The XX  are four 19-year-old guys, who do not embody all the hype- and indie-like clichés like wearing Ray Ban glasses and skinny jeans. They are normal young people from a suburb in the south-west of London and have just released their début album. It is their inconspicuousness and aloofness that makes them so special and that has aroused my curiosity.

Their music is vulnerable, personal and nostalgic, which arises in the song  “Islands”. Right from the start, I loved the composition of the voices of Romy and Oliver, which resonate so perfectly together, with a discreet use of guitars, drums, keyboard and synthesizer sounds. For me, this song, reflects safety, hope and arriving wherever this might be.

I’ve heard the whole album and every single track on this album tells its own unique story. In my opinion, it is a very well produced album.

I made my two crosses at: X audio-licious and X definitely worth listening to.

If you want to purchase the album on amazon, click here!

The reason why I write about this issue was a talk show on ARD “Hart aber fair” hosted by Frank Blasberg. The topic was “Sufficient is still too little. Why does greed dominate us?” It was so interesting, that I thought about greed in my life and how greedy I am. That’s why I dedicate my weekly blog to this topic and want to present to you some voices in that panel discussion.

The most interesting fact for me was that we are all born greedy. It is scientifically proven by Matthias Sutter (professor of economy in Innsbruck) among others that newborns don’t share. Only due to a good education they learn to share. So does that mean that all the greedy managers went through a bad education?

I think I went through a very good education and know how to share, although I am the youngest of three children. But nevertheless, I remember me being 6 or 7 years old and greedy. I used to collect these figures in the chocolate eggs (Überraschungseier) and a friend of mine had the complete line of the “happy hippos” and oh my god, I was so envious and wanted to have the missing hippos, which were about 7 out of 10 (I just started collecting them). My friend went to the bathroom and the figures were in my pocket. I could have taken just two of them, and perhaps she wouldn’t have realised anything, but my mind went blank and I took them all. I still remember the feeling of greed I had and I think we all can tell similar stories. Besides I was not only greedy but pretty mean, but I said sorry and gave her the figures back. Still, we don’t know each other today, well, no surprise.

Jutta Ditfurth, a journalist, says in that panel discussion that greed is the essence of capitalism, but personally, I think one just cannot limit greed to the economy, as it is a human vice, which everyone should control carefully. I would love to see these people, who complain about today’s manager, in their position, when the next million seems to be so attractive. I don’t want to credit the greedy top managers, not at all. Nevertheless, I can understand them to some extent or at least know where the behaviour is coming from, as nobody is immune from greed and as a saying states: “Wealth is like sea water. The more you drink of it, the thirstier you get.”

Another thought came across my mind. We all study “International Business Management”. Do we have to be greedy in order to be successful later on? Well, greed is such a negative word, but it can be a driving force. And greed does not always have to be the desire for money, it also means greed for knowledge (Wissbe-gier) and curiosity (Neu-gier), which are necessary for success.

So how greedy are you?

I fell in love with her song “La La”, which doesn’t go out of my head. I heard it this week on radioeins and is worth presenting to you. As an analysis of song lyrics is always a matter of how you see the things and which mood you are in, I just let you interpret this for yourselves. But I perceive this song as very melancholic in the first place, written in a pessimistic and sad tone. It could symbolize a goodbye, break-up, an identity crisis or just a change in life. But then this song embodies confidence and hope and turns out to be encouraging and positive, that’s why I really love the composition of this song. But as I said watch this video and make your own opinion.

In order to tell you some facts about Cortney Tidwell, she was born 1972 in Nashville, Tennessee. Her mother was diagnosed with manic depression and Cortney’s music ambition was derailed. Cortney’s musical genes emerged again after the passing of her mother many years later. She attended two years of college before she dropped out to pursue art.

To read more about Cortney Tidwell or listen to more music, visit her site.

In one of these get-togethers, a friend of mine showed me a clip by René Marik, a German degreed puppet player, I didn’t even know that you can study that. In his plays appear love-sick cloths in “Liebesleben der Lappen” or the slightly chavy ice bear who speaks in a Berliner accent and comments on the sinking of the titanic in “Titanic”, which is one of my favourites. His most famous puppet is a mole, who wears an armband for the visually impaired and is characterized by a speech defect, whereby legendary sayings are born like “Jemand ze hage?” (“Jemand zu Hause”), Autsch’n, Schneewante (Schneewittchen) or “Rapante” (Rapunzel).

René Marik would describe what he is doing as comedy, but,  nevertheless,  is different from Mario Barth or Michael Mittermeier, whose repertoire circles around parking and listening, whereas in Marik’s plays there is love, which is relentless as the life itself. Taz says: “Im Grunde ist Marik ein Romantiker, der an der Realität verzweifelt – und sich deshalb im Schutz des feinen Dazwischen aufhält, bis ihm etwas Besseres einfällt”. I like that quote  and it fits.

I wouldn’t have thought that puppet shows can be so funny. It reminds me of my childhood and I think as well that you must have kept your inner child to really see the fun in it. So let’s see whether you have saved your inner child and tell me what you think about René Marik.

Tschüßn’

A year has ended, a new one has started. That’s normally the time, when we reflect on last year. Where have we been? Who have we met? Was it a good one? I had a quite excited year. I saw new places:  Amsterdam, Rome, Budapest, I’ve started studying, met a bunch of new interesting people and had great fun. And at the end, I realised what grief and the farewell of a beloved person mean and how other things just lose importance.

Finally, I still don’t know what I really want, but found more answers to the question what I do not want, which in the end will lead me to the final solution and complete happiness.

There is no other band that can express the feeling I have on New Year’s Day so well as U2 in the song “New Year’s Day”.  It is the third track from their 1983 album War and it was released as the album’s lead single in January 1983, written about the Polish Solidarity movement. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed the single at #427 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time“, at least! For me it has become tradition to hear that on the first day of the year. The melancholic atmosphere in that song is just overwhelming and fits to the atrabiliousness on New Year’s Day and it has one of the greatest and saddest guitar solos I know.

In Bono’s words “Let’s begin again!”

How was your 2009? A new year always makes room for new expectations and resolutions. What are yours?

That are the facts, but lately I have asked myself why are they in Barcelona? There aren’t no strong cultural, economical, social or linguistic links between Pakistan and Spain, and concretely Barcelona. For instance, the high concentration of Pakistanis in London leads back to the fact that Pakistan is a member of the British Commonwealth. But why then Barcelona? I began investigating.

Although it looks to me like the convenience store is the major business they are involved in, they also are represented in ‘locutorios’ (small businesses where you can pay to use a phone by the minute), Internet cafes (often combined with locutorios) and restaurants. And of course, they sell “sexy beer” on the ramblas. Due to the Pakistani community selling ‘estrella damm’ I had the best parties in Barcelona, that just took place in the streets of Barcelona.

Obviously, Barcelona is a place where many Pakistani immigrants are establishing a life for themselves, but why in Barcelona? The immigration of the Pakistanis began in the mid-nineties, after the Olympic Games were held in Barcelona. According to some comments I read the big chain of community from Pakistan is due to awarding of papers to illegal persons by Spanish government. Another reason might be that nationalities who found niches of employment in Barcelona swap ideas on the employment issue with other nationalities.

I have read in the newspaper abc.es and on the homepage vozbcn.com (voices of Barcelona) that law-breakers concerning traffic abuses do not have to pay the fine if the traffic sign was just written in Catalan and not additionally in Castellano (Spanish), which is almost 100% of all cases.

There are existing two articles about the traffic law concerning traffic signs. Article 56 says that the traffic signs have to be written at least in the language of the state, which is actually Castellano. Article 138 claims that the traffic signs should be written in Castellano, but additionally in the language of the autonomous community, which is Catalan.

Although these both laws exist the City Council of Barcelona (Ayuntamiento de Barcelona) keep on ignoring these laws as the official language in Barcelona is Catalan.

Personally, I think this is just ridiculous. I can completely understand that Catalan people want to be seen as an autonomous community with its own language, culture, government due to their history, but Barcelona is full of international people, who are just knowing Castellano. With that law the Council just wants to show that Catalan is still the official language and wants Catalunya to be silhouetted against the rest of Spain.

For people’s fortune, after committing an abuse, they have just to look whether the traffic sign was in Catalan and they can refuse to pay the fine. For me, it does not make any differences, as I always go by metro in Spain, because I am too ‘scatterbrained’ to go by car in a foreign country. But I know people who are taking advantage of these policies.

On the other hand, the government just loses a high amount of money through these non-paid fines, which Barcelona could use for other applications in Barcelona.

Isn’t it an interesting issue? If you have an opinion on that case, I would be pleased to read your comment.

You can be sure that if “The Gossip” is playing live in Berlin I will be there. And on Thursday the time had come again. Due to illness I felt a little weak, but as far as Beth Ditto entered the stage, I felt a flush of endorphins running through my blood and I was awake and couldn’t stop jumping til the end.

Getting hustled from one side to the other augurs some inconviences, as I found myself touching a complete sweat- and beer-soaked man with my cheek on his sweater. On the other hand, I got pushed to such degree that I found myself standing in the first row.

I was astonished at the audience who seemed to me much older and “The Gossip” seem to approach a broader audience than in May, when “The Gossip” played in Berlin. I listened to a man who talked about a concert of Matthias Reim, where he was bawling “Matze, Matze, Matze”. I thought he must be joking. You cannot go to a concert of “The Gossip” if you listen to Matthias Reim as well. That is a NO GO!

But well, another band that goes mainstream, but I keep on loving them. And when giving the add-on song “Standing in the way of control” she entered the audience and I touched Beth Ditto. The Queen of post-punk!

It was an amazing performance!

See here the performance of “Standing in the way of control” in May in Berlin:

Although “The notebook” was the typically Hollywood cliché love story, more likely you see him as a dark and tense character. He uses to play all what’s far away from the mainstream. Therefore, it is not surprising to see him in that strange independent band called “Dead man’s bones”. It is hard to characterize that kind of music, it would be the perfect soundtrack for Halloween. The Rolling Stone describes his music as  a “demon spawn of the Misfits, Bauhaus and the Zombies”.

Indeed, he has an affinity for monsters and ghosts, which he shared with his friend Zach Shields, that’s why they began working on a monster love story for the stage. Although no stringed instruments appear on the album at all, — the track “In the room where you sleep” truly rocks, which I thought is impossible without guitars.

For me, a children choir always scares me in a way, which was surely Ryan Gosling’s intention. And with the keyboard, — in this case a piano, it creates the perfect scary atmosphere. I should have posted that on Halloween, what a pity!

I just remember that we saw the event on television, as my mom preferred not go to the wall with her 5 year-old daughter. On top of that, she has a great sense of duty and knew that she had to be at work the next day. As a result of the parties that took place everywhere in Berlin, only 6 out of 80 workers went to work on the 10th of November 1989, one of them my mom of course. On the other side, I think she would not have gone if she hadn’t had me or hadn’t had to work. Because she was quite happy in the GDR, she felt secure, had her job, all was well organised, the kids had their place in the kindergarten. Well, we could not eat many bananas, but my mom always used to flirt with the fruit seller, so we knew how bananas taste. So all in all my mom was the perfect GDR inhabitant. It’s like with the things you don’t have you can’t miss.

So my mom was not one of the demonstrators who catered for a reunion on all the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig and Dresden weeks before the wall fell. By 9 October 1989, just after the 40th anniversary celebrations of the GDR, what had begun as a few hundred gatherers at the Nikolai Church in Leipzig had swelled to more than 70,000 (out of the city’s population of 500,000), all united in peaceful opposition to the regime. The most famous chant became Wir sind das Volk! – “We are the people!”, reminding their leaders that a democratic republic has to be ruled by the people, not by an undemocratic party claiming to represent them. The next week, in Leipzig on 16 October 1989, 120,000 showed up, with military units again being held on stand-by in the vicinity. The next week, the number more than doubled to 320,000, proving that the majority of the population opposed the regime. This pressure led to the Fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, marking the imminent fall of the socialist GDR regime.

As I was too young in 1989 I wanted to feel the spirit of 1989 and went to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and I thought about all the people I would not have met, all the countries I would not have seen, if the wall hadn’t fallen down. And I came up with the matter of fact, that it is so important to raise your voice against injustice, war, dictatorship, shortened financial means for education or whatever offends us. We have a proof that we can achieve a lot, because “We are the people!”

And my mom? She is happy that the wall fell and wouldn’t want to go back in time in the GDR like some “ostalgiker” who say that all was better in the GDR. Still, everyone has to take into account that it was a dictatorship, which imprisoned people, so it is dangerous to claim that!

And the walls in our heads? Did they fall as well?