fortytwo

There is a theory which sta­tes that if ever any­body dis­co­vers exactly what the Uni­verse is for and why it is here, it will instantly disap­pear and be repla­ced by some­thing even more bizarre and inexplicable …

… There is ano­ther theory which sta­tes that this has alre­ady happened.

Dou­glas Adams, 1980

Right now you can find 761 images in my collec­tion. Some – about 21 – are not on my web­site so far but on my computer …

Joan Baez | The Band | Blood, Sweat & Tears | Paul But­ter­field Blues Band | Can­ned Heat | Joe Cocker | Coun­try Joe and the Fish | Cree­dence Cle­ar­wa­ter Revi­val | Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young | Gra­te­ful Dead | Arlo & music (and mud)">wei­ter »

Me on the ter­race, dres­sed per­fectly (as recom­men­ded) in the »Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy« – wait­ing for a ride on Towel Day 2011 – (hope­fully not a Vogon space ship) into space. The towel is hel­ping any­way during the day!

The Dou­glas Adams-Trilogy at Ama­zon …:

… and the audio­books at the iTu­nes Store
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Restau­rant at the End of the Uni­verse
Life, the Uni­verse, and Everything

see me | feel me | touch me | heal me

Is there a dou­ble LP (these were black discs you had to play on a machine cal­led »record player« and than, after 17–20 minu­tes you had to get up and play the other side – please don’t try this with a CD!), I heard more often than The Who — Tommy? Pro­bably not.

The rea­son is quite sim­ple: As descri­bed in the arti­cle Uncle Meat by Frank Zappa, we lear­ned and trans­la­ted the lyrics of that »rock opera« at school in our English les­sons from start to finish. That was some­thing spe­cial in the 70s! Unfor­t­u­na­tely I couldn’t watch The Who in their ori­gi­nal lin­eup (with Keith Moon on the drums, who died 1978). Alter­na­tively, I can recom­mend the album Live at Leeds and lis­ten to the drums (with head pho­nes). Keith Moon was one of the grea­test drum­mer of all times!

When I lived in Bos­ton in 1989, I had the oppor­tu­nity to watch the band live at the Fox­boro Sta­dium when they cele­bra­ted their 25^th anni­versary. In the middle of the con­cert Roger Dalt­rey (sin­ger and micro­phone »thro­wer«) lost his voice and Pete Town­s­hend (the wind­mill) and I believe so John Ent­wistle (who died in 2002) sang the rest of the con­cert. It was still very impres­siv, since — as always at con­certs in the U.S., ever­yone (and I mean ever­yone) sang along with the band. Inclu­ding me – thanks to my English les­sons at the MBO in Berlin-Spandau!

Tommy (Deluxe Edi­tion) — The Who at the iTu­nes Store
Tommy (Ori­gi­nal Sound­track Recor­ding) — Various Artists at the iTu­nes Store

Framed by two incredi­ble songs (Cin­na­mon Girl as the opening and Cow­girl In The Sand at the end of the album) Ever­y­body Knows This Is Nowhere is one of my favo­rite albums from Neil Young What you can do with these songs I could watch live in 2009 at the Cita­del Music Fes­ti­val at the Zita­delle Span­dau. Neil Young and the Crazy Horse cras­hed and ratt­led. It was a real plea­sure. If there is music to blow out your brain, this is it. The still young Young rocked with his band so that the time flew by. With Cow­girl In The Sand he showed alre­ady on this album, that grunge music was inven­ted in 1969 by Neil Young. Later he played live con­certs with Pearl Jam!

Ever­y­body Knows This Is Nowhere — Neil Young With Crazy Horse im iTu­nes Store

It’s the sum­mer of 1977 and I am with a fri­end in Milina, Greece in the sum­mer vaca­tion. We had plan­ned 6 weeks. In addi­tion to the con­struc­tion of the recently from his father bought foun­da­ti­ons (mis­ta­kenly cal­led »house«) we recei­ved news from Ger­many from time to time in the form of a maga­zine cal­led »Der Spie­gel« from a news­pa­per stand in Volos. One of these news was: The WDR (West­deut­scher Rund­funk) will show a live rock night from the Gruga Hall in Essen, Ger­many on July 23^rd / 24^th 1977. Par­ti­ci­pa­ting: Little Feat, Roger McGuinn (Ex-front man of The Byrds) and Rory Gal­lag­her, »Mr. Taste«!
We (two young adults and a Giant Schnau­zer named Pud­ding) took the next train (!!!) and went back in a three days trip to (West) Ber­lin to enjoy this con­cert with our (many) fri­ends.

Tscherr­männ Tele­wi­schen praut­lieh presents

(which is a »very« Ger­man pro­nun­cia­tion of Ger­man Tele­vi­sion proudly pres­ents) became a hou­se­hold word …

Rory Gal­lag­her died on June, 14^th 1995 in London.

Taste — Taste at the iTu­nes Store

Frank Zappa – Uncle Meat was not my first encoun­ter with Zappa. That came years later, in 1974 with the dou­ble live album Roxy & Else­where, which a for­mer class­mate recom­men­ded to me. My English was not good enough to under­stand ever­y­thing (actually I still do not under­stand ever­y­thing, which is with some lyrics pro­bably quite good …). Howe­ver, we had an English teacher, Ms. Krohn of the Mar­tin Buber-Oberschule (high school), which trans­la­ted »rock music« lyrics with us. Since that day I can memo­rize the lyrics of Tommy by The Who But the Zappa lyrics she could not trans­late as well. To this day I do not know if she could not, or — because of the quite adult texts — not wan­ted. Later two books of the publis­her zwei­tau­send­eins (Plas­tic People – Song­book und Zonx) hel­ped me trans­la­ting. I highly recom­mend the recently publis­hed (Ger­man) book Grand Zappa – Inter­na­tio­nale Frank Zappa Dis­co­logy.
By the way. Frank Zappa is the first and pro­bably only artist who »made it« with an instru­men­tal album in the U.S. on the index »Par­en­tal Advi­sory — Exp­li­cit Content«.

In April 1976 I was able to expe­ri­ence a legen­dary con­cert of Leo­nard Cohen at the Ber­lin Phil­har­mo­nie. I remem­ber a 2.5 hours (plus x) con­cert with an »infi­ni­tely« long final applause and the fol­lo­wing »never ending« ver­sion of Lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, come back to me! were the rest of the audi­ence was asked to come clo­ser to the stage. A large part of the con­cert songs were played from the now 42-year-old album Songs from a Room, like »Bird On A Wire« or »The Old Revo­lu­tion«.
Besi­des the music I expe­ri­en­ced ano­ther len­gendary moment when my bro­ther with his SLR (Praktica, Made in GDR) released the shut­ter but­ton exactly at the moment of com­plete silence at the Phil­har­mo­nie con­cert hall. I felt 2500 pairs of eyes tur­ned to us for the look: is-this-really-neccessairy? Who ever saw or bet­ter heard a Praktica knows what »sound« the trig­ge­ring mecha­nism has/had. It was a memo­rable eve­ning.
Songs from a Room — Leo­nard Cohen at the iTu­nes Store

After just three albums in three years, the English super­group Cream announ­ced their sepa­ra­tion. As it should be for real English gent­le­men, they waved Good­bye with an album named Good­bye. With three live and just as many stu­dio tracks the band had their super sta­tus con­so­li­da­ted with no. 1 in the U.S. album charts and no. 2 in the UK. One of the three stu­dio songs — Badge — was writ­ten by Eric Clap­ton and George Harrison.

Why Cream was cele­bra­ted as the first ever super group, shows a list of their sup­porting live acts: Taste (with front man Rory Gal­lag­her), Yes und Deep Purple (!).

In 2005 Eric Clap­ton, Jack Bruce and Gin­ger Baker per­for­med a few sen­sa­tio­nal reunion con­certs in the Royal Albert Hall (Lon­don) and in the Madi­son Square Gar­den (New York).

Good­bye (Remas­te­red) — Cream at the iTu­nes Store

… appealed to me several years ago. The second album Spooky Two is con­side­red the mas­ter­piece of the Bri­tish rock band Spooky Tooth. The music speaks for its­elf. A key fac­tor for this was the unusual instru­men­ta­tion of the band with two key­boards (organ and piano), as for example, Pro­col Harum used. Nevert­he­l­ess, all the tracks from Spooky Two com­bi­ned cool free-style rock rhythms with a rela­xed pace – per­fect in my favo­rite song »Evil Woman«.
Spooky Two is avail­able as CD, not for down­load (just: The Best of Spooky Tooth). Or you just still own the LP … Youn­ger rea­ders can check out Google what this is.