Deutschlande.. into Nederlands...Groningen & Den Haag

Klaus Schulze
Trancefer (1981)

Doing a lot of 'old school electronic" here in Deutschland.Often when I'm here I listen to a ton of Beethoven, Bach, Haydn (ok he's Austrian but he rules) or some of the German electro-school like Eberhard Schoener, Ulrich Schnauss, CAN, Amon Duul, you name it.

Today the rainy quiet day was perfect for this brooding Schulze LP.... consisting of just 2 long tracks...it slowly morphs thru still interesting synth textures...driven by a live sounding drum pulse. Schulze was in Ash Ra Temple and he's originally the DRUMMER for Tangerine Dream, so his sense of rhythm, performed or programmed, is usually pretty interesting...this album however has the great Michael Shrieve on there (yes you know him from the Infamous Santana/Woodstock clip...and LOTUS/live in japan. He's still a monster today --check out the 90s stuff he did with Bill Frisell and Shawn Lane/Jonas Hellborg. Utterly Fantastic.)

Ahh..a truck stop. I'm serious, if you like Good Food- the truck stops in Germany are stunning... I have actually sat at a place in bavaria with ... a vegetarian menu section. People always, ALWAYS ask me how the hell I stay vegetarian in Germany -- it's a myth folks ...this is perhaps one the best, easiest places to be vegan/veg. Really. They get it, that's all. And no - Hitler wasn't a vegetarian. Here's just one little set of choices in a place that wasn't EVEN that great: All kinds of great fresh stuff, some of it organic even. But -our driver - Peter - who is fantastic --still went right into Burger King, saying about the other stuff "Ahhh, they only have crap here"!! Sigh.. Lots of fresh soups, stuff for meat-eaters, dieters, vegans, whoever. Sad to see our American Poison is loved everywhere. They may rail on our politics, but they love our grease. So-- take with a grain of salt when people tell you about 'the shitty food' in other countries. That's for my NEXT project - I am doing a project called "Tour Healthy" where i share some ideas that have WORKED in the field--- how to stay healthy, eat a great vegan, even raw diet, while on the road in ANY country. I have done this in Germany, Russia, Chile, Venezuela, Hungary, Bulgaria, Jamaica, England, Israel.....you name it.


So We're on a long series of highways....
the fall colors are amazing (who needs to go to New England?) and my soundtrack implies forward motion nicely, so it's all pretty trippy without any drugs...the hypnotic, meditative opiate of synth tones will always work for me. They're warm and organic, I never understand why people call this music "cold" or "inhuman".

We drive into Holland and you start seeing LOTS of windmills...one of the many cool things abt this country is --of course you get to see like 500 years of windmill technology!!! What the fuck are we waiting for!!??

Rollins Band
TURNED ON (Live 1989)

Well I'm a collosal Rollins Band fan...just a Rollins fan in general, I love what the guy has to say I love the Black Flag years, along with Bad Brains, Fugazi, that is some required punk rock/hardcore listening. I have every one of his albums, have seen every tour since "The End Of Silence"....the 80s band wth Chris Haskett, Sim Cain, Andrew Weiss, the 90s band with Melvin Gibbs replacing Weiss, and the completely new 2000s band with Mother Superior as his band, until the recent reunion to tour with X.

But his renaissance one man industry deal is just awesome. I don't live my life by it - but I'm intrigued by the possibilities offered by astrology, and as a fellow aquarius (2.09.65) to his (2.13.61) I find myself agreeing a lot with his outlook on the world - an innate fairness of judgement, a propensity to rip on all sides when stupidity is seen, general bonhomie until we are fucked with, then we will crush you. One difference is -- he could actually DO IT...!! I also learned a lot about touring reading his books, great series of travelogue, self -released stuff all available thru his website. His book Get In The Van documents brilliantly the Black Flag years, and YOU ARE THERE with his escribe verite style...check it out!!

But one thread that goes thru many of his "road diaries" (to be certain --blogs before there were blogs) is that -- they toured Europe a lot , and ....played Holland (and Belgium) all the time!!! The back of Rollins Band albums were the first places I read names like ....Nijmegen...Maastricht... Groningen and Eindhoven where we're going today. And when we hit Eindhoven one of our special guests in the audience will be the mighty Theo Van Rock, always listed as the fifth member of Rollins band...and without whose amazing engineering skills the band's might ..simply would not have been captured the way it was...WHICH WAS MASSIVE.

Chris Haskett is just stupidly unsung.....his simple PRS into Mesa Boogie approach with a couple simple pedals had a major head-crushing effect on me. One of the reasons I have a PRS today. Huge, post-sabbath riffs. Simple , direct and devastating. But he really got TEXTURE..and sometimes wasn't doing much AT ALL... just adding some atmospherics with a harmonic ..or one sustained note. Great. Tension and Release. This band had and still has -- such amazing power. But the bottom end was what it was all about - Andrew Weiss, towering under his mop of unruly hair, huge bare feet braving ANY and all surfaces. the dude was unreal onstage, storming around with this HUGE bass sound.

Blues based, soaked-in sabbath and hardcore punkrock, with a decidely funky edge and a fantastic drummer in Sim Cain. Out front you have this crazy, stripped-to-his-bike shorts fireplug of muscles, screaming his hoarse message of self improvement and wry social-observation. Calling people on their shit. Fortunately this very live band recorded a TON of their stuff and Rollins pumped out release after release in the late 80s...any fan of hard rock, metal and punk rock should check out the early stuff before they kinda blew up with the hit "Liar". And those albums with Melvin Gibbs kick ass too. DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT !

What's great about being alive today is you can just GO WATCH IT. We can all catch up on the shit we missed. Rollins Band at Youtube