Sports all the way…

Because of the nice and warm summer weather I decided to spent my Saturday afternoon outside after being stuck in the office all week on the late shift. I live rather close to the university campus so I went there to hang out a little bit. Turned to be a very “sporty” time.

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The Gaslight Anthem @ Werkstatt, Cologne

I had been looking forward to this evening for a long time and then it was over a little bit too fast. I was working in the morning and had to rush to a rehearsal afterwards so there wasn’t any chance to grab something decent to eat by the time we arrived at the “Werkstatt”. The weather was fine, quite a few people were there and before we knew it our good friends of The Gaslight Anthem came out of the venue and the time turned back a few months. It was almost like they never left. I really enjoyed talking baseball with Benny again.

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KölnCampus: College radio in Cologne

There had been an urgent need for an independent radio station in Cologne for ages and since the local college radio station “KölnCampus” went on air a few years ago it’s fun to listen to the radio again. Although the program is far from perfect the main difference to the established corporate and public radio stations is the choice of music they play. And that’s where it really gets interesting.

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Home sweet home

It was always rather funny to listen to those rap songs in which the lyrics describe the surroundings of the rapper, how he grew up, how hard and tough his life was roaming the streets of his hometown district. And maybe it was always funny because the cities and their disctricts were always somewhere else. There are songs about my hometown Cologne, but those were either pretty weird and bad (as in wanna-be gangsters singing about their oh-so-tough part of the town) or they were referring to other parts of the city I never lived in.

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Akiakane @ Sonic Ballroom, Cologne

I have been looking forward to this show ever since I found out about it on punkstelle.de at the end of last year. It’s very rare for us to get to see Japanese bands play live in local clubs, so I gave the music of Akiakane a try via their myspace site and I instantly liked it. Very nice melodic punkrock with enough energy and aggressiveness.

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Weekend Round-up: Shows, shows, shows

So Friday started off with that show in Dortmund. And since I hate to repeat myself, I will just give the link here.
On Saturday then I was really wasted when I got up in the morning. Let’s face it, I’m just not used to getting to bed this early in the morning. And every time I think I want to sleep way into the afternoon hours there’s always some idiot in my neighbourhood who’s redecorating his or her room. So no sleep ’til the next show and on this Saturday evening Kommando Sonne-nmilch were playing at Gebäude 9. I completely forgot about that show and only remembered it when I saw the poster for the Dortund show the day before.

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Great days in a row.

Honestly, the past few days have been the best in a long time. I had so much fun spendingt ime with the guys of The Gaslight Anthem who we had the honour to play with on monday. We talked a lot after the show, I then met the guys on tuesday to give them a short tour of the city which they seemed to have enjoyed. And then yesterday I spent the evening with them watching movies, going to a bar and talking and talking for hours and hours.

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The strange story of an old punk turned model in Japan

So I never had a morning like this. I was waorking as usual and while there was nothing to do I was looking at spiegel.de which is one of the (if not the) biggest German news site. And guess what I find there. An article about a friend of mine. He went to Japan to study there for a few semesters and now he’s a model there. Something we all here were going nuts about. That guy is anything but a model. He always looks like he’s way too tired, he always sneaks around like nothing can bother him, he always wears old clothes, worn out sneakers, and so on. But he’s a really nice guy and he’s a very good friend of mine.
So some guy I know from my internship last year did an article about him and his story which can be found here >>> Big in Japan: Wie ein Altpunk zum gefragten Model wurde (German).

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Copa Colonia 2007: "The ball knows us"

It’s a tough life. After drinking for the past two days, on Friday out of frustration, on Saturday because there was a good show, I was asked to take part in a football tournament on Sunday. Boy, that is hard. I had to get up at 10 am, I tried to at least wake up a little bit before the first game started at 11.30 am. Our team was “Bolzen” and we represented the magazine with the same name. A lot of players were acquired from Cologne Sunday League team “FK Trimmdich” and those guys can play.

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Edelweisspiratenfestival

Today there was an “Edelweisspiratenfestival” taking place just across the street where I grew up. The park is called “Friedenspark” and at its outside stretches there is a huge memorial for the fallen soldiers of the World War I. The whole building used to be a fortress during the times of the German Empire back at the turn of the century (1900). Today it houses a center for children where they can play and build their own wooden fortress.

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