The Weakerthans @ Stollwerck, Cologne

It never was a secret that The Weakerthans from Winnipeg, Mb. are one of my favourite bands of all time. Ever since I first met Stephen, their guitarist, while he was on tour with his first band Painted Thin, and then ever since he joined The Weakerthans and I got to see them play live on their first tour in 1998 I always tried to keep track on what they are doing. I still admire the records, I simply love “Fallow” and I adore “Left & Leaving”, although I have to admit, that “Reconstruction Site” and “Reunion Tour” weren’t able to keep up with the first two. Still, those are great records on their own with wonderful songs.

Envy @ Gebäude 9, Cologne

I have been waiting for this one for a long time. The first time I was able to experience the whole intensity of an Envy live set was over eight years ago when they played the “Sojus 7″ in Monheim. guess what, they were the supporting act for Jimmy Eat World on that day. Several other bands played, but I can’t remember the names, I’m sorry. Anyway, those were the days. You can’t imagine a billing like that today, can you?

Euro 2008 Qualifiers: Better luck next time, England

So we are all set and ready for next year’s Euro championship in Switzerland and Austria and England won’t be there to play in the finals. They had their chance to make it, a chance they actually didn’t deserve after they blew the whole thing against Russia. They had to thank Israel to get them back into the race and all England had to do was to get a draw against Croatia. And what did they do? They lost. They were trailing 0-2 after only 14 minutes, they got back into the game after a strange penalty call and a goal by Crouch and then there was Mladen Petric who delivered the final blow 13 minutes from time.

Three examples of sports gone wrong

I stumbled across some thing over the past few days and I though I should share those with whoever wants to read this. There was this article in the New York Times for example, which deals with the strange halftime rituals during Jets games. Apparently hordes of men assemble at a certain gate during halftime and yell at women to expose their breasts. What the fuck?! Now I have always been interested in fan-dom and whatever surrounds the people who worship a team to the extent that they go competely crazy and have no other thing in their life besides their love for a club.

In The Backyard Of The Record Collection (7): Entombed – Clandestine

I encountered this record when I was in … what was that? 8th grade? Or was it 10th grade? Must have been 10th grade, I think I got this one in 1992 through a friend who was introducing me to all kinds of hard music. He started out with stuff like Gang Green or Sodom, but this little gem stuck with me through all the years. At first I only had a cassette with the record and I only found out about the great cover later.

Smalltown Canada with a little muslim twist

This …. is brilliant. Wonderful. Great. I was introduced to this series at a wedding of a friend of mine. Her husband is from Canada and so was half of the crowd there and one of those guys talked to me about this series. It’s set in the small (fictous) Canadian town of Mercy, Saskatchewan and the viewer is introduced to the problems and struggles a small muslim community is facing when it is trying to establish a mosque – in the parish hall of a church.

This AIn’t Vegas + Patterns @ Gebäude 9 Café, Cologne

There used to be a lot of shows in the small café of the Gebäude 9 club back in the days. Compared to the huge hall in the back of the building which fits an audience of around 500 the frontroom with the bar (called “the café”) is a way more nice and cozy room. As I said, back in the days there used to be a lot more shows there, bands like Braid, The Get Up Kids, Ensign or Hot Water Music played there and it was always a very good time.

Bundesliga: Day Thirteen – At last, the crisis!

MSV Duisburg – VfL Bochum 0:2
FC Schalke 04 – Hamburger SV 1:1
FC Hansa Rostock – FC Energie Cottbus 3:2
SV Werder Bremen – Karlsruher SC 4:0
VfB Stuttgart – Bayern München 3:1
Borussia Dortmund – Eintracht Frankfurt 1:1
Hertha BSC Berlin – Hannover 96 1:0
VfL Wolfsburg – Bayer 04 Leverkusen 1:2
DSC Arminia Bielefeld – 1.FC Nürnberg 3:1

A day at the record store (III)

I had a little time on Thursday so I decided to stop by at the record store to grab a copy of the new album by German punk rock superstars Die Ärzte. And this is what I got.

Die Ärzte Jazz ist anders LP
This band is by far the best when it comes to putting out unique records. You can imagine the fun they must have when they think of the things they want to have for a vinyl release. They had double 10″ records in gatefold sleeves, they had wonderful “normal” double LP releases with heavy vinyl, they had one record the put into a blue flokati rug thing (unfortunately that one is missing in my collection). And now they came up with a pizza box. Yup, that’s right, a pizza box. The thing looks like what you get when you order a pizza to your home.

NPB: Chunichi Dragons are Nippon Series Champions

Chunichi Dragons of Nagoya won the Nippon Series against Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters with a 1-0 perfect game in Game 5. Starter Daisuke Yamai and closer Hitoki Iwase retired all 27 Fighters Batters and won the match against the Fighter’s ace Yu Darvish who delivered a strong performance once again and proved that he was a worthy winner of the Japanese equivalent to the Cy Young award, the Sawamura award. So this gives the Dragons their first title since 1954 and with this at least one drought ended this year, when the Cubs and the Indians saw their hopes buried in the MLB across the Pacific.