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No guts

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

All of Europe is under the influence of Eyjafjallajökull. Or rather its ashes, which constitute a danger for air traffic.

All European countries came up with clear regulations: either air traffic is allowed at a certain point in time, or it is not allowed.

Germany didn’t manage that. In Germany, air traffic is still banned. Except if the pilots fly “on sight” and have special permissions. What does that mean? It means that the pilot has the whole responsibility for the flight. Not the airline, not the air traffic control, not the government. The pilot. Who is forced by his company to fly, and who will be condemned by everybody if anything happens.

Obviously it really isn’t possible to say whether the ashes in the air are dangerous and whether they are really a risk for air traffic or not. And it’s obviously very hard to determine their concentration. That is fine. It’s a new situation, how should anybody know how to deal with it?

But: We have to deal with it in one way or the other. And we in this case is not the pilot. We is not the airline. We is the officials in charge. But obviously, they don’t have the guts to deal with it.

They decided to close the airspace. They were criticized for it. So they have two choices:
Have the guts to keep the airspace closed, no matter how much the airlines, the industry yell at them. THEY are responsible for the safety, THEY decide, everybody else doesn’t have a say, and that’s the bottom line.
Or have the guts to open up the airspace, at least at certain times – and take the risk for it.

But no, they don’t have the guts. They keep the airspace closed, but allow the airlines to ask for exceptions and they grant the exceptions but don’t take the risk. That’s coward behavior at its worst, and it leads to a total chaos because nobody knows what is going on. ALL other countries manage to come up with clear rules, except for Germany. So show some guts here, one way or the other!

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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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24.03.2010 Jägermeister Rock:liga (LKA, Stuttgart)

Thursday, March 25th, 2010
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OK, vielleicht sollte ich voranstellen, dass ich mit elektronischer Musik eigentlich nur dann wirklich etwas anfangen kann, wenn es drei Uhr nachts ist, ich allein auf einem Festival bin, schon den einen oder anderen Radler intus hab, völlig geschafft bin, aber schnell mal noch in irgendein Musikzelt reintorkle und da eben irgendso’ne Elektronik-Punkband spielt – und das Zelt tobt.

Diese Atmosphäre passt allerdings so gar nicht dazu, nach der Arbeit schnell nach Stuttgart zu fahren, um dann um gerade mal halb neun Datarock auf der Bühne zu sehen, in einem nicht mal halb vollen LKA und ohne einen Tropfen Alkohol, denn man will ja auch wieder zurückfahren. 😉

Dementsprechend hab ich durchaus schon bessere und spaßigere Konzerte erlebt. Auf der Kuriositätsskala liegt dieses hier aber GANZ weit oben. Warum? Nun ja, wer schonmal irgendwas von Datarock gehört oder gesehen hat, wird es ahnen – die sind nämlich einfach extremst schräg. Und genau dieses Image haben sie auch aufgefahren, obwohl das Publikum noch alles andere als warm und die Stimmung eher verhalten und seltsam war. Für mich gab es mittendrin einen extremen “Häh”-Moment, als der Schlagzeuger plötzlich ein “Let me introduce the band for you now!” von sich gab… häh, Moment, falsche Band? “If you want me to introduce the band, say yeah!” – und das auch noch genau im Tonfall des Kaizers-Orchestra-Sängers. Ja, ich bin leicht zu amüsieren. 😉
Nun ja, zum Finale gab es jedenfalls noch “Time of your life” inklusive Wall of Death. DAS sagt eigentlich alles. Und ich lag spätestens da lachend am Boden… *g*

Nach einer Umbaupause kamen dann “Does it offend you, yeah?” auf die Bühne, die objektiv betrachtet natürlich um Klassen besser waren als Datarock. Ich muss aber gestehen, dass da für mich dann auch der letzte Anreiz, mir ein Elektro-Konzert zu geben, weg war – denn eigentlich war ich ja wegen Datarock da, und wir machten uns dann auch recht bald auf und haben uns die letzte Band des Abends damit gespart.

Insgesamt ein eher seltsames Konzert – aber das kommt davon, wenn man sich Elektro-Bands nüchtern am frühen Abend ansieht. 😉

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04.03.2010 Pétur Ben (Sudhaus, Tübingen)

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Almost exactly two years ago I was in Norway, seeing a couple of Kaizers Orchestra concerts. Support: Pétur Ben. I liked him! Not so much that I would have bought the CD, but the songs stuck in my head and he managed to get the crowd going.

Now I read he would play in Tübingen, and yes, of course I decided at once to go there! Just to find out whether I still remember any of the songs and whether I still enjoy his show – even without Kaizers coming on afterwards.

I didn’t bother to get a ticket beforehand, because I was certain he wouldn’t sell out the big hall where he was booked. And yes: The parking lot was basically empty. And no: They didn’t have him play the big hall, but a smaller room – good idea! The surprising part for me was all the chairs there… oh, a sitting concert. Not quite what I’m used to… *cough*

The support, Kenneth Minor, was okay – but the songs didn’t stick at all, and I found it hard to understand what he was singing. A short break, and then Pétur Ben came on. And wow: He caught me from the first second. He’s just got some kind of “presence”, his voice is amazing, he doesn’t need a mike at all.

And yes, I did remember several of the songs, and it was great to hear them again. But there wasn’t a single song I didn’t like. The concert and the atmosphere was perfect, even though I couldn’t explain why.

And of course it was funny as well, in a weird but very nice kinda way. The way he was talking about the tour, about his job, about his family… At some point in time, his mobile rang, and what else would you do other than pick it up and answer the call right in front of the mike? *lol* And then crowding everyone together for the (next to) last song, making everybody sing along… Just amazing. 🙂

Of course I did get the CD this time. Mentioning that I had seen him before, on the Kaizers tour… “Oh, the Kaizer audience, that was difficult… with everybody loud and drunk…” Yep, difficult, different, but it planted the seed. “But it was fun with the Kaizer boys!” Yeah, I bet. 😉
And it was great fun with just this one guy as the main act. Thank you for the great show!

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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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11.02.2010 Kaizers Orchestra (Sentrum Scene, Oslo)

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Well, and already it’s all over again… =:-( Two shows of a tour is really way too little – while on the other hand, it is amazing to see how much less stressfull it is, and cheaper as well, of course. And I think I picked the right two concerts! =:-D ... read on!

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10.02.2010 Kaizers Orchestra (Folken, Stavanger)

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Hmm … Somehow, Kaizers have been doing lots of things lateley that I didn’t expect at all. For example this “studio tour” with exactly four shows to cover the album costs (and not more than four shows, because the four are sufficient, even though they could have easily filled Folken twice). Or the fact that they suddenly announced playing at EuroSonic festival (does that mean they are targeting Europe again? *startingrumors*). Or that they have posted new (and in my opinion still somehow immature) songs on their website the last few weeks, so that the audience at the studio tour has a chance to listen to them beforehand. Or that they, on the day of the first concert, feed information to the media that they will not only publish ONE album in 2011, but THREE – sorry by the way that I didn’t manage to pass that information on earlier (and that I don’t really have the time to translate anything right now), but hey, at the time the news came out, I was stuck at Copenhagen Airport without internet… *gg* ... read on!

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06.02.2010 The Busters (Sudhaus, Tübingen)

Sunday, February 7th, 2010
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Hach…! Meine alljährlichen Busters-Konzerte musste ich dieses Jahr leicht zurückschrauben, da ich beim Karlsruhe-Konzert (das wohl wirklich letzte im “echten” Substage) noch in Mauritius war und beim Heidelberg-Konzert in Norwegen sein werde. Tübingen hab ich mir aber nicht entgehen lassen – zum Glück!

Eigentlich hatte ich überhaupt keinen Bock auf das Konzert… aber gut, das Ticket war gekauft, da geht man auch hin. Und es dauerte ungefähr zwei Minuten, bis ich begeistert war. Und mich von jetzt auf gleich zehn Jahre jünger fühlte! =:-D Nicht, weil ich mich sonst so alt fühlen würde – nein, weil plötzlich alles wie früher war. Ohne, dass mir in den letzten Jahren irgendwie bewusst gewesen wäre, was mir fehlt oder was anders ist oder wie auch immer. Die Konzerte änderten sich von Mal zu Mal halt ein bisschen. Und diesmal: Ein (fast) vollständiges Reset.

Kein FURT-Dresscode mehr, sprich nicht mehr alle in einheitlich schwarz, sondern jeder wie er will. Kein ellenlanges Gequatsche (und genau davor hatte ich mit nur Ron am Mikro nun echt Angst, muss ich gestehen *g*), sondern ein Lied nach dem anderen. Dabei Publikumsaktionen, die von der Band befürwortet und angetrieben wurden – mittendrin hinsetzen, und auch wieder “offiziell” in Mickey Mouse in Moscow, und Mensch: sogar die Sonne in Liebe macht blind war wieder da! Gut, man hätte sich vielleicht das neue Album vorher nochmal anhören sollen (dabei hab ich das durchaus für gut befunden, keine Ahnung also, warum es irgendwo mitten im CD-Stapel verschwunden ist?), aber nach ‘ner Runde neuer Sachen ging’s dann ganz zurück… Candy (wobei das ohne zweite Stimme nicht so gut kommt *seufz*), Wendy, Wish you were here, Make a move (wann hab ich das zuletzt gehört?!? 1999?), Rivers of Babylon, … Hach. Nur ein Sänger ist doof, aber hey, dann sing ich die zweite Stimme halt selbst. Die Ärzte-Kiddies wissen immer noch nicht, dass Skanken ungleich Pogen ist, aber bei uns in der Ecke war’s am Ende richtig schön, und alle am tanzen! Und überhaupt, das Publikum war irgendwie viel älter als sonst in Tübingen, wie das wohl kam… *gg*

Tja, und jetzt ist die Tour rum. DAS ist gemein… =;-)
War jedenfalls ein absolut wundervolles Busters-Konzert – und wie ich gerade gesehen habe, mein insgesamt 40. Busters-Konzert! Die 50 krieg ich definitiv noch irgendwann voll… *g*

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28.01.2010 Dúné (Substage, Karlsruhe)

Sunday, February 7th, 2010
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Dúné kenne ich, seit ich sie mal als Ärzte-Vorband vorgestellt hab. Da fand ich sie stinklangweilig. Aber man muss ja alles mal gesehen habe – und so stand ich beim Taubertal-Festival 2008 am Donnerstag Abend im strömenden Regen im Steinbruch… und war begeistert! Beim DÄ-Konzert am Chiemsee kurz darauf habe ich sie dann verpasst, weil das Konzert hinterhältigerweise zu früh anfing, und danach waren sie immer genau dann in der Nähe, wenn ich entweder in Norwegen oder beim DÄOF-Teamtreffen war. *grmbl*

Die Platte gefiel mir allerdings sehr gut, und daher wurde der Konzerttermin im Substage natürlich SOFORT in den Kalender eingetragen und geblockt. =;-)

Los ging das Konzert mit Fertig los, die okay waren (ganz nett eigentlich sogar), die ich aber absolut nicht kannte. Und dann Dúné! Irgendwie war so gut wie niemand da – so schlecht gefüllt hab ich das Substage noch nicht oft gesehen (na ja, bei Tempeau damals… *g*). Die, die da waren, kannten aber definitiv die Band und die Lieder, wie sich herausstellen sollte.

Die ersten zwei, drei Lieder waren allerdings eher eine “Schrecksekunde”. Was war das denn bitte? Überhaupt kein Druck dahinter, keine Spannung, da steht halt ein Typ auf der Bühne, der sich nicht so ganz entscheiden kann, ob er nun Kerl oder Mädel ist, und näselt rum, zum Bandgeklimper im Hintergrund… ach herrje, und das hatte ich toll gefunden?!?

Tja, und dann kamen die richtig guten Lieder, das Publikum flippte aus, der Sound war endlich so, wie er sein sollte, und die Band wurde warm. Und ab da konnte man dann durchgehend bis zum Ende durchtanzen… und wie sollte es anders sein, nach dem Konzert hat jetzt auch ihr zweites Album bei mir so richtig den Durchbruch geschafft, und ich warte begeistert auf das nächste Konzert hier in der Nähe!

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