The last week my colleague has kept free himself some days. Because our musical taste is completely different I have perceived the opportunity and alongside have heard music. Usually I start work earlier than him and I listen to my music until he comes. Sometimes he asks me who's playing and I tell him. Sometimes he can agree with the music that was playing and some times he don't. Most of the time I switch of my player after the song is over to get him a chance to hear different kind of music. But it's like cast pearls before swine when he told me to switch off the fantastic mix Hazienda by Andrew Weatherall. Anyway, this song appeared on the shuffle and I thought I ought to post it these days. It's the live version of Burning Down The House by Talking Heads. And this song is still brilliant! I loved this band since they released their first record in the late 70s. A perfect combination of funky rhythms and a new way of performing them. I seldom heard a bass player using his instrument like Tina Weymouth did. And the vocals of David Byrne fit accurately to the songs. And the movie Stop Making Sense is a milestone in this genre. I remember this movie very well and for many people it was new, if with every song a band member comes more on the stage. I first saw it by Joe Jackson in the very early 80s. This song is the first song that the entire band played in the movie.
Today we have one with the 25th post a small jubilee which I would like to commit with one of an American rockabilly band.The Moonlight Howlers are a family unit out of Williams, Arizona with brother Raffael “Bones” Weatherly on stand-up bass, sister Ariel “Siren” Weatherly on drums, and cousin Tory “Lee Terror” Putman on guitar. Each of these kids are in their early 20s, yet they’ve put together a strong resume that includes appearances at county and state fairs throughout Arizona, New Mexico, California, Wyoming, and Montana. Not too bad for three kids who credit their grandfather for their love of old 50s rock and roll and honky-tonk.
Weekends over and another working week ahead. This week C. will come back from Sri Lanka to watch out what's to be done in the next weeks. For me it's just another busy week ahead in which I don't know what problems in our projects I should be work. Anyway, let's start this week with a song from Fun Lovin' Criminals a New York based band who plays a fantastic mixture of alternative rock, hip hop, funk, blues and jazz. As a band, they cover such issues as organized crime, recreational drug use, violence, poverty and politics. Their songs are often gritty or existentialist in nature, but are just as often humorous or satirical. One of my favorites is Run, Daddy, Run which shows their abilities maybe the best. It's a very good mixture of the styles I described.
It's Sunday again and I'm going to do my personal accountancy and post of the last weeks. Although I am very exact in my job and work on documents fast and put away, I do not get it on the row, to do this resembles with my personal things. That's why I collect everything and pull it from the drawer if it cannot be moved over any more longer before itself. So now is the time to spent one or two hours to get these things done. I made me a coffee, selected some songs from the 60s soul era and hope that this work will be done soon.
Update notice: Fucking DMCA prohibits me from providing the songs as a download. That's why I have made available the songs about Youtube, so that everybody can make to itself a picture of my image.
What year with so many heights and depths. I have come back better and better in my occupation. And the better I have managed this, the worse it goes for my wife in her occupation. Not only that she a lot of problems has to do to herself in her position, but there are colleagues whom have worked against her. I do not know how many evenings we have maintained us and looked for solutions. At last the best solution might be that she gives up her job and searches for herself something else. This was also the time in which we have gone away on from ourselves and did not have any more the same aims which we want to pursue. Nevertheless, we have done everything to give ourselves a new perspective and to gain control of our life again. Then something happened what I would not have held for possible. My father got cancer and has passed away after a short time of the suffering peacefully. I would never have thought, how much I would lack him, because he was there fifty years for me and my brothers always. This is why all other things that happened to me made no difference. Anyway - life goes on. More next week, people.
Seems like I turned more and more into electronic music:
LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening: If only for Dance Yrself Clean
Caribou - Swim: Fantastic record
Four Tet - There Is Love In You: Good like everytime
Warpaint - The Fool: What a great band and what a great record
The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang: Influences of Springsteen, Waits and The Clash made a great record
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs: Another alternative rock that sounds good
Panta Du Prince - Black Noise: Electronic music that I played often since then
And here like the weeks before, some songs from the start of the topical decade:
And again: some movies from this year:
The Kings Speech: Excellent historical drama
The Social Network: A true story how to get a billionaire
Black Swan: Wonderful pictures and a great drama
Shutter Island: Very good novel and a very good movie
Inception: Di Caprio again - what a great story
Soul Kitchen: Fantastic story about how to run a German restaurant
Some headlines again from the rest of the world:
Heavy earthquake in Haiti devastating the capitol Port-au-Prince; more than 300.000 people died // Airplane crash in Smolensk kills the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski // European finance crises starts with the support of Greece // Ethnic riots in Kyrgyzstan // 2010 FIFA World Cup is held in South Africa and was won by Spain against the Netherlands
He has it still - this rat-catcher's voice; though she sounds different, more fragile, taken, but also a little age-wise and more conciliatorily, but not less reproachfully, only less deploring. 16 years after Spirits that reports back of drugs, alcohol and the destiny sieved Heron, finally, again with a new collection from poems and songs, and knows how as to fascinate as at times from winter in America.
The special in this record is above all that he has found a sympathetic musical partner, or in Richard Russell also again better: this has found Heron and has reactivated directly from the prison. Differently than Brian Jackson in the 70s, however, Russell offers a wide spectrum of styles with those he Heron's texts puts under which have all one common denominators: the bandaging of traditional instrumentations with highly topical modern genres like hip-hop and electronics. The fact that here stretching frictional surfaces should prove is clear that this succeeds, however is, also to be ascribed to the aerial and partly fragile arrangements which Russell sketched here thus capably and absolutely freely of currying favour. How he made from Robert Johnson 's classic Me And The Devil an artistic hip-hop, is as astonishing as the quite clear power station loans in Your soul And mine. Blues is celebrated on I'll take Care Of You and Heron's own (and fantastic) New York Is Killing Me and above all to this piece a rhythmically like orchestrated gruff Extravaganza sticks which one has never heard thus. Soonest comparably this is still with blues an explosion, only never overload so and crudely. Heron's gospel song-like song does his remaining around these songs to let get under skin.
And if he proclaims guitar accompanied his lyrics with the title track only from accumulator tables, one also thinks without fail of first (and possibly best) American Recordings album of Johnny Cash. If one of the big old men should walk on such a way for his late work, then Heron. A short, but big and extremely exciting album which connects Old and newly brilliantly. Heron has never taken up bad albums, but I'm New Here counts definitively to his best.
Let's cross the border to Austria today. Wolfgang Ambros is a well known singer/songwriter in the German and Austrian scene. He got famous by his song Schifoan, telling us about what fun it could be driving in a fresh snow downhill. This song is very popular at the hot spots in the alps when you finish skiing at your your local bar. Lot's of people singing along to his song - especially the refrain. Sure, it is some kind of freedom that you can have when you are driving in a fresh snow. But Wolfgang Ambros was more than a one hit wonder in the skiing scene. He has made an album about the mountaineering and has made clear like the mountain dwellers think and feel. It was very local and no one out of Gemany/Austria would ever recognized it. Anyway it was a record I grew up with. In the late 70s he made a record with songs from Bob Dylan in Austrian language. He didn't translate his words one to one into German - he tried to transfer Dylan's meaning and intentions into my native language. And I have to say it was a very good job. Many songs on this record have a deep melancholy in it. This is typical for music made in Vienna these days. It is nearly 40 years ago that I listened to this songs and I forgot how wonderful they are. Wolfgang Ambros had a feeling for the meaning of these songs. And I don't know anyone better to sing these songs in German (maybe Wolfgang Niedecken from BAP - but this is another story to be told). A few years ago he made another record with cover version in Austrian language. This time he interpreted songs by Tom Waits - a very good record as well.
Today's bank holiday in Germany and many other countries celebrating the International Workers Day. In my younger days I used to got to political rallies organized by local unions at this day. I don't really know when and why I stopped it. Maybe it was at these days I got in conflict with some leading members of the union. It was in the mid 90s when some organized members of our workers council in the bank tried to install the unions ideals more than they should. I remember big discussions when I was a member of our working council. For me the fact was decisive that I have dissociated myself from the trade union that consciously the untruthfulness was said. There was clear for me that it is for the trade union not about the workers, but therefore her aims to realize. Another fact might be that in 1933 the Nazi government declared May 1 as the 'Day of National Work' an official state holiday and announced that all celebrations were to be organized by the government. Any separate celebration by communists, social democrats or labour unions were banned. Deep in my socialist heart I feel a little pain, seeing that this day was occupied by lots of group for their own aims and ideas and that they forgot what ideas originally stood behind this day.
