3.7 KiB
can
I am a member of a secret society. It has its own gospel in the form of a still evolving story, it is not yet written, that starts with Grandmother Czuckay exclaiming that she would not set foot upon MS Wilhelm Gustloff, since one can not walk on water, it has no boards. As the official history explains the ship was sunk by the Russians on january 30th 1945. And so they took the train to hannover where young Holger Schüring, that's his Dutch name, would grow up and found his love of music.
He is of the same generation as the fictional composer Hermann Simon in Edgar Reitz' Heimat. Born out of the shadow of WWII, thoroughly educated on Bachisch counterpoints, too smart for his teachers, discovering new ways in experimental music
--
Irmin Schmidt en Stockhausen
Stockhausen was godlike. He challenged Irmin when he said: Tomorrow we will dedicate three hours to questions. But I only accep intelligent questions. Next day, Irmin asked him: Do you think you will get really intelligent questions posed about the work if you act so that everybody thinks, 'I won't ask him, it's not intelligent enough'? Stockhausen was the last of the gods, traditional composers, writing on paper, divorced from the performance of music. Irmin's answer was: The intellectual God is Dead. Who are you on that mountain, higher that all of us? Just get down and be normal like any of us. So is that my secret society's gospel? No, it's not about that per sé, but we will not stand for any authority.
-- Günter Grass - Danziger Trilogie: Die Blechtrommel. Katz und Maus. Hundejahre Holger lived in the same street (?)
On the question of his nationality, Holger once said: "That I am German is a falsification. That I am Polish is a falsification. That means that my whole person is a falsification. This happened because my grandfather told the nazis that we must be Aryan. And he made a kind of family tree. And his family tree was just born from fantasy, with no basis behind it. It looked nice..."
--
The nice thing about LCD Soundsystem is that it's not about boys drunk on testosterone going out on a Friday night. It rather hints at the hangover next day. Or the one in the years after. The whole project was described by James Murphy as an attempt to make something out of his life after reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and feeling inadequate for not having achieved anything yet. Just spent years wasting time in resentment, too scared to do anything meaningful. His name dropping is awesome:
But I was there
I was there in 1968.
I was there at the first Can show
in Cologne.
...
I was there in 1974 at the first
Suicide practices in a loft in New
York City.
...
I was there when Captain
Beefheart started up his first band.
...
This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders,
Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The
Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd
Terry, The Germs, Section25,
Althea and Donna, Sexual
Harrassment, a-ha, Pere Ubu,
Dorothy Ashby, PIL, the fania All-
Stars, the Bar-Kays, the Human
League, the Normal, Lou Reed,
Scott Walker, Monks, Niagra,
Joy Division, Lower48, the
Association, Sun Ra,
Scientists, Royal Trux, 10cc,
Eric B. and Rakim, Index, Basic
Channel, Soulsonic Force ("just
hit me!"), Juan Atkins, David
Axelrod, Electric Prunes, Gil!
Scott! Heron!, the Slits, Faust,
Mantronix, Pharaoh Sanders and
the Fire Engines, the Swans, the
Soft Cell, the Sonics, the Sonics,
the Sonics, the Sonics.
Who is that 'Niagra'? Should that be 'Niagara', a French outfit from the eighties? I admit I did not know them, but they sound a lot like Les Rita Mitsouko, who I still like better ;) I found them by accident in the library where at the time they lent out LP's, that I would then routinely copy to cassette.