This piece is not about The B-52s. It’s not even about Ricky Wilson. For those who don’t know, Ricky Wilson was the original guitar player of the B-52s. He died from AIDS in 1985, at the age of 32. I love the B-52s. I always had a soft spot for them. Their ridiculous mix of…
Beyond C: Terry Riley’s Alternative Timeline
I cannot imagine Terry Riley to be an aggressive man, I cannot imagine him to have strong and absolute principles of what music should be, what good music should sound like and what separates music as art from music as entertainment. I cannot imagine Terry Riley having an argument with Beyoncé after watching one of…
Lost in Music
I’m lost in music… I have so many great ideas of things to write about. In no particular order: Hüsker Dü’s drummer Grant Hart and other unsung heroes of alternative music, Terry Hall, Shane McGowan, Sinead O’Connor and other artists with uncompromising personalities and largely unseen or unaddressed histories of abuse, the great records I…
Dresden, 1985 (incomplete and fragmented reconstruction)
It feels like the morning after. In beautiful but pale late summer sunshine I stare at the whisky-ginger ale in front of me, freshly refilled, then at Henry on the other side of the small round aluminium table, then across the boulevard at people hurrying for lunch, or back to the office again, I don’t…
Dynamic Appraisal of Oasis
Oasis is and never was the greatest band in the world. Not even the greatest Rock band. Right now, with the big reunion tour hanging over UK and Ireland, you could, with only a hint of nastiness, call them the greatest Rock ´n Roll swindle, but face it, they´re on the same level as The…
Love Letter to Small Venues
The smell of sweat. The tall guy standing right in front of me. Someone singing into my ear. The life-size proportions of the singer on stage. No dancers. No choreography. No influencers. No parallel streaming on Internet. Buying my ticket at the venue itself. Old people, young people, people too old to be here, people…
Adolf´s Autobahn
I´m sitting next to Florian Schneider, who is driving an electric version of the classic Volkswagen Beetle. ´I´ve kept the original sound, even though it´s artificial, there is no engine producing it´. He is visibly excited and can barely keep his eyes on the road. ´In a way it doesn´t even have an engine. It…
Fatal distraction
The stage set-up and your elevated kit makes you the centerpiece, the focal point of today’s gig, the visual point of convergence, where all energy comes together. Is it on purpose, did the band decide to become miniscule by comparison, minions in a show designed around a massive drumkit and, by extension, you the drummer?…
Open letter to Bruce Springsteen
Dear Bruce, Some songs deserve to be forgotten, erased from history never to be mentioned again. Some songs warrant complete eradication and deafening silence in the aftermath. You have one, and right now that puts you in the same league as Sting. Do you really want to be talked about in the same breath (pun…
Darkness on the edge of town
I missed the turn and now I’m lying in the grass next to a lamppost that looks equally deserted. It’s here that I compose my first poem. Don’t know how long it took me, relativity theory has its own reality in a state of severe inebriation. But even so, cycling is so much of an…
