Recent Acquisitions (October 2011)

Back from my much-needed extended holiday way down south, as close to the Sahara as one can get short of floating in the water just a few miles offshore. Twenty-five to thirty-something degrees Celsius each and every day, nary a cloud. Great places to see, a breathtaking landscape and lots of insiders’ tips in my back pocket.

Recent Acquisitions

“Recent Acquisitions” has been something I’ve had around for quite a while on this site, in one form or another. And looking back on past posts or drafts that never came to fruition, there’s one single aspect that stands out immediately. The shopping sprees of the past are long gone. It could be that I have reached a saturation point somewhat, although I do doubt that. It’s just that I have so much to listen to that whenever I stumble over more “Want-Need-Will Have” items, I’m reluctant to shell out the dough, mostly because my bad conscience (left shoulder, far right) parades those CDs in front of my inner eye that I haven’t really listened to intensively yet. Continue Reading →

Daiquiri: My Sound of Venezuela

When my parents moved to Caracas, Venezuela, in the early 1980s, I tried to visit as often as my time and our traveling budget allowed. It was the time of the Sony Walkman and, soon thereafter, the Sony Discman, and I usually had more than enough music along for the many trips to last me several weeks. Still, in the long run, I would run out and simply tune into any of the many radio stations available.

Besides the usual US fare being played up and down the airwaves, Venezuelan radio was infused with salsa, from right to left, from top to bottom, and 24/7. For someone unacquainted with it, most of the tunes played sounded all alike, but it didn’t take me long to get with the program. So, when my second or third visit rolled along, I found myself automatically tuning into a salsa station to accompany the soothing night sounds of frogs and chicadas and whatever else came creepy crawling out at night. By the way, whenever I returned to Europe, I immediately missed that soundtrack I had then enjoyed for anywhere from 4 weeks to nearly three months. Actually, Europe was, if you didn’t live downtown, sonically dead as a door nail.

One day, a single tune made me prick up my ears, run over to the radio and turn it up as loud as possible without gliding into distortion territory. It had an incredibly modern rhythm, a polished 80s production sound, and one hell of a catchy hook, including a wonderful finale. It was a fascinating fusion of traditional dance music with modern instruments and production values.

That song was “Chamito Candela“. Continue Reading →

A musical life in Denmark of the 1970s, 80s and 90s

Even at the risk of alienating some of my regular readers (those that haven’t been alienated by my long absence around here already), this is the start of a longer series, many parts of which have already been completed. The reason is very simple, really, What I’m about to expand upon, I’ve had first-hand experience with, lots of it, and if one really starts researching what’s available on the topic, there is either laughingly little (inaccurate at that) or only highly fragmented information available online. I kid you not when I say that about some of my favorite music, there’s hardly any information to be had whatsoever.

On the one hand, what I’m going to write about here can hardly be called essential listening for anyone outside of Denmark, none of it is relevant in an earth-shaking manner, nor does it belong into the must-have category for international collectors, but on the other hand it made up a huge part of my musical life for quite some time and, as I will try to show, a lot of it was and/or is of the highest caliber. It is also the core experience that turned me into a collector, into a musician and into someone who has since then always tried to get to know new music, outside of the commonly trodden paths. Continue Reading →

The Age of Mediocrity

I’m beginning to sound like our parents. Mine never really complained about what I was listening to, but it was often apparent that – despite being open-minded about everything I tormented their ears with – they thought I had gone off my rocker when I was blasting Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and other (to their ears) loud and obnoxious music out the speakers (at full volume, naturally).

Because of my upbringing in a family that listened to the broadest musical range possible, I was always willing to give just about everything a chance, and I’ve followed many a fad and have heard the oddest music available at any given time, but these last years, if not this last decade and longer, I noticed that I have basically gotten sick and tired of about 99% of the music being published. You just have to have a look at my collection that seems caught in a time warp, in permanent lock-down, to actually see the effect.

I can’t really pin-point the time when I basically stopped buying new music or keeping new music I had bought, or the day I basically threw my radio out the window, shut the various music video channels down permamently and stopped reading the more widely-circulated music mags, but it did happen, and it happened for a reason. Continue Reading →