A Quick One

I'll be short this time, 'cause I only have a few minutes. I've been watching late night TV again Monday, assuring that Tuesday would be another "great" day for me. This time I saw a '50s movie, "The Bad and the Beautiful", with Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner. Despite not getting enough sleep, I took it well yesterday. Even decided to go play football instead of rehearsing with the band. A bad move.

We decided to try a new pitch in Hesperange. The downside: it's absolutely impossible to get out of town just after work. (No wonder they say that Luxembourg reunites all the disadvantages of living in a small town and a big city.) Plus, we didn't get to play at all, since the storm from hell came down just as we got there, with a bit of hail to improve the finish on my car. We had a drink in a local pub and went home. Bummer.

Had a bit of feedback about "Rise" on the Guitar Rig forums, mostly about how bad my drum programming is. I spent most of the night trying to improve the drum track, it's more sparse now, hope it does the trick. I'll be uploading the updated song to my Soundclick page later, hopefully this evening.

Creative Juices Flowing

Man, what a great weekend! I spent virtually all Saturday sleeping. I woke up at 1/2 past 12, went for a walk in town and was already in bed by 7. My idea of an ideal day :). Had my favorite dish on Sunday morning for breakfast, baked beans (no, seriously), and took the Beemer to the car wash. You have a thirty minute wait for your turn on Sundays, so it's good opportunity to listen to music in the car. I had the Iggy Pop anthology playing. It's been a while since I bought it but I've never heard it through until now. It was time for a change, I've been listening to Pearl Jam for almost a week now.

It got me fired up to record an idea I came up with on Friday while practicing. As soon as I got home, I sat down with the laptop and recorded a basic rythm track with the metronome. It turned out to be pretty unusual for me and I found it damn hard to come up with a second guitar part and a bassline. I did each in three takes and overdubbed a guitar solo. I usually avoid this but I couldn't find any other way to make it work. The second guitar and solo tracks have a couple of errors but I still decided to stick with them to give the recording a live feel. You can check out the results by clicking here, it's the song called "Stress".

By the way, I pretty much gave up on recording vocals for "Guiding Light". I have to accept the fact that I just can't sing. On the other hand, it seems I'm churning out new stuff by the week now that I have a proper rig for recording. I'm also getting better at building drum tracks. The one for Stress took me under an hour and it isn't all that simple if you listen to it closely.

Anyway, after recording the bass and guitar tracks, I went to see the UEFA U17 European Championship final between the Czech Republic and Russia at the Josy Bartel stadium. I have a couple of Czech friends from work, with whom I watched their team agonize in the first half, which ended with a score of 0:0. The second half was much more exciting, with the Russians scoring an early goal after a really stupid defensive mistake. The Russian number 9 is a guy to watch. A big, strong and agressive striker, this one. The Czechs had nothing like him and it showed as they were struggling to get even, with the Russians using every opportunity to kill the game, of course. They finally got their equalizer in the last minute of the game through a header from a corner. The Czech supporters around me went berserk and the teams got ready for extra time. It was the Russians who scored first again after the Czech 'keeper couldn't hold a well applied free kick and a striker butted the ball into the wide open net. However, the Czechs clawed themselves back into the game before the first period of extra time was over, thanks to another mistake, from the Russian goalie this time. The Czech number 10 headed the ball on goal after a nice cross from the right, and though the 'keeper caught it, he dropped it behind the line. 2:2 it remained after the second period of extra time, so it was down to penalties. The Czechs missed their second attempt, and though their 'keeper had saved a shot, the referee had the penalty repeated, since the Russian player hadn't waited for the whistle. Of course, the second attempt went in, giving the Bohemian crowd around a good excuse for their team's loss...

H-bombs, Gulash and What Not

Yee-haw! I was lucky enough to catch Dr. Strangelove on TV last night, definitely one of my fave movies of all time. It's interesting to watch, say, the BBC's banned late sixties faux documentary on the probable consequences of a nuclear attack on Britain. But Dr. Strangelove shows us exactly how all our safeguards and good intentions can amount to nothing now that we have the bomb. I love the way it uses the elements of a John Wayne war movie to get its point accross. I mean, take the B-52 crew. They're your typical war movie heroes: determined to serve their country, they won't let up, no matter how many obstacles they have to overcome. They get hit by a missile blast, start loosing fuel fast, can't release the warhead... Everything is up against them, even the audience wants them to fail this time, but these good American boys prevail and bring about the total anihilation of mankind and all life on this planet. Watch your fluids, guys!

Of course, the movie was on pretty late, so I woke up feeling like crap again this morning. I revised communications all day at work, not very exciting stuff and had a terminology meeting in the afternoon.

Tonight we had some guests over, Anna's colleagues from the European School. She spent the entire afternoon preparing a good old fashioned Hungarian dinner with gulash soup, cottage cheese pancakes and Mr. Bock's wine from Villány. It was a good opportunity to satisfy my urge for flapping my mouth. As we were talking about all sorts of things ranging from the integration of people working here, through our respective homelands and the miseries of traffic to renewable energy, a storm rolled in with thunder and lightning, marking the end of the good weather we enjoyed here for days... Just in time for the weekend.

We quickly cleaned up after the guests left, after which Anna went to bed and I read an article in last week's HVG about Sigmund Freud. Then I checked my e-mails before beginning to write this entry. Got one from grandpa with a couple of comments about my earlier posts on religion and immigration. Since he sent his comments in a private message, I'm not going to discuss them in this public space, but I feel that I'll have to ellaborate my position on these issues a bit further sometime.

It's getting pretty late (or early), so I'm going to call it a day for now. It's still raining cats and dogs.

Ignorance is Bliss

Booked our train tickets and hotel in London last night. We're taking the Eurostar from Brussels and we're going to stay at a hotel near the Lords cricket ground. Can't wait to be there. It's going to be my first time in the UK and there's so much to see. I'm worried a little about the currency, got a bit comfortable not having to check exchange rates and provide for cash in the Euro-zone. And I heard London is pretty expensive anyway, I wouldn't like to get fucked. Stupid, ain't it?

Otherwise, not much is happening. I held a presentation in German class this morning. I think I did pretty well. It's just so annoying, I'm now at the point where I understand most of what is being said but have terrible difficulty expressing myself.

I also saw two documentaries on TV last night. The first one was about the Belgian colonization of the Congo, about which I knew very little. It certainly wasn't the sort of glorious adventure in bringing civilization to the noble savages, as it's made out to be by the colonnial monuments in Brussels. The Congo and its people were exploited ruthlessly. They choped people's hands off, even killed them and/or their families if they didn't supply enough rubber to plantation owners, a practice also followed on the Belgian king's own estate. Entire villages were wiped out that way. All this went on systematically for decades, until British missionaries raised the issue (not that the Brits were any better on their own colonies). There was a big uproar about it in the 1900s, then it just got forgotten. One thing's for sure, I'm not buying any more hand-shaped chocolate in Antwerp.

The second one was about how stereotypes of people from the colonies developed over the years in France, and how that still affects the way people issued from immigration are viewed. It was interesting to see how this still manifests itself every day in the media and indeed, in our minds. The noble savage, who needs to be taught as if he were a child, or presented as a freak-show attraction, the Chinese immigrant communities refusing to integrate and being a hotbed of drug abuse, lazy and dangerous Arabs, and so on. Yeah, these images are still prevailing in our collective conscience. And what about the fat, lazy, ignorant, violent, prejudiced, xenophobic white Christian European? Things are not looking up in Babylon.

I guess it's just to complex to judge people on their individual merit. It's easier to take that everyone in Poland has a plumbing business and they steal cars and stab Belgian students for kicks when they're not out taking decent people's jobs away...

Unhappy 'Burgers

I was dicking around with the acoustic guitar Monday night and found a riff that I liked. Since I wasn't getting anywhere with Guiding Light, I decided to record it. Spent a good couple of hours laying down guitar and bass tracks before going to sleep.

Had yesterday off, slept long. After finishing with cleaning up the appartment, we went to a Swiss restaurant in Kopstal (Koplescht), called Edelwyss, and filled up on fondue. There was a waitress there who seemed frustrated that we didn't speak Luxembourgish. When I ordered "fondue genevoise", she looked back at me as if I was speaking gibberish. "Ah, genfer Fondue!", she said. You get a lot of that here, especially up North. I once asked a policeman in Vianden for directions in French and got my reply in English. Not that it matters any to me, not being French, but his intention was clearly to insult me. I guess it's hard for them to stomach the fact that they're fast becoming a minority in their own country, but this is a really stupid way of venting it. Especially if you're working in a restaurant where the manager is French-speaking Swiss. Anyway, the food was great, and that's what matters.

After getting home from Kopstal, I had to run to make it to my band's rehearsal. We worked on a song written by our keyboard player, Mark. It's a joy to play, a kind of post-punk number. But Mat, our bassist, was bitching again. He didn't take it well that his rolling bassline didn't work at all during the verses, and then he was complaining that you can't hear the vocals. We had kind of a run-in earlier about a proposed gig, where we would back our vocalist's choir and then do a couple of numbers of our own. The choir chose songs that simply didn't work for us, I mean we sounded like a really lousy cover band playing them. We proposed that the choir learn three simpler songs and to go from there, but they rejected it and postponed the event until October. Mat then wrote an e-mail, which disgusted me, laying all the blame on me and Mel, the drummer. It kind of ruined last week's "repetition" for me. Anyway, I'm glad at least that I don't have to do a humiliating gig.

After recording a version of Mark's song, he asked us if anyone had an idea for another song, "Atmosphere" (we're working on a kind of concept show based on Mark's lyrics that were inspired by Andy Warhol's autobiographical book). I pitched the riff I recorded Monday night, and we actually found a way to make it work with the words. This version only uses the verse and chorus parts (slightly altered) of the song I recorded, but it seems okay. We had our usual glass of beer after rehearsal and I was on my way back home.

I spent the rest of the night building a drum track for the Monday recording. You can check out the finished product here, it's the one called "Rise". It could use some lyrics of its own. I put up a picture showing gas prices to go with the song.

Rain

The rain won't let up. It's one of those days. Pretty much uneventful, didn't get to speak to anyone. Tomorrow's a holiday for us at the institutions and most people took Monday off. I did more than enough work for today and am tired anyway, so I spent the last 30 minutes surfing the net. Read a couple of blogs, something that I rarely do.

I was planning to check out a game of the U17 European Cup after work, but I guess I'll stay in. Maybe I'll check out a movie later tonight...

Santiago, Tibet

Had a pretty good weekend, appart from having to spend the better part of Sunday cleaning up at home. My wife and I were invited to a party at a sculptor's studio in Dalheim, a village south of Lux. It was kind of weird, as the invitation came not from the host but a guest. It seems that he was eager to show off his work to pretty much everyone. We arrived pretty late and we knew nobody there.

It was kind of awkward but the host, a Chilean called Marco something-or-other, did a good job at making us feel welcome. The place was in a farmhouse, partly renovated, which Marco rents from a Danish guy who's selling it, until the new owner moves in. A couple of Marco's works were exposed in the main hall but you could walk around freely in the studio and check out his work in progress as well. Marco works with stone, mostly non-figurative. He spent some time speaking with us about his stuff, showed us around, offered food, drinks and smoke, then told us to check out his travel log on Tibet when he got bored with us.

I kind of envy guys who can do stuff like that. The book was filled with sketches of places he saw, different ideas, beer labels and other documents (including a bus ticket from a Chinese "aviation bus company", which cracked me up), his commentaries (in Spanish, of course) and notes from people he met. The spontaneity of the whole thing made it pretty exciting to look at, though we couldn't make out much of the text, as neither of us speaks Spanish :(.

It reminded me of "mail art", where people send letters or a book back and forth by mail and react to each other's work. I like the "log" format, which lends a narration to the whole thing and gives meaning to otherwise sketchy stuff. I wonder if it can be done with music...

Speaking of music, not much got done with "Guiding Light" this weekend. I re-recorded the song like three or four times. It seems that the key of A is just too low for my voice, so I threw the whole thing out and did two new takes in E, before deciding to go back to A, 'cause the guitar parts sounded way better that way. So now I'm stuck with trying to make the vocals come alive. I made a couple of attempts last night but am very far from having anything definitive.

I'm still listening to the new PJ record, it's starting to grow on me...

TGIF

Began work on the recording one of my older songs last night, "Guiding Light". So far, so good. I layed down two guitar tracks before going to bed. Then I woke up around 2 AM and couldn't get back to sleep, so I recorded the bassline. Now comes the hard part, building a drum track on my sequencer. I just hate to do it, it's slow and frustrating. Then I'll try to get my vocals down. I'm very unsecure about my voice, so I always have to do it in about 9-10 takes. I transposed the song into A to fit my vocal range, so I hope it's going to be okay. If not, I'll have to start all over again.

Anyway, I woke up feeling like shit, since I didn't get enough sleep. I got dressed, had another listen to what I recorded and went to work. I had coffee with the Polish girls in the morning. We were talking about how hard it is to find a good appartment in town. You can look for ages until you find one that's worth having to pay instalments on a loan for the rest of your professional life. The rices here are ridiculous.

Had Lasagna for lunch. A positive note.

This afternoon I'm going to town with the wife to meet some people. I'm not that excited about it right now, I'd rather go home and get it over with the drum track. Plus my leg hurts real bad. Got injured playing soccer yesterday. I was having a damn good game up until I got kicked by a defender while we were scrambling for a loose ball. I was cursing at the top of my lungs, it's a nasty bruise. I couldn't walk yesterday but it got better by this morning :). Yet it still hurts just enough to contribute to my "high spirits" today. Anyway, as the sign says, no spitting...(By the way, I found this photo while sifting through old stuff on my hard drive. It was taken by one of my friends, Andras Hagen, in Shanghai.)

God's word

I just bought this month's National Geographic. It runs an article about the Judas Gospel, which is currently a source of great debate. The text is a Coptic copy (written in Greek characters) of a supposedly Greek original, which is also referred to in independent Christian sources from the 2nd century AD. It describes a conversation between Jesus and "his most faithful disciple", Judas in which the Christ foretells the role the Apostle will play in his undoing. This was, of course, denounced by the Church as heresy early on.

I don't really want to go into much detail about Judas. However, the questions raised by his treatment in cannonic scriptures are among those that underscore my scepticism towards Christianity. I mean, without him, there is no Calvary, no salvation and consequently, no Christianity (at least as we know it). If he is to be hated, are we not admitting that the Christ's sacrifice was a product of chance, rather than fate? If he acted of his free will, wasn't this whole thing an accident? However, if it was meant to be, should he not be seen as victim (even as a hero)?

There are just too many uncertainties like that for me to forge faith out of it. And this religion has been abused so much anyway, all that's left are rags. It's like a piece of meat that's been thrown to the dogs, really.

Its morals are not its own, the most fundamental ones are not reliant on religion and have been known to exist for as long as we have records of human existance, while many of its teachings have been proven to be false, downright lies or just plain stupidity. It was also turned into an institution of convenience, which should not be the case for what it pretends to be.

The only reason I could see myself submitting to it is just that, convenience, and for that, I have no need. Do I need it to tell me what's right or wrong? I have my sense of that, be it a divine gift or nothing more than a product of civilization. Do I need it to make sense of the world or to find my place in it? I'm doing pretty good without it, thank you. And I've found better answers than it can provide.

Pearl Jam

Last night I downloaded the new Pearl Jam record from iTunes. Been listening to it all day. These guys get me every time. I couldn't tell you why, they're not doing anything new, technically. It just works, period.It's the sort of music that makes me want to scream the lyrics out loud and not give a fuck.

There's no other band out there at this time that has the chemistry to make this happen, IMHO. That's what I'm missing in my current group. I mean, it's all fine, there are lots of decent ideas floating around but it doesn't click. The fact that it doesn't look like we'll have any opportunity to play live in the near future only makes things worse...

I decided to look for another band to play with on the side but I don't really know where to start. Luxembourg is a small place and you can't pick and choose, so you take what you get. You have to make compromises and I don't want that anymore, I've made just enough already.

First post

So I finally got down to it. Last week I read an article on villagevoice.com about a New York cabby who's doing a blog about her shifts, posting photos of stuff/people she found interesting or just pissed her off. I spent something like an hour reading through her posts. Something clicked in me at that point and decided to start one myself. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, we'll see what comes out...