happy new year to all!!! I predict a good year.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
happy merry christmas etc
all i want for christmas is keith richards with a chuck berry riff and a bo diddley beat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Pli1oldAg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Pli1oldAg
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
what have i done to deserve this
watch this video now. this is the movie version of a top ten single by the pet shop boys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2nDjxXung
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2nDjxXung
Friday, December 14, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Point That Thing Somewhere Else
the clean are pointing their sound towards philly this sunday at johnny brendas so so siked to see this show. also amped to see openers times new viking, from ohio. i posted a video of theirs on http://thewillowhouse.blogspot.com/2007/11/times-new-viking-outside-sound-on-sound.html
sounds like a perfect match.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
louise, never released single of shocking blue mariska veres
shocking blue is one of my all time favorite bands and i never heard this song until today. it dates from around 1980 i believe. funny how so many shocking blue videos on the internet dont sync up with the song. this song is so great anyway it doesnt matter
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
DEAD KENNEDYS ..... INSIGHT (LIVE)
from about age 9-12 this song accurately described my life. pyro tendencies included. i think i first heard it when i was 11 and was elated to have some insight into my life (pun intended)
Monday, November 19, 2007
The Peeesseye @ Edera - Codroipo, ITALY
i dont have a biological big brother cause i am the eldest in my family but since about 1997 the drummer of the peeesseye, fritz welch has filled that role for me. here is a clip from his recent european tour.
Dean Martin, Truman Capote, James Stewart & Jack Benny
i've tried to post this before but it wont work just copy and paste to follow this link to hear and see 41 seconds of dean martin, truman capote, jimmy stewart and jack benny singing a few bars of their favorite country songs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S97Z7wrVGmk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S97Z7wrVGmk
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Literary lion Norman Mailer dies
By Todd Leopold
CNN
(CNN) -- Norman Mailer, the outspoken writer whose prize-winning works made him a towering figure on the American stage for more than 50 years, is dead. He was 84.
Norman Mailer, shown in February, cultivated a streetwise, brawling, larger-than-life image.
Mailer died about 4:30 a.m. Saturday at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, his literary executor, J. Michael Lennon, said.
Author of "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song," Mailer was probably the most famous of the generation of writers who came of age after World War II -- he was certainly the most colorful, and most pugnaciously so.
He wrote constantly: novels, screenplays, articles (he was a key figure in the "New Journalism" movement of the 1960s), poems, polemics. He co-founded the Village Voice. He was married six times.
And with his brawny physique and outsize personality, Mailer was never one to shy from a fight, whether physical -- he once stabbed his second wife after a party -- or literary. His feuds made headlines.
He ran for mayor of New York, agitated for left-wing causes (though his 1971 book, "The Prisoner of Sex," made him a pariah to the feminist movement) and led a drive to obtain parole for a talented convict, Jack Henry Abbott -- an act that backfired when Abbott killed a man not long after being freed.
One of his books was called "Advertisements for Myself," and he wasn't kidding.
"He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements," his longtime rival Gore Vidal once said.
"Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision," Mailer observed. "The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation."
But, even as he walked both sides of that line, there was no doubting his literary talent. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice -- for "The Armies of the Night" (1968) and "The Executioner's Song" (1979) -- as well as the National Book Award and several other honors.
His literary style was energetic, muscular, relentless: Joan Didion, no slouch herself, called him "a great and obsessed stylist, a writer to whom the shape of the sentence is the story."
Norman Kingsley Mailer was born January 31, 1923, in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He describes his family -- his father was an accountant, his doting mother an assistant in running a trucking company -- as a "typical middle-class Jewish family," but other accounts refer to the clan as working-class.
Whatever the family's economic level, Mailer showed his mettle early, writing a 250-page story at age 9 and entering Harvard at 16. At the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university, he won a student fiction contest. He received a degree in engineering in 1943, but that was just a formality: "I knew there was one thing I wanted to be and that was a writer," he said.
Mailer joined the army after graduation and was sent to the Philippines, where he served as a rifleman and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant.
When the war ended, he entered Paris' Sorbonne as a graduate student and wrote his first novel, "The Naked and the Dead," inspired by his wartime experiences. The book, published in 1948, became a huge best-seller, and Mailer was famous. He was 25 years old.
"I understand one element of celebrity, which is the unreality of it," he said later. "At the age of 25 I went from being the kid next door ... to being called a major American writer -- that's a role you just don't fit at 25. ... I used to feel I was secretary to someone named Norman Mailer, (and) to meet him you had to meet me first."
Celebrity was intoxicating, however, and Mailer set out for its capital -- Hollywood -- in hopes of seeing "The Naked and the Dead" immortalized on celluloid. But the studios rejected the young writer and he returned to New York. A film version of the book finally appeared in 1958, with Aldo Ray, Cliff Robertson and Raymond Massey.
After one failed novel -- "The Barbary Shore" (1951), about McCarthyism -- his next book, "The Deer Park" (1955), took on Hollywood. The book's sexual content prompted six publishers to reject it, and when it was finally published by Putnam, reviews were middling to scathing: "Stultifies us with misanthropy," wrote The New York Times' John Brooks in one of the kinder notices. But the book sold moderately well and became a cult item in later years.
By then, Mailer was characterizing himself as a hipster, a "psychic outlaw." His 1957 essay, "The White Negro," dealt with alienation, anti-establishmentarianism and race relations. He followed that work with "Advertisements for Myself," a 1959 collection that, as its title promised, promoted its author and his anti-establishment beliefs. It became a favorite of the Beat generation.
But Mailer rose to a new level of prominence in the 1960s. He wrote an influential essay for Esquire during the 1960 presidential campaign, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," about John F. Kennedy, which the magazine later named one of its five best stories.
Mailer was a regular contributor to Esquire over the years. He reported on politics for several publications, often putting his point of view at the center of the story -- a hallmark of the "New Journalism" practiced by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson.
Meanwhile, with a lifestyle redolent of rock stars (before such a species existed), he was a constant in gossip columns, particularly after the 1960 stabbing incident, for which he was temporarily confined to New York's Bellevue mental hospital.
As the atmosphere of the '60s became more tumultuous, Mailer found himself in his element. A 1967 novel was titled "Why Are We in Vietnam?" He turned a 1967 protest against the Pentagon into "The Armies of the Night," subtitled "History as a Novel, the Novel as History." Its main character was Norman Mailer. His coverage of the 1968 political conventions became "Miami and the Siege of Chicago." He wrote about the 1969 Apollo 11 moonshot in "Of a Fire on the Moon" (1971).
During this time, he was also appearing on talk shows to argue with all comers, making films -- one of them, "Maidstone" (1970), includes a brawl with actor Rip Torn -- and, in 1969, running for mayor of New York as an independent on a platform of city secession. He lost the race, one of the city's most contentious, to John Lindsay.
By the early '70s, Mailer was more than a writer -- he was a full-fledged personality. In 1973 he threw himself a 50th birthday party. The 550 guests, who paid $30 a head (a hefty sum in 1973), included the cream of New York's arts and political classes.
"These were people wholly unaccustomed to paying their way into any party. ... They came and they paid because Mailer has a magic command on our attention," The New York Times' John Leonard wrote.
But attention to his writing was waning. Books on Marilyn Monroe and boxing failed to move critics or audiences.
He reinvigorated his reputation with "The Executioner's Song," a 1,000-page "true-life novel" about convicted murderer Gary Gilmore. The book won Mailer his second Pulitzer Prize. He followed it up with "Ancient Evenings" (1983), set in ancient Egypt, and the hard-boiled detective story "Tough Guys Don't Dance." Mailer also directed the 1987 film version starring Ryan O'Neal.
His later novels include "Harlot's Ghost" (1992), another lengthy tome about the history of the CIA; "Oswald's Tale" (1995), about Kennedy's assassin; and "The Gospel According to the Son" (1997), which concerned Jesus Christ. His most recent novel, "The Castle in the Forest," probed the life of Adolf Hitler, told by a demon.
Mailer also remained involved in civic life, not always happily. In 1980 he led the movement to have a convicted killer, Jack Henry Abbott, released on parole. Abbott had published a book, "In the Belly of the Beast," with Mailer's help. Six weeks after his release in 1981, Abbott stabbed a restaurant employee to death. The Abbott affair was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in," Mailer later said.
In 1984 he traveled to the Soviet Union, reporting on a country he believed was imploding. He headed the international writers' organization PEN in the mid-'80s and continued to speak out on political topics well into his 80s.
Mailer had opinions on everything. The Associated Press compiled a few:
The '70s: "The decade in which image became preeminent because nothing deeper was going on."
Poetry: A "natural activity ... a poem comes to one," whereas prose required making "an appointment with one's mind to write a few thousand words."
Journalism: Irresponsible. "You can't be too certain about what happened."
Technology: "Insidious, debilitating and depressing," and nobody in politics had an answer to "its impact on our spiritual well-being."
He distrusted technology so much he continued to write with a pen, some 1,500 words a day, according to AP. When a stranger asked him if he used a computer, AP reports, he replied, "No, I never learned that," then added, "but my girl does."
In a 1971 magazine piece about women's liberation, Mailer compared the dehumanization of technology to the effect of feminists, who he said were abolishing the "mystery, romance" and "blind, goat-kicking lust from sex," AP reports.
Mailer received a gold medal for lifetime achievement at the National Book Awards in 2005, where, AP reports, he deplored the decline of interest in the "serious novel."
Mailer said, according to AP, that when he was young, "fiction was everything. The novel, the big novel, the driving force. We all wanted to be Hemingway ... I don't think the same thing can be said anymore. I don't think my work has inspired any writer, not the way Hemingway inspired me."
Even as he settled into a quieter life in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his sixth wife, Norris Church, Mailer was always thinking, always moving.
"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit," he once said.
He made the most of his own time on Earth.
CNN
(CNN) -- Norman Mailer, the outspoken writer whose prize-winning works made him a towering figure on the American stage for more than 50 years, is dead. He was 84.
Norman Mailer, shown in February, cultivated a streetwise, brawling, larger-than-life image.
Mailer died about 4:30 a.m. Saturday at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, his literary executor, J. Michael Lennon, said.
Author of "The Naked and the Dead," "The Armies of the Night" and "The Executioner's Song," Mailer was probably the most famous of the generation of writers who came of age after World War II -- he was certainly the most colorful, and most pugnaciously so.
He wrote constantly: novels, screenplays, articles (he was a key figure in the "New Journalism" movement of the 1960s), poems, polemics. He co-founded the Village Voice. He was married six times.
And with his brawny physique and outsize personality, Mailer was never one to shy from a fight, whether physical -- he once stabbed his second wife after a party -- or literary. His feuds made headlines.
He ran for mayor of New York, agitated for left-wing causes (though his 1971 book, "The Prisoner of Sex," made him a pariah to the feminist movement) and led a drive to obtain parole for a talented convict, Jack Henry Abbott -- an act that backfired when Abbott killed a man not long after being freed.
One of his books was called "Advertisements for Myself," and he wasn't kidding.
"He is a man whose faults, though many, add to rather than subtract from the sum of his natural achievements," his longtime rival Gore Vidal once said.
"Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision," Mailer observed. "The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation."
But, even as he walked both sides of that line, there was no doubting his literary talent. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice -- for "The Armies of the Night" (1968) and "The Executioner's Song" (1979) -- as well as the National Book Award and several other honors.
His literary style was energetic, muscular, relentless: Joan Didion, no slouch herself, called him "a great and obsessed stylist, a writer to whom the shape of the sentence is the story."
Norman Kingsley Mailer was born January 31, 1923, in Long Branch, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He describes his family -- his father was an accountant, his doting mother an assistant in running a trucking company -- as a "typical middle-class Jewish family," but other accounts refer to the clan as working-class.
Whatever the family's economic level, Mailer showed his mettle early, writing a 250-page story at age 9 and entering Harvard at 16. At the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university, he won a student fiction contest. He received a degree in engineering in 1943, but that was just a formality: "I knew there was one thing I wanted to be and that was a writer," he said.
Mailer joined the army after graduation and was sent to the Philippines, where he served as a rifleman and eventually rose to the rank of sergeant.
When the war ended, he entered Paris' Sorbonne as a graduate student and wrote his first novel, "The Naked and the Dead," inspired by his wartime experiences. The book, published in 1948, became a huge best-seller, and Mailer was famous. He was 25 years old.
"I understand one element of celebrity, which is the unreality of it," he said later. "At the age of 25 I went from being the kid next door ... to being called a major American writer -- that's a role you just don't fit at 25. ... I used to feel I was secretary to someone named Norman Mailer, (and) to meet him you had to meet me first."
Celebrity was intoxicating, however, and Mailer set out for its capital -- Hollywood -- in hopes of seeing "The Naked and the Dead" immortalized on celluloid. But the studios rejected the young writer and he returned to New York. A film version of the book finally appeared in 1958, with Aldo Ray, Cliff Robertson and Raymond Massey.
After one failed novel -- "The Barbary Shore" (1951), about McCarthyism -- his next book, "The Deer Park" (1955), took on Hollywood. The book's sexual content prompted six publishers to reject it, and when it was finally published by Putnam, reviews were middling to scathing: "Stultifies us with misanthropy," wrote The New York Times' John Brooks in one of the kinder notices. But the book sold moderately well and became a cult item in later years.
By then, Mailer was characterizing himself as a hipster, a "psychic outlaw." His 1957 essay, "The White Negro," dealt with alienation, anti-establishmentarianism and race relations. He followed that work with "Advertisements for Myself," a 1959 collection that, as its title promised, promoted its author and his anti-establishment beliefs. It became a favorite of the Beat generation.
But Mailer rose to a new level of prominence in the 1960s. He wrote an influential essay for Esquire during the 1960 presidential campaign, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket," about John F. Kennedy, which the magazine later named one of its five best stories.
Mailer was a regular contributor to Esquire over the years. He reported on politics for several publications, often putting his point of view at the center of the story -- a hallmark of the "New Journalism" practiced by Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson.
Meanwhile, with a lifestyle redolent of rock stars (before such a species existed), he was a constant in gossip columns, particularly after the 1960 stabbing incident, for which he was temporarily confined to New York's Bellevue mental hospital.
As the atmosphere of the '60s became more tumultuous, Mailer found himself in his element. A 1967 novel was titled "Why Are We in Vietnam?" He turned a 1967 protest against the Pentagon into "The Armies of the Night," subtitled "History as a Novel, the Novel as History." Its main character was Norman Mailer. His coverage of the 1968 political conventions became "Miami and the Siege of Chicago." He wrote about the 1969 Apollo 11 moonshot in "Of a Fire on the Moon" (1971).
During this time, he was also appearing on talk shows to argue with all comers, making films -- one of them, "Maidstone" (1970), includes a brawl with actor Rip Torn -- and, in 1969, running for mayor of New York as an independent on a platform of city secession. He lost the race, one of the city's most contentious, to John Lindsay.
By the early '70s, Mailer was more than a writer -- he was a full-fledged personality. In 1973 he threw himself a 50th birthday party. The 550 guests, who paid $30 a head (a hefty sum in 1973), included the cream of New York's arts and political classes.
"These were people wholly unaccustomed to paying their way into any party. ... They came and they paid because Mailer has a magic command on our attention," The New York Times' John Leonard wrote.
But attention to his writing was waning. Books on Marilyn Monroe and boxing failed to move critics or audiences.
He reinvigorated his reputation with "The Executioner's Song," a 1,000-page "true-life novel" about convicted murderer Gary Gilmore. The book won Mailer his second Pulitzer Prize. He followed it up with "Ancient Evenings" (1983), set in ancient Egypt, and the hard-boiled detective story "Tough Guys Don't Dance." Mailer also directed the 1987 film version starring Ryan O'Neal.
His later novels include "Harlot's Ghost" (1992), another lengthy tome about the history of the CIA; "Oswald's Tale" (1995), about Kennedy's assassin; and "The Gospel According to the Son" (1997), which concerned Jesus Christ. His most recent novel, "The Castle in the Forest," probed the life of Adolf Hitler, told by a demon.
Mailer also remained involved in civic life, not always happily. In 1980 he led the movement to have a convicted killer, Jack Henry Abbott, released on parole. Abbott had published a book, "In the Belly of the Beast," with Mailer's help. Six weeks after his release in 1981, Abbott stabbed a restaurant employee to death. The Abbott affair was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in," Mailer later said.
In 1984 he traveled to the Soviet Union, reporting on a country he believed was imploding. He headed the international writers' organization PEN in the mid-'80s and continued to speak out on political topics well into his 80s.
Mailer had opinions on everything. The Associated Press compiled a few:
The '70s: "The decade in which image became preeminent because nothing deeper was going on."
Poetry: A "natural activity ... a poem comes to one," whereas prose required making "an appointment with one's mind to write a few thousand words."
Journalism: Irresponsible. "You can't be too certain about what happened."
Technology: "Insidious, debilitating and depressing," and nobody in politics had an answer to "its impact on our spiritual well-being."
He distrusted technology so much he continued to write with a pen, some 1,500 words a day, according to AP. When a stranger asked him if he used a computer, AP reports, he replied, "No, I never learned that," then added, "but my girl does."
In a 1971 magazine piece about women's liberation, Mailer compared the dehumanization of technology to the effect of feminists, who he said were abolishing the "mystery, romance" and "blind, goat-kicking lust from sex," AP reports.
Mailer received a gold medal for lifetime achievement at the National Book Awards in 2005, where, AP reports, he deplored the decline of interest in the "serious novel."
Mailer said, according to AP, that when he was young, "fiction was everything. The novel, the big novel, the driving force. We all wanted to be Hemingway ... I don't think the same thing can be said anymore. I don't think my work has inspired any writer, not the way Hemingway inspired me."
Even as he settled into a quieter life in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with his sixth wife, Norris Church, Mailer was always thinking, always moving.
"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit," he once said.
He made the most of his own time on Earth.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Monday, November 05, 2007
Warren Zevon - Splendid Isolation
i wish i wrote this song. i did make a drawing that i titled 'splendid isolation' two years or so ago a former lover bought it in miami. isolation is only splendid when it has roots in longing i believe.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
The Waterboys - Whole of the Moon
this is a such a great song yeah to bringing to the school hallways
Steiner.
tonite saw werner herzog talk at university of penn 3rd row so so much to talk or walk towards estatic truth. this clip is from my favorite herzog film i saw late 2000 when i first moved to nyc, the great ecstacy of the sculptor steiner. more to walk to follow etc
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Cure Plainsong
my first concert was the cure at the spectrum in philly on the disintergration tour. this is my favorite song on that record. a year ago steve gunn and i geeked out at a party by playing this song on the stereo so so loud. so so good.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Biddeford Pool
i just back from a long birthday weekend in biddeford maine. i found this 7 second clip on youtube of the next town over biddeford pool. my trip was so great. i explored islands at low tide, found a shipwreck and a visor from the kentucky derby, bonfires on the beach, just great great fun and first time back in maine since i was 25. i dont want to wait that long for the next visit. last year just after my birthday i went to la to see my bestfriend'sband play arthurfest, we went to joshua tree and i got to stay with a good friend from college for about a week and a half. i started this blog when i got back because i meant to write about all the things i thought about and saw. now i may have to do a combo post thinking about what has transpired between the fall setting sun in the mojave last year and the rising one on the atlantic this autumn.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Monday, October 08, 2007
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Morrissey - Trash (live New York Dolls cover)
a favorite of morrissey's also. this is from dallas 1991. i was at the tower theater show in philly same tour same cover.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
one of kraftwerk's members owns a collapsible bike (or jann wenner has selective memory)
i still get excited about the rock and roll hall of fame. mostly the past couple years as some of my favorite new wave and punk acts have started to get inducted. i choose to step outside of much of the debate about who is deserving induction etc. i could impose my personal taste for hours if prompted. johnny cougar mellancamp sucks etc etc. this year however the velvet underground of the 70's kraftwerk are really getting a raw deal. i am a fan and own his music but afrika bambatta's groundbreaking single 'planet rock' wouldnt be possible without the sample of kraftwerk's 'trans europe express'. . . but that is just a fraction of their influence. maybe it will take the more likely induction of the velvet underground of the '80s - new order, who most surely will mention kraftwerk from the podium to highlight the slight. anyhow this article from the guardian shows that kraftwerk definitely are not campaigning for a spot on the ballot. -anthony campuzano
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Desperately seeking Kraftwerk
In a yellow building somewhere in Düsseldorf, the reclusive, bicycle-obsessed creators of electronica are back at work - and not accepting visitors. Alexis Petridis goes anyway
Friday July 25, 2003
The Guardian
The bar at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts is swamped. The crowd are an uneasy alliance of asymmetric-haired trendies and what may be their polar opposite: nervous, bespectacled thirtysomething men who look like they regularly won the maths prize at school. Regrettably, some of the latter are wearing Gary Numan T-shirts.
The crowd's appearance may be odd, but it's nothing compared to their conversation. Queuing for a pint, I overhear two men enthusiastically discussing computerised hi-hat patterns. "It's sort of a tsk-ch-ch-tsk," suggests one. "No," counters his friend, "it's more ch-ch-ch-tsk." Ask people why they are here, and they have a tendency to fix you with a gaze somewhere between pity and total incomprehension: "It's Kraftwerk, innit?" Well, not quite.
In fact, the ICA is packed for a rare live appearance by Karl Bartos, who was once Kraftwerk's percussionist, but left the Düsseldorf quartet a decade ago. Even the ICA's organisers seem slight overwhelmed by the public response to the concert. One tells me that there were 200 applications for a guest list of 40. People unable to make the gig sent money and pleading letters asking for posters. "Not a lot of women here, are there?" she frowns. "I feel like I'm going to grow a beard if I stay here much longer." It's certainly a peculiar evening, testament to Kraftwerk's continued appeal: days later, the sight of a large group of maths prize winners literally squealing with delight when Bartos played Kraftwerk's celebrated song, Computerworld, is still proving difficult to eradicate from the memory.
But then Kraftwerk are a peculiar and unique band. The remaining members - Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter, who formed the band in 1969, plus two hired hands called Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmidt - are about to release the first new Kraftwerk album in 17 years.
Tour de France Soundtracks, a musical celebration of the famous cycle race, was intended to coincide with this year's event, but Kraftwerk's endless perfectionism meant that the album's release date has been endlessly pushed back. It will now come out next month, weeks after the race itself has finished. In the ICA bar, this news is greeted with a sort of doleful resignation: it's Kraftwerk, innit?
Most people had given up on Kraftwerk ever releasing any new music years ago. After all, Schneider and Hütter have spent the last two decades gradually cutting themselves off from the outside world. They rarely give interviews, and when they do, they come with strings attached: one magazine which secured an audience with Hütter was informed that he would only discuss his collection of bicycles and that they were not allowed to even mention that he was a member of Kraftwerk. Their legendary Düsseldorf studio, KlingKlang, has no telephone, no fax, no reception and returns all post unopened. They have not attended a photo shoot since 1978: their record label has had to make do with blurry shots from their highly infrequent live appearances and pictures of the band's painstakingly constructed robot doubles. No band has shunned publicity with such dedication.
And I should know. I have spent the few weeks since the announcement of Tour de France Soundtracks' release attempting to penetrate Kraftwerk's enigma. It seems a worthwhile task. After all, Kraftwerk are one of the few bands in history who genuinely bear comparison to the Beatles. Not because of their sound or their image, but because, like the Beatles, it is impossible to overstate their influence on modern music. It's the five albums they made between 1974 and 1981 that really matter: Autobahn, Radioactivity, Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine and Computerworld. In their clipped, weirdly funky rhythms, simple melodies and futuristic technology, you can hear whole new areas of popular music being mapped out. Kraftwerk were so far ahead of their time that the rest of the world has spent 25 years inventing new musical genres in anattempt to catch up. House, techno, hip-hop, trip-hop, synthpop, trance, electroclash: Kraftwerk's influence looms over all of them. It's difficult to imagine what rock and pop music would sound like today if Kraftwerk had never existed.
In addition to their artistic importance, there's certainly plenty to talk about. In lieu of actual publicity, bizarre rumours about Kraftwerk began to abound during the 80s. Ralf Hütter was said to have suffered a minor heart attack, not due to stress - in fairness, overwork was hardly likely to be a factor - but as a result of obsessively drinking coffee. There were also allegations of a kind of cultural Stalinism: after Bartos and fellow percussionist Wolfgang Flür left the band, not only were their names removed from some covers, but their faces were removed as well. Less troublingly, someone once solemnly swore to me that the Düsseldorf accent in which Kraftwerk sing was a Teutonic equivalent of the Brummie drawl, which would certainly add a whole new layer of humour to their deadpan lyrics: "Oi prowgramme me howme compewter, bring meself into the fewcher" etc.
With this and other burning topics running through my mind, I attempt to go through the official channels, pestering their record company for an interview. A tentative maybe swiftly becomes a definite no. So I decide to take matters into my own hands. If Kraftwerk won't come to me, I'll go to Kraftwerk: I resolve to go to Düsseldorf in an attempt to track them down. Even if I can't find them, perhaps the city itself will shed some light on their oeuvre.
Few bands have ever seemed as rooted in their environment as Kraftwerk. While their German peers - Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream - muddied their cultural identity with a liberal dose of commune-dwelling, acid-munching hippy idealism, it's hard to see how Kraftwerk could have appeared more German without taking to the stage clad in lederhosen. While every one else was letting it all hang out, they sported suits, ties and short haircuts. Their sound was precise, efficient, emotionally cold and technologically advanced. It was music that had bagged the sun loungers while everyone else was still snoozing.
Occasionally, their image even led Kraftwerk into slightly sinister waters. In 1975, Ralf Hütter told one gobsmacked music journalist that "the German mentality" was "more advanced" than anyone else's and that German was "the mother language". The night before I leave, a telephone call comes from Kraftwerk's British press officer. Somehow, the band have got wind of my scheme. Ralf Hütter, it is intimated, will give me an interview on condition that I abandon any plans to go to Düsseldorf. This has rather the opposite effect from the one intended. Why are they so keen to keep me away from Düsseldorf? What am I going to find there? I think of Wolfgang Flür's memoir, I Was A Robot. Less an autobiography than an extended treatise on Flür's virility, I Was A Robot paints Kraftwerk not as emotionless "man-machines", but shameless groupie hounds. Perhaps Düsseldorf is filled with evidence of their youthful indiscretions, populated by children who bear a startling resemblance to members of Kraftwerk. In the case of Schneider, who the late rock critic Lester Bangs once described as looking like a man who could push a button and blow up half the world without blinking, this is a disturbing thought indeed.
The next morning, there's another flurry of communication between EMI and the Guardian. Hütter is now asking for the arts editor's written assurance that any article will not paint Kraftwerk as part of a German music scene, nor will it contain any jokes at the expense of Germans. This seems a bit rich coming from someone whose public image has involved the deft manipulation of a Teutonic caricature, but nevertheless we agree. I glumly consign a notebook packed full of rib-ticklers about bratwurst and square-headed men with no sense of humour to the bin.
Next, we get sent a list of pre-interview conditions stringent enough to make your average Hollywood superstar baulk. Hütter will not discuss Kraftwerk's history, their KlingKlang studio or indeed anything other than the new album. This poses a problem, as nobody in England has actually heard the new album yet. You suspect the end result will bear an uncanny resemblance to Kraftwerk's most recent German interview, in which Hütter and a fearless correspondent from Der Spiegel spend two pages attempting to bore each other to death. Its gripping highlight comes when Hütter is forced to admit that computers are smaller nowadays than they were in the early 70s. We tactfully decline their kind offer and I head for Heathrow.
After an abortive attempt to garner some support for my expedition from an organisation called Düsseldorf Marketing And Tourismus (no, they don't know anything about Kraftwerk; no, they never get tourist enquiries about this subject; they would recommend I visit the Rhineburn instead - "it's the largest decimal clock in the world!"), I meet up with Dirk, who is going to be both photographer and de facto interpreter for my trip. Dirk is a nice man, but he regards me with deep suspicion. Unlike Düsseldorf Marketing And Tourismus, he's heard of Kraftwerk, but can't believe that I have just turned up in Düsseldorf with no leads at all. He seems to think I'm making it up about the veil of secrecy around the band. "You have looked on the internet?" he asks, triumphantly double-clicking on a website called Kraftwerk FAQ. "The band does not encourage active correspondence," it reads. "There is no official fan club and no way of making contact has been announced."
Indeed, the only solid information we have to hand is a series of hints to the whereabouts of KlingKlang studios, dropped in Pascal Bussy's Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music. According to Bussy, KlingKlang is near the station, it is a "yellowish" building, it overlooks a cheap hotel and there is a Turkish grocers nearby. Dirk is confident - "we will find this!" - and leads the way to his car.
It quickly becomes apparent that you could never accuse Bussy of giving too much away. Every street adjacent to Düsseldorf station features a yellow-ish building, a Turkish grocers and a cheap hotel, frequently blessed with an appetising name such as Hotel Wurms. Every street also seems to feature a table dancing club, something called a Sexy-Kino and a lot of furtive-looking men. Perhaps realising that driving very slowly up and down the streets of Düsseldorf's red light district while staring out of the car window is liable to attract the attentions of the polizei, Dirk suggests we continue our quest on foot. After an hour of tramping around Düssel dorf's least salubrious area ("This is junkies' corner," sniffs Dirk, becoming more nonplussed by the minute), we come across a building that certainly might be KlingKlang. Not only does it fit Bussy's description, it also houses an electronic instrument manufacturers. Parked in its courtyard, there is a vintage Mercedes, of the kind Hütter and Schneider used to collect. One of its buzzers is left tantalisingly blank. Pushing it is no use, but inside the courtyard, we find an unlocked door.
Is this it? Are we about to walk into the world's most mysterious recording studio unchallenged? Will we be confronted with the sight of Hütter and Schneider furiously working to complete their latest opus? Perhaps they'll be impressed by our tenacity - not to mention our disregard for the law - and grant us an interview on the spot. Perhaps not. The door leads only to a series of empty rooms. We leave crestfallen, unsure of whether or not we have just stumbled upon the world's most mysterious recording studio. Dirk in particular, takes this news rather badly. He begins a lengthy monologue, delivered to no one in particular, in which the word "Scheisse" seems to crop up with alarming regularity and considerable emphasis.
Either he's angry at me, or he's remembering the last time Kraftwerk made the news in Germany, thanks to their involvement in the technological festival Expo 2000. Hütter and Schneider were paid DM400,000 (around £145,000) to come up with a four-second jingle. Snappy financial thinking like that eventually caused Expo 2000 to lose a staggering DM2.4bn (£700m) - £10 for every man woman and child in Germany - and the media deemed Kraftwerk guilty by association. As Dirk's assistant confirms, Kraftwerk's image at home could do with a wash and brush up. "I think in Germany people today prefer Robbie Williams," she says, sadly. "All the girls like him so much he had to play two concerts in Düsseldorf."
Her opinion appears to be confirmed as we head to the old town, a square kilometre containing a staggering 260 pubs. According to Wolfgang Flür's book, Kraftwerk used to come here of an evening in order to ogle local models, an experience recalled in their most famous song, The Model. It's also home to Düsseldorf's techno record shops. Surely here we will find traces of the local boys who effectively started it all? Initially, however, we meet only indifference. In one shop our timid enquiries are dismissed with a non-committal wave of the hand.
Finally, we strike gold. Wilfried Belz, proprietor of a shop called Sounds Good Records claims Florian Schneider is both an old friend and a customer. In the early 80s, he ran a club called Peppermint, at which Schneider was a regular. Would it be worth us trying to track him down in one of the nightclubs on Düsseldorf's famous Monkey Island? Wilfried shakes his head: "He's always interested in new music, but he doesn't go out to clubs any more, so he stops by here, I tell him what music is great or fabulous and he listens to them. He was last in here three weeks ago."
This information sets Dirk off again, but his increasingly threatening demands for the whereabouts of KlingKlang fall on deaf ears. "They are very private people," says Wilfried, lifting his index finger to his lips. Nevertheless, he insists that some Düsseldorfers still prefer Kraftwerk to Robbie Williams. "We have sold out of their last single, Tour De France 2003, long ago," he smiles. "They're a cult. Do we get many tourists asking about them? No. Nobody knows where they are, nobody will tell you where they are, so why would you come here?" With this final remark ringing in our ears, we leave.
Over a glass of Altbier, a remarkable local brew that smells of bacon, we weigh up our options. We have failed to find KlingKlang. Record companies and music shops have proved no use. The largest decimal clock in the world aside, Düsseldorf itself has proved not to be the sort of futuristic technopolis that would inspire Kraftwerk's music, but a slightly dull German city where people like Robbie Williams. We have got nowhere.
There is one last option. As evidenced by the title of their new album, Hütter and Schneider are obsessive fans of cycling. Indeed, Bartos once claimed that their love of racing bikes was a decisive factor in his departure from Kraftwerk: "Every day we would meet and have dinner. Ralf always talked about how he rode 200km that day. That would bore me to death." Maybe Düsseldorf's cycling shops hold the answer.
Rosso Sport certainly looks like a very Kraftwerk kind of shop. A converted industrial warehouse next to a disused railway line, it is staffed by rather stern-looking men with lycra shorts and shaved heads. One drags himself away from the giant television screen showing the Tour de France long enough to answer my queries. Yes, he says, Florian Schneider sometimes comes in here. He has two bikes. A racing model and a small collapsible bike. And with that, he curtly turns away, like a man who has suddenly remembered some kind of Kraftwerk confidentiality agreement.
Perhaps he thinks that the whole carefully constructed edifice of secrecy surrounding Kraftwerk is in jeopardy now that a foreign reporter knows that Florian Schneider owns a collapsible bike.
I start to giggle, before a troubling thought strikes me. I have flown from England to Düsseldorf, made innumerable telephone calls, wandered around its streets for a day, illegally entered a building, and really annoyed one of the city's top photographers. And what is the sum total of knowledge gleaned from this experience? Have I gained any insight into the fascistic overtones of some of their early statements? Have I discovered the key to an appeal so vast that people will fill a venue just to see the band's former percussionist play live, a decade after his departure? Have I even found out whether or not the Düsseldorf accent is a Teutonic equivalent of Brummie? No.
My investigations have exclusively revealed that one of Kraftwerk's members owns a collapsible bike. Dirk appears at my rapidly-sagging shoulder. "I don't think we win the Pulitzer prize here, huh?" he says softly, a master of understatement.
- Alexis Petridis.2003
Useful links
Kraftwerk official site
Kraftwerk FAQ
Dusseldorf tourist information
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Desperately seeking Kraftwerk
In a yellow building somewhere in Düsseldorf, the reclusive, bicycle-obsessed creators of electronica are back at work - and not accepting visitors. Alexis Petridis goes anyway
Friday July 25, 2003
The Guardian
The bar at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts is swamped. The crowd are an uneasy alliance of asymmetric-haired trendies and what may be their polar opposite: nervous, bespectacled thirtysomething men who look like they regularly won the maths prize at school. Regrettably, some of the latter are wearing Gary Numan T-shirts.
The crowd's appearance may be odd, but it's nothing compared to their conversation. Queuing for a pint, I overhear two men enthusiastically discussing computerised hi-hat patterns. "It's sort of a tsk-ch-ch-tsk," suggests one. "No," counters his friend, "it's more ch-ch-ch-tsk." Ask people why they are here, and they have a tendency to fix you with a gaze somewhere between pity and total incomprehension: "It's Kraftwerk, innit?" Well, not quite.
In fact, the ICA is packed for a rare live appearance by Karl Bartos, who was once Kraftwerk's percussionist, but left the Düsseldorf quartet a decade ago. Even the ICA's organisers seem slight overwhelmed by the public response to the concert. One tells me that there were 200 applications for a guest list of 40. People unable to make the gig sent money and pleading letters asking for posters. "Not a lot of women here, are there?" she frowns. "I feel like I'm going to grow a beard if I stay here much longer." It's certainly a peculiar evening, testament to Kraftwerk's continued appeal: days later, the sight of a large group of maths prize winners literally squealing with delight when Bartos played Kraftwerk's celebrated song, Computerworld, is still proving difficult to eradicate from the memory.
But then Kraftwerk are a peculiar and unique band. The remaining members - Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter, who formed the band in 1969, plus two hired hands called Fritz Hilpert and Henning Schmidt - are about to release the first new Kraftwerk album in 17 years.
Tour de France Soundtracks, a musical celebration of the famous cycle race, was intended to coincide with this year's event, but Kraftwerk's endless perfectionism meant that the album's release date has been endlessly pushed back. It will now come out next month, weeks after the race itself has finished. In the ICA bar, this news is greeted with a sort of doleful resignation: it's Kraftwerk, innit?
Most people had given up on Kraftwerk ever releasing any new music years ago. After all, Schneider and Hütter have spent the last two decades gradually cutting themselves off from the outside world. They rarely give interviews, and when they do, they come with strings attached: one magazine which secured an audience with Hütter was informed that he would only discuss his collection of bicycles and that they were not allowed to even mention that he was a member of Kraftwerk. Their legendary Düsseldorf studio, KlingKlang, has no telephone, no fax, no reception and returns all post unopened. They have not attended a photo shoot since 1978: their record label has had to make do with blurry shots from their highly infrequent live appearances and pictures of the band's painstakingly constructed robot doubles. No band has shunned publicity with such dedication.
And I should know. I have spent the few weeks since the announcement of Tour de France Soundtracks' release attempting to penetrate Kraftwerk's enigma. It seems a worthwhile task. After all, Kraftwerk are one of the few bands in history who genuinely bear comparison to the Beatles. Not because of their sound or their image, but because, like the Beatles, it is impossible to overstate their influence on modern music. It's the five albums they made between 1974 and 1981 that really matter: Autobahn, Radioactivity, Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine and Computerworld. In their clipped, weirdly funky rhythms, simple melodies and futuristic technology, you can hear whole new areas of popular music being mapped out. Kraftwerk were so far ahead of their time that the rest of the world has spent 25 years inventing new musical genres in anattempt to catch up. House, techno, hip-hop, trip-hop, synthpop, trance, electroclash: Kraftwerk's influence looms over all of them. It's difficult to imagine what rock and pop music would sound like today if Kraftwerk had never existed.
In addition to their artistic importance, there's certainly plenty to talk about. In lieu of actual publicity, bizarre rumours about Kraftwerk began to abound during the 80s. Ralf Hütter was said to have suffered a minor heart attack, not due to stress - in fairness, overwork was hardly likely to be a factor - but as a result of obsessively drinking coffee. There were also allegations of a kind of cultural Stalinism: after Bartos and fellow percussionist Wolfgang Flür left the band, not only were their names removed from some covers, but their faces were removed as well. Less troublingly, someone once solemnly swore to me that the Düsseldorf accent in which Kraftwerk sing was a Teutonic equivalent of the Brummie drawl, which would certainly add a whole new layer of humour to their deadpan lyrics: "Oi prowgramme me howme compewter, bring meself into the fewcher" etc.
With this and other burning topics running through my mind, I attempt to go through the official channels, pestering their record company for an interview. A tentative maybe swiftly becomes a definite no. So I decide to take matters into my own hands. If Kraftwerk won't come to me, I'll go to Kraftwerk: I resolve to go to Düsseldorf in an attempt to track them down. Even if I can't find them, perhaps the city itself will shed some light on their oeuvre.
Few bands have ever seemed as rooted in their environment as Kraftwerk. While their German peers - Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream - muddied their cultural identity with a liberal dose of commune-dwelling, acid-munching hippy idealism, it's hard to see how Kraftwerk could have appeared more German without taking to the stage clad in lederhosen. While every one else was letting it all hang out, they sported suits, ties and short haircuts. Their sound was precise, efficient, emotionally cold and technologically advanced. It was music that had bagged the sun loungers while everyone else was still snoozing.
Occasionally, their image even led Kraftwerk into slightly sinister waters. In 1975, Ralf Hütter told one gobsmacked music journalist that "the German mentality" was "more advanced" than anyone else's and that German was "the mother language". The night before I leave, a telephone call comes from Kraftwerk's British press officer. Somehow, the band have got wind of my scheme. Ralf Hütter, it is intimated, will give me an interview on condition that I abandon any plans to go to Düsseldorf. This has rather the opposite effect from the one intended. Why are they so keen to keep me away from Düsseldorf? What am I going to find there? I think of Wolfgang Flür's memoir, I Was A Robot. Less an autobiography than an extended treatise on Flür's virility, I Was A Robot paints Kraftwerk not as emotionless "man-machines", but shameless groupie hounds. Perhaps Düsseldorf is filled with evidence of their youthful indiscretions, populated by children who bear a startling resemblance to members of Kraftwerk. In the case of Schneider, who the late rock critic Lester Bangs once described as looking like a man who could push a button and blow up half the world without blinking, this is a disturbing thought indeed.
The next morning, there's another flurry of communication between EMI and the Guardian. Hütter is now asking for the arts editor's written assurance that any article will not paint Kraftwerk as part of a German music scene, nor will it contain any jokes at the expense of Germans. This seems a bit rich coming from someone whose public image has involved the deft manipulation of a Teutonic caricature, but nevertheless we agree. I glumly consign a notebook packed full of rib-ticklers about bratwurst and square-headed men with no sense of humour to the bin.
Next, we get sent a list of pre-interview conditions stringent enough to make your average Hollywood superstar baulk. Hütter will not discuss Kraftwerk's history, their KlingKlang studio or indeed anything other than the new album. This poses a problem, as nobody in England has actually heard the new album yet. You suspect the end result will bear an uncanny resemblance to Kraftwerk's most recent German interview, in which Hütter and a fearless correspondent from Der Spiegel spend two pages attempting to bore each other to death. Its gripping highlight comes when Hütter is forced to admit that computers are smaller nowadays than they were in the early 70s. We tactfully decline their kind offer and I head for Heathrow.
After an abortive attempt to garner some support for my expedition from an organisation called Düsseldorf Marketing And Tourismus (no, they don't know anything about Kraftwerk; no, they never get tourist enquiries about this subject; they would recommend I visit the Rhineburn instead - "it's the largest decimal clock in the world!"), I meet up with Dirk, who is going to be both photographer and de facto interpreter for my trip. Dirk is a nice man, but he regards me with deep suspicion. Unlike Düsseldorf Marketing And Tourismus, he's heard of Kraftwerk, but can't believe that I have just turned up in Düsseldorf with no leads at all. He seems to think I'm making it up about the veil of secrecy around the band. "You have looked on the internet?" he asks, triumphantly double-clicking on a website called Kraftwerk FAQ. "The band does not encourage active correspondence," it reads. "There is no official fan club and no way of making contact has been announced."
Indeed, the only solid information we have to hand is a series of hints to the whereabouts of KlingKlang studios, dropped in Pascal Bussy's Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music. According to Bussy, KlingKlang is near the station, it is a "yellowish" building, it overlooks a cheap hotel and there is a Turkish grocers nearby. Dirk is confident - "we will find this!" - and leads the way to his car.
It quickly becomes apparent that you could never accuse Bussy of giving too much away. Every street adjacent to Düsseldorf station features a yellow-ish building, a Turkish grocers and a cheap hotel, frequently blessed with an appetising name such as Hotel Wurms. Every street also seems to feature a table dancing club, something called a Sexy-Kino and a lot of furtive-looking men. Perhaps realising that driving very slowly up and down the streets of Düsseldorf's red light district while staring out of the car window is liable to attract the attentions of the polizei, Dirk suggests we continue our quest on foot. After an hour of tramping around Düssel dorf's least salubrious area ("This is junkies' corner," sniffs Dirk, becoming more nonplussed by the minute), we come across a building that certainly might be KlingKlang. Not only does it fit Bussy's description, it also houses an electronic instrument manufacturers. Parked in its courtyard, there is a vintage Mercedes, of the kind Hütter and Schneider used to collect. One of its buzzers is left tantalisingly blank. Pushing it is no use, but inside the courtyard, we find an unlocked door.
Is this it? Are we about to walk into the world's most mysterious recording studio unchallenged? Will we be confronted with the sight of Hütter and Schneider furiously working to complete their latest opus? Perhaps they'll be impressed by our tenacity - not to mention our disregard for the law - and grant us an interview on the spot. Perhaps not. The door leads only to a series of empty rooms. We leave crestfallen, unsure of whether or not we have just stumbled upon the world's most mysterious recording studio. Dirk in particular, takes this news rather badly. He begins a lengthy monologue, delivered to no one in particular, in which the word "Scheisse" seems to crop up with alarming regularity and considerable emphasis.
Either he's angry at me, or he's remembering the last time Kraftwerk made the news in Germany, thanks to their involvement in the technological festival Expo 2000. Hütter and Schneider were paid DM400,000 (around £145,000) to come up with a four-second jingle. Snappy financial thinking like that eventually caused Expo 2000 to lose a staggering DM2.4bn (£700m) - £10 for every man woman and child in Germany - and the media deemed Kraftwerk guilty by association. As Dirk's assistant confirms, Kraftwerk's image at home could do with a wash and brush up. "I think in Germany people today prefer Robbie Williams," she says, sadly. "All the girls like him so much he had to play two concerts in Düsseldorf."
Her opinion appears to be confirmed as we head to the old town, a square kilometre containing a staggering 260 pubs. According to Wolfgang Flür's book, Kraftwerk used to come here of an evening in order to ogle local models, an experience recalled in their most famous song, The Model. It's also home to Düsseldorf's techno record shops. Surely here we will find traces of the local boys who effectively started it all? Initially, however, we meet only indifference. In one shop our timid enquiries are dismissed with a non-committal wave of the hand.
Finally, we strike gold. Wilfried Belz, proprietor of a shop called Sounds Good Records claims Florian Schneider is both an old friend and a customer. In the early 80s, he ran a club called Peppermint, at which Schneider was a regular. Would it be worth us trying to track him down in one of the nightclubs on Düsseldorf's famous Monkey Island? Wilfried shakes his head: "He's always interested in new music, but he doesn't go out to clubs any more, so he stops by here, I tell him what music is great or fabulous and he listens to them. He was last in here three weeks ago."
This information sets Dirk off again, but his increasingly threatening demands for the whereabouts of KlingKlang fall on deaf ears. "They are very private people," says Wilfried, lifting his index finger to his lips. Nevertheless, he insists that some Düsseldorfers still prefer Kraftwerk to Robbie Williams. "We have sold out of their last single, Tour De France 2003, long ago," he smiles. "They're a cult. Do we get many tourists asking about them? No. Nobody knows where they are, nobody will tell you where they are, so why would you come here?" With this final remark ringing in our ears, we leave.
Over a glass of Altbier, a remarkable local brew that smells of bacon, we weigh up our options. We have failed to find KlingKlang. Record companies and music shops have proved no use. The largest decimal clock in the world aside, Düsseldorf itself has proved not to be the sort of futuristic technopolis that would inspire Kraftwerk's music, but a slightly dull German city where people like Robbie Williams. We have got nowhere.
There is one last option. As evidenced by the title of their new album, Hütter and Schneider are obsessive fans of cycling. Indeed, Bartos once claimed that their love of racing bikes was a decisive factor in his departure from Kraftwerk: "Every day we would meet and have dinner. Ralf always talked about how he rode 200km that day. That would bore me to death." Maybe Düsseldorf's cycling shops hold the answer.
Rosso Sport certainly looks like a very Kraftwerk kind of shop. A converted industrial warehouse next to a disused railway line, it is staffed by rather stern-looking men with lycra shorts and shaved heads. One drags himself away from the giant television screen showing the Tour de France long enough to answer my queries. Yes, he says, Florian Schneider sometimes comes in here. He has two bikes. A racing model and a small collapsible bike. And with that, he curtly turns away, like a man who has suddenly remembered some kind of Kraftwerk confidentiality agreement.
Perhaps he thinks that the whole carefully constructed edifice of secrecy surrounding Kraftwerk is in jeopardy now that a foreign reporter knows that Florian Schneider owns a collapsible bike.
I start to giggle, before a troubling thought strikes me. I have flown from England to Düsseldorf, made innumerable telephone calls, wandered around its streets for a day, illegally entered a building, and really annoyed one of the city's top photographers. And what is the sum total of knowledge gleaned from this experience? Have I gained any insight into the fascistic overtones of some of their early statements? Have I discovered the key to an appeal so vast that people will fill a venue just to see the band's former percussionist play live, a decade after his departure? Have I even found out whether or not the Düsseldorf accent is a Teutonic equivalent of Brummie? No.
My investigations have exclusively revealed that one of Kraftwerk's members owns a collapsible bike. Dirk appears at my rapidly-sagging shoulder. "I don't think we win the Pulitzer prize here, huh?" he says softly, a master of understatement.
- Alexis Petridis.2003
Useful links
Kraftwerk official site
Kraftwerk FAQ
Dusseldorf tourist information
Saturday, September 29, 2007
kraftwerk - trans europe express
one of the most essential bands ever. (stage 2) arguably the first sample on the first hip hop track -'planet rock' by afrika bambatta. begat everything from your evening news theme to 50 cent and timbaland's career, etc
N I C O HEROES
nico singing david bowie's heroes with backing band Blue Orchids, who were formerly the original members of The Fall. Nico went on to in 1986 die of a cerebal brain hemorage from falling off her bicycle.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Dionne Warwick - Heartbreaker
killer single from the best black female pop vocalist ever (written by the bee gees)
Monday, September 24, 2007
Medley of Bee Gee Hits -- the Bee Gees
there are few bands that in six minutes with just 2 guitars and three voices could express so many beautiful hit songs. the bee gees were one of the greatest groups of all time and along with abba and the beatles brought some of the most beautiful songs to the most people in the world.
The Bangles - Going Down To Liverpool
this song is one of the best best songs bethany klein still has my copy - i love the bangles ( this song was written by kimberly rew of katrina and the waves)
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Nirvana - Seasons In The Sun
i love the television personalities version of this song had no idea nirvana did it too. yeah yeah terry jacks and the poppy family.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
hot chip - no fit state (live@glastonbury'07)
this summer while working on my show i listened alot to this mix will made me which included this performance. he is friends with a member of this band and asked him why he broke into temptation near the end. he said that since the bulk of the song is inspired by temptation it seemed right to give it its due. i suggested to will that perhaps when you play to 80000 people at glastonbury you cant help but feel like new order and so one of their songs just comes out of your fingertips.
tomorrow my new solo exhibition opens
thursday september 20th at fleisher ollman
gallery 1616 walnut street suite 100 there will be a reception that day from 6-8 the show runs through october 27th.
also showing in the gallery will be fellow tyler alum anissa mack which is a real treasure.
my show is called 'Note On Door' and will center around a suite of 9 82"x38" paintings.
we are producing a catalog for the show which includes among other things:
essays by william pym, pablo colapinto, and anthony campuzano and interviews with andy bell of erasure, legendary chicago bulls power-forward charles oakley, and shaun ryder of the happy mondays
ok also on thursday september 27th i will be a visiting artist at pafa and will be giving a lecture at 11:30. the lecture will be in the morris building at broad and cherry. the lecture is open to the public.
http://www.fleisher-ollmangallery.com/
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Who-Baba O'Riley@Concert For New York City 2/4
it has been a few days since tthe 9/11 anniversary but back then I watched this live in brooklyn with amie in a vogue editor's apartment trying to get things together. the who are the best and this song is the closest to gospel i'll ever get and this might be the best performance of it ever.
The Fall - Big New Prinz
even when absolutely resolute do not underestimate the power of a blonde lead guitarist from beverly hills
Friday, September 14, 2007
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Shampoo Montage
one of the best films about california, ambition, and circumstance. my favorite warren beatty film and along with Being There my favorite Hal Ashby production. in the film warren beatty sleeps with a wife her husband's mistress and the wife's daughter. in real life he was sleeping with the mistress (julie christie) and the woman playing his fiaance in the film (goldie hawn). this is the fleetwood mac of american cinema. later after Being There hal ashby kind of lost it on drugs, perfectionism etc according to wikipedia: "Entering into a drug-induced spiral after Being There (his last film to achieve widespread attention), Ashby became notoriously reclusive and eccentric, retreating to his spartan beachfront abode in Malibu, where he smoked prodigious amounts of marijuana and frequently refused to eat in the presence of other people.
The productions of Second-Hand Hearts and Lookin' to Get Out − a Las Vegas caper film that reunited him with Voight and featured Voight's young daughter, Angelina Jolie − were plagued by the director's increasingly erratic behavior, such as pacifying former girlfriends by hiring them to edit Lookin' To Get Out. Studio executives grew less tolerant of his increasingly perfectionist editing techniques, exemplified by his laboring over a montage set to the Police's "Message in a Bottle" for nearly six months. Initially set to helm Tootsie after two years of laborious negotiations, reports of these bizarre tendencies resulted in his dismissal shortly before production commenced."
also:
'In the opinion of actor Bruce Dern, "What happened to Hal Ashby, both what he did to himself and what they did to him, was as repulsive as anything I've seen in my forty years of the industry".'
she lets me know
the little murders 3rd single she lets me know. the beautiful julie christie graces the video
Trailer: Billy Liar (John Schlesinger, 1963)
this is one of my favorite movies and it features one of my absolute favorite actresses julie christie. based on james thurber's secret life of walter mitty. for anyone who has ever worked as a clerk and dreamed of moving to nyc or los angeles or london or paris. this film was actually filmed in cinemascope which i got to see a screening of in 1998/99 via the philly film forum. right before it i got in a raging argument with my soon to be ex girlfriend which added a certain context to the viewing. right before they also screened a cinemascope section of oklahoma! which was quite impressive.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Stone Roses - Waterfall - live on OSM
there is another edit of this clip that has tony wilson talking about how he wasnt convinced about the stone roses until ringo starr suggested he check out there new single. hence the introduction reading "the excellent stone roses" this edit has better sound. clem thinks the la's are better because they only made one record and werent compromised by club culture. in my book the la's run at most 3rd with the rose's second and the mondays on top. the stone roses could probably play the best but the mondays took a bag of influences swallowed them whole and completly made their own thing. the la's have too obvious of the velet underground via frankie valli vibe. which is fine i adore both those bands. but the mondays took sly and the family stone, the fall, the beatles, dancehall, whatever and made it cool. a harder bit i say. the stone roses fall similar to the la's too arch, too coifed. but they could really play and really if you only base it on one record. (their comeback ten years later was mostly abysmal) you could say with a straight face they made one of the greatest debut records ever. on par with the pistols and the velvet underground. the la's more on par with galaxie 500. good just not groundbreaking.
Tony Wilson Interview In Hulme, Manchester
it iseems like a nonstop deathwatch around ice station zebra lately. filmmakers, artists, journalists (tom snyder and now tony wilson)
rest in peace
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Happy Mondays - Performance - OSM live
i posted this already on the willow house blog but i wanted to put it here too. problably right after the smiths broke up, but more from about late 1988 until 1990 the happy mondays were the greatest band in the world.
Bez's Madchester Anthems - Non TV version
in the midst of my fever and cold the other day my friend will sent me the new happy mondays record. i think it is pretty good. i would prefer some more guitars but the only original members left are shaun bez and the drummer so you get what you get. will and i also broke each other up playing this bez clip over and ober. will even went and got a copy of the madchester anthems. "call the fookin cops!!"
blues control live at big jar books pt 4/5
the other day marked the anniversary of hiroshima and also lee hazelwood died. this past sunday i tried to go see the improv punk band called violent students. my friend max leads them, but i was late and only could hear from the street the crashing conclusion. i partyed afterwards real late at max's and got to hang deep with russ and lea who make up blues control. sometime that morning i awoke with a terrible cold. it has been two days on the couch and films ranging from sly stallone's remake of get carter to brian de palma's the black dahlia. i feel slightly recovered. i dont recommend that you watch the sly version of get carter. this clip is of a show i saw in philadelphia. rumor has it they will play again in philly on a boat late sept.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Thursday, August 02, 2007
all you need is love
i tried to post this earlier but it didnt work so below is a link watch it that way. not only is all you need is love an uplifting anthem it was part of the first live global television broadcast. the ad industry can stuff it. david hinckley gets it right below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLxTpsIVzzo
David Hinckley
Disposable income
Diaper ad uses Beatles' tune
Wednesday, August 1st 2007, 4:00 AM
A rash of diaper ads plays off the Fab Four's 'All You Need Is Love.'
I don't know how to put an exact value on the Beatles' 1967 song "All You Need Is Love."
I do know it's more than whatever Procter & Gamble paid to use it in an ad for Luvs diapers.
I also know popular songs have been rented by Madison Avenue for years because they can draw attention to a product.
And I know protesting against this practice is about as effective as protesting against the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn. But using this song to sell diapers is, at best, annoying. More to the point, it's sad.
The commercial doesn't insult "All You Need Is Love" as much as it says the song didn't really matter, that it had no significance or context beyond creating a catchy tune that could be plucked from our collective memory and cashed in.
Yes, I understand how this game works, that leasing a song for an ad requires no effort beyond endorsing the check. It's as close as the music biz comes to money for nothing.
When Barenaked Ladies leased "If I Had a Million Dollars" to the New York lottery, where it ran forever, no one begrudged them the windfall.
The "ridiculous money" Bob Seger got from renting "Like a Rock" to Chevy might have been the cushion that ensured he could stay home for 10 years to raise his two children. No one will shoot him for that.
I also think a good song can survive selling cars, or orange juice, or financial institutions.
John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" will always be a brilliant laser illuminating America's class divide. Its brief walkabout to sell Wrangler Jeans is a faint memory, as forgotten as Best Buy selling stuff with Sheryl Crow's anti-stuff song "Soak Up the Sun."
"All You Need Is Love" isn't in my Beatles top 10, or top 100. You could argue that both musically and culturally, it's a period piece.
But it was also a song that propelled the Beatles, and a big chunk of popular music, from where it had been to where it would go. Hippie-dippy and naive as its lyrics might sound, now or then, it was a cry for better instincts at a time when a bad war over there and bad blood over here had left love in short supply.
Using "All You Need Is Love" to sell diapers isn't quite as egregious as if, say, someone used "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to sell video games.
But it's the same sort of disregard for a song's place in its time, and in the end, it leaves you feeling the same sort of sad.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
David Hinckley
dhinckley@edit.nydailynews.com
David Hinckley joined the Daily News in 1980 and for the last dozen years has been critic-at-large. From this floating position he tries to frame a context for modern American popular culture, though he sometimes has to settle for a reference to Bob Dylan or the Brooklyn Dodgers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLxTpsIVzzo
David Hinckley
Disposable income
Diaper ad uses Beatles' tune
Wednesday, August 1st 2007, 4:00 AM
A rash of diaper ads plays off the Fab Four's 'All You Need Is Love.'
I don't know how to put an exact value on the Beatles' 1967 song "All You Need Is Love."
I do know it's more than whatever Procter & Gamble paid to use it in an ad for Luvs diapers.
I also know popular songs have been rented by Madison Avenue for years because they can draw attention to a product.
And I know protesting against this practice is about as effective as protesting against the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn. But using this song to sell diapers is, at best, annoying. More to the point, it's sad.
The commercial doesn't insult "All You Need Is Love" as much as it says the song didn't really matter, that it had no significance or context beyond creating a catchy tune that could be plucked from our collective memory and cashed in.
Yes, I understand how this game works, that leasing a song for an ad requires no effort beyond endorsing the check. It's as close as the music biz comes to money for nothing.
When Barenaked Ladies leased "If I Had a Million Dollars" to the New York lottery, where it ran forever, no one begrudged them the windfall.
The "ridiculous money" Bob Seger got from renting "Like a Rock" to Chevy might have been the cushion that ensured he could stay home for 10 years to raise his two children. No one will shoot him for that.
I also think a good song can survive selling cars, or orange juice, or financial institutions.
John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" will always be a brilliant laser illuminating America's class divide. Its brief walkabout to sell Wrangler Jeans is a faint memory, as forgotten as Best Buy selling stuff with Sheryl Crow's anti-stuff song "Soak Up the Sun."
"All You Need Is Love" isn't in my Beatles top 10, or top 100. You could argue that both musically and culturally, it's a period piece.
But it was also a song that propelled the Beatles, and a big chunk of popular music, from where it had been to where it would go. Hippie-dippy and naive as its lyrics might sound, now or then, it was a cry for better instincts at a time when a bad war over there and bad blood over here had left love in short supply.
Using "All You Need Is Love" to sell diapers isn't quite as egregious as if, say, someone used "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to sell video games.
But it's the same sort of disregard for a song's place in its time, and in the end, it leaves you feeling the same sort of sad.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
David Hinckley
dhinckley@edit.nydailynews.com
David Hinckley joined the Daily News in 1980 and for the last dozen years has been critic-at-large. From this floating position he tries to frame a context for modern American popular culture, though he sometimes has to settle for a reference to Bob Dylan or the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Zabriskie Point trailer 1
alot of people rag on this movie but i really dig it. ten years ago at yale/norfolk my studio mate ben degan said my work reminded him of this movie. i took it as a compliment. rest in peace antonioni.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Stevie Nicks - Stand Back - 1983 Appearence
Details: Rumor number four: You are like the character in "Rhiannon"--a real witch.
Stevie Nicks: What do you think? (laughs) Honestly, I never dabbled in the black arts.
Details: Really? What about you and Prince?
Stevie Nicks: Let me state this here and now: We did not have a sexual relationship--I did not let that happen.
Details: How did you meet?
Stevie Nicks: When we were recording "Stand Back" I decided to be really blatant and call Prince up and tell him that I had been inspired to write the song while listening to "Little Red Corvette." I told him that I figured my song was half his. He came over to the studio where I was recording and listened to it--as I turned extremely white and started to shake. Then he walked over to the piano and put on a really incredible keyboard track. And not only did Prince make it up right on the spot, he played it with only two fingers. Then he left.
Details: Did you see him again?
Stevie Nicks: Yes, when I was on the road a year or so later. I was sick, and Prince brought some cough syrup up to my hotel room. He was sweet--he walked around the room folding things, fluffing pillows, tidying up in general. Then he gave me a spoon of it himself. But when I asked for another spoonful he changed--he said, "I didn't come all the way up here just to get you hooked on another substance!" Then he left.
Details: Do you still see him?
Stevie Nicks: No. I was at the premiere of Purple Rain, and in the scene where he slaps Apollonia I freaked and had to go sit in the bathroom. Afterward I went back to see him, and when he asked why I'd left, I had to tell him, "When you popped Apollonia, it kinda popped my brain." He looked at me like it just killed him. We've never spoken since. (sighs) It’s a shame, really...we were alike in so many ways.
Details: Such as?
Stevie Nicks: Well, for one thing, we both liked wearing black chiffon around the house.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Saturday, July 21, 2007
B-52s - Rock Lobster [live]
here's to the hope that pablo comes thru on his threat to dress up as a lobster in santa barbara this coming halloween
The Go Team - Huddle Formation Music Video
i went to the beach for the past few days on the highway back and forth thru the pine barrens my friend clarie's ipod bled into my back seat sleep and this is the song that really stuck. more to follow
Friday, July 20, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
The Go-Go's ~ Head Over Heals *80s video*
arguably the greatest pop group from the west coast. (perhaps even better than the mighty mamas and the papas)
Friday, July 06, 2007
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Billy Paul - Your Song
when i think of a song sung by a philadelphian that is my favorite this billy paul version of elton john's your song always ends up on top
Hall and Oates
last night i stood in the rain on the parkway and saw this great show. this song killed it. daryl hall made every girl there wish their name was sarah
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