MLT Club Member Jürgen
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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A melancholic song marked by loneliness and pain of separation…
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Not only since “Last Christmas” by Wham we know that Christmas is not always as smooth and harmonious as many people would like to have. And indeed: surprisingly many artists take Christmas as an occasion to talk about sorrow and separation. Perhaps for all people who also have to spend the Christmas Celebration alone a small consolation.
A song that was covered several times, among others by U2:
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Thanks for the hint Jung. I haven’t even noticed this feature yet. Funny. What exactly am I seeing there? The current active members? And why are some numbers highlighted in yellow and others in blue?
David, I can edit posts as long as they are „fresh“. Felt up to 12 hours. After that, the editing function disappears and the posts are forever set in stone.
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The Octobass. This instrument has already been presented in another topic, but as David correctly pointed out at the time: the instrument actually belongs in this topic and I think, after the monster bass guitar from ZZ-Top, it is now time to present the monster double bass in action:
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I stumbled across this music video by chance and at first I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what Elwood Francis of ZZ-Top was dragging onto the stage: a bass guitar with 17 strings. Whether you need them all like that? A really unusual musical instrument:
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No, you’re definitely not a grumpy old person, Sara. It’s always the question: what is my purpose in attending a live show? If I do this to know which smartphones are currently in fashion, then it’s ok when the person in front of me keeps holding his smartphone up all the time (oh yeah and of course I’m also particularly interested in which ringtones are especially popular at the moment). Otherwise, I see it like you: I enjoy the concert and afterwards watch the shaky videos of the others, or even not. Especially in the cinema, I find it annoying when suddenly somewhere in the auditorium a mobile phone owner creatively illuminates the cinema with his device, or is poking around in his 20 liter popcorn bucket for hours, but now I’m going off topic… 🙂
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My idea with the time machine was half fun and half serious. My conscious childhood memories begin sometime in the 70’s. Before that, everything is just gray fog. What would it have been like to stroll along the Reeperbahn in Hamburg in the 1960s and see the people of that time? Their clothes, their way of expressing themselves, their way of life? What would it have been like to sit there in the Star Club and see many bands that were unknown at the time and that you know will one day conquer the world musically?
I had a special kind of time travel experience maybe 20 years ago. Somewhere in a neighboring town there was a Beat Club modeled on the 1960s. A small, low stage surrounded by round, high wooden tables with bar chairs. There was maybe room for 50 people, so a very cozy and intimate atmosphere. The musical hosts: The Beatles. Not one of the well-known revival bands that are more or less good and that I wouldn’t actually watch, but selected members of a kind of musical revue tour that toured Europe for a short time. And they were damn good. Of course, they wore the usual wigs, but in the dim light of the club atmosphere, their outfit looked pretty real. The bassist was left-handed and the resemblance of their voices to the originals was amazing. Of course, everything was rehearsed down to the smallest detail and yet they seemed surprisingly natural and real. And the instruments? It wasn’t a playback, it was real musicians. Every grip was right, every chord fit. And for about 90 minutes I succumbed to the illusion of having traveled 40 years back in time.
Yes, live music is something completely fascinating. But I’m not a fan of the big concerts and I don’t like big crowds. I feel kind of constrained there and so I’m actually a lover of pub music and smaller events. And that’s how I ended up coming to the Star Club, or the Star Club came to me, whatever. The owner of the Hamburg Star Club granted patents for the Star Club name in the 1960s, so that there were also offshoots of the original Star Club in other major German cities. I don’t know how successful they were. In 1988 this idea was revived and another, probably last, Star Club was opened in my hometown. The location was a former cinema hall, like the original in Hamburg. Only with the difference that „Star Wars“ and „Alien“ had been shown there before and no sleazy films like in Hamburg. The cinema was still one of the old kind: with a gallery and an antique charm. Every weekend, unknown artists performed there and had the opportunity to play live music. The quality of the music was mixed: from very good to rather mediocre. I was there often with my friends. None of the bands made it big, but I loved the idea. Later, nationally known artists also performed in this latest version of the Star Club. After 15 years this place was closed as well. Today there is a cafe. No, it certainly wasn’t the great freedom like Hamburg, but seeing the young artists live there was something special.
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How are the acoustics in your living room David? Better than the Cavern and Star Club? Then I’ll come over…
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Hello Sara,
if only I could finally find my time machine again, which I have stored somewhere in the basement, I would like to go back to Hamburg in 1962 and see the still young Beatles live at the Star-Club (and invite them to a beer…). And I would also like to see Mona and Lisa there as the opening act. Ringo can stay seated at the drums.😀
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Thank you Jung for liking my little childhood story. But you also seem to have many fond memories of that time, and the small coal mining towns in the northern parts of of British Columbia sound romantic. Yeah, sometimes quite strange tools were used for sledging. Cooking pot and carpet are the more ordinary things. We ran a show on TV for a short time in which the moderator raced through an ice canal while sitting in a wok. You can do it if you want a lot of attention, but you don’t have to. I definitely prefer such a romantic horse-drawn sleigh ride through the winter landscape (I’ve never done it, but I’d love to try it):
PS: Regarding the video: No, I am not sponsored by the Austrian tourist industry…😀
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Hi David,
unfortunately I don’t know the quote. Reminds me a little bit of Schrödinger’s cat dilemma. You can only be sure if you look. But that doesn’t work in this case. A dilemma indeed. Probably the bread and butter of most theoretical physicists. Therefore, I would first consider the person making such a hypothesis. Who is this person, where does he get his knowledge from and how does he even get the idea that a teapot rotates between Earth and Mars. If I then still had doubts, I would rely on empiricism or reject the idea. I am aware that with this approach, around 50% of astrophysicists would probably lose their jobs…. 😀. I added the following idea to my first entry as a PS (and then deleted it again, because I wasn’t sure if the idea would be misunderstood): „It’s hard to tell the color and shape of a chair cushion when you’re sitting with your butt on it“. So to say, it is not the teapot that causes the problem, but the human being who tries to find an answer with his limited possibilities. Would you rather know or believe? A matter of personal taste.
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Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a little boy in a place where people spent a large part of their lives underground. They dug long shafts and tunnels into the depths of the earth to find treasures. Oh no, they were not dwarves, they were too big for that. They didn’t have red pointed caps on their heads either, but miner’s lamps, so that they could see something in the darkness of their shafts. And they didn’t find diamonds or gold, but black stones that burned when you lit them. They called it “Grubengold,” which means something like gold from the depths. When they came out of their underground mines, their faces were black and their bodies sweaty, because where they worked it was very warm and also very dirty. The people began to process the treasures they had found. To do this, they built large furnaces, with long chimneys that soon shot out of the ground everywhere. Thick clouds of smoke rose from the chimneys when the ores from the earth were processed into metals. And soon the houses of these people were also as black and dirty as their faces. Someday small mounds grew out of the ground like mushrooms, because the people collected the burnt out ore there and soon these hills grew higher and higher and the whole land froze in blackness.
But Mother Earth was kind to them. She emptied her green cornucopia over this land and soon green grass grew on the black hills, trees stretched their crowns to the gray sky and the birds and small animals also returned. But that’s not all: a small miracle always happened at Christmas time. When it started snowing overnight, this barren landscape turned into a white winter wonderland. And the little boy with whom this story began got his sled out of the basement, because right in front of his parents’ house was one of those mounds and it was the greatest toboggan run in the world. A small path snaked up to the top of the hill. The soft, fresh snow crunched beautifully under the soles of his shoes. The branches of the trees bent low under the white burden and his breath condensed into small clouds that accompanied him part of the way. Once at the top, the little boy had a fantastic view of his own, very special winter wonderland. The once gray and dark landscape was covered with the white cloth of winter. From up there the blast furnaces and their chimneys looked like small steam engines and the trains loaded with iron ore reminded him of his toy train that was already waiting for him under the Christmas tree. And then the boy went down with his sled, in a wild ride over the snow-covered slope. Trees whizzed past left and right and the path seemed to wind endlessly through the wintry landscape until he reached the bottom and quickly climbed back up the hill to enjoy the magic of winter once more.
On full moon nights, when the snow shimmered particularly mysteriously, the boy could see the molten iron being drained from the blast furnaces and the sky glowing in a deep red whole. “The Christ Child is baking cookies again,” his mother used to say and laughed lovingly. That little boy, that was me. I no longer have the sled, but I have many fond memories of the Christmas season from back then.
Even if memory often plays tricks on us, the idea of how something could have been is sometimes even more beautiful than reality itself can offer.
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Yeah David, finger extensions and a back corset. The instrument looks damn heavy, like a back killer.
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Yes the early Beatles sounded like unpolished diamonds, but definitely like diamonds.
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Hi David,
thanks for the background information on John Cage. Some time ago I saw a documentary on TV where such experimental music was presented. The performance took place in an old factory hall to create the necessary atmosphere. On the stage there was a grand piano and some stringed instruments. One of the performers struck some weird chords on the keyboard, and the rest of the performers moved to the fading sound, then stood motionless. The string instruments served a similar function. This is how I could imagine a performance of Cage. It looked very interesting, but I certainly wouldn’t watch something like that for an entire evening.
Oh yes, „Revolution #9“. I’ll be honest: the deeper meaning of that piece has not been clear to me to this day. As you rightly said: a kind of special art. I always thought it was a pity that so much valuable space on the White Album was sacrificed for this idiosyncratic number 😀. I can well imagine that Yoko Ono was involved in this piece of music. She saw herself as an artist and had a strong influence on John Lennon’s later works (whether good or bad, I’ll leave it open for now). The piece seems to me like a foreign body on the White Album.