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Eyjafjallajökull

Friday, April 16th, 2010

OK, so everybody is talking about Eyjafjallajökull at the moment, the volcano in Iceland that causes so much trouble for all of Europe. And honestly: I’m laughing my head off about it. I know that’s not fair, I know I would be SO annoyed if it would affect me in any way – but it does not, and it’s just crazy to see how much we all depend on flight traffic.

But let’s back up. I first read about the eruption on Twitter on Wednesday evening, when some Norwegian posted something about flights not going because of a volcano in Iceland. Huh, what?!? Checked aftenposten.no – oj, yeah, now that looks bad! Will it affect Germany as well? spiegel.de and tagesschau.de didn’t have anything. Or well, yes, spiegel.de did – a month old article about the first eruption, duuh. news.google.de gave me some Austrian and Swiss news sites that were at least saying that “scientists suspect there might have been an eruption”. Well, okay. I guess Norwegian online news are just faster than German. (Which is no surprise though, I have experienced that before – I would never think about checking the internet for what has happened when walking by some crime scene in Oslo. Norwegians do. And it works…)

OK, so I guess I was one of the first Germans to hear about the eruption. And I felt glad that I hadn’t planned on traveling to Norway this weekend – I had considered it because of the Kaizers Orchestra laiv and because I haven’t been there for so long (more than two months now!!!1), but decided not to go. Puuuh…

The next morning, it was actually on the radio. We discussed it during lunch – with people laughing at me because I doubted the weather would really be so nice this weekend, with all the ashes in the air… At that time, I was still convinced the airports down in the south wouldn’t be closed, but I expected we’d get at least some ashes, like we get Sahara sand in summer. Turned out the airports in northern Germany were closed the same day, and the ones in the south on Friday morning…

As I wasn’t traveling, I had time to keep track of those who were trying to travel. In Norway, they started replacing flights by busses – funny idea, uhem. *g* The Norwegian band Katzenjammer posted they wouldn’t be able to make it to Bremen the next day – because the ferries were fully booked. (That means they weren’t trying ALL that hard though – they could have driven via Copenhagen, that would have been feasible. ;))
And on Twitter, it was really crazy following the WWE wrestlers who are currently on a tour through Europe – for once, they are now stuck in Europe, which is probably not the best feeling you can have after two weeks of constant touring… And then, they had to get to their next shows. Which meant Hanover-Zurich for one part (which isn’t much of a problem), and Lille-Belfast for the other part. Uhm. France to Ireland WITHOUT flights? No way. But yes, obviously there was a way (bus-ferry-bus-ferry-bus *g*), they made it to Belfast in time. To quote from Twitter: “sleeps overrated anyway”. Hell yeah, that’s dedication… (OK, dedication from promoter’s side, I assume. *g*)

Anyway, today the news continued. A colleague who’s traveling to China (yesterday: “When are you flying?” – “Saturday.” today: “You are flying tomorrow?” – “I have no clue…” *lol*), the state funeral in Poland where the guests can’t come, the thought that Metallica might be stuck in Norway, Norwegian soccer teams that have to spend hours on the bus (and they might not make it anyway because of… guess what… snow falls! *rofl*), Merkel being rerouted to Portugal (hey, it’s only a thirty-some hours drive to Berlin from there!). I know it’s not funny, but somehow it is. Never thought about how much we depend on flight traffic…

(Oh, and the fact that you can do millions of stupid word plays around ash or aske doesn’t make it less funny. Not at all. *lol*
At least as long as you’re not affected, I know…)

Update: Obviously, WWE is now trying to somehow get their wrestlers out of Europe in time. By carting them from Zurich to Madrid (!!), probably hoping that Madrid airport will still be open when they get there… 😮
Wait, are we being evacuated here and nobody told me?
(Yes, still joking, but I AM getting a bit sarcastic…)

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Do the Bartman?!

Friday, February 19th, 2010

He he… I just (re-)discovered last.fm radio. When I last used it, you could play songs according to tags or musical styles, or put some songs on a playlist (which I never really figured out how to use). Now, you can play radio from your own “library” – thus songs that you have scrobbled before.

Or wait, maybe I should back up a bit – “to scrobble” means that you play the songs on your PC and submit the info about the songs to last.fm. This information is then stored, there’s all kinds of stats, and everything is presented on your last.fm profile. So this means that you own all the songs that you scrobble (or at least have them on your computer).

So now you can play all the songs that you scrobbled on last.fm as well on your “personal radio”, without access to your local computer. Cool! OK, actually I have no clue how they actually GET all the songs – I guess they must have some deal with a service like iTunes or Spotify or something, ’cause it seems to me they have EVERYTHING, Skambankt, Busters, Yakuzi – not quite main stream, any of them… *g* But I don’t really need to care, I guess, because I DO own all the music I am playing there.

Lately, I’ve become a huge fan of Opera Unite – because I just need to leave my computer turned on, and then I can listen to all my music wherever I am. Just like with last.fm, as I now found out! However, there’s a big difference: With Opera Unite, _I_ choose what songs are played. Which also means that I need to decide what I want to listen to. With last.fm, I don’t have a choice (except the skip button, of course). But this also means that I go on a wild ride through my music library and discover bands and songs that I haven’t listened to for ages.

Like the Simpsons with Do the Bartman. What the hell…?! *rofl*

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They have made a new album!

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Yes, Disco Ensemble have made a new album – and I can’t wait! The single sounds promising, and again they are doing a lot of great promotion activities around the new album… like the studio diary, of course, and a weekly competition on Twitter! =:-D

But what I still find really really strange is…

It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the best-dressed band in the world:

Kaizers Orchestra

And at the same time, I’m obviously also fan of the by far worst-dressed band in the world…:

Disco Ensemble

But hey – it’s all about the music anyway! *g*

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The best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be!

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Yep, I admit: I was a HUGE pro wrestling fan when I was a kid. I was watching everything (well, everything there was on German TV, which wasn’t a lot), I kept track of all storylines, I wrote down who fought whom at which show, hell, I actually learned English through the interviews (which were shown with subtitles at that time and not dubbed).

That was ten, fifteen years ago. Maybe even more? I don’t remember… I stopped watching long ago, when it became impossible to follow the storylines on German TV. Just reading the news wasn’t good enough to keep me interested.

Now, a while ago, I don’t remember what was the trigger, I started googling a bit. Ended up on Wikipedia, reading all about what Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels had been up to in the mean time, and I stumbled about the “Montreal screwcase”. Huh? Never heard of that. Read through all the explanation and started wondering whether I had seen that and couldn’t figure out. 1997? Yeah, for sure I was still watching WWF back then! But Bret Hart left WWF to join WCW?!? Guess I erased that from my memory (yes, I was always a strong supporter of WWF and hated WCW – which left me kinda confused when everybody suddenly started misspelling WWF as WWE *g*).

While googling, I found out that Bret Hart has an autobiography out. Put it on my wishlist to order it some time, and got it for Christmas now. So right now I just started reading it – not very far into it yet though. I would love to spend hours reading, but I just don’t have the time. And actually, I’m struggling a bit with the jargon English, which surprised me – but I’m getting into it, slowly. 😉

And today I suddenly came up with the idea that YouTube might have some clips of Bret Hart. Well, sorry, I know that must be obvious to today’s kids, but hey: For me, WWF was something that you got to see on Tele 5 late at night and taped on VCR! WWF and YouTube just don’t fit together!

But oh yes, they do, and of course there’s LOTS of videos up there. Which means I won’t have much time for reading today either. 😉 But then, the first thing I found was Bret Hart making his return in WWE at the beginning of the month! 😮 And talking about the Montreal screwjob – which I still couldn’t place. And then there was a short “summary” clip of Bret’s career, of course containing that match. And YES, of course I have seen that! “Did you or did you not screw Bret Hart?” – “I did not have sex with that woman!” … Uh, wrong scene, but just as deeply burned into my memory. 😉

So yes, I have seen the “Montreal screwjob”. But: I absolutely bought it as part of the storyline! I never suspected this to be real. And that’s why it was just one more story for me, and nothing special…

Guess there will be a lot of surprises for me in Bret’s book. And it’s cool to know that I can probably go back and watch the respective matches again on YouTube. Even though I was already planning to look for my box of old payperview-recordings at my room back home at my parents’. *lol* Guess I gotta do that anyway though… Bret Hart, The Heartbreak Kid, Diesel, Razor Ramon, the Macho Man… oh, the memories! 😀

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Concert summary 2009

Monday, December 28th, 2009

2009 is almost over, and it’s time to look back at the concerts of the year! Quite a lot again, so I won’t mention all of them but just remember the highlights and “lowlights”. Much more highlights than lowlights, fortunately! ... read on!

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04/05.09.2009 Preview Verket-Festival (Mo i Rana)

Monday, August 24th, 2009

July 2009. I just returned from my vacation in Norway – including an absolutely amazing concert of Kaizers Orchestra at Månefestivalen in Fredrikstad. And coming back home from vacation is always bad – especially, if you don’t have another vacation planned, no concert trip, nothing. Just work to look forward to…

This and the fact that I assume Kaizers will take another break now made me think – there must be some other festival show I can see this summer, right? So I checked the dates. Almost all shows were in the next two, three weeks. Hrmpf. I mean, I have a great job and can take days off whenever I like most of the time. But then, I DO have to work once in a while inbetween my trips. And I can’t come home from vacation and go back to Norway the next week, that feels stupid.

I checked the dates again. Hmm, this Verket festival at the beginning of September? That would be the perfect time. I can allow myself another weekend trip then, can’t I? And most probably it’s gonna be the last show before the break, another reason to go there. I thought I remembered that I had considered this show before but dismissed the thought before it could really settle. Why was that? And by the way, where in Norway is Mo i Rana?

A few minutes and a short visit to Google Maps later the memory of why I had dismissed the thought was back, and somehow the date didn’t seem quite that perfect anymore…

But hey, I don’t call myself Konzertjunkie for nothing! There’s trains to Bodø, right? So it’s gonna be affordable. Hey, and they can’t take much more than… uh, 16 hours from Oslo. *cough* OK, maybe flying is a better alternative. Hey, and not even that expensive!

To cut it short: Three days later I had found a pretty good flight connection that would get me to Bodø Friday afternoon and back to Germany by Monday afternoon. And even affordable! AND: I had convinced a friend to come along! 🙂 (Well, if you can call “Festival? Kaizers? YES of course, I’m almost done booking, when was that again???” convincing… *lol*)

So, now I’m going up to Mo i Rana to see Kaizers play at Verketfestival. And because you can’t travel that far just to see one band, I’m going to Bodø Friday, gonna meet my friend there, we’ll hire a car to go down to Mo i Rana, might catch (hopefully!) a bit of the festival on Friday night already, have a nice day visiting the area on Saturday, a GREAT evening with even better music and concerts, and then we’ll have the whole Sunday to drive back to Bodø and see a bit of Nordlandet. Jippie, I am SO looking forward!

Oh, but this was actually supposed to be about the festival a bit here as well… 😉
So, Verket will take place for the first time this year, so it’s gonna be really interesting. In general, I have the feeling that (especially small) festivals in Norway are organized much better than in Germany. But then, for the first time? We’ll see how that works out. It won’t be perfect, probably, but then it is gonna be small, which is something that I love. 🙂
And the program got a lot to offer: On Friday, it’s gonna be Katzenjammer (who we will miss, most probably :(), Marit Larsen, CC Cowboys, and Paperboys. And on Saturday I guess I’ll just HAVE to check out Alexander Rybak, then Hjaltalin from Iceland will be there (I saw them at Slottsfjell and liked them pretty good), and as headliners The September When and Kaizers. What else could you wish for? 🙂

So, I can’t wait! I have to admit though that it does feel a bit strange to go up to the arctic circle for a festival just because Kaizers play there – especially now, since it’s been confirmed that they will play a free festival close to Oslo the same weekend – but hey, we are gonna have so much more fun up there! *g*

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Var dette alt?

Monday, August 17th, 2009

I’ve seen lots of Kaizers concerts. Good ones, bad ones, festival shows, club shows, you name it. Lately, the concerts have changed… not to the worse (not at all!), but they are somehow different.

It started with the “b-sides tour”, the tour where Kaizers played lots of songs they normally don’t play. What did I expect before that tour? Honestly: “Yeah sure, they say that every time, and then they play the same stuff as always. Just like they always say they’ll change the setlist every day, and in the end, they never change anything.”

Then I heard about the setlist from the first concert and couldn’t believe it. But hey: “Yeah, okay, first concert. They’ll change the setlist, latest when they come to Europe.” Yes, of course they did. But only slightly! And I would have bet all my money on a “boring” setlist, at least in Europe.

Then, out of nothing, they suddenly announced the Våre Demoner album and the corresponding club shows. Something completely different. A triumphal tour, I have to say – it was just perfect. And 100% different from every other Kaizers show I’d seen so far!

Then the concert together with Farmers Market. Now there’s another cooperation with Nephew. Geir is doing documentaries about Kaizers. They announced a theater play, containing their music.

The festival shows this year are fantastic. I’ve only seen one up to now, but that was one of their best festival shows I’ve seen. And from what I read, the other festival shows are at the same level – which is something that is fairly unusual for Kaizers, to be honest. They tend to have a few great concerts and then a bad one. That’s just the way it is – or the way it used to be, at least.

So, why am I writing all that? Well, to me it seems that at the moment, Kaizers try really hard to NOT do the usual stuff. To do concerts differently, to play different songs, to change songs. Or in other words, to not get bored by what they are doing.

And yes, that’s really what I feel they are doing: Trying to hold on, trying to keep things interesting. Or maybe even to make them interesting again. I have a kind of feeling that they are burned out. That they can’t go on the way they used to. That they either have to do something different or call it a day and stop. No more Kaizers.

And honestly, this summer, this triumphal Våre Demoner tour followed by the fantastic festival shows, would be just the time to quit. ‘Cause you should quit while you’re ahead, right? And I doubt it can go up much higher. They are at their best, absolutely.

So yes, I admit, I am a bit afraid Kaizers will be history soon. I hope they won’t, I hope they can find a way to go on, to have fun in what they are doing, and I really don’t want them to quit.
But if they do, I won’t be one of the people screaming “you can’t do that to us”. Because it’s not about us, the fans, but about the band. And we have the memories. And the music. Of a fantastic band.

And this video sums it all up – another hint? Hopefully not…

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Kaizers go theater

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Hmm… OK, so Kaizers will do a theater play now. Based on their lyrics, based on their text universe.

I don’t know. Somehow, I feel bad about that. Not so much because I think this might “be the end” (but that deserves another entry) – because hey, if that’s what they choose, that’s what they choose, and it’s just a fact to deal with, not anything to be sad about. But because I think it doesn’t do them justice.

I know that for lots of people, and even for a lot of fans (which I can’t really understand, honestly), Kaizers is their “mafia universe”. Well, sure, that is part of Kaizers. You can’t listen to the first albums without delving into the Kaizers universe. But is that really all? Can you reduce Kaizers to mafia, to the dark and mysterious, to Resistansen? No, I don’t think so. It’s just lyrics, nothing more. Music needs lyrics, so you have to come up with something, whatever it might be. For Kaizers, it was the underground universe, at least in the beginning. So yes, this milieu is related to Kaizers in my opinion as well. But it’s NOT what makes Kaizers.

Kaizers are so much more. I really can’t see them reduced to just this mafia thingy. And I fear that this is just what will happen. And they push it themselves, that’s what I don’t really get. But well, we’ll see – I’m sure it’s gonna be a fun play, no question about it. I’ll love it. It will be Kaizers. But it will never be all that Kaizers stand for, at least not for me. And I find it really sad that lots of people see Kaizers in this context, and in this context only. And no, I’m not talking about the people who hardly know Kaizers, but mostly about the fans. The fans that didn’t like Maskineri because it didn’t have a theme. (Of course it’s fine to not like Maskineri, but this reason is pretty lame…) The guys who judged competition entries and rejected my text adventure because it didn’t have a Kaizers atmosphere (meant was: a mafia atmosphere… ’cause there was a Kaizers atmosphere, but you would have to look at it for more than two minutes to find it…). The people that insist on gas masks and oil barrels on stage.

I always had the feeling Kaizers wanted to get away from that image. And now they turn around, 180°, and focus on the image they wanted to get rid of. Now, anybody care to explain that to me?

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Alte Blogeinträge

Friday, August 14th, 2009

My old blog entries are available on http://my.opera.com/konzertjunkie.

I plan to move them here, but I need to find out first how I can do that at least partly automatically.

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