30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 18: Pink Military, Do Animals Believe In God?

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days Pink Military, Do Animals Believe In God?

30 records in 30 days goes into its eighteenth round. degenerated man from the wild wild west….

Now we’re in the middle of my New Wave phase. As hard as I think, there is no story coming with this record. So very briefly, it’s simply good. Have a nice weekend.

Here are 4 samples:

Degenerated Man: https://youtu.be/ct2zJAoPqBE
Did you see her https://youtu.be/ymEcFiuiJU0
Wild West https://youtu.be/vGo3WQSkX9o
I Cry https://youtu.be/d1jHWtqURoI

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 17: Kissing the Pink, Naked.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days - Kissing the Pink, Naked

30 records in 30 days goes into its seventeenth round. Let’s take a look at the last film with some big men…

Along with the end of my time in the Bundeswehr (hurray!) and the beginning of my studies (hurray, hurray! The era of boredom and stupidity came to an end, finally I could use my brain again) I started a new musical chapter: New Wave in all possible varieties. Sometimes with a lot of synthesizer, sometimes with guitars, sometimes a mix of both. One of my favourites was this album.

Here are two samples:
Big Man Restless: https://youtu.be/aBqV8k6OevQ
Last Film: https://youtu.be/O0KXVgeGZCc

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 16: Human League, Reproduction.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days Human League Reproduction

30 records in 30 days enters its sixteenth round. Listen to the voice of buddha…

Yessss. That’s it. With this record I was finally drawn to the danceable side of electronic music. How many times I listened to it, I don’t know. Quite often, anyway. I was thinking for a long time about picking up the band’s second long-playing record (Travelogue). But no, if we’re already on debut albums, then we’ll stick to that. Just as Klaus Schulze was the spark that ignited synthesiser music, Human League was the spark that ignited danceable electronic music.

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 15: Fehlfarben, Glut und Asche.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days Fehlfarben, Glut und Asche

30 Records in 30 Days enters its fifteenth round. Beyond the door, agents are waiting in cinemas.

I thought long and hard about whether I should include this record in the 30 days. As I listened to the various songs, it occurred to me why I’ve been repressing it all these years. In contrast to the first two albums, „33 Tage in Ketten“ and „Monarchie und Alltag“, this album falls well short.

This was the turning point of Fehlfarben and from then on I didn’t really loved them anymore. I just liked them. In this respect, this LP is a mourning milestone, a swan song to the former musical genius of the band.

There is an nice story about Fehlfarben I would like to share. When I was at the love Island Festival in Bad Abbach in 2017, I met Tigerskin (a DJ), he is not much younger than I am. We had a great chat from the beginning and of course after a short time we dived into our musical past. During that conversation, a very magical moment arose. At the keyword Fehlfarben came – as if shot out of a pistol – “Paul ist tot” and I added “kein Freispiel drin”. I then threw a sentence from another song into the round “es liegt ein Grauschleier über der Stadt”, which Tigerskin supplemented with the following words: “den meine Mutter noch nicht weggewaschen hat”. We both still knew the lyrics by heart after so many years.

Wow, we both stood there – like little children in front of the Christmas tree – with shining eyes and dived deep into our youth after these four sentences and rejoiced in our common enthusiasm for Fehlfarben. I will never forget this moment, 2:00 in the night in Bad Abbach.

Back to “Glut und Asche”. It is not bad, but just a farewell to the old Fehlfarben.

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 14: Nichts, First Album.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days, Nichts Debütalbum

30 records in 30 days goes into the fourteenth round. “Lieber Gott ich wünsch mir so. Meine Stimme im Radio. In den Charts Nummer Vier. Alle sind so nett zu mir.”

These first lines from the first song on the A-side of this LP have accompanied me not only through my youth, but also into the present time. O. k., wicked people will say it’s punky Tralala, simply Neue Deutsche Welle. Some of the lyrics are hilarious, some even show some depth. In contrast to Alien Sex Fiend it’s easy-going German punk with a bit of infantile nonsense.

Probably that’s why I love this LP. Not only because it appeals to my childish mind, but also because there are so many memories associated with the songs. I’ve been searching for it for the last decade and a half, but it’s not available on CD or as a legal electronic download. In 2020 I bought it again, a real vinyl record after more than 30 years. Digitized at a friend’s house and cherished ever since.

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 13: Alien Sex Fiend, Acid Bath.

30 Platten in 30 Tagen / 30 records in 30 days. Alien Sex Fiend, Acid Bath

30 records in 30 days goes into the thirteenth round. A trip to the moon or goodbye and smoke your bones?

From the beginning ASF was a pretty weird band with a distinct morbid humor. But maybe they were just creative? Or simply crazy? In any case, they combined several different worlds: Punk, experimental electronic music styles, visual art (the album covers were usually designed by Nik Fiend himself) and a bizarre stage performance. And that’s exactly what impressed me from the beginning. The band was just so completely different and so creative-surreal, so anti-mainstream and the music so good, for me it is a milestone in music history, almost artistic avant-garde.

A commercial success on a broad scale was denied to them from the beginning, they were simply too extreme, too eccentric and also too destructive. How? Here is a typical example from the track “breakdown and cry”: “Breakdown is on it’s way. Breakdown in the month of May. Breakdown and cry, lay down and die. Goodbye, goodbye.” Not everyone’s sense of humor, but whatever. Perhaps it is not humor, perhaps it is a hidden message? A misunderstood poem?

I still celebrate ASF and have therefore successively acquired some CDs and many electronic downloads.

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 10: The Damned, the debut album.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days: Damned, Debut Album

30 records in 30 days goes into the tenth round. My fan club is waiting for new roses.

I can still remember very well the moment when I suddenly came across this wacky record cover in our tedious supermarket in the tedious record corner. After the exact study of the back side it was clear to me that I must have this great piece of music. Although with each record about 1/5 of my pocket money was gone, I took the risk and bought it without having listened to it.

Threw it on the record player at home, listened, marveled, and heralded a radical musical change. Before the purchase I my hair was long (dare not to laugh) and my favorite music genre was reggae. After that, pretty much everything changed: cut my hair short, unpacked my dad’s 50s shoes (pointy and ugly), and stole all my mom’s safety pins. Hooray, I was a punk! I was simply fascinated at that time by the possibility of producing something resembling music despite complete lack of musical skills.

Unfortunately, some of my records also fell victim to this radical turn, for example Bob Marley’s “Babylon by Bus”, Frank Zappa’s “Joe’s Garage” and “Live in New York”. As a real punk, of course, you didn’t have such records in your collection. A decade later I was deeply sorry, but in the meantime I own them again as CD or as download.

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 9: Simple Minds, Sister Feelings Call.

30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days: Simple Minds, Sister Feelings Call

30 Records in 30 Days enters its ninth round. Let’s cover big promises, big cities and big nations with a carpet of sound.

Let’s make it short, sweet and to the point again. After Klaus Schulze ignited the first spark with his spherical synthesizer sounds, I really caught fire with two bands, one of them being Simple Minds. I was thinking for a long time if I shouldn’t include “Sons and Fascination” in the 30 days, but decided to go for “Sister Feelings Call” after all. Why? This record, for some inexplicable reason, is inextricably linked to one of my favorite movies, Alien. In my opinion, the following two songs would have fit the atmosphere of the movie perfectly: “Theme for great cities” and “20th century promised land”.

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 8: Roxy Music, Greatest Hits.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days, Roxy Music Greatest Hits

30 records in 30 days goes into the eighth round. Let’s do the Strandsky.

Short, sweet, crisp, Roxy Music is just cool. The entry is made by Love is the Drug with a wonderful bass-line. With the bangers “All I want is you” Virginia Plain”, “Pyjamarama”, “Do the Strand”, “Mother of Pearl” the LP leads you through all the older tracks. A wonderful overview of the really exciting and interesting times of the band.

Stay tuned

30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 7: Alannah Myles, the debut album.

A Challenge: 30 Platten in 30 Tagen/30 records in 30 days, Allanah Miles, Debut Album

30 records in 30 days goes into the seventh round, with velvetish kisses and lots of love.

Here comes my musical coming out, part 4: Alannah Myles. Yes, every time when I look at this record, I am suprised that I like something like this. I probably bought the debut album in 1990 at the same time as I got my new stereo system (big amp, big speakers, crystal clear sound, mighty boom). I had my first decent apartment in Giesing and just about nine months working behind me.

My apartment heated up pretty quickly due to the large window areas and quickly became a 1.5-room-sauna in the summer. The rocking sound was a perfect match, embodying a vinyl-pressed, shimmering, leaden heat for me.

Black Velvet in particular reminds me of the days I spent sitting on my balcony, soaking wet, enjoying life at its best. Lazy and happy. My time at the university was over. I had already started to forget about my diploma thesis, exams and all the other stuff from my studies, and the doctoral thesis was still far away.

It was a wonderful time and the artist’s sound has been inseparably linked to the mood I just described. Funnily enough, I remembered this only last year during the summer, which led to the re-procurement of this debut album as a digital download relatively quickly.

Stay tuned