I have finally watched the 5th season of Dexter and enjoyed it lots. Got me thinking though, at least for a moment, if it was cool to enjoy something with a vigilant law message so much. Especially as it’s basically about a man teaching a woman how to take revenge for a rape cause on her own she would fail. I find it a bit surprising as the series has its strong independent women but Dexter’s lovers somehow always get the cliche treatment if it comes to personality (& looks) shaping. At least she doesn’t get crazy at the end like the protagonist of ‘Ms. 45’. And this series is of course made to entertain on an easy level and not to spark discussion like, let’s say, ‘Extremities’.

The Birthmark and Lisa Freieck show was great. If you haven’t yet listened to it, I really recommend their album ‘Shaking Hands’, it’s online here.
It was good to have such a thouroughly friendly band (according to certain others ‘the nicest band ever! really: ever!’) as first overnight guests at massacre mansion in 2011 cause somehow it sets the tone for the year.

For the first time in my life I have some vague resolutions for the new year. Okay, not really because of the new year and some of them I’ve already started realising in 2010. One of them is setting up more shows for unknown but awesome bands again, even if no one else or only one more person in my concert group is backing me in this. Somehow the interest in those smaller bands has shrunk in my companions and last year I often was too lazy and it seemed too much work/time/responsibility for me as one person. Will change. There are too many great ones out there and it’s so good to do those shows based on mutual trust.

Tonight is the first example: Two bands I came across last year browsing through german DIY music spheres and whom I instantly liked. THE BLUESCREEN OF DEATH are a boy/girl electropunk band, noisy and screamy and wild, to capture the sound think of early Crystal Castles or think of Kap Bambino, but less commercial of course and of course doing their own thing – no copycats. The other band, LOVE ACADEMY, are one of the few bands to pass my personal “german lyrics suck in 90% of all bands” test which is a tough one and puts them in a league with Dackelblut, up-to-‘Flamingo’ Turbostaat and Trend. The latter also being musically close to them: fast punk with a touch of wave, or even NDW, played very tight and with cool hooklines.

I find it sad that there’s not really much of a scene for this kind of shows in Nürnberg at the moment as there’s far more excitement and fun going on than in having either the same local bands play every two months (which Nürnbergians seem to enjoy but bores the shit out of me), or sticking to one’s own scene – yes, I’m talking to you ‘political’ DIY scene! You have gotten – at least partly – as conservative and lame as back in the 80s/90s. And the kids seem to listen to strictly the same kind of music again. Except if it comes to parties – then dubstep is okay, too.  Oh my. No fun, my babe, no fun. Those hc/punk kids should be the ones to put up this show tonight, not me. I should be the one who goes there and gets drunk and stands in the corner smiling wisely and feeling a bit old. 🙂
I won’t even start criticising the hipster (indie) club kids cause I’m well aware that they still need to have a band mentioned in intro/spex/ipod-advertisement/melt festival line up before they go their show. Where’s your curiosity gone?! Is it all about safe investments instead of letting yourselves be surprised?

Resolution #2 is going a bit slower which might sound contradictory to #1 but I hope with a little more focussing I can make it happen. I want to – no, I need to take more time off again for making music and writing. It’s soothing. It’s existential. I feel incomplete without it. So this has to happen or I’ll implode mentally.

Resolution #3 is being more honest again. I miss my rants. I miss getting steam off and focussing on reasons why I find something bad/boring/sexist/whatever at the same time. I’ve never been the ‘everybody’s darling’ type but last year I’ve calmed down a bit. Makes me feel uncomfortable. Actually everyone is so — friendly and tolerant. Especially in the promoter/dj/etc scene. As if distinction and criticism were so dangerous and necessarily about hate. Ranting also is not backchatting. That’s what had gotten me a bit tired and less outspoken in the first place: Whenever I criticised a detail people were so quickly judging that I hated the whole thing and as if I hadn’t mentioned any reasons and arguments but they spread the word that eve hated or dissed xy. That’s never my point. Criticism can spark discussions. Rants can be so much more productive than keeping your mouth shut and make a polite compliment for stuff that makes you go all fizzy and sick inside for a reason. If we all do the same things and like everything everyone else does and no questioning is allowed for friendlinesses sake – it’s so boring and assimilating and definitely no good ground for a lively (sub)(socio)cultural scene. So don’t be surprised to see me more vexatious/honest/controversial again in 2011. If I haven’t unlearned it.
I love all y’all anyways. Except for you. And you’s a bit dubious, too.

Now I’m off to get the bands some catering and hope a few of you will turn up at the show. Or at the party after. Or both. Have a wonderful week-end.

PS.: Listen to more James Blake and Retox. It’s good for you. The latter is a new band with Justin Pearson playing with his The Locust/Holy Molar/Head Wound City band mate Gabe Serbian again, adding Michael Crain (The Festival Of Dead Deer). Sharp. Tight. “Anger is an energy” music. So good. They have a free EP to download on their website: www.retoxrules.com

Cat hidden from fireworks under bed – check. Headphones plugged in to build invisible wall between me & ‘the others’ celebrating the last day of public boozing on public transport – check. Music packed (both – songs to make the hair on the back of you neck stand up & songs to hopefully make you dance like a happy loony) – check. I’m j…ust one quick shower away from a classic fondue dinner with fwends.

Time to wish all y’all a happy new year! No matter if you party hard or party not at all – hope you are happy and safe and we will meet again.

Hugz & kixxous to all of you!

Sometimes booking bands can be a bit like a Beckett play. Sometimes I think that’s directly proportional to
factor a) how close to Berlin/London the booking person on the other end of the interwebwire lives
and
factor b) how high he/she rates on a hipster scala.
This specimen hits a ‘very’ on both a) and b).

Mid-December:

me: We’d love to put up a show with band xy but we only can do it on the 19th of January.

hipberlinbooker (a few days later): Hello, I can offer you the 16th.

me: Sorry, but we can’t do it on the 16th. Like I’ve said the 19th would be the only date left possible cause you’re already a bit late with booking a January tour.

hipberlinbooker: I’ll get back to you in a moment.

me (a couple of days later): So  – would the 19th be possible?

hipberlinbooker (a week later): Hello, the 16th would be free for Nuremberg! 🙂

me (giving it one more try, whispering Beckett’s “i can’t go on. i go on.” as a mantra in my mind): I’ve already written you three times that the 16th isn’t possible. Only the 19th would still work. So I take it that we can forget about this show?

hipberlinbooker (one more week later): No, what about the 16th? If you don’t mind that they play in Munich on the 15th you could have them on the 16th.

I give up.

i’m not in the mood for a proper analysis. these are just some simple impressions while watching it.

22 min. in:
first impression: so inception is about men doing things with men. american classic: man hero only in it for the family. doing it for the kids. women pop up as hostile (grandmother rejecting to talk to him on the phone) or things from the past covered in feelings of guilt (wife).

24min. in:
woohoo. been moaning to quickly. young female genius architect enters the scene. curious if she will be more than scenery.

30 min. in:
cool. she starts bending the blocks and streets into escher world. of course that’s forbidden cause it brings chaos into the neatly-structured bureaucratic dream world. meh.

49min. in:
roles are such: female is for the creative (dream architecture) and emotional (listening to leo’s problems) bits. male is for the decision-making and technical bits of what seems to become an ocean’s eleven coup in a dream world. and by now we know it’s for a good cause even if it’s illegal. no one wants monopolisation of energy blabla. how tame this movie is.

59min. in:
does it count  –  bechdel-test-wise  –  as ‘two women talking to each other’ if one of both is dead and just exists in a dream?

60min. in:
oh, i see, it doesn’t count anyway, as all they do is talking about ‘him’ and his problems.

1h09 min. in:
it wouldn’t be a male action movie if they can’t die but just wake up. so imagine extra facts and feed it to the audience. oh, and what could be worth than dying? going down into some christian limbo thingy.

1h17 min in:
boohooo – hero now is hated now by the rest of his crew for knowingly bringing them into danger so he has time on his own to pour his heart out to female protagonist. seems to be her main purpose in there by now.

1h29min in:
yay, they realised the movie needs a few joke:
a) the unavoidable funny ‘mine is bigger than yours’ weapon scene.
b) more misogyny:
one man: ‘we need a distraction’
the other: ‘i know a lovely lady i’ve used before’.
c) and one more: tricking the female protangonist into a kiss. oh, she’s such a naive little thing. *hahaha*
oh my. all three presented rather un-funny. and absolutely useless for the story. résumé: this film surely has a humour deficit and a male cliche overdose.

1h36 min in:
next scene with the woman who – let’s not forget that – was introduced to us as a genius architect, shows of course her as the one of the bunch who gets confused by all the dream levels and has to ask who’s subsconscious they’re about to enter. all in all this film sinks deeper into bland action movie standards. instead of using all the cool options the world of dreams gives you it doesn’t go further than using a few time / story twists and a few gravity gimmicks for classic action scenes.

2h05 min in:
oh my, leo’s dead wife didn’t even come up with her idea on her own. he planted it in her head. how dumb of her. how dominant of him.

end:
oh my. disappointed. those guys in whose dreams we glimpsed have the tamest lamest subconscious minds ever. it is an entertaining movie but doesn’t make much of it’s opportunities. well-structured dreams are a bit boring. also it’s the most a-sexual and humourless movie i’ve seen in a while. maybe cronenberg would have done this better.

All you lonely hearted, family-less lovelies, grinches, christmas ignorers and you, too, you post-family-christmas-clubbers: Tomorrow Stefan Wagner and me will dj for you at the Zentralcafé (Künstlerhaus / K4, Nürnberg). Entry is free. We start at 11. We will play electro / guitar / pop and the inbetweens.

Tonight you can hear a two hour eve massacre mix at RADIO Z Nachtclub. At midnight. German midnight. UTC+1.
Local terrestrials in Nürnberg can listen on those old school radio machines on 95.8 mHz.
Extraterrestrials anywhere can listen to the livestream here: http://radio-z.net/Radio-Z.m3u
And on this livestream you can hear the show again tomorrow at noon. Yowsa!

EDIT: Nowsa! <3 radio z but to hell with the people put the wrong mixes on. It wasn’t mine that was aired. Grrrrrrrr!

It will be a mix of tracks I enjoyed a lot in 2010, songs from bands whose live shows were great and touched me in 2010 and a few songs from artists I’m happy to help putting up shows for in 2011. I started the mix trying to compile some kind of year’s end / best list thing but found there was far too much good music in 2010 to squeeze into a 2 hr mix so it’s just a tiny glimpse into what was ‘2010 in music’ to me. To me it was a very cool year for pop  –   from disco pop over chillwave sweetness to twee indie (regular indie rock got shockingly boring and please stop all those springsteen-alike-revivalries – uarrrghs)  –  and it was a very good year for bass music, from post funk ‘wonky’ whatever to cool post dubstep house influenced artists. James Blake’s album will be next year’s album of the year. It also was a good year for queer music, or even better: more and more openly queer artists are having a wider audience, to name but a few: Teengirl Fantasy, Des Ark, Abe Vigoda, Men, aMinus, Xiu Xiu, Salem, Owen Pallett, Hunx & His Punx… And I hope the whole witch house thing doesn’t die a quick hipster death but grows into something bigger. The potential is there. Experimental music was lively too, and from the few glimpses on it that I get, it seems to have become more diverse again. I’m thankful that there’s more than drones and postkrautfreestyle boredom again. The only thing I have found to become very rare: Angry fast twisted guitar music, edgy and ballsy/titsy, and with something to say and doing so in witty AND heartfelt ways. If you think I missed out on bands who make this kind of music please tell me! I miss my portion of grindviolencechaosheartcore! Please, youth, take back emo and screamo from those manga-crossover-metal-pop-disasters if you can’t find new ways of doing it. I want a screamochaoscore revival done only be all female and queer guys bands. That would be the coolest thing ever.

Tracklist to the mix will be posted tonight after the show.

To keep you updated in this blog, too: I’m glad to write reviews again and have the pleasure to do so for Culturedeluxe, a UK online music zine.
So far I’ve written about:
Parenthetical Girls – Privilege Pt. II
Salem – King Night
Wild Nothing – Golden Haze
Eskmo – Eskmo

I’ve also started doing radio again: Once a month for Nachtclub on Radio Z, a two hour music show. No spoken word part, the challenge for me is to compile and mix a great two hours of music journey. Mostly Nachtclub is with electronic dance music djs, I’d like to take it as a chance to broaden this up a bit and roam around multiple genres.

What’s keeping me so busy that I haven’t got to blogging or making new music for so long, I wonder. I’ve gotten a bit tired of the bootleg mix stuff as it often is associated with a kind of cheap mainstream club style of partying that I don’t like. I don’t say I will never do any mash ups again but lately I haven’t felt the urge to make some. My work for the musikverein, the promoter collective I’m part of has definitely gotten busier. For a while we had only 5-8 events a month. This Ocotber had us busy with 13 and this November we are involved with 15 events. More events does not only mean more entertainment and fun but also more problems and discussions to solve them. I don’t complain cause I mostly enjoy this but I find myself more often unable to get creative or in writing mood after soandsomany hours of dealing with musikverein related things. I’m more often feeling drenched. Maybe because it’s the kind of work that combines so much different work: it includes as much braindead routine work as it demands creative solutions for problems and of course: the social part, the friends you work with, and not to forget: the fun and community part of enjoying the show and (hopefully) see some happy faces in the audience. I love it all and it’s pretty easy to get lost in this kind of work but when I’m wrecked I’m wrecked on all levels. That means I rather spend my spare time relaxing passively these days: watching series, reading through news sites & blogs & facebook/twitter, sometimes getting all worked up about something but not finding the energy to start focussing on it and getting it on a proper level of action. Hence more ‘going to take a hot bath now’ and ‘cooking lentilsoup now’ tweets than brainy bonmots from me.
I’m aware that’s the life that many people are happy with but I feel a bit uneasy with it cause I feel like wasting my time when I only use my spare time to relax and be all unproductive instead of using it for making music and writing etc. Another thing I caught myself with: I’m getting increasingly antisocial. Not sure if this should worry me or if it’s just a healthy reaction to be surrounded by crowds of people on other nights. More than ever I got a problem with people who ooze a certain ‘need to be liked by everyone’ air. And as flattering as it sometimes might be: There’s a thin line between well-deserved compliments and blind ‘scene status’ props. The first are flattering and often give me more power to put into whatever project I’m busy with, the second simply make me feel embarassed for the persons who come up with them. Oh my. Fuck social politics. More honesty. More content. Less quantity mistaken for quality.  Slow down. More deepness. That’s what I long for these days. Not so sure if I’ll be able to satisfy myself.

“You wanted a hit…” j.murphy

You gotta love those ‘musician’ workshops.

Dear lemmings with “when will i will be famous?!” sparks in your cute young eyes, let us, the league of gentle(wo?)men who didn’t manage to ‘make it big’ in the music bizness show you how to become a successful band.

Don’t forget to pay us in advance.

Lesson 1: Forget about fun and passion. Being in a band is about being professional and about planning and about optimised marketing. We’ll teach you GbR instead of DIY.

Lesson 2: Grow up and forget about creative playfulness and creative courage. We’ll teach you how important it is to be well-trained by music lessons and how to reproduce market expectation in your songwriting and promotion.

Lesson 3: Promotion! It’s all about promotion and image and joining competitions and about viral youtube clips. And about guest lists for important ‘scene’ people whose attendance at your shows will automatically multiply the number of your audience and bizness people. And don’t forget promotion! Music is about how you sell it, not about how it sounds. Have we mentioned how important promotion is?

Lesson 4: Let us show you all about how to have the best sound on a huge festival stage. (No, this lesson is not downgradable to the tiny stages with cheap PAs that you are going to play IRL, so shut up.)

Lesson 5: Forget about sharing. All potential listeners are potential thieves. Music needs to be locked up in bureaucracy and controlled. How else could the GEMA jobs and ours survive?

Lesson 6: Promoters are your enemy. Especially the DIY ones, who don’t put up shows professionally (= for money) but only in their spare time (=for fun). There’s a worldwide shady DIY network out there that is run by cons and punx who only want to set up shows cause they like bands’ music and want to help them out. Truth is: This is higly unprofessional and they will not agree to pay you a 500€ guarantee for a show but only give you ‘what’s left after their expenses’ and they will not pay hotel rooms for you but make you stay at their messy own homes while they secretly make thousands of bucks from the 10 people who came and payed to see you play.

(should be continued. feel free to do so.).

(Dedicated to whoever carelessly said they miss the massacre rants. 🙂 )

Reposting this in the face of the anti-gay riots in Serbia.

Things like these riots made me mix this track about the cocksucking Jew from Galilee, his blinded-by-the-light-Christian haters, about being fed up, and claiming freedom as TEAM DRESCH sing it:
“Don’t tell us we only care about the dykes and fags
Don’t try and find fake reasons to hate us
Some people get it, lots more people need it
Freedom is freedom or it’s all for nothing.”

Made it one or two years ago and things clearly aren’t getting better.

I’ve been having a sweet holiday at the Baltic Sea, a gift from friends whom I’d like to thank once more cause it really was a wonderfully relaxing time. I loved the sea!
Here’s some pictures.

“I’m oh so glad they sent me away,
To have a little holiday …
Lying on the beach with my back burned rare,
The salt gets in my blisters and the sand gets in my hair…
Oh, I’m so glad they sent me away,
To have a little holiday” THE KINKS

the bit of the beach i was most at. first day with calm crystal clear water, then it got a bit windy and therefore more waves but not so clear anymore. the wind is so sweet and soothing and sooo deadly dangerous for sunburns. no crashing aeroplanes. no oil leakage.

no clue what grows here. canola? raps?
i told myself ‘at leat it’s no corn’.
i mean, me alone in a bungalow in the midst of nowhere. of course when the first night broke i instantly recalled any nature related scare film i’ve ever watched, from ‘children of the corn’ to the holiday camp of ‘friday the 13th’.

bridge, innit. over not-so-troubled fjord waters.

the fjord. pretty good job, slartibartfast.

bike way to the beach. on one day i drove this route home through a storm. got me wondering about possible bicyclemetal/lightning-interactions. i only got rain/clothes/skin/wet-to-the-bone interactions though.

nature, innit.

this looks
a) idyllic
b) like the perfect location for a horror flick
c) like the inspiration for a Jelinek hate tirade against rural patriarchal family structures.

lifeguards didn’t look like in baywatch. thank godorwhomever.

this is ‘the other’ beach by the way. felt a bit ‘lost’ after watching the final season on my first days there. (excellent final season except for the poor ending.)

‘my’ beach again. hours and hours of reading and dozing and floundering about in the water.

♥
WANT.

a ten minute walk from the bungalow i lived in.
in other words: mo’ nature.

lots of nature even. whole landscapes full of it.

again: what do you see in this picture?
a) an utterly pittoresque and peaceful place to live?
or
b) the potential crime scene of an absolutely comprehensible wife-runs-amok-and-kills-whole-family drama?

bike route again. sweaty biznis but fun.

view from the south window of my flat. the real flowers in the middle can’t quite match the plastic flower pots to the right and left. my renter obviously had a mild obsession with plastic flower pots (6), thermometers (5) and clocks (6).

view to the north from me flat. behind the hill you can see our tripod rulers (unsere dreibeinigen Herrscher) coming.