music that takes you all the way back

I'm sure that this is a common phenomenon: you listen to a certain song or album for hours, days, weeks and suddenly it's enough. You discover a new song for you to do the heavy rotation or you simply get sick of that particular kind of music...

Then, months later you see this cd or lp or whatever it happens to be, and think: gosh, nothing, I say, nothing in the world could make me listen to this music. You simply cannot IMAGINE listening to it again.
Well, don't think you can get around it.... At some point you pick it up again and put it innocently into the player, hit play...and ...wam!

you are back. you can smell the time. you can taste the time. you can feel it. you are there, right there, back in this life-situation which this music was the soundtrack for. Sometimes it even happens unconsciously. You just didn't realize that this particular song would beam you back but it does. You sit there, puzzled, leaving the now for the then......
ahhhh, these times, these times...let me remniscent a bit about some of these songs.....music......

• Gotan Project. Beams me back to sleepless nights working hard on my installations for my installation art, cruising around Berlin to get stuff, booze, chocolate, nails, lights, whatever I needed for the different projects I had. James borrowed me his gorgeous old Mercedes and his House CD's. For God's sake, I never ever thought I would ever go for electronical music! But Berlin taught me the better. It just fitted so well, it drove me far it drove me wild, my energy was set free and the Gotan Project sound accompanied me through some desperate and inspirational situations in this old abandoned house where I had my studio...
• Tracy Chapman. 2002. I just bought those NIKE running shoes to make a point for my running career. Hannover, running through the fields, listening to Tracy. This was a time when I loved wild and passionately persons who were far away. Omar, Paul,....Tracy just has sort of a stillness that draws me in. I admire her fiercly because she made many songs that do not care about whether it is cool or not or pathetic or not to write about social and moral issues.
• Wu Tang Clan. 03/04 Basel. Switzerland. I was in this school where everybody was as different as it can get from what I am. Middle class rich swiss asses. Holy Ghost! I just shut myself up in my music and banged my head to the Clan, trying to channel the aggressive energy that emerged whenever I had to face those ingorant bastards. To be fair, not all of them were as bad but I am glad I am out of there. To have artists around me just feels so much better!
• 'Summer Rain'. I even don't know who is the interpreter of that song, but funnily enough it is intrinsically connected with a certain smell 'Indian Summer'. Both belong to my oldest sister (luv ya Juli!) and characterize the time of my awakening to music, fashion and being a woman. That wasn't a small step for the little tom-boy I was!!! It was the time of my first serious crushes on boys (heya J.!) and also the time of my serious commitment to the Greenteam, a youthgroup of Greenpeace. Yes, I was and probably still am a little idealist.
• Fugees. . Atlantic Ocean. Summer. Ohhhhhh. Ahhhhh. what an innocent time. 'Killing me softly was ON, everywhere, everywhere....I was such a kid back then, didn't have any CD's or tapes back then, just radio and didn't know anything about 'rap' (huh, that sounds soo... is that music?) or hiphop. (ahhh, I didn't know how much I would fall in love with it later!!!!). But the Fugees haunted me. As well at this camping place near Bordeaux, where we had a great summer vacations with my dad (I love my dad, he is truely the best! This goes out to all the dads out there! Daughters LIKE to admire their dads!!!!!!) and fascinating personalities (simple teenies, but, yes, for me they came from a different planet) carried around ghettoblasters with the Fugees on....it was everywhere, I breathed it literally. Lauryns clear, beautiful and stunning voice is still very dear to me (also her Unplugged is great) and whenever I hear 'killing me softly' I am again this little girl, being fascinated by the 'grown up's world' and the beauty and mystery of music....
• Compilation 'Flower Power'. Somehow pathetic to listen to a flower power compilation but it was part of my education. I was maybe 14 or so and just started playing guitar myself. People started wondering whether I would like to become a singer, and of course I would be incredibly flattered but also not believe in it. Well, maybe I will eventually make the step out there on a stage, if this thing with the music academy in Los Angeles works out. I really feel I need another kick in the ass in order to get myself out there. I really suffer from this women's disease. You know, that many of us cannot take something out there, as long as it isn't 'perfect' and they fully assured not to fail or be embarassed. Terrible....Oh, and this whole flower power thing kind of opened up a new level of understanding for where my parents came from....Although my mom of course wasn't from the Hippie movement (but Dad) but rather from the beatnik's time and anyways more into her Alaskan songs than into anything else
• Bob Dylan 'Lay lady lay' . Spain. 1997 or so. Me, my two sisters and my brother in the car, fighting about minor issues. We had had a wonderful vacations with our dad again, driving through France, Spain, the Pyrenees. My brother, a little choleric back then, starts screaming against the overwhelming pressure and power of three older and smart sisters. It doesn't help. He starts trampeling against the front window of the car. It cracks. Dad comes back from paying the gasbill. Speechless. A thunderstorm and a heavy rain add to the situation. We are all thrown back onto ourselves. Dad puts Bob Dylan on. - Lay lady lay - ahhh.it goes straight through my body into my heart, fills my little universe with words, sounds, strings, and an obscure meaning...
• Dead Prez 'mind sex', ahh and all the other songs of that cd too.... Dead Prez, as well as Common and A Tribe Called Quest or Public Enemy shaped my true love for HipHop. 2003. My final high school year/first year college. Working late at nights just because I was such a lazy ass and basically never did any work until the very last minute which had me sit there for entire nights then, in order to get things done. I absolutely loved 'mind sex' because it symobilized first of all everything that I thought would be important for me in a functioning relationship (which I obviously did not have back then) (oh yes, and yet didn't have) and also what I did not have: my boyfriend (if you can call this a boyfriend) was a big huge fat asshole, 15 year major, CEO of a fucked up record label (sorry Bo!) and just such a fucking pretender. In fact, he was a Bush supporter, which should have made me suspicious in the first place. However, in my very liberate and tolerant way I even took that. I mean, we really had interesting conversation due to that. Instead of having sex. haha. the whole night. 'Bush keeps his word!" OH MAN, how could I have spent one entire year keeping calling this right-wing son of a gun who would call me a fucking nazi when we had arguments? (we had argument from the very beginning which was maybe one of the reasons why it took me so long to realize the extend of his fuckedupness) and writing long mails to him that he anyways did not understand? All in all we saw each other for maybe a month or so.I don't know what attracted me to him. My sister was maybe right in telling me to come to Los Angeles to see more afro-americans. I mean, it'd be fucked up, I know, if that was true, but maybe the very fact that he was afro-american (the american was the worse part if I can say so) attracted me to him. Poof....I know better now. Oh, how stupid can a girl be....nah....ah it hurts to write this down!!!! **
• Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix. yeah. cleaning houses for my aunt who is a real estate manager...HUGE houses. I say HUGE!!!! hours, on dragging hours....feeling FUCKED UP because I couldn't find another job. Well, I did have other jobs but all sucked. Somehow. Although - to see what it is like to be on the other side of an erotic telephone hotline was worth the trying. ;-) Janis just screams it out so nicely. yeah
• Ben Harper and Meshell Ndegeocello. 2004. Basel again. The artist loft. Anuschka, my lesbian friend and her flat mates, endless morning and evening sessions discussing, smoking (I didn't smoke back then, rest assured darling) and drinking wine or coffee or yogi tea. Jamming with Anuschka, up in the attic where we also had our first attempts of having a little band...I can't describe the incredible comfortableness stemming from this place. This attic is so special, and this not only because I lost my virginity up there!!!! It s all so beautiful..the memories...and the music, the acoustic stuff, the genuinity, the real life... We lived a dream, oh we did...
• Macy Gray sitting in the first room of my own. empty space (ahh, ever since such an inspiration to me!!!!! I LOVE empty space which invites my creative energy to take action!), listening to macy gray. ahhhh what a privilege...sexual revolution...hmmm.......ah yaya.
• last but not least: Tango: when I was 16 I drank for the first time in my life wine ( I know that this sounds as if I was a retard, but well, I am slow in my development and I really take it easy. I just think there is too much out there than to hurry. I want to take it all and I have to say that it was in many ways good not to be occupied by drugs or boys in my early teens, as it created free space for me to develop and pursue many interests which would otherwise have been sadly neglected....) I was still unkissed and I spent a whole night after a concert of my cousin in Stuttgart with a stranger of afro-descendance and his bottle of good red french wine... (yes, it's worth being mentioned, as we all have figured by now that the colour of skin, despite all denial, somehow matters, but I just would like to make it clear from the scratch that it also can matter in a very positive way and I am by no means prejudiced or anything I like many different guys and women, so don't get me wrong. I just love beauty in general and my personal taste or eye for beauty is somehow conditioned in a way that makes me love coloured skin...and not only the skin....). I discussed with him the whole night through whether or not 'true love in the moment' is possible***, and to be honest, this has shaped my entire love life that was yet to come back then. First of all I really fall very easily for coloured people (oh, yes, sure, also the green ones!!!) and I love red wine and I am still wondering whether or not 'true love in the moment' is a silly excuse for men to get their way or a real option....I am exploring this right now, so if you have any comments on that feel free to contribute to this process!!!! (in any way ;-)) - ahh, how this is connected to Tango? Well, I danced Tango Argentino back then and it was all very exciting to gradually finding my own way into the world of lovers......love, in any form, especially in the danced form and expressed in music.....and it always reminded me of that night and of 'Sun', how I called him every since.....when I had my first kiss? ah, thats another story. But really, all my love-related stories are beautiful. I mean, all 'first times'! but this, maybe later in the blog ;-)

this list could be of course, arbitrarily extended but I think thats enough for today...and the order is really randomly!!!!

if you feel like mentioning a song that means something special to you, I d be extremely pleased to hear which one....and also, as I am doing my first steps as a blogger here, feel free to critize!!!

piranha (right now listening to 'Saint Germaine'

** I was strangely addicted to that dude, because I made out with him despite all the described nonsense and I am still wondering what it was. I met him again, some years later and was incredibly relieved to see that I didn't feel anything for him and actually felt quite 'superior' in the sense that I could face him with dignity and consideration. He tried to make out with me although he is married now and has a kid ! (OH WHAT A PATHETIC LOOSER!!!!) and I was so happy to see that I am over this. I am a real woman now who can deal with this kind of men (that is, refraining from dealing with them as a principle) and, luckily I owe this partially also to another 'brother' as many of you would say, who showed me a much healthier way to deal with 'colour'...and see the colours of the rainbow ;-))

***and he was decent enough not to seduce me although he clearly would have made out with me if I had wanted to. I really appreciate this up to today and when I think back I think that I must have a real good guardian angel because I have gone through many crazy situations which in themselves were actually rather risky. I mean spending a whole night in a dark park with red wine and a gorgeous looking guy is risky in itself no???!