October 1993 : Letter printed in British music press
At the start of 1993 British music magazine Melody Maker started including tapes with music by
new and upcoming bands. Unfortunately I obtained none of them because as it said on the cover
' For copyright reasons this tape is not available to overseas readers'. So I sent them the very brief letter
pictured on the left which actually got printed shortly afterwards. But obviously my concern was not fully understood as
the next tapes failed to reach me as well.
December 1994 : Manic Street Preachers prove to be best support act ever
Support acts usually are a bit of a nuisance. The shouldn't play so loud, they shouldn't play so long, in many
cases they better shouldn't play at all. Not so in this case where a band I to this point considered of being a bunch
of over hyped pretenders took the stage and delivered a ravishing, intense 30 minute set, all band members looking relaxed and in
good mood. When main act Suede had to follow this, they of course never stood a chance. The disappearance of guitarist Richey Edwards
two months later is still a tragic mystery to me.
November 1995 : Velvet Underground's Peel Slowly And See box set released
With The Velvet Underground it has not been a 'converted in the space of a few months' affair as with The Smiths.
As I recollect, I bought their first album at the age of 18 and quite liked it, at least the more
melodic songs. But it took years until the real enthusiasm for their work, particularly the more inventive and daring stuff
evolved. It reached its climax in 1995 when this 5 CD set was released. Especially the first CD containing early demos of
songs from their first album fascinated me a lot. You could really hear musical history being made there.
July 1999 : Only ever festival attendance
To some people this might be hard to understand as their greatest moments list will consist of festival visits only.
But tell me what's the point of festivals anyway? In my opinion a concert is a special occasion where you try to melt into
the music of a band you love. At festivals this is practically impossible as you rush from performance to performance,
watch 20 bands in two days, each one playing only fragments of their normal set. This festival of course had its
moments : Catatonia calm and almost sober in the midday sun, Hole passionate and angry as ever, Pavement
old and wise at the end of their career. But it all ended rather chaotically when Mr. Marilyn Manson and his band left the
stage after only four songs without apparent reason, therefore infuriating the crowd which responded by demolishing
the stage completely until finally the police stepped in.
December 2000 : Last edition of music magazine Melody Maker published
When at the end of 2000 the last issue of Melody Maker appeared it had long been in a messy state. Reduced to
A4 size, filled with posters, song lyrics and personal ads nothing much was left of the magazine that fascinated me
so much a decade earlier. I had long proceeded to reading NME as well and my subscription to MM has more or
less remained only for nostalgic reasons. Nevertheless it was a sad day because with monthly papers like Select and
Vox gone as well, now the NME is the last man standing.
May 2004 to December 2005 : Franz Ferdinand play Munich three times in 18 months
As a music fan in Germany especially in the South you normally do not have the chance to watch a band evolve
gradually. If you're very lucky they will play here after their first album, if not you will see them not until after their
second one when they might be not that good anymore. Some may even refuse to play in this part of Germany at all
(Hello The Strokes !). Not so with FF. Possibly due to their guitarist having lived here for a while they played 3
concerts in Munich in the space of one and a half year. The first one in an intimate, familial atmosphere, the second one at
the height of their powers an euphoric bliss, the last one in a packed 5000 people venue showing a band maybe a
bit to self assure but still in great form.
May 2006 : This web site launched
So it gets a bit self-referential at this point. The idea of making a web site has long been on my mind but I couldn't get
myself to really do it. Of course I'm well aware that my writing skills are not sufficient enough for such a task, especially
not in the English language. But as hardly anybody in Germany cares much about music and most are content with
listening to over familiar, 'heard them a 100 times on the radio' mainstream acts, a music web site in
German would make as much sense as, say, a skiing web site in Dutch. The main challenge for me was to get that classic
albums list done properly, the other stuff then fortunately came a bit more easily. I really hope that this page
will be useful to someone somewhere sometimes.
December 2006 : Morrissey performs How soon is now at Munich's Zenith
And it all came back to where it started. Life may move on, you may get older but there is always the music,
the songs that will never leave you.
