Pale blue eyes
Yesterday we went to see Aimee Mann. Very good concert. When she arrived on stage she looked so pale and ill and was really shy. But after a couple of songs she had warmed up. She really looked like the daughter of Joni Mitchell. Resembling her like hell and the songs of Aimee are maybe less poetic but definitely more pop. She told us (after her first short tour in Europe) that German audiences are the best ("after a million concerts that I have done"). And I believe her. She cannot lie. Impossible with such a face (found using this Google image search). She also told us that the concert the night before (in Stuttgart) was really bad. And then she corrected herself, it was just her who was terrible, the other musicians are "professionals", it was her who was just a dabbler. Of course this was an understatement. She did two encores. Altogether 18 songs. She started with "..One.." and finished with "Deathly" from the Magnolia soundtrack. The guitarist was great (some nice distortions). Altogether a very nice inauguration of the Unionhalle in Frankfurt.
posted by Alexander Fritz at 8:42 PM

Music criticism
I am definitely not and will never be a music reviewer. I neither have the ears nor the vocabulary (especially not in English) to write anything profound about rock music.
It is very easy to say such and such album is crap or brilliant. It is much more difficult to argue with good reasons why the album is bad. Nevertheless the most difficult is to write why something is so phantastic. It is like in real life. When you are happily in love you do not write. You only become creative when you have to fight for resp. attract love. Or can you imagine to write love letters to your wife with whom you have been married for a couple of years?
Anyways I have to start this, I want to do it. I really love the new REM. I think Reveal is a revelation (sorry for the stupid pun). I will tell you why. Soon. Stay tuned.
posted by Alexander Fritz at 7:03 PM

Went to see Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau last night. A huge disappointment. The worst were the so-called sex scenes. Ridculous. How can you have sex without an erection? Watching other people having sex is embarrassing enough, watching them faking sex is even more stupid. Anyways the soundtrack was brilliant. The music somehow did not fit to the movie but who cares. Starting with the Tindersticks "A Night in" it went on with The Clash, David Bowie, the Clinic (I did not know them), Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Eyeless in Gaza etc. A good sample of the darker and punkier part of the mainly London indie scene of about ten years ago. Between the bad sex and the good music there was nevertheless one line by the main actor to remember: Is next Wednesday again Wednesday? (Wednesday was their meeting day.)
posted by Alexander Fritz at 7:10 AM

What has been going on lately? Not a lot actually. We have phantastic April weather in June again. Somewhere I read the global temperature was rising. Not so in Germany, at least not in summer. Summer should be called rain around here and if the lakes or rivers had the current air temperature (below 15 degrees Celsius) it would be much too cold to swim in (sorry about the English, it is not my mother tongue as you must have guessed by now, but I hope you get the picture).
So music-wise I was slightly positively surprised by the new Radiohead of which I heard extracts tonight on the radio. Some quite far-off stuff. And the name Amnesiac is so much cleverer than this stupid title Kid A :). I liked Thom Yorke's voice much more than before where I found it annoyingly thin and weepy. Now he seems to use his voice as an instrument. There was this quite conventional song Knives out where his voice was really sad. It sounded as he had understood the deep sadness of the world. That song really caught my attention. Impossible for me not to listen. I felt like a moth flying into the fire.
posted by Alexander Fritz at 9:47 PM

No More Heroes?
I bought the latest offering by one of my favourite groups of the 90s:
Everybody Wants to Know by Swell (better french page) from San Francisco. They were the masters of atmospheric alt-rock with everyday noises like doors closing, steps on the stairs, keys turning etc. 41 is like a sound odyssey on magic mushrooms.
There is only David Freel the singer left now. I should have feared the worst.
The album is a DISASTER. All the listenable tracks come from the EP "Feed"
from last year. Songs 9 to 11 from the record use the riff of "Feed", the song.
The whole album is a bad remix, mainly keyboards, drum machine and
synthesizer. What a rip-off!
posted by Alexander Fritz at 6:34 PM

The name of this blog is totallly random. It could have been called masturbating in the rain or dying in a thunderstorm. Maybe not as Blogspot does not allow such long names I guess. Actually I wanted to write in German and call it Tomaten in Ohren, a pun on Tomaten auf den Augen which translates literally as "tomatoes on the eyes" and is used as a reproach when you do not perceive something apparent because of the red tomato juice which is covering your eyes. I wanted to call it "tomatoes in ears" as I am more the auditive than the visionary (pun intended) kind of guy. And I think there is lots of music which you can only enjoy with tomatoes in your ears.
But I kept getting these 503 error messages so I had to change the name.
But actually THE reason for calling this "sex and sunshine" is that this can be abbreviated to SAS and this stands for at least two totally different things. One of the two can give you a clue about my studies and work. All the above is of course bollocks. I chose sex and sunshine as name for the blog as I hope to attract much more traffic with such a fancy and slightly frivolous title.
posted by Alexander Fritz at 11:04 AM

Last weekend I bought the new CD Stalled Parade by Eleventh Dream Day. As always 11thDD are very eclectic but pretty good as well. Most songs remind me very much of Sonic Youth. Even Rizzos voice sounds like a blend of Ranaldo's and Moore's. Only difference is a certain monotony, SY are usually more dynamic and innovative. As always there is a song (In the Style of...) Neil Young and Crazy Horse would be proud of. Premier cru guitar work. Unfortunately enough JB Bean has to sing as well. She really should restrict her singing to her other project Freakwater. Especially the country song Valrico 74 is unbearable for my ears. She really has got the classic female country voice. Just awful.
This explanation of the origin of the band name was too phantastic to be true.
posted by Alexander Fritz at 9:14 AM

yes!!! now it works. so the solution is to start a new blog hosted on blogspot and use template cutesy. this at least worked for me!
posted by Alexander Fritz at 8:42 AM

just testing hope i do not get this bloody 503 error anymore when trying to publish: cannot load template www/blogger.com etc.
posted by Alexander Fritz at 8:37 AM