nice new outift & barra head - schokoladen mitte (berlin) - 150308

... then we take berlin, albeit a rather small piece of it ... only 1 day in this big city, some musea, wall-seeing, checkpoint charlie and two gigs by a german and danish band, in a bar with a small stage ... first up nice new outfit, who are labeled as postrock/instrorock, which describes what they do, but not how they sound: not bad, but a bit as an inside-the-lines version of 65 days of static, put shortly, their songs could benefit from some more energy ... which was greatly demonstrated by the next band, barra head, who played like they lived depended on it ... described as postpunk/mathrock, whatever that last may be, maybe the not straightforward-punk rhythm lines and compositions, which sounded really good (together with the singer's voice), unfortunately they have at the moment only 2 songs on their myspace, while their back catalogue is already quite extensive ... check out common ground, listening to it makes you wanna go there ...

new arsenal single - they're back :)

bayern munchen : rsca - alianz arena - 120308

score 1-2 ... a victory without gain unfortunately ... but what a nice arena, already from the outside, a red futuristic bulb ... the german crowd was quite silent, the anderlecht supporters were singing and shouting all game long, making more noise than about sixty thousand (!) of them ... but they must be the most polite of all, here is the conversation between the speaker after the first goal: goal!!! bayern EINS anderlecht NULL, nr drei, LUCIO, bitte, DANKE ... amazing :)

bloc party dj set - paard - 290208

a dj set of kele, the singer of bloc party, not sure what to expect, ok, some bloc party remixes, but otherwise ? it turned out to be an 'i like playing dj but don't do that too often' experience, where the concept of mixing tunes was somehow missing ... the girl accompanying him was doing a better job ... still fun though, with an old chiro-fuif feeling at some point (smells & bomtrack), getting kicked off the stage when requesting deus (which, shame shame, he didn't have at hand) ... and green the color of the night ...

next day, flying to munich, and at the luggage belt i notice a girl & guy who look familiar ... kele and his co-dj ... that evening they'd play in a club in munich ... speaking of a coincidence ... i remembered him about the missing deus record, and informed whether they would play werchter ... which they wouldn't this year

zita swoon - paard - 240208

again :), this time a band in a little box, as the big hall of het paard is for zita standards not that huge (last time i saw them, not so long ago, was in paradiso) ... now it sounded as an evening with zita, as i was looking down, enjoying and taping most of the gig (unfortunately my phone's amount of memory is not that high, as is the quality :) from the first balcony ... the evening with part ended with a silencing dare to love, after which a long and standing applause followed, which flowed in a more up tempo & dancing part ... they stood close to the two bars, so stef said, hey, don't mind to pass to go for a beer, after which someone shouted "bar is dicht", which he replied with "ah dan moet die open eh" ... applause, and an open bar ... actually the whole gig was high quality (i was thinking i don't mind at all that part of my tax money goes to them, as they got subsidies some time ago), but to highlight some: big black tv cat, stamina and (again) the night, with the nice long intro ... and a great night again ...