Tag: Music

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 6: Dire Straits, the debut album.

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

30 records in 30 days goes into the sixth round, with the swinging sultans from the wild west.

Here comes my musical coming-out, part 3: the debut album of Dire Straits. With this record, I travel way back in my youth. A friend of mine showed up with it one day and really wanted us to listen to it together right away. That’s how enthusiastic he was about it. It was also on my side a musical love at first sight and the record accompanied us both through many, very long nights, during which we talked about everything and anything. In the background this record was playing at least once a night. Very often more than once.

So it is always a musical memory of this phase of my youth. There is no favorite for me on the LP, it is simply excellent as a whole. In my opinion, the Dire Straits have in the following albums unfortunately no longer this unused freshness and musical nonchalance musically implement. Simply a unique piece of music.

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 5: Madonna’s first album

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

30 records in 30 days goes into the fifth round, with holydays on a lucky star.

Here comes my musical coming out, part 2. Yes, I like Madonna. When I started picking out the 30 records for my challenge last weekend, I knew that the artist’s debut album definitely belonged to this collection. Why? The album as a whole was a musical reminder of high school graduation for me. Besides, my best friend and I listened to it until we dropped.

So I was very surprised to find out that it was released a year after I graduated from high school. Crap, now I have been telling nonsense for more than 3 decades. I noticed this error when I tried to put the records in a chronological order last Saturday.

Since then, I’ve been desperately trying to figure out what was really my high school graduation anthem. I’ve been looking at all the charts and since then I’ve been getting on the nerves of my circle of friends with the question “can you still remember 1982 …”. Over the course of the last week, a hot candidate has emerged, Tainted Love by Soft Cell. But that track came out in 1981. Well, I guess I’ll be digging around for a while. I am grateful for any suggestions.

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 4: 4 by Foreigner

30 Tage, 30 Platten / 30 days, 30 vinyls, Tag 4: Foreigner 4

30 records in 30 days enters its fourth round, with heroes who urgently want to meet a woman in black.

Here comes my musical coming out, part 1. Yes, I have heard something like that once and I connect quite an exciting story with this LP. There are 2 real firecrackers on it (Juke Box Hero, Urgent), which I have heard together with my best friend at that time up and down. By chance we got shortly after it’s release into conversation with 2 classmates and to our surprise they were also Foreigner fans and loved these two tracks very much. A few hours later we had the idea to go to Munich together to see the group live. To our surprise we got tickets and on top of that a place to stay with acquaintances.

The concert was a great success and we partied long into the night. Therefore next day we were not at our best. But after one of us reminded the rest that we will write an art-exam in the late afternoon, the tiredness was blown away. We studied on the way back from Munich to the Allgäu, and we arrived in Füssen 10 minutes before class started, a bit stressed. I’ll never forget the moments when we threw the characteristics of different architectural styles at each other and the panic gradually increased during the drive home.

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30 records in 30 days from 2 collections from one household, day 3: Incantations by Mike Oldfield

30 Tage, 30 Platten / 30 days, 30 vinyls day 3: Mike Oldfield, Incantations

30 records in 30 days goes into the second round, this time with düdeldideldü, ping, dum, dum and düdeldideldü again.

Please do not misunderstand, this introduction is not meant negatively. I just wanted to summarize what is the essence of the entire LP. The double album is characterized by medieval-like melodies, richly varied instrumentation and a complex arrangement. Overwhelming.

The 4th studio album of musician Mike Oldfield belongs to my category ” records for meditation and contemplation “. A record for the quiet moments, as a complement to a good book or simply as a trigger to think and ponder. Later I bought Tubular Bells and Ommadawn. And still Mike Oldfield is for me the ideal musical complement for the quiet moments of life.

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