth
Alphaville from Germany with their second smash hit
Chaka Khan - back in the charts again
Echo and the Bunnymen - some of my all time favorites
The Style Council - music of quality and distinction
Sade - perfect combination from jazzy moods and a great voice
Prefab Sprout - Paddy McAlloon appears
Icicle Works - Also a song I listened these days
Let go over to the records that was released in 1984:
The Smiths - same: Their first record. I'm a fan since then
Joe Jackson - Body and Soul: Perfect mix of pop and jazz - timeless
The Style Council - Café Bleu: Paul Weller arrived at his new sound
R.E.M. - Reckoning: Perfect College Rock from Athens GA
Echo and the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain: Good to have Ian McCulloch back
Nick Cave - From Here To Eternity: Their debut - something big and dark from down under
The Waterboys - A Pagan Place: Not only because of the trumpet solo on the title track
Sade - Diamond Life: This years sound most of could agree to
Minutemen - Double Nickels On The Dime: Their monument. A perfect combination of punk rock, funk, country and jazz. Also statements to the American way of life
Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade: Another monument of post punk released on SST
The Go-Betweens - Spring Hill Fair: Just good music and great songs
Scott Walker - Climate of Hunter: The man and his voice is back after long years
Cocteau Twins - Treasure: Superb reduced music
What we saw when we went to the cinema:
Amadeus - Milos Forman shows what happened when the great composer Salieri meet the genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Birdy - One of the best post Vietnam war movies with a great Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage
Blood Simple - The Cohn brothers appear with a great movie
The Company of Wolves - British gothic horror and fantasy
The Hotel New Hampshire - Great movie based on a novel by John Irving
Paris, Texas - Arty movie by Wim Wenders
Stop Making Sense - Unforgettable The Talking Heads in Concert
And of course: Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop and Gremlins
What was in the news this year::
Apple places Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States; the Winter Olympics are held in Sarajevo/Yugoslavia; German minister of defense retires general Kiessling because he was suspected of being assessed homosexual - some month later he was found innocent; Konstantin Tschernenko get the president of the USSR; the former boxer Gustav 'Bubi' Scholz get arrested under suspicion to shot down his wife and killed her under heavy influence of alcohol; Ronald Reagan announces the bombardment of Russia during a microphone test and regrets behind his 'joke`;Assassination of Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh security guards - Anti Sikh riots breaking out and more than 10.000 Sikhs were slaughtered; Band Aid records the charity single 'Do they know it's Christmas'; Bhopal Disaster A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll reaches 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.
Talk Talk released their second record in 1984 and it was the breakthrough of the band around her founder Mark Hollis. There was a lot of commercial successful singles like 'Dum Dum Girl', 'Such A Shame' and 'It's my life' which are recommended as their best. But I prefer more songs like 'Renée', 'Does Caroline Knew' and 'It's you' for them reduced speed and their arrangements. The best versions of these songs came out a few years later on a live-record called London 1986 released in the last year of the last century. While I write these words I listen to the record once again and I find new little things I didn't realized the last times. It is one of these timeless records you would take to a lonely island.
my babe is coming back from vacation from Sri Lanka tomorrow. I am so glad to see her again. Lot's of time we are on different places but together in mind. Christiane, it is good to have have you back.
