In seach of…

Once again and nearly one year after first time seeing them a Fu Manchu concert was on my plan. If there’s one band I like, it’s Fu Manchu. There are always favourite bands but this particular one survived all these years with being nearly untouched in my personal hall of fame. I’ve also been a huge fan of bands like Sepultura or Slayer, but with the years the interest faded and nowadays they are just bands I revisit sometimes to remember “the old days”. Fu Manchu is more rock solid and they were able to resist all kinds of trends I personally had and I was always listening to them. The point is simple, you know what you can expect from a band like them and you sure will get what you expect. Even though they are categorized as a Stoner band I’d rather say that they’re just a rock band with a fine California attitude, a passion for sun and muscle cars and they actually seem to care about no trend. Their sound is desert dusty, their riffs just grooving and their rhythm catchy.

So, this time I saw them once again in Berlin’s club called the “C-Club” which was previously known as the Columbia Club and Fu Manchu was offering something special. Playing the whole “In search of…” album from the first to the last track. YES! One of my faves with one of my favourite songs, “The Falcon Has Landed” The band started the gig with ass kicking songs like “Hell on wheels” or “Mongoose” and started with the “In search of…” after, I guess, the fourth song of the show. I always love it when a band goes by and plays one particular album in complete. Some songs of the album were played in a kind of extended versions and reminded me a little of a jam session. Well, this what you can call jam session considering that you’re watching Fu Manchu and not King Crimson. Like mentioned before, Fu Manchu is pretty basic, but that’s what’s charming about them and what I really like. Finally, after finishing the complete album they also played some most wanted songs like “Weird beard” and “California crossing”. This band is truely, honestly rocking the stage and I’ll visit their concerts again and again and again. You simply get what you want, rock’n’roll to the face.

What was and what will be

A year’s gone and a new decades arrived. So what’s my resume for the decade that has just passed in the 21st century on this ball called Earth (“How peaceful it looks…”)? Great Scott, I don’t know and it’s barely possible to capture a whole decade in one single blog entry so I simply don’t resume the past decade. But what are my plans for the next decade? Guess what, I just don’t know but I can tell you some of my plans for this year. 2011 will hopefully be the year were I’ll go back to more creative oriented activities. I’ll definately do some more photography and will try to switch to some portrait shots or let us say, I’ll switch from landscape photography to something more human related because for me is the portrait photography something that looks like hard to handle and I want this challenge, because challenges simply makes you better and let you improve yourself.

One thing that’s still unfinished and I simply haven’t found the time for, were the bunch of music plans I had for 2010. I missed to remaster Narcosis’ “Super Satan Terror Demon 665.5” mini CD and to upload it. I also missed to get the original tracks for the CDs so I have to do some more complex re-editing to tracks that I got. It’s such a pain in the ass that the studio were we once recorded this master piece of modern black- and death-metal is no more (/irony off).

The second music project hasn’t been touched since I first announced it here in this blog because of… well… urm… issues? Some might remember, it was this electro, industrial thing called “Degraduated to be machine” which includes till now two barely finished tracks. The problem is, that I was working on the studio software several times but it turned out that my plans are much more complex than they first seemed to be. I want this whole thing to get much better than the first solo CD of mine which was more a bunch tracks mixed together, this second one follows a concept and I want this as perfect as it can be. PERIOD! I guess, it won’t be finished by the end of this year so don’t expect anything.

Recording Studio

Something that I’m going to do pretty soon is to upgrade my PC. I decided not to buy me a new Android phone and to upgrade my PC instead. There were to many issues and failures that were bothering me that led me finally to this decision. It’s a kind of sad, because I really liked the black mainboard and the CPU watercooler with its red LEDs inside that made the whole system look so damn eeeeeviiiiiil. I’ll give some details on the upgrade in another blog entry.

Back to music and the whole life thing. I still have this plan to move to Berlin, maybe it’s going to happen this year if I can make it to find a job there. If I can make it I’ll free my guitars from the dust and try to find some guys/girls to start a new band, I still feel like a stoner band would be nice, with a girl drummer.

Some might ask, what happened to straight edge? Well, straight edge will be back as sooner as you think. It might start on January 16th, maybe later. It all depends on the big thing called time and I never have enough time for anything. It’s going to be the “Straight Edge 3.0 Project” with customized rules and a new training plan that does not only inlcude a plan for gym, it will also include some other activities. I currently drink some alcohol from time to time but only small lashings and no hard liqueur. I’m so NOT satisfied with the fact that I started with this bad habit again and it will stop because I simply can’t stand the dizzyness while drinking something.

Any traveling plans for this year? Yes, but nothing totally fixed. I was wondering if I can make it to Asia this year, countries like Japan, Indonesia and South Korea has always been in my focus, but unfortunately is it so massively expensive that I don’t know how to pay for this. For the opposite direction, well, there might be a trip to New York, I always wanted to go to New York, a huge, big, crowded, dirty city that always fascinated me. I also have to mention that I have these itchy feet for Seattle, I can’t help it but Seattle is beside Berlin a city where I can go to at any time. To make a long story short, there’ll be definately a trip to the U.S. but no exact plans for the rest of the world. Hmmm, the orient could be nice, too.

Hadouken

Concert plans. There’s only ONE concert by now I have a  ticket for and that is the rocking, mind blowing, beloved FU MANCHU. Yes, I got a Fu Manchu ticket for Christmas again and I will see them in March. Damn it, I fucking love this band. If there’s a Misfits concert somewhere here around Germany I would go there too, no matter what it costs. Till now I am very unsure if I should go to the Roger Waters concert in Berlin and see The Wall for a second time. It would be nice to see the show in Berlin, because for me it’s something special because this very one album influenced my musical taste so much, but once again, the tickets are expensive and the seats you can get at the moment are totally crap. We will see.

Last but not least, gaming plans for this year. First of all, I’m thinking about canceling my ‘World of Warcraft’ subscription because I don’t like the new add-on. The balance between casual gaming and going back to the roots of ‘World of Warcraft’ totally failed, in my opinion. Maybe I’ll switch back to ‘Champions Online’ as soon as you can play it for free or I will give ‘DC Universe’ a try. I’m following TotalBiscuit on YouTube and he’s playing the beta at the moment and it looked nice and auspicious to me. Non-MMO games I’m definately going to play are ‘Crysis’ and ‘F.3.A.R. 3’ in March. ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ sometime by the beginning of this year and hopefully id softwares’ ‘Rage’ in September.

There will be some minor changes to this blog, too. One thing is, that there will be a “Game of the week” post every week with a kind of a review and I will do the same stuff with music, movies and photography. Anyhow, the “Game of the week” thing is for sure and the rest will come up soon and simply follows within the next weeks and month. …hmmm… longest blog post ever… yeah!!!

Garcia plays Kyuss

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…