das pop - paard van troje - 191007

after a year of silence (exept the gig with daniel johnston, i heard little of them) they're back, one i love t-shirt in the full small hall, still popular here in the nls apparently ... they sounded the same as a year ago when i saw them at boomtown, gentse feesten: less pop, more das rock, with harder drums (new drummer, now bent, the singer, can concentrate on that, showering the first rows and performing turnexercises with the mike-stand ... still remember him opening a werchter day of the 2001 edition, dressed in white tennis-outfit and inviting couples on stage to slow on true) and dito guitars (old beard, going well with the double snared guitar played once during the gig -great sound-), all this resulting in a heavier jacket for the old hits (the love program, one, you, ...), which suits them, and the new work as well ...

afterwards three great songs, unfortunately not great in the mix: the boyz noise remix of feist's my moon my man (!!), the whip's trash (i wanna be trashed), listen here, and goose' british mode ... give me a reason ...

new york - 2809.051007

first we take manhatten ...... island of many heights, 1/5th of new york, the empire state ... what a views ... let me entertain you: lion king musical on broadway, the shout-opening nants ingonyama is goosebumping, great & ingenious stage techniques (nothing digital, all theater), the moment musafa's spirit talks to simba is nothing less but impressive; pygmalion (broadway again) starring claire danes (juliet in baz luhrmann's r+j), a great and sarcastic play; in the valley of elah, a recent movie by p haggis about post iraq-war soldiers, with a superb tommy lee jones (that end sequence!); the secret machines in the annex (soho) -the same night bloc party was playing at the madison square garden, but i went for the local band and smaller venue-, first up was a band with the sm' base player and a female singer, wearing a ballroom dress, for a moment i thought they changed line-up, not, next up were the secrete machines, which apparently did change line-up (other guitar player), 2 known songs at the start (nowhere again) and end, in between new work, which sounded ok, a bit slower and heavier than those 2 older songs, afterwards no bis, short applause and that was it, somehow strange; arbouretum in the union pool (brooklyn), a really nice venue: a little theater stage surrounded with small light bulbs, first up was illuminations, a young local ny band, which got the audience dancing at the end, next pg six, never heard of them but they sounded really good, thanks to the singing between frontman and female base, and after that (and some hours/duvels later) arbouretum, with (again strangely) less people than the band before (the bar has a large open courtyard), but they were awesome, what a sound & songs, no tonight's a jewel though, the singer explained afterwards they need 2 guitars to play it live, now they had only 1, too bad ... relaxing: bryant (incuding chairs & tables) and battery (including seashore feeling) park ... belgian beer bars tried out and approved of: vol de nuit (in greenwich village next to washington square), markt (on 6th avenue around 21st) and bxl (43st next to time square) ... starbucks & subways ... art: museums should keep their permanent collections also permanently on show (guggenheim!, whitney!), now i saw only 3 hoppers :(, which seems to be my favorite american painter, the met had a great section on modern art & abstract expressionism, and i discovered the american impressionists there and the hudson river school (great landscape paintings), the collection of the moma is quite large (2 floors) and a good overview of modern art, although i expected more pop arts ...... now we take berlin ...

annapolis - 23.280907

setting foot on us soil, always a pleasure ... i forgot to fill in the last part of the visiting card, which the fingerprint & webcampicture official pointed out friendly, so i ask 'do you have a pen', 'yes' ... point ... silence ... so i go 'can i use it' pointing to the missing part, 'next time, bring your own', he replies ... no jokes, tom, i thought ... all this after 50 minutes of rowing slowly ... my destination was annapolis, a rather small harbour town, my hotel was on the edge of town, about an hour on foot to the center, which i tried once, including the 'hm, were is the footpath gone' experience ... reason to be here was the int symp on space flight dyn, and international it was ... americans are sometimes over self confident in their presentations (home advantage maybe), russians read from their papers, very inspiring, and japanese start laughing awkwardly if they don't get the question (often the case) ... i liked the french mission with primary goal the search for supermassive black holes, i already heared the draging intro and was back in front of a stage ... and always nice to hear scientist talk about the dark side of the moon ... a strange (town?) habit was to serve beer in plastic cups, after a while, we europeans found a bar with beer in glasses, which had also happy hour after the symp hours, how nice ... friday the greyhound bus to ny, first to baltimore standing ... 'i'm running out of seats' the driver wailed when looking at the row that had to board his bus ... i thought this was the land of the free, not free seats apparently ...