Wow, I've been in Berlin for ten days and I'm not yet bored of the hearing the CD's I brought. In fact, I've barely made a dent in them. However, I would like to clarify a couple of things
The Orb's "Spanish Castles in Space" : still one of the finest pieces of ambient music ever. It should be twice as long as it already is (15 min). The floaty portion at the end, just after the bass drops out and just before dripping water is the best part of the song, but you need the 10 + minute build to appreciate those moments of serenity.
Woob 1194 still owns you along with most of your family.

Pop radio : Newer stuff, obviously, but lots of standards that seemingly haven't left their spot in heavy rotation since my first trip here one year ago, such as :
Every Pink single from "Mizzundastood"
Every Evanescence single from "Fallen"
Every Black Eyed Peas single from "Elephunk"

Canadians continue to be well represented, with Alanis and Avril turning up often. Best of all -- I've heard "Enjoy the Silence" each of the last two days! I also remember hearing it on one of the other trips. When was the last time you heard DM's best single on North American pop radio? Anyone?

BIzarre and disturbing video aside, Britney's "Everytime" is her best single in ages despite its nearly-too-close-for-comfort ressemblance to Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting". Among her rivals, Xtina's "The Voice Within" (and to a lesser extent, Avril's "I'm With You") threatened to set the bar way higher than Britney could ever reach. Those tracks require a smashing set of pipes, which Britney doesn't have and never will. If these songs led the way, and pop became all about The Voice (also "blame" the Beyonces of the world for pushing this change as well) then Britney would obviously be left behind, dated and irrelevant. But then a funny thing happened, Xtina butchered "Beautiful" on the Grammys by throwing in 17 times more notes than necessary, and Britney released a wonderful single sung in a little girl lullaby voice (the perfect vehicle to showcase the talent she does have) and dare I say, let the melody run roughshod over the histrionics from now on.

------------------------------

If I lived in Berlin, I would see to it that Dense was put out of business. Why? Because I would end up going there all the time and would buy so many CD's that they'd have no stock left, which would leave them no choice but to go out of business. Friday's R&R trip took in the standard stops (Dense, Neurotitan), and purchases of the standard music (noise, minimal techno). Unfortunately, the gentrification of the Hackescher Markt area may soon swallow up Neurotitan's building and morph it from its present character into (likely) another bar aimed at the tourist market. Along with other businesses in the building/alley/enclave, they are circulating a petition to prevent the building from being sold, citing historical reasons. This is hardly grasping for straws -- there is an Anne Frank exhibit in the building and there is a pictoral history of that city block displayed in the stairwell. The timeline goes back for hundreds of years.

Speaking of historical events, while in Neurotitan (for the last time? who knows, I guess), I learned of a grime party going down nearby -- the first grime party ever held in Berlin, according to the girl who worked there. I was craving a beer and my Carole Pope bio more than a party that night, but I was skeptical about her claim ... could it really have been the first grime party in the city? I'd have thought such a thing would have descended upon Berlin months ago. Perhaps I will be kicking myself for this decision somewhere down the road.

(entirely written in airports on JULY 16 and 17). I don't understand comments such as "if the White Album had been cut down to a single disc then it would have been a better album". Of course, trimming away the fat would produce a more consistently excellent album, but you could say that about *any* album. It's just more fashionable to say it about the long ones. Using this logic, since side one of "Loveless" is stronger than side two, so if they'd just released everything up to "I Only Said" and called it a mini-album or an e.p., then it would have been a stronger musical statement. Snipping away all but the very best tracks on any album must result in a better (track-for-track) record by its very definition. But what you're left with bears little resemblance to the original product, just as watching only the best scenes in a movie and skipping over the rest doesn't improve upon the film as a whole (although obviously it is fun to do sometimes).

Epics such as the White Album are supposed to be long and uneven. Every time somebody makes such a record they feel that it's necessary to take in every style of music from hard rock to Irish folk. Such an album is bound to be about as consistent as its many stylistic jumps (that is to say, not very consistent at all). It's bound to get silly in places, boring in others, and deliver some ill-thought sounds and lyrics that make you go "that was extremely unnecessary". You.re supposed to feel as though you.ve been listening forever. "Getting there" may not be half the fun, but it just wouldn't feel the same if you got there sooner.

Recently, I finally got around to exploring the Magnetic Fields' voluptuous "69 Love Songs". Some of it is missable, but "37 Love Songs" wouldn't carry the same weight, would it? Three albums, three hours, everything from punk to weepy folk ballads. You have to sit through all those one-minute tossed-off tunes and let each lo-fi pop song roll by until you can no longer distinguish between them. Or remember which disc of the three you're listening to at that moment. And wonder about the reasoning behind the track ordering on this beast, giving rise to questions like "why is the song I'm hearing at this exact moment on disc three instead of on disc one?" and "why did this reggae/English air/Steve Reich tape phasing composition just interject itself at this particular point on the album?" The rocky terrain and extended investment of your time makes for deeper feelings gleaned from sad songs like "Come Back From San Francisco" or "Acoustic Guitar". Good things come to those who wait around and get slapped out of thin air from "Tea in China" rhymed with "North Carolina" or "Louvre" with "manouvre". It's worth it for the poignant senses of "that song perfectly encapsulated my relationship with Person X".

A future task : get through the entire album in one sitting.

I'm baffled by the attention given to the recent arrest of a Hamilton man charged with bootlegging (Toronto Star story here). Here, bootlegging = live concert recordings sold without permission of the artist =! alcohol trafficking or rock remixes of Jay-Z (at least not this time). From the derogatory language directed at this incident, you'd think we were dealing with a brutal, heinous crime. You'd think he was a sex offender or something.

Jann Arden takes the concert experience WAAAAYYY too seriously. Writing about the Orb earlier in the week, I largely dismissed the role of poor sound quality negatively affecting the listener's perception of a gig's "specialness". And last year (in reference to a 1994 Depeche Mode concert), I wrote how memories can be tarnished by hearing inferior gigs (*not* inferior sound quality) months or years after the fact. The best recording quality in the world wouldn't have cleared up Dave Gahan's heroin-ravaged croak.

The article goes to length to explain what a bootleg is, and how they are recorded. I suppose in the year 2004 there are people unaware of these details that I take for granted. All the talk about internet piracy must have turned the spotlight away from bootleggers to the point that their trade must be re-explained to the next generation. But the anti-filesharing tone still permeates many paragraphs in the article. It depicts bootlegs as yet another of the myriad ways that starving artists and record companies are losing money. Hmmm ... unless you're Pearl Jam (and give official releases to all your concerts) then you're not losing any money on bootlegs, you're just not gaining money on them. Oh wait, if fans are buying the bootlegs then they might want to stick with their dicey recording instead of the superior sound, pictures, and scores of extras on the similarly-priced DVD. Or so the story goes.

This is one case where the jam bands have got it all figured out. They encourage bootlegging, they have no problem with people openly making soundboard recordings of their shows and distributing them via tape or the internet. Somebody should tell Jann Arden that fans get increasingly excited and devoted to their fave bands when they get to hear more of their music. Sharing concert tapes and stories with similarly-minded fans makes concert-going MORE special, not the opposite.

-------------------------------------

I recently heard cover versions (that were new to me) by Lush and Xiu Xiu, which prompted the following three-way battles:

1. "Ceremony" : New Order vs Galaxie 500 vs Xiu Xiu. G500 covers are fantastic. Their version exhibits their trademark largo approach to tempos, stretching the drama out over six reverb-drenched minutes. Xiu Xiu's is more or less identical to NO's original, with little of the crackle and sudden noise blasts that are so common with XX. The dominating force is Jamie Stewart's delivery -- he sings it a full octave higher, which actually puts the higher notes out of his range. So of course he just screams those notes at the top of his lungs, leading to several blood-curdling moments (whether you view those words as complimentary will depend on how you take to Stewart's voice in general. One could claim that his off-key straining and wailing wrecks the song, but then you'd have to claim that about most of his band's output).

Unfortunately for the copyists, "Ceremony" is one of the top three songs NO ever did. They rule. NO > G500 > XX.

2. "Outdoor Miner" : Wire vs Lush vs Flying Saucer Attack. Wire's original is arguably the closest they got to a conventional two-minute pop single. It stands apart from the ambience and general strangeness on "Chairs Missing". Lush drenched the song in a few more wads of guitar and their immediately recognisable dual-female lead vocals. Such a production could have only been made between 1990-1995, during the extremely short lifetime of grrl group semi-shoegaze. FSA's effort adds even more guitar -- it's a blistering attack of treble, even for him -- and buries the vocals deep beneath all that chaos. This was the first version I heard, and I hold a big mushy soft spot for it in my heart because it's one of my favourite singles of the 90's. Many a morning was spent blowing my brains into consciousness with this song (the rest of the e.p. is damned good as well). And I'm also a big softie for Lush's harmonies, so ... FSA > Lush > Wire.

I've got half of an Orb gig from Detroit in 1995, which would make it only a few days removed from their tremendous gig here (a mainstay in all of my Top Ten Gigs Ever lists).

The sound isn't too good, but when gigs are this great it doesn't matter. An OK gig can come off good or great on the bootleg if it's a well-done recording, but great gigs retain their greatness nearly irrespective of recording quality (factors such as crowd chatter, and inconsistent volume or frequency levels are exceptions to this).

The versions and setlist order are pretty much the same as I remember them. "Towers of Dub" had a four minute beatless intro, and when the bass finally hit, the tension in the club completely exploded. Swaying and dancing ensued and the hippies who were camped out in the bass speakers completely lost it and started leaping up and down with the beat.

Then there was the fake ending. The song wound down, only to spring up again from nothing with the bass ever huger than before, but this time accompanied by live drums and percussion. The strange thing is, I'd completely forgotten about this ending -- it had slipped my mind literally for years -- but upon hearing it again it instantly sounded familiar again. And of course, with my memory freshly jogged, I now remember this moment from the gig. If it doesn't exist already, there *needs* to be a name for this phenomenon. It's like not seeing or thinking about an old friend for years, but subsequently running into them in the street and remembering them instantly as well as every silly prank you pulled together in grade 11 English class.

I've spilled a bunch of e-ink on the subject of 15-years worth of diversions on the path to hearing "Disintegration", but upon further thought, my record with ALL Cure albums is nothing to brag about. I didn't hear "Wish" in full until a few years after it's release. Despite seeing them live on the "Bloodflowers" tour, I have never heard the album. Compilations and live albums aside, the only other Cure album I own -- and have heard at all, for that matter -- is "Kiss Me x3".

Until this week, that is. Now I can add two others to the list: "Pornography" and "The Cure". The latter only came out a few weeks ago, now how's that for turning over a new leaf?

I hadn't planned to write anything about the former, but after hearing the new album, suddenly the two don't seem all that different. Almost nothing the Cure have done since "Pornography" can match the smothering, black, depressive cloud that it creates. But both albums sound so incredibly heavy -- the pounding drums, thick bass, messy and hazy guitars -- they're produced to sound more like metal albums than just about anything else in their catalogue. On the newest, thanks should be given to Russ Robinson. The press leading up to the release date intoned along the lines of "The Cure's latest self-titled effort is the fruit of a long-awaited collaboration with Ross Robinson", to which I self-intoned "who???" in response (I'm supposed to know who's been producing Korn's albums? As if). At first thought, a Cure album produced to sound like Korn appears disturbing, but producing something to sound like Korn isn't the same as, you know, actually sounding like Korn. Because laying down the heavy like this makes the Cure sound fantastic. The music thuds into the sternum. This is not the dreary goth music we grew up with, this is a snarling vicious beast of an album with Robert Smith wailing over it to help remind us that this really is a Cure album. "Pornography" isn't nearly this huge.

"Lost", the opener, vaguely recalls Smashing Pumpkins "Bodies", with its slow and steady build, balls-out conclusion, and a one-line chorus/mantra chanted throughout and screamed with crazed abandon by the end. "The End of the World", for reasons I can't explain, comes off miles better than I remember it from their Leno performance (its familiarity is the leading candidate to explain this). Overall, it's a blistering collection and Cure fans certainly needn't worry about making excuses for it (except for the cover, perhaps).

Contents of the late afternoon 5CD tray:

1) LFO -- Sheath. I sometimes wonder whether those who praised this album last year heard its predecessor, "Advance" (inasmuch as a record can be a "successor" to something after more than seven years. With Gaz leaving LFO for good, Mark keeping busy breathing techno-fied life into Bjork and Depeche Mode, it was more like coming out of retirement). "Advance" is louder, funkier and nastier than "Sheath". It's a sequence of rumbling, churning crescendos. In terms of speaker rattling bass quakes, it's also a no-contest. Other than "Blown", the astounding opener, "Sheath" generally doesn't hit those sorts of highs (at least that's one thing the albums have in common -- the best track comes first). It's an album of perfectly acceptable techno tracks such as "Mum-man", which build to something good and constantly threaten to explode into something wonderful, but they never do. Perhaps he was recording the real follow-up to "Advance" but the neighbours got tired of the noise and rebelled, forcing Mark Bell to strip away several layers from each track in order to finish the album.

In a sense, this makes it a sister album to Speedy J's "Public Energy", i.e. a techno-funk that's mostly lightning but without the thunder and hail (although in Speedy's case, he ended up getting it right with the follow-up, as opposed to the predecessor).

2. Xiu Xiu -- Fabulous Muscles. I've got it figured out -- if the stuff people said about Radiohead was actually true, then they'd sound like Xiu Xiu. Paranoia and self-loathing? Go home, Radiowimps, Xiu Xiu is the Colonel Kurtz of paranoia and self-loathing (RIP Marlon Brando). Xiu Xiu didn't just listen to a couple of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada records and proceed to whine on top of his best approximation of them, he brought the window-cracking NOIZ and proceeded to whine and scream on top of three-dollar drum machines.

3. SFA -- Guerilla. I finally remembered to rewind from track 1 in order to hear the hidden track. It's a worthy prologue. Still a killer album. And as I lamented at the time, I remain exceedingly doubtful that they will ever top it. Short of one A++ single ("Juxtapozed With U", the pinnacle of their career, about which there are not enough words in the language nor hours in the day required to trumpet its greatness), they haven't come close.

4. System 7 -- s/t. A strong contender in the "early 90's techno album that hasn't dated well" sweepstakes. With The Orb, Hillage's guitar parts were far more remote in the mix. Like with all great dub, it would drift in and out, as if the guitar were just another sample. With S7, the guitar takes a prominent role, leaving us with guitar solo wankery plus a drum machine.

With a bit of post-production to freshen up the sound, "Strange Quotations" could probably be a radio hit today.

5. V/A -- LANding. (lots and lots of noise here)(Perhaps I'd say more about it if I could read the liner notes (in German)).