While I was writing the post about Udo Jürgens the breaking news arrived that Joe Cocker died last night. When I have read this I was stunned at first and shaken. I remember ver well that 40 years ago I was in the flat of an older friend of mine checking out his records and found Joe's first record. I put the vinyl on the record player and what I heard hit me like a titan wave. Never listened to a voice like this. So broken, true and mighty. After I listened to the whole record I played it once more and finally grabbed my whole mney to buy this. This voice that sounds like he gargled with glass shards led me into Soul Music - first of all into Ray Charles to explore the whole sound of the black America in these decade. His story is well known : after success he turned into drugs and alcohol and was a wreck. Down and out. On his way back to an 'ordinary' life he spent some time in Jamaika, where he recorded together with Sly and Robbie on drum and bass one of the best white reggae songs in these times. For me a hero's gone and I miss him.
R.I.P. Joe and sing for the angels now.
Bye bye blackbird (with the young Jimmy Page on guitar):
He always interpreted songs from other artists in his very own way, like Randy Newman's Guilty
In the early 70s I have worked in my school holidays in a factory to have at disposal a little money. It was a heavy job, because I had to work with a colleague on a press to produce India rubber products which the society has made as automotive supplier for the automobile industry. We have stood every day at 6 o'clock in the morning to the pressing and have worked a high chord. After half an hour were completely sweaty and have lost a lot of body liquid. But I got a very good money and most of it I spent driving through Europe by trail. But I also spent a bit of this money on buying records. One of them I bought at this time was the first record by Joe Cocker. Since the first time I listened to his songs I got shiver on my skin. There was an a working man from Sheffield who sung after work in a band. His voice was very rough and you could her in it the pints and the whiskey he drunk. But it wasn't only his voice - he sung the soul out of himself. Sometimes you could hear him being happy about his love - but most of the times he sung about a love that wasted. I could feel the emotions that he shouted out in his songs. And everyone understood what distress he went through.
I remember the time very well when the boyfriend of my best mate's sister introduced me to the music of Joe Cocker. I were in this time as young boy into glam rock like T.Rex, Slade, The Sweet, Mud and all this stuff. Then I listened to this guy who grabbed out maybe the best songs of this decade to interpret in the way he was able to. Joe Cocker was the one who thought me listen to originals of real black music like Ray Charles and the other singers which got soul in their voices. This album might be his masterpiece (if we let go in front once the records outside which he has taken up in the time when it was a wreck in Jamaica). And with a little help from his friends meant that some of the best musicians at this time played on his first record: Jimmy Page, Albert Lee, Chris Stainton, Steve Winwood and on vocal Madeline Bell. I love this record because he had a superb choice of songs that fits to him and his way to sing them.
If you want you can get more of his career on Wiki. I don't agree in most of the songs he did the last 20 years. Some of them are superb, others don't need to be named. But for me he was an artist that lead me into another kind of musical genres. I wouldn't say that he was the one that guided me into soul but he was one of the few that grabbed MY soul while listening to his songs (the other one was Rod Steward - but this will be another story told throughout this series). Someone might name my choice as BOF-music but I stick to Mr. Cocker. He had more downs than ups in his career and I'm glad that he can earn the success to him is entitled. I get sentimental right now while I listen to his songs - so let's finish for today and maybe you can enjoy some of the song I present to you right now. It's one of the few record that accompanied me for long decades and I will never get tired to listening to. What I also love with Joe Cocker, he is which essential questions he throws in the round. For example the simple question: Do I still figure in your live If I still mean to you something in your life.
So let's raise our glasses to one of the best white singers throughout the last 40 years (knowing that he's got rid of this drug).
Stand the rest of the working week mates - Weekend is soon ahead.
This year we had the chance to go to Hawaii but we missed it. Christianes sister married there and we were invited. But for several reasons we couldn't take the chance. First one was that I changed my job in my office to become a risk controller in the bank and we changed on a new operating system were I was hardly integrated just at the day of her marriage. The second one was that Christiane started a new job at the time of wedding as well. So we decided not to travel for a few days around the world and sent our best wishes to them. In fact of our busy working we took just a few weeks to go to Mallorca in early summer. The weather wasn't that bad but every time we started a little journey into the hillside it started to rain. So we spent a lot of time in the local pubs to watch the UEFA EURO with some British guys. All in all a year with no very big highlights but a year of relaxed going on.
Some records that made fun this year.
Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand: Great Indie-rock from Glasgow
Interpol - Antics: Indie-Rock as well from over the Atlantic ocean
Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Loves Bad News: Fantastic music in the tradition of Pavement, Pixies and Meat Puppets
Morrissey - You are the Quarry:
Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days: Just good songs
Melissa Auf der Maur - Auf der Maur: Mostly overseen rock album
Velvet Revolver - Contraband: One of the best hard rock records of the decade
Four Tet - Late Night Tales: Fantastic remixes
Some songs from this year that are worth to be played again:
And that's what we've been seeing in the movies:
The Aviator: Great Scorsese movie about Howard Hughes
Million Dollar Baby: Another good drama from Clint Eastwood
Ray: Great biopic about the life of Ray Charles
The Motorcycle Diaries: Good to see the young Che Guerva riding
Head-On: Very emotional drama about the life of Turks and Germans
Hellboy: It's a cute little devil
Shaun of the Dead: Zombies could be funny
Let's take a little look what happended in the world:
251 pilgrims were killed by a Hajj stampede in Mina // Rebellion in Haiti and Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigns as president // Terrorist bombing in the Madrid railways kills 191 people // The start of banning smoke in working places, pubs and bars starts with laws in Ireland // North Korea bans mobile phones // Greece wins the UEFA-EURO in Portugal (what a shame, that defense can win against playing forward) // Armed robbers steal Edward Munchs the Scream in Oslo.
What one must hold of Morrissey, the cover already betrays: there Morrissey poses as a tastefully dressed dandy with machine gun – he embodies exactly this ambivalence also in excellent manner. You are the quarry connects demanding, melodic and minor-heavy guitar-rock/pop with political lyrics, to big gestures and a pinch Morrissey like megalomania: He sings "I have forgiven Jesus", and this points in which class he sees himself and to whom he has to prove here something else. In addition this striking and warm voice – this carefully produced and on no account stale album completely gets by without gap fountain pen and stands out anyway from the mass product in rock and pop, but why also the "old people" should leave the field without a fight to the "boys"? Maybe also, therefore, the machine gun, or he has reloaded only for his critics? My favorite:„ Also it is for ridge of the way to them“ – subversively about weapons.
From time to time I'm in sentimental mood and I listen to some old singers/songwriters singing their chansons in French. In former times I was fascinatet by singers like Jacques Brel and Charles Aznamvour which made fantastic songs that they mostly arranged by themselfs. Jacques Brel is on that I often listened because of his smooth voice and the his catchy tunes. I am far away to understand the meaning of the chansons so I could focus just the singer and the song. Nowadays it's easy to get a translation of this songs and my respect to the artist grows more and more when I listen to songs I used to play and understandig the meaning of this songs.
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer/songwriter who had a great influence in modern chansons. Although he recorded his songs in French, he became a major influence in English-speaking songwirters like David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Marc Almond and Alex Harvey. Translations of his songs were performed by Ray Charles, Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra. This song is recorded live during a show in Paris in the early 1960s. I never heard warmer words of the land he loves.
Enjoy and have good days
Withits cathedralsas asinglemountain, With blackspiersequal toclimbingpoles. Stoneon whichdependthedevilclouds With the sequence ofdaysas the onlymovement Becauseas the onlycountrywith arainyeveninggreeting With itsnortheasterly winds.Hear himas hedesiresit The flat landthat'smine.
