The Alexanderplatz Experience

Or ways to make my fortune # 452. This one basically involves moving to Berlin and advertising an Alexanderplatz Experience, available to tourists for a mere €45.00. The ad will promise that those availing of the offer will enjoy the genuine evening experience of East Berlin's celebrated public space. Those who take part will find themselves escorted to Alexanderplatz on the S-Bahn (fares not included in the €45.00). On arrival, they will come out into the square, where each tourist will be handed three cans of beer and a hotdog. I will then leave them to enjoy their Alexanderplatz Experience.


first picture source. I'll take it down if you want, please don't hurt me.

A Trip to Bruxelles

I do not mean the town, but the pub in Dublin. I found myself there before Christmas, after a meal with my old classmates. We made our way to the Heavy Metal room, in which we were the only people not clad in leather miniskirts and chainmail bikinis (and that was just the guys!*). The DJ played loads of great Metal tunes, many of which had the punters punching the air and grunting along. Handily, one of my spymates knows all about metal and was able to explain who the tunes were by and what Metal subgenres had spawned them. My favourite was perhaps the one by MANOWAR, in which the band sing about how much they love Metal. I wish I knew the lyrics to that one, I can tell you. I was also interested by a tune that belonged to the genre of Power Metal – it seemed like a cross between SLAYER and Queen, in that it had the operatic vocals Queen would sometimes use, but with much heavier and faster guitar sounds.

So yeah, deadly stuff. It did get me thinking a bit, though, about the ROCK JIHAD club we are always thinking of going to. ROCK JIHAD is meant to be a club of big, dirty, rock sounds, but I suspect there is an air of irony to it, given its hipster clientele. Would people not be better off heading to Bruxelles for the Real Deal?

*thank you, I'm here all week.

VERY IMPORTANT NEWS FOR ALL SPORTS FANS

This weekend is the weekend of PUPPY BOWL IV

Meet the Puppy Players. Which one is your favourite?

Thanks to ILX for notifying me of this vital event.

The Truth About Pandas

Have you ever wondered why Pandas are coloured the way they are?

Mit Freikörperkultur Fliegen

A German travel agent has announced a new service - henceforth passengers on flights from Erfurt to the island of Usedom will be required to travel naked. Air crew will remain clothed "for security reasons".

More: Nudist flights ready for take-off

Edwards.jpg

Why do American politicians feel so obliged to pose in public with their stupid families?

Picture from the BBC: Edwards abandons White House race

The Sugar Club: [em]

This represents another of my visits to Jazz Alley. Thanks to the Goethe Institut, I managed to go not merely go to see German jazzers [em] (great stupid spelling of your name, guys), but I got to see them for free and with a pre-gig discussion about the jazz scene in Berlin and the effect of urban environments on musical and artistic scenes. Result. And this was in the Sugar Club, where you can relax into plush seats and have servants bring you brandy alexanders, although you did have to pay for these.

The chit chat featured the musicians, a Berlin architect, some noted Irish jazz critic, and a couple of other people who had wandered in off the street. It mainly focussed on how Berlin is currently a city in a state of permanent flux, and this feeds into the music, which develops its own dynamic of permanent change. Etc. I was maybe a bit more amused by the attitudes of the musicians, which seemed to be straight out of classic urban anthropology book Outsiders by Becker, which features a chapter on The Jazz Musician, wherein various examples of this social type talk about the distinction between straight jazz (the sort of thing audiences like) and types of jazz you play to earn the respect of your fellow musicians. Wow, this really took me back to first year in college, deadly stuff. The other great thing about the discussion was being reminded of the disdain that all right-thinking jazz commentators have for Wynton Marsalis.

[em] themselves comprise three people, Michael Wollny on piano, Eva Kruse on bass, and Eric Schaefer on drums. They resist the description of themselves as a piano trio (I think the terms has connotations of the band being led by the pianist) and came across in the discussion as rather droll people, something very impressive with people talking in a second language. Their music was very enjoyable to this cloth-eared listener who knows next to nothing about the jazz. Their music retains a lightness of touch, but never seems to be straying into the realms of straight jazz. They are interesting to compare to Jan Garbarek's band. One thing that was said in the pre-show discussion was that the current cohort of European jazzers are band oriented rather than focussed on individual musical talent (hence the resistance to the piano-trio term), and this came across in [em]'s playing. Whereas Garbarek's lot seemed to play a succession of disembodied solos, [em] seemed to be playing together, and their music was the better for it.

Lacking the vocabulary to say any more about [em]'s music, I will now draw a discreet veil, apart from mentioning that I liked this concert so much that I bought their album II, presumably their second. It has a nice cover with drawings of the band in the style of that guy who did that Blur record cover. I also have it signed by the band, so when they reach Garbarek levels of fame and fortune I will be able to sell it on e-Bay for slightly more than I paid for it. I particularly like the track 'Walpurgisnacht', and hope it signals the creation of a new spooky jazz genre.

Picture from: The ACT Company

The Helix: Jan Garbarek

I saw this concert an eternity ago. Jan Garbarek is a famous Nordic jazz saxophonist, and was playing with some other well known musicians. This was not really my cup of tea, being a bit too based around show-offy solos (particularly by the drummer). And the music generally reminded me a bit of the theme to Moonlighting, not one of the better features of that programme. The performance was nevertheless very popular with most people in the audience… to each their own. It is possible I would have liked it more if it was in a smaller venue or if the drums were lower in the mix.

There was however one guy in the audience who was so unimpressed with proceedings that he shouted out "Boring!" That seemed a bit churlish – even though the concert was not my cup of tea, I would never stoop to spoiling the enjoyment of others, unless I was very drunk.

ok_computer

You might have noticed this already... but if you have not, there is a good CD of electronic music with the current issue of Mojo. It covers the years from early synthpop (and proto-synthpop) up to the present day.

The magazine itself is interesting enough. An interview with Radiohead confirms reports that they do not exactly spend their time snorting cocaine of the chests of underage groupies. It also contains the important coded message that their Hail to the Thief album is shite. Won't be buying that one then!

Whelan's: Gallon Drunk

Huzzah, GALLON DRUNK are back. Or at least they were back a couple of months ago when I went to this concert. And they have Terry Edwards* back in the band, bringing us some saxophone goodness. They also boast a proper oldarse bass player who looks the part, as opposed to a session muso muppet from central casting they were stuck with last time I saw them. Excellent. Obviously it would have been nice if at some point in the gig Joe Byfield had suddenly leaped in from the side to add some maraca attack to their music, but you cannot have everything.

For the younger readers out there, Gallon Drunk were a band who enjoyed brief popularity in the early 1990s but then vanished into a void due to record company madness. I missed the bus back then, but picked up on their amazingness when they were on the road again in the later 1990s, in a period when they were basically attempting to reassert their relevance to a world that had moved on. Their music has a certain swamp rock quality to it, combined with a louche swagger. Their lyrical concerns follow the dark sides of nights out in olde London towne. They are basically one of the world's greatest live bands, even now, and your life is empty if you have never seen them.

On this occasion they gave it all, putting on a great show for the discerning audience present. Songs from the most recent album demonstrated the kind of full-on woaaahhh qualities you want from the Drunk, so I bought it. It is called The Rotten Mile. I like it. I also bought a remastered version of From The Heart Of Town, their classic second album, to see if it was better mastered than the earlier release I have. And it is! Excellent, now I will have to reacquire their back catalogue.

I also joined a Gallon Drunk mailing list after going to the concert, but the posters seem to be mainly people who think, incorrectly, that I need to enlarge my penis.

Image from some website called Delusions of Adequacy's review of the Gallon Drunk reissues.

*Almost wrote Terry Riley there… now that would have been awesome.