“Cheer me up” – Hey Willpower, Rebel Music, EM Flags

“If you can cheer me up I could learn to love you” Descendents

Hey Willpower was adorable. R’n’B pop at its best. And when I say R’n’B I mean really good R’n’B like back from “Bills Bills Bills” or TLC-“Waterfalls” times. There were two nice cover versions in the set, Architecture I.H.’s ‘Heart It Races’ and Annie’s ‘Chewing Gum’. And Tomo must have sweated to death in his cat-sweater. It was appreciated. It was a really nice cat-sweater. Hell, it was the most heart-warming and positive show I’ve been to since last year’s Ted Leo show. The kind of show that leaves me brimming with new energy to face all the crap in the world. There weren’t that many people showing up but it was great to see how everyone who was there turned out to be bewitched by Will’s charme and everybody went home with a big smile on their faces. Magic. I asked if they please could come back in a month and play again, or even monthly but I don’t think Will really considered it. Tsk. If I remember it right the interview that Tobi has made with him will be aired on Radio Z next Monday. A big big thank you to Quirin to get them to play in Nuremberg.

I’ve uploaded a few more snapshots in the pictures section at www.evemassacre.org
There I’ve also finally uploaded the photos from the final Sophisticated Boom Boom party, the We Are Wolves show, and of Mochipet and The Death Set!

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Tonight I’ll dj at Rebel Music night at the Desi. It will be a journey through four decades of danceable rebellious underground culture, from black power soul via reggae, punk and post-punk, hardcore and indie and hiphop to the non-commercial trends of today’s electronic music.

Redcar of Here Comes Conclusion and me will take care of the guitar tunes of this swooshy night. It starts at 11 pm. I haven’t played guitar music out in quite a while and it should be fun!
Should I take “Anarcho punx are mysterious” by Against Me or “Only Anarchists Are Pretty” by World/Inferno? Have Bambix drunk too much Jägermeister over the years for me to still play their ‘Explain it’ and will I play Le Tigre’s ‘Deceptacon’ even though it has been used for some tv ad? Is Minutemen’s ‘Fascist’ too short to dance to? Is Big Boys too funky to be played amongst the guitar tunes? Is Xiu Xiu’s ‘Support The Troops oh’ too long and slow even though it’s my favourite anti-war song? Is Jello Biafra & Mojo Nixon’s ‘Will The Fetus Be Aborted’ too country? It’s fun to pick those tunes and I can’t wait for tonight.

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We had tried to keep our musikverein-shows free of flags and flag-wearers. Two reasons: The obvious nationalism and the fact that the later the night the more of the people who wear that stuff disturb the show/party for other guests with drunken comments and out of place football cheering. Well, it looks like we can’t. It’s a public building in which we are putting up our shows and it’s owned by the city, so the law seems to say we are not allowed to exclude someone because he carries or wears a national flag cause that’d be discrimination.

This whole consumerist euphoria/hate spectacle that the euro cup is seems boring and scary and annoying at the same time. Doesn’t it show how easily people can be mobilized to become a collective mob that has zero acceptance for those who are ‘different’? Even if ‘different’ means people who simply are not interested in that game. You get it forcefed. It doesn’t add sympathy points that professional football still is a repressive hotbed for patriotism edging on nationalism, homophobia and sexism. Under the mask of ‘it’s just a game’ and ‘no one means it seriously, it’s just fun’ the most conservative mindsets get reinforced in the mainstream and by the mainstream. The tone of conversation at public viewings or even in the bus or underground is set to bar room clichés, and if you don’t cheer in, or if you dare to criticise when someone says a bad player ‘plays like a woman’ or that if a players moves look a bit dancy he’s called ‘gay’ in a derogative way, well – for any bad word about that joyful football community you quickly get the whole spirit of ‘you’re either with us or against us’ in your face bukkake style.
Well, that’s euro cup democracy for you: You get forced to swallow the discriminations that are mainstream and you get forbidden to discriminate against people who wear flags. Boo-hoo. Rant over.

“Romancing the stone” – Des Ark, The Death Set, Mochipet. & me.

“I’m romancing the stone, never leaving your poor heart alone
Every night and every day gonna love the hurtin’ away”
Eddy Grant
After two nights without having to go outside to smoke I now got the sniffles and my head aches from the cold. Not fair. Especially as I’m actually looking forward to dj tomorrow at the Gieszer16 in Leipzig. I hope they have a heavy tea-with-rum-supply. Ender Error and zOSH! will play first. And there’ll be a second room with minimal techno. So I’ll leave my huuuge stack of minimal vinyl at home this time. 😉

I have another new gig up: A DJ + live thing at Club Disaster in Berlin, at the West Germany club. Thanks to Noisy Pig I’ll play there on the 15th of March.

For my hometown friends: Please don’t miss the It’s The Beat party next week at the K4. The Electric Dog, Elektronisch Rocken, Suicide A Gogo and Sophisticated Boom Boom will dj there and we are trying to raise some money for Kaff Of Subkultur debts. There’ll also be a special Sophisticated Boom Boom party later this month: For once we move to the Desi! It’ll be on the 23rd of February.

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I went to see Des Ark a second time as in Nuremberg I hadn’t caught the whole show. Seppo was so kind to drive to the Würzburg show. It was nice to meet them again and the show was good and intense. They really make those songs come alive on stage. An outstanding voice and way of singing. Beautiful, haunted indierock music, excellently performed and a pleasure to watch. And it’s more than the music, it’s also the casualness with which Aimee goes from talking about having a sex life after having been abused, to telling you about her socks stinking more than some crust band’s ones. In my eyes the great thing is that she manages to talk and sing about such things in a way that doesn’t say “i’m special because of that”. You know what I mean? Less Trent Reznor boo-hoo-hoo style and more Johnny Cash ‘I won’t back down’ style. Her way of sharing those stories is somehow empowering. It’s as if things like abuse or suicide get depriven of their power to turn you into a victim and instead shoved into perspective: as parts of our lives, painful for sure but something we share with a lot of people, and something we have to cope with and go on.
It felt weird when in the middle of the show it came to my mind that it might be the first time that I come to a show at the Cafe Cairo since Julian’s suicide and again it was a show that brought me on the verge of tears.

Then I spent a whole weekend without going out which might sound wrong but just between us: It felt good. My ‘weekend’ began on Monday when we put up The Death Set and Mochipet at the K4. Mochipet already arrived in the early afternoon and Dominik took him to Radio Z where Stefan interviewed him in his Castrop-Rauxel show. In the early evening a friend of Mochipet arrived who called himself Bloody Snowman, and as The Death Set hadn’t arrived yet we agreed on him playing too as it would get later than we had planned anyway and it seemed nicer to cover that time with a third live act. I didn’t enjoy his set too much but it was okay. Then I went outside smoking and listening to weird stories from Joseph’s (who drives the Death Set and whom to meet is always a grumpy pleasure although he doesn’t seem to like to hear that 😉 – … note to myself: less subordinate clauses, plz! – stories from Joseph’s life and missed Mochipet’s entrée which according to Tobi was pretty smashing. By the time I got in Mochi already was in the middle of a nice housy dance set that got a lot of people dancing. Of course there also were the purists who rather went outside to wait for the ‘real band’s show’ but you can’t satisfy everybody with a line up anyway. The only thing I missed a bit about Mochipet’s set was the humour of his older breakcore stuff, the play with pop quotations etc. but at the same time I think it’s cool that he moved on and didn’t get stuck repeating himself musically. He did a little breakcore encore and then The Death Set set up their stuff and Dominik helped them with the sound while Tobi and me played some music. They played on the floor and it was a fun and wild show. Between the songs they had lots of samples, mostly pop song excerpts ending in a scream that reminded me of one Nomeansno song. Not sure though. The live drumming added a nice bit of energy to the drum computer sounds. Ach, and it was a fun coincident that they played ‘Territorial Pissing’ by Nirvana, the same song that XBXRX had also played as an encore in the very same line up at the very same place in an equally noisy way and just a couple of weeks ago. After the show it took a while till people started dancing but we had a nice party going on when it turned twelve and it was Johnny’s birthday (the tinier of the Death Set’s guitar players). We sure celebrated it, lots of dancing and alcohol abuse happened, and they were drunk out of their minds when we finally drove home to massacre mansion.
Not healthy.

On the next day we went to a guitar shop cause Johnny’s was broken and he got himself a new one. I drove with them to Munich where they were to play that night at the Kafe Kult. I wanted to take that chance to visit Kerstin and other friends, and of course to see their show again. Just a couple of kilometers before Munich, just when I had kind of fallen asleep we got stopped by civil cops looking like Chuck Norris and some other tv copster. Although I’m not sure if “oh nice, where can i get one of those?” is the best line to come up with when they show you there badges they didn’t search us but ‘only’ checked the chassis number for ages. Sure – a czech van can’t be not stolen, can it? Tsk.
It was nice to hang out and chat along at the Kafe Kult and to finally have the pleasure of eating Tibor’s yummy vegan burger thingies again(I just realise that I got no clue what the english word for ‘Bratling’ is?!). David played support, under his Mondo Ray moniker, in his nice Speedo-reminiscent way and then The Death Set played another amazing set and there was confetti and dancing and lots of smiling faces. There are great pictures of the show at www.eartrumpet.net
Then it was time to say goodbye and we drove to Tobi and Kerstin’s place and Kerstin and me chatted through the night and now I’m back home and pitying myself over this shitty cold I’ve got.
Meow, I’m outta here.