Category Archives: Art

AC/DC rocks Berlin

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If there’s one thing that everyone who barely likes rock music should have done in his life, it’s visiting an AC/DC concert. Yesterday was once again an absolutely amazing event – remarkable. The Olympiastadion in Berlin was such a fine scenery for AC/DC. The first warm-up band, called Boon, had horrible sound and wasn’t my personal taste so there’s no need to mention them. The second warm-up band, Volbeat from Kopenhagen, Denmark, was a way better and I would also say that they were good but if you’re playing as an opening act for AC/DC there’s nearly no one in the audience who really wants to see you. I would have enjoyed this concert but NOT on the same evening with AC/DC as a headliner.

Rosie at Download by ~ILoveBrucieD

The main-act itself completely kicked ass. While everyone else in that age gets retired and enjoys the last days of life the guys from AC/DC don’t get tired to rock as hell. Well, of course AC/DC is a very, very stereotype band but they don’t have to excuse for this because they are what they are – AC/DC and everyone wants to see them acting like this. So what else is to about this event which has the character of a holy mass for every rock’n’roller? I guess nothing else than : “It simply, giantly ROCKED!!!”

I met this one guy in the audience right after the concert filming all around the stadium and he was instantly repeating “Dude, this was so fucking awesome”. After a short conversation I found out that this guy took the long trip from Vancouver, Canada to Berlin just to see his favourite rock band. Canada, I salute you!

Quickie

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Here’s just a short update of what has happened in during the last days since my last blog post. To be honest, nothing really special happened. It’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa and I try to watch as many matches as I can, even at work. I was so pissed with my old tube TV that I had to bye me a new 40″ flat LED TV screen and I also signed a new contract with my cable provider to get as much HD as possible.

Another thing that pisses me off for a while is my job. It bores me on the one hand and it stresses me incredibly much that I can barely concentrate on anything on the other hand. Actually it feels like a burnout syndrome but I’ll wait till the last day of my upcoming vacation in France if this feel is still present. If it’s so I’ll look around for a new job.

Straight edge is running well at the moment except one thing, my addiction for ice. From today on rule #6 which says “Say no to chocolate and candy! Subsist yourself healthy!” will change to “Say no to chocolate, sweets, ice, cake and candy! Subsist yourself healthy!”

I had to make this change because I personally think that my nutrition wasn’t that healthy as it should have been in last 2-3 weeks and there were too much of this sweet thing crap. Maybe with “Straight Edge 2.0” I’ll introduce something like a “day off”-rule to get more control into flexibility and wanted rule breaks. But I have to think about this rule.

Tonight is the night where I am going to see AC/DC in concert again. I’ve seen them last year in Leipzig in the Central Stadium and now I am going to see them in Berlin’s Olympiastadion which will be a great and amazing scenery for a rock concert of this size. For those about to rock, we salute you…

Garcia plays Kyuss

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Kyuss is beside Fu Manchu one of my favorite stoner bands I like to listen to. My sweetheart made me a present last x-mas with tickets for a Fu Manchu show in Berlin which was totally awesome. This band’s got so much energy when they play live and they definately kick ass. I read on MySpace by the beginning of this year that Kuyss’ John Garcia was going to play some gigs where he will sing the good old Kyuss songs again. As soon as they put the tickets out for sale I ordered a pair for the show in Berlin and I was definately excited about what was going to be come.

kyuss by ~headbuzz

Yesterday was the day of the concert in Berlin and I went there with my girlfriend. The club where the show was going to be was full, packed and SOLD OUT and too warm. Special guest and warm-up band was Brant Bjork, former drummer of Kyuss, and this band was a kind of good but not perfect and for my matter of taste too loud. The bass and the bass drum felt like an interrupting heart massage.

Later that evening and after waiting too much time at the bar for a simple glass of water the time had come for John Garcia himself to sing Kyuss songs with a bunch of musicians I have never seen before. The show started pretty good but my worst expectations would finally come true because the band itself was nothing else than a stupid Kyuss coverband and the whole sound of the concert felt horrible. The bass was drowning everything like an old B-17 bomber and the voice of Mr Garcia was dabbling nearly all the time somewhere in the background without any power. Finally, the concert was made an horrible event due to the incompetence of the sound engineer. But I also have to mention that some legends should stay legend and they should live on in our memory and not in form of a “reunion band” that looks like a bunch of pensioners.

Long live Kyuss…

Musical exploration

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About 10 years ago I finally finished the work on my very first solo musical output. I don’t want to say record or CD release because technically it was a bundle release of some of my older and newer compositions in MP3 format on the internet as a free download. I didn’t even made a big thing out of it and it didn’t find many listeners, I guess the downloads were something around a 1.000 “copies”. During a flush of excitement I started composing on something that would be more structured and even got a kind of concept included. Those days the concept was raw spoken ‘man enslaved by his own machines’ and the ‘record’ should have sounded in a way like this. Raw, dark and unsettling.

Curiously the working progress stopped after two compositions and was never touched again. One reason was that I abruptly lost interest in that project and secondly my music equipment and everything that comes into play with such a project could not measure up the requirements. One problem was that I had no software that could handle MIDI files and WAVE Samples at once and the hardware I owned was a bunch of crap too. I was in the need for something new those days because I wanted to get away from the classical composing based on a score and MIDI only that was finally pushed in quality by using SoundFonts and overdubbing several audio tracks. My goal was to mix MIDI with the use of samples, which is nothing that causes excitement but like I said my remedies were straight limited.

Over the years the whole thing fell into limbo. But yesterday everything returned while I was browsing through some of my old files because I was literally looking for the master of my first release. There they were, my old drum tracks, my old sketches, my old MIDI files… EVERYTHING. I always thought the whole data got lost one day but my backup strategy worked in a way. I instantly started to investigate what I actually found and if everything is still working and if I can use and/or rebuild everything to work on it 2k10 style. By now around 80% of the files that I’ve found are suitable and compatible. The other 20% are not worth to put time and energy on or it can be rebuild in a different way to make it suitable again.

I guess you know what that means, after TEN (!) years I am going to continue the work on my second solo music release. I have the remedy, I have my files, I have ideas and I have the will to bring it to a satisfying end.

From Zero to Zen

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Finally I am a proud owner of a Creative Zen X-Fi2 MP3 player. As you may know, the jack on my Sony Ericsson mobile is broke and I was not able to listen to music while wandering around or suffering in the gym. Due to the fact that I couldn’t really live like this I decided to gather every single cent and buy me a new MP3 player. A new mobile wouldn’t have made any sense because I do not actually use a mobile phone for telephoning though.

What shall I say, I really like this Zen player. The sound is awesome, as usual by Creative products. It’s easy to understand and to handle and does not include too many useless functions. One thing I am not very familiar with is the touch screen but this is reasonable because it’s my first MP3 player with touch screen.

zazen by Vanishing-S

I listened to different kinds of music from AC/DC to Wolfmother, from Chemical Brothers to The Prodigy and everything sounded well and absolutely clear and in general much better than I personally expected. The X-Fi processor does a great job and does not sounds too artificial or alienates the music. Yes, this player was a good investment and I look forward to my next longer trip by train accompied by the wonderful sound of ZEN…

Narcosis returns… partially

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I mentioned it in the “About” area of this blog that there was once a time where I played in a death metal band. This band had a website which hasn’t received maintenance for a veeery long time. I’ve decided to bring it back online as a reminiscence of a good old time. Where we were young and so on… if you know what I mean 😉

By bringing it back online, there will also be a kind of “re-release” of some old recordings from that time in a lot different audio formats (FLAC, MP3, OGG) and you will be able to download complete CD images. We had a lot of downloads years ago and our music was spread out all over the world and lots of people listened to it and I still feel like releasing it for free (and it’s not going to change – promise). One of my mottos is, “If you sell your own music, you would even sell your soul”

I will announce a go-live date when everything is nearly done and ready to hit the online-highway road again…

Def in the end

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It started as a small disease and it finally ended in an huge desaster. The jack for my ear-phones on my mobile is broke. This is a catastrophy without measurable dimensions. I do not use my mobile for phone calls or SMS or whatever, its main function is MUSIC. When I went to work, I listened to music. When I was riding the train to good old Berlin, I listened to music. When I was off to gym, I listened to music.

I dread of the thought on my next session in gym without my personal music collection. Damn it, I’ll have to listen to mainstream pop music and have to hear the senseless conversations of brainless muscle zombies walking around me.

It seems as if I has to use my phone for what it was built originally – phoning and communicating. And some SMS. I’ll have to wait for at least this year’s october to get a new phone and till now I am not sure, how to handle this situation. Creative Zen? Phone repair? A new expensive walkman mobile? I don’t f*#@ing know…