Music

Witness of time: versus – Past, Forgotten

Monday, May 27th, 2013 | Activities, Music | No Comments

versusThis is as far as I will ever get to a stage (and you’re most welcome to prove me wrong).

I still reminiscence about the time when I was part of a band, because I really had a breeze rehearsing. It was the late 90s and I managed to get my best friends together to become ‘versus’.

It’s such a pity we had a major dispute at the brink of stage time and the band fell apart (respectively continued without me as “Psaar”, surname of the last member to join the band). ‘Fun’ fact: nobody knew anybody before I introduced them to each other. Yeah, life’s a bitch :) Today it seems to me that these guys where just not the friends I expected them to be. What a pity.

Son: Yeah, my dad’s weird he gets like that when he’s writing.

Writer: I'll miss him forever. I never had any friends later on like the ones
I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?

Anyway, the fact that I was weeks apart from my first ‘real’ gig will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. This is still a major task on my bucket list.

A few recordings of that time got saved … they are simple tape recordings, yet still absolutely original and a witness of of a very influential time period.

This is a song I wrote back in 1998 performed by the original ‘versus’:

Past Forgotten

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Drumming like Animal!!
(This time multiple exclamation marks are just fine)

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 | Activities, Misc, Music | No Comments

Tonight, my drum-kit got the worst beating so far. Animal would have approved.

I broke a stick on my mesh head snare for heaven’s sake! It was worth it though. (Guess I hit the rim at some point?!)

Props go to The Machine’s “Caterpillar’s Mushroom“. Dim the light, lean back and enjoy a pretty intense roller-coaster ride.

The take-off at 13:00 just blows my mind!

If you need a lift home after that I suggest you try Hills’ Master Sleeps. Farewell!

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GarageBand is in da house!

Thursday, November 22nd, 2012 | Gadgets, Music, Tech-savvy | 1 Comment

Needed a space to play music. Set up a working environment. Got an Apple computer. Recorded my fist song.

Flachboot Nandu
. An instant classic ;) I was just making sure all instruments and mics were working properly, the outcome was so hilarious I had to keep and share it.

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Time flies – Grunge was 20 years ago!?

Thursday, September 29th, 2011 | Music, Reviews | No Comments

I recently started to realize how frickin kewl a lot of bands from the peak of the Grunge era are.

For me, these songs are still very present and it was kind of a shock that for me this started 20 years ago. That’s quite some time for a 34 year-old :) I remember that at the age of 13 I started to really get into music – and a few years later music and the scenes behind the genres defined a lot of the stuff we did back then (like Straight Edge, Metal and obviously Grunge). I loved Nirvana‘s Nevermind, probably the most popular Grunge record ever, yet this post should not cover this stale release. I wanted to reminiscence about some other pearls of that genre.

I cannot say how much I love Smashing Pumpkins‘ Siamese Dream (1993). Often dreamy and fragile yet rocking pretty hard as well. Ingenious.

Most people will remember Today and Disarm, but one of my all time favourite songs is Soma. A pity there is no real video available, just a few live versions. Awesome song that I play on the guitar every once in a while.

Funny thing – I just wanted to consult rateyourmusic.com for some info and it was covered in Nevermind reviews. It’s been exactly 20 years (and 5 days) since it was released. So I changed my mind and will put it into this post as well. It’s iconic and should not be ignored …

I remember listening to BFBS‘ radio taping songs when the hosts announced a song that “is a bit loud” and recommended locking up your Granny. This is the original recording from 1991:

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit (taped 1991 BFBS)

Smells Like Teen Spirit instantly blew my mind and I had to play it to my best friends immediately. A few weeks later this song was everywhere and paved the road to Nirvana’s success that also ultimately led to Kurt Cobain’s death.

Somewhat lingering in the shadow of Nirvana but not less genre defining was Dirt by Alice in Chains (1992)

Sometimes it feels hard to pick good songs, because most of the time I listen to albums as a unit rather than just single songs. Outstanding songs of Dirt may be Them Bones, Rooster, Angry Chair, Down In A Hole and … surely Would? – this is almost the whole record? Correct, this should prove how good it is :)

Another band that I like a lot is Soundgarden. Jesus Christ Pose was the first Soundgarden song I ever listened to (watching MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, yeah! \m/) but Superunknown (1994) is my favourite album.

Skipping through this record songs like Fell On Black Days, Black Hole Sun and The Day I Tried To Live seem to be the ones that I liked the best. I did not like Spoonman. Not at all. It might be the memory of that freaky old chick dancing to it every time they played it in our local rock club (post-Getaway Exit) or maybe just the fact that it is just a plain boring song to dance to and every time they played it it felt like wasted time that could have been used to play Slayer or something ;)

These bands came to my mind in this exact order, and suddenly I remembered another album that is also one of the best things that ever happened to me – Pearl Jam‘s Ten (1991)

I can hardly describe how great this record is. Maybe I just tell you that my favourite songs may be Black and Garden. Both made it to numerous tapes I recorded when I was a teenager.

This makes 5 great albums by 5 great bands. So basically this is also an homage to Nick Hornby‘s High Fidelity – my five all time favourite Grunge records. Here they are. (A pity Faith no More cannot be considered Grunge …)

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Stoned From The Underground 2011

Monday, July 11th, 2011 | Activities, Music | 1 Comment

It’s been a while since I visited a festival … I guess it was Roadburn a few years ago. (Yet I don’t consider Roadburn a “real” festival, shuttle buses from the camp site to an indoors venue? WTF?) Anyway, Stoned From The Underground was awesome! Open air, camp site nearby, only 2000+ people, great weather, great bands. Now that’s what I call a festival!

The only thing I can easily pass on are the reckless drunkards who just never know when to STFU.

And next year, please everybody bring your own chair, for heavens sake! I don’t want to ASK whether I can use my own gear. Fucking cadgers … sometimes I’m proud to be square!

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w00t! Got my Comptroller Shirt – finully!

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | Music, Reviews, Tech-savvy | 6 Comments

Wifey already told me on the phone that my Comptroller shirt arrived today. (The first one got lost during the postage process…) I asked her to open the package to see whether I could expect something my belly actually fits in. She said: “Yeah, seems to be quite your size, but wait – what is this? There’s a mini CD!” I was like “WHAT? How kewl is that?” I had no idea! The order form didn’t mention a CD when I used it (afaicr), therefore I was surprised big time. Right now I am listening to an interpretation of the C64 classic “Last Ninja 2” – awesome! No really, go get Comptroller‘s stuff, it’s so much fun to listen to his chiptune sounds in the car while your passenger cannot decide whether to escape at the next traffic light or dare ask for a copy :D

Excerpt from the mini CDs inlay:

Directions to use -
a) Put on your Comptroller t-shirt
b) Activate CD
c) Get pumped!
d) GO GO GO

Brilliant! Thanks Comptroller for making my day :) And thanks Jack for your “protekshun” …

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Chiptune Madness

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 | Gadgets, Misc, Music, Reviews, Tech-savvy | 1 Comment

Thanks to my favourite emag Lotek64 I stumbled upon some really interesting music: Chiptune!

I like to listen to OSTs of games and films (favourite game OST: Turrican 1/2 by Chris Hülsbeck, favourite motion picture OST: Avalon by Kenji Kawai). Reading Lotek64 the absolutely stylish cover arose my initial interest, reading the review I decided to give it a try:

(Chip) Comptroller veröffentlicht mit seinem RPM2010-Album auch sein Debüt. Zwischen schnellen und wütenden Chipbeats kommen dabei auch immer nette kleine Melodien zum Vorschein.

Free Download @ http://comptrolleralpha.co.uk/album/comptroller

Listening to this artistic musical creation reminds me of endless GameBoy sessions and the time I connected my GameBoy to my home stereo to listen to the music of Super Mario Land and, naturally, Tetris. The sound of Comptroller is “great” in the sense of interesting/disturbing – sometimes even toothaching listened to at the right volume :P

Lotek64 Issue 33 has more interesting musical reviews, such as an 8bit NES chiptune version of Pink Floyd‘s “The Dark Side of the Moon” called Moon8.

(Remake) … Wer das nur für einen musikalischen Scherz hält, irrt. Mit Moon8 tut Brad Smith Pink Floyd einen großen Gefallen, indem er die Stärken des Albums offenlegt und mit seiner klanglich zwangsläufig äußerst minimalistischen Auslegung der Kompositionen zu einer Entmystifizierung dieses überhöhten Werks beiträgt. Hier wird auf unerwartete Weise hörbar, wie The Dark Side of the Moon klingen könnte, wäre es nicht so hoffnungslos überproduziert und verkitscht worden. Moon8 ist die bessere Version des Albums, dessen Qualitäten endlich auf würdige Art hörbar werden.

Free download @ http://rainwarrior.thenoos.net/music/moon8.html

Crazy shit indeed! :D Thanks Lotek64 for providing these reviews!

Googleing I also found two blogs (The Chiptune Blog, Stadkind: Berlin), just in case you want to listen to some more chiptunes. So far, I like the idea a lot!

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