From Here To Eternity

For your Sunday pleasure a song all of you will know. Nick Cave released a short album a few weeks ago recorded live in Copenhagen. There is nothing new on it but the versions of his classic songs are worth to be listened once again. It seems that he is in good shape after all the tragedies that happened to him and it should be worth to see him live again.

Darkness Rains

This is the title of Los Angeles based psychedelic and punk influenced Death Valley Girls. They are back as usually with militant beats, chaotic lyrics, swirling riffs and some pop harmonies. All songs were kept together with a psychedelic frame. Made to be played loud. Later this day I'll see what Stuttgart will do to left the bottom of the table. We got a new manager but a few players came back playing that needless Nations League. And we will play against Dortmund standing on the top of the table.

Kind Of Girl

Today I got a day of to reduce my overtime before they were cut at the end of the month and my co-worker gets into holiday from next week on. So I will do something at my home that I deferred for longer time. Seems like a rather relaxing day for me listening to some new and old music along my duties. Today's song is from the new record by Paul Collins, a Los Angeles based musician that is active since the mid 70's. He formed The Nerves, a power-pop trio that got little success not only because they've written Blondie's Hanging On The Telephone. Later he transformed the band into Paul Collins' Beat not to be mistaken with the British ska band The Beat. From the mid 70's until now he was true to his sound - power pop and emotional songs about love.

Shleep

Robert Wyatt is a veteran of British progressive music and founding member of Soft Machine. During a party in 1973 he fell out of the window from the 4th floor and was paralysed from the waist down and had to use a wheelchair for mobility ever since. But he never stopped making music in the following decades. Not the normal stuff you can find in a jukebox and always searching for new sounds. Most of his recordings were experimental and filled with great ideas in arrangements. A few days ago I found his album from 1997 Shleep again in my collection. It made fun to listen to this album after a long time. Shleep is a conscious return to more melodic paths, eschewing some of the experimentation of the past in favour of a gentler sound that recalls the calmer moments of his classic album Rock Bottom, albeit in a more pastoral vein. It is the tension itself between nearly happy ones and the rather more epic songs the album makes amusing. And you can hear that Brian Eno produced the album and played on it as well as one of the most underrated guitar players of the 70's - Phil Manzanera.

Robert Wyatt - Heaps of Sheeps
Robert Wyatt - Alien

Hong Kong Garden

I was not the one who bought singles in former times but when I visited my local record shop back in 1978 this single came appeared when I searched the newest incoming records. It was in these days when almost every week another great song was released but it was hard to get the singles at my hometown. Hong Kong Garden was one of these singles I bought without any listening to it - just because the cover fascinated me. Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees was one of the hottest bands in 1978 and they still are one of those artists from the punk era that stood the test of time for me. I don't know how much I listened to this song but I still get goose bumps when I listen to it after all these years.

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Hong Kong Garden

A few weeks later they released their debut album The Scream a manifest in punk/pre-post punk. Learned a lot by Velvet Underground and obscure Krautrock they made one of the sounds of they year. This record is still a classic and worth to be played today.

Metal Postcard
Suburban Relapse

Queen Of The Silver Dollar

I was out at the pub with my oldest friend last evening when we meet once a month having a great time talking about everything what happened to us during the last weeks. And as every time we fall back to music that we used to listen decades before. He is still a favourite to jazz-fusion and funk but we both have a covered fondness to country music. We could agree to Shel Silverstein's song he wrote and often was released by Dr. Hook. He wrote superb lyrics and poems that made him a place in musical history. It is not the music I listen to every time but every time I hear this song I feel save and warm to it.

Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show - Queen Of The Silver Dollar
Emmylou Harris - Queen Of The Silver Dollar

Monday's Long Song

The first song that came to my mind when Drew invited to join his Monday's long song post was Can. The second one that came also quickly to my mind was by Mogwai from their debut album Mogwai Young Team. It was released in 1997 and was very different to many others in these days These Scottish post-punk band created a sound with lengthy guitar-based instrumental pieces. Their songs feature spaced guitars sounds with melodic bass lines and the use of heavy distortion and effects. Seldom enough in these days that a band ruptured classic song structures and made also some kind of meditative sound.

Mogwai - Mogwai Fear Satan