Cobretti @ Bauwagenplatz, Cologne

On a day on which summer came back to the city for one last time what better way to spend the evening than with a small open air show at Cologne’s squat area Bauwagenplatz. Cobretti called and all of their friends followed. Cobretti have been around for a long time now hailing from the “other” side of the river locals use to call “Schäl Sick”, which can hardly be translated but means something like “weird”.

In The Backyard Of The Record Collection (12): Jimmy Eat World – Clarity

I usually buy records because of one or two tracks on it I really like. Sometimes it’s a song I heard the band play live, sometimes it’s something I listened to on our local college radio station. But very seldomly a record stuns me for the full time it’s playing on my turntable. Now I don’t own a vast amount of records, but still I think it can be considered enough to call it a “collection”. And all those “pretentious assholes” like me know that you can’t listen to your entire collection all the time, so you pick out certain songs from certain records. So it’s pretty unusual that I listen to a record constantly for a long period of time. But that’s exactly what happened with this gem.

Bundesliga 08/09 Day 2: Money scores goals. Or does it?

• Hannover 96 – Energie Cottbus 0:0
• Hamburger SV – Karlsruher SC 2:1
  
• VfB Stuttgart – Bayer Leverkusen 0:2
  
• Hertha BSC Berlin – Arminia Bielefeld 1:1
  
• Borussia Dortmund – Bayern München 1:1
  
• 1899 Hoffenheim – Borussia Mönchengladbach 1:0
  
• 1.FC Köln – Eintracht Frankfurt 1:1
  
• VfL Bochum – VfL Wolfsburg 2:2

Neurosis @ Essigfabrik, Cologne

This show flew a little bit under the radar as I only learned about it a few weeks ago. It has been quite some time since Neurosis went on some sort of a tour in Europe so the expectations were quite enormous. Previously the only chance to catch a glimpse of their live shows was at festivals or exclusive shows in the U.K. and I know quite a few people who especially went to those shows.

Summer Koushien Day 17: A onesided affair in the final

So this is it, this year’s tournament is finally over and the end of it wasn’t the high class game one would expect for a final of a competition. Well, at least the neutral spectator would expect a slightly closer competiton. But this is high school baseball, things like this happen. I wonder if this was the highest scoring win in the final in Koushien history.

Bundesliga 08/09 Day 1: A newbie on top …and Fortuna gets a draw in their first match

• Bayern München – Hamburger SV 2:2
• Bayer Leverkusen – Borussia Dortmund 2:3
• Energie Cottbus – 1899 Hoffenheim 0:3
• Arminia Bielefeld – Werder Bremen 2:2
• Karlsruher SC – VfL Bochum 1:0
• VfL Wolfsburg – 1.FC Köln 2:1
• Schalke 04 – Hannover 96 3:0
• Eintracht Frankfurt – Hertha BSC Berlin 0:2
• Borussia Mönchengladbach – VfB Stuttgart 1:3

Summer Koushien Day 16: Osaka Toin and Tokoha Kikugawa are in the final!

So there we have it: the final of this year’s Summer Koushien tournament is just around the corner. And both semifinal games seemed to have been not as close as some other games this year. In fact the turnout was the same on both occasions. Identical results, although the runs were scored in different inning (duh!). Goro Shigeno of the 高校野球 Blog spoils us with the stats of the Best of 4 teams and it’s interesting to see that the teams who reached the final used their pitchers very differently.

Summer Koushien Day 15: Wakayama’s effort not rewarded, Yokohama routs Seiko

Things are drawing to a close at Koushien Stadium with the last two matches of the Best Of 8 round having been played today. Only three matches to go and I won’t be able to watch anything on those two days live since they will start when it’s the middle of the night over here in Europe. All that’s left for me is to check the scores when I wake up and when I did that today I was rather stunned.

Summer Koushien Day 14: Okinawa keeps rolling, wins in extra innings

I was a bit surprised by the matchups of todays two games. While I was able to figure out the second game, the first one didn’t make any sense when I was looking at the brackets posted on japanesebaseball.com. Turns out that for the Best 8 round and onwards the teams draw lots to determine the matchups.

Hardcore in Cologne back in the days: Hard Times Concerts @ BüZe Ehrenfeld

15 years ago the Bürgerzentrum Ehrenfeld aka BüZe, a venue run by the city council of Cologne back then, was setting out to become the focus of hardcore shows in the city. I was invited by a friend to come along to see Agnostic Front and Madball at the beginning of 1993, two bands I had only heard about recently before going to the show.