Another lazy Sunday and nothing to do than hang around. Since we will not plan special I probably bring my laptop up to date, and store some data on my external hard drive. My mobile phone makes trouble as well and I will probably come not fail to reset the device to factory defaults. With this setting, all data and apps stored on the phone lost. So I'll know what I will do the next hours. By the way the weather is like in spring and I think of all you people in Great Britain who can't get rid of heavy rain and storms.
2001 was the year that changed everything in our whole life. If we thought that everything's easy and don't bother us we were interrupted by the attack to the Twin Towers in NYC in September 2001. Nothing was before since than. George W. Bush declared the war on terrorism and all the secret services started to collect informations where ever they could get. As John Orwell told us in his novel we got our Big Brother throughout the years. And the last we knew from Mr. Snowden was that we were close to Orwells thoughts about controlling us all. Like NSA and all the secret services in the whole world will do. We ought to krype our messages and think what we probably think about every word we say or post in the Internet, we have to think about what we talk when we call our friends via mobile phones and so on. But do we feel more safe than before or are the services taken more part of our life than they ought to? I don't really know but this is what I think right now when I look back to 2001. Surely there was a lot of more things in this year that I might remember very well without setting 9/11 in the middle of it.
I still remember when I got the news of this horrible crash into the WTC. It was at the time when I used to finish work and I took a last click on the news. I read about a plane got crashed into the building and thought that this must be a joke and couldn't be true. Later this evening we went to friends to invite them to our wedding (yes there was one thing this year without the shadow of 9/11 on it) - one of those things that was brighter than this terrorism attack. We visited several friends and at all their places the TV was running. I think we saw this pictures 100 times this evening and so they were burned inside our brains. We have refused to marry ecclesiastically and to celebrate a party instead of this with our narrow friends and the family. In our neighborhood there was a villa that was pursued a bar and we rented this location for a whole Friday night. All of them made us an unforgettable night.
As usual - some records that are worth to remember
The Strokes - This is it: The return of Indie Rock with a sensational debut album
Jan Delay - Searching for the Jan Soul Rebels: Fantastic reggae with German lyrics
Kings of Convenience - Quiet is the New Loud: Beautiful Indie folk pop from Norway
Spiritualized - Let it Come Down: Another great record from them
Fun Lovin Criminals - Loco: Eclectic mixture of hip hop, rock, blues and a little bit of jazz
Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy: Very good songs from the Welsh alternative band
India.Arie - Acoustic Soul: Perfect combination of hip hop and R&B
Diana Krall - The Look of Love: As good as her album before
Robbie Williams - Swing When You're Winning: Great songs never die
Here some songs that are typical for this year:
Monster's Ball: Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in a great drama
Memento: Crazy idea to tell a story from the end
The Lord of the Rings: I didn't like the novels and don't like the movies (but it was a chart buster)
Amélie: Wonderful movie about a good person (only could made in France)
Enemy at the Gates: Fantastic story about two snipers in Stalingrad
Blow: Based on a real story Johnny Depp tells us about smuggling drugs
From Hell: Johnny Depp (again) try to tell his version of Jack the Ripper
Black Hawk Down: First good movie about a useless war
I renounce this time out to mention something else that has happened in the world.
I seldom listened to a record that combines so many influences from the last 40 years in music to a very own sound. It's like you have a grab bag of music in front of you. Open this fund has the magical Welsh band Super Furry Animals. And they take all of the best. Of course they have studied the mid Beatles work and the Beach Boys as well. You can hear also Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra in a song and in the next one sounds like a Barry White inspired song. You might call this retro but the retro case still not snaps, plus the band sounds ultimately to their own. It is opulent instrumented with big melodies and pomp.
Let me take you back 20 years ago to German rock music. The Hamburg school is a loose music movement which originated in the end of the 1980s and reached her commercial high point middle him of 1990s. She went back to traditions of the new German wave and connected them with elements of Indie rock, punk, Grunge and pop. It was and is with it an important part of the German youth culture and brought a new self-image for the use of the German in the pop music with itself. In the beginning purely from Hamburg based bands like Cpt. Kirk &., Kolossale Jugend, Blumfeld , Die Goldenen Zitronen or Huah! carried, the Hamburg school is not simply a „storage tank of similarly sounding music“. It's distinguishes herself above all by German-speaking lyrics to which often a high intellectual claim is portioned out and which are connected extensively with society criticism, left political setting and postal-modern theories. In the middle of the 1990s became in particular of three bands very successful: Blumfeld, Die Sterne and Tocotronic. By the success of the Hamburg school also attained a lot of German-speaking guitar bands a higher fame whose attempts were not necessarily to be compared in music and text to the Hamburg school. However, with the establishment of a national, German-speaking indie-pop scene and the concept „Hamburg school“ became less important bit by bit. But this will be a story to be told another time.
So let me introduce some band from the 'Hamburg School' that made German ears listen to some new sounds:
And if I talk about the so called 'Hamburg School' this story would not be complete without any word about Bernd Begemann from Bad Salzuflen who was still a member of the scene. He did a lot of good things all over the years and I was glad to see him live last year in a very very small bar in Stuttgart.
What would be this series when I doesn't lose any word about Graham Parker? Absolutely nothing. I cannot find better words than was written down in Wikipedia:
Despite only moderate commercial success, Parker's energetic performances - along with the wittily class-conscious spirit of his debut album Howlin' Wind - preceded the arrival of punk rock and new wave music. In addition, his quirky-blue-collar image is often believed to be a major influence on the public persona of many British musicians, most notably Elvis Costello, Paul Weller and Joe Jackson. The band's first album, Howlin' Wind, was released to acclaim in April 1976 and was rapidly followed by the stylistically similar Heat Treatment. A mixture of rock, ballads, and reggae-influenced numbers, these albums reflected Parker's early influences (Motown, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison) and contained the songs which formed the core of Parker's live shows – "Black Honey", "Soul Shoes", "Lady Doctor", "Fool's Gold", and his early signature tune "Hey Lord, Don't Ask Me Questions", which hit the Top 40 in the UK.
Howlin' Wind was on heavy rotation in this time and it marks what pub rock was and what it made famous: The time between classical and boring rock music and the time of new music what was called punk rock/new wave. I loved Graham Parkers deep and soulful voice that fits to most of them songs he wrote. Even it was a classical ballad or a reggae tune - he did it all well.
Let us take a step beck in the early 90s when electronic music became more and more famous in Great Britain. Leftfield was formed by former members/session musicians of band like Brand New Heavies and A Guy Called Adam. Their first release in 1995 hit me massive and made me look to the electronic side of music. It is still a music that's worth to listen to. If I name them as pioneers of electronic music I think I can't be wrong.
Todays track come from another Memphis bound musician - Johnny Burnett. Grown up with Elvis he wanted to start a career as boxing professional but gave it up after his first fight and a broken nose. Together with his brother he formed a band that became later The Rock and Roll Trio. He will not be forgotten with Only Sixteen that got him in the top-ten of the charts and was covered by many artists along the years. His son Rocky Burnett had also success in the early 80s with his top-ten hit Tired of Toeing the Line.
Let's start the week with a trip back to the times of love and peace. The music of this time was laid out either on long guitar passages or on songs with miraculous harmonies. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was the band who made it perfect. Also after decades it still is breathtaking to hear them singing. Yesterday I took me the time to listen to them again after long years and I think it is not the worst way to start into another working week.
