05^th May 2009: I listen to dead people's records. No, I don't mean musicians, but - as the thought striked me today - of all those second hand albums I have and listen to, a portion of those might belong to people who have gone from us. Of some I know it very well because they were somehow handed over to me by the begriefed. Others is just a hunch, because a lot of people sell record collections when the collector has died. A shame, that is. But the music is good and should be listened to. The yin and yang of life and death in second hand collecting.

26^th November 2008: Time is the most important thing for reviewing records. Time to listen to them, time to contemplate what os on them, what your reactions are and what your connotations are and if all that is a meaningful package and if it would make a good review for somebody to read. Time is what is most hard to come by these days. There is always a big stack of music next to my CD player that goes into the "to be reviewed"-label or even the "to be listened to"-label. I am still fascinated, that people send music my way just because they want to know what I think about them. Maybe any review is a good review to them. Well, if I don't like it one bit, I won't write about it.If I find a few bits I like and they make for a good review, then I'll write about it. Easy, right? Well, not at all. But spare your sympathy, I still do it for the fun of it.

12^th August 2008: “What is the secret of the success of Cracked?.”  what success are you talking about? "Well, that people still read the reviews and take a certain measure of interest to your opinions." Okay, well I think it has two sides, one is longevity, the other is honesty. I have been doing this same thing for so long, I think people just take a certain peace of mind from the fact that I am still around. Closely the same thing as with the Rolling Stones, only with less riffing. The other thing is the complete lack of advertisement on the website. Of course, we say a lot of "this is great" or "really get this because it is good", but people know that this always comes straight from our hearts and minds, and never the briefcase. Take a look around, there are no paid advertisements on this site, no rectangles, banners, skyscrapers and what have you. Sometimes I think we should fake some to make the page look more "real". (laughs). Nobody here gets paid anything, apart from a few free CDs now and then, but other than that, it is all true, and I think people just sense that. And therefore pay us with trust. 

20^th March 2008: “Your reviews are really long, but they are a good read.” A promo-lady of one of my favorite labels said that. Well, thank you very much. In our day and age of superfast-download, where anybody could just skip through the new releases lists and download anything that strikes his fancy by nothing but a whim, then listen to it superficially and store it away on some disk or memory thingy forever, it takes some effort and quality to make people listen to your music or to read about music (which in turn needs music worth listening to). People, who like to write about music, and people, who like to release music, on this level, are in the same boat together actually. That is why I’d rather write less reviews, therefore (hopefully) better ones. I mean, a review like: “this band plays kind of rock with electronic elements in them” don’t really help anybody. To me and to the labels and bands that I like, music is about discoveries. So, if you like my travel tales, thank you very much. If not, let the computer at last.fm or amazon.com decide what you’re gonna listen to next.

11^th October 2007: I bought some records today, four to be accurate, and on vinyl. All four of them contained credit slips where a URL was mentioned and a code that I will type into some field and then be able to download the album I bought in mp3 format. Is that the future of recorded music as a commodity? Does that mean these labels - three big american indies with long tradition, you might guess which ones they are - are betting on vinyl record player as the home stationary mechanism of choice to listen to music and the ipod and its brethren as the favorite mobile mechanism? If so, what about the CD? Looks as if the CD is gone earlier than the vinyl record. Ha ha. Well, it will survive as a tool to save the mp3s people downloaded from somewhere and never listen to. 

15^th March 2007: People ask me how I chose the records I review. Because some are quite well known, like Grinderman and others have never been heard by anyone except me and the guy who recorded the music at home. Easy answer: next to my stereo there are three stacks of CDs: one is stuff I want to review, another one is stuff that I want to listen to again, which is made of either new arrivals after the first listen or stuff that I thought I want to listen to again if time allows, and the third one is stuff I haven’t yet had time to listen to. Everything that arrives in my flat, be it sent to me or bought by me, goes to the unheard stack. If I listened to it and liked it, it goes to the re-listen stack. If I like it a lot and think it would be something worthwhile to write about, it goes to the review-stack. If I like it just a tiny bit, then it goes into my archive, ie. more stacks of CDs. If I don’t like it at all it goes into the bin. If I have time on my hands, I look at the three stacks and chose something. If I have time to write a review, guess were I look. The same goes for vinyl, tapes and whatelse there might be, although there is only one stack and it is a little mixed.

If you want to know what makes it through these stacks and into a review, the best thing would be to look at the reviews and find the winners.

14^th November 2006: I should do reviews of record covers some time. No, not talking about what they show, but digging into the fact that it seems so easy to take judgement at the music inside a cover by judging the cover. A lot of genres seem so intent on according to a certain given style – I am thinking electronica, minimal electronic, hip hop, jazz even – which makes them stumble over themselves sometime. Suddenly a record that is basically half assed finds a lot of attention because its cover is so different to that of all the other bands in the genre or works on the principles of another genre’s recordcovers. That way half-assed wins over half-assed, which means all the worse for anybody. Indierock in all its meanings always had the most diverse covers. Hm, I should take a look into that sometime to see if it is worth looking into.

19^th August 2006: People tell me, they are amazed my reviews are so long. If I get paid by the word? Well, I guess if I would, I would have to write about Robbie Williams or the new record by Coldplay and how great they are. Not that I wouldn't if they were, but it would be on my terms. I have written below somewhere below that I don't like writing bad about music that I don't think is good. I would hate it even more to write good about music that I don't like. No, there is no form of payment here (except maybe for recieving parts of the music I write about - which I am thankful for.) Now, about the length: they are exactly as long as they should be. No word less or more. 

2^nd March 2006: Lately I have been thinking about writing about music again and I have come up with this: When writing reviews, there are only two things to keep in mind: 1) Write as if you are writing for yourself and nobody else. 2) Write as if a million people will read your writing. Most music journalism is insultingly bad. I know that not everything in these pages is the best I have ever written, but at least it is all according to one of my unwritten review-laws: If the artist you have been reviewing would call you on your opinion, would you be able to stand up to it and defend yourself? If not, rewrite it.

28^th December 2005: Take it from someone, who oughta know: John Peel said when he gets a record from somebody and he doesn't like it, he assumes that it's his problem and that the band would not have made that record if there wasn't something valuable about it. I so hope he is right.

18^th November 2005: With over 500 reviews to account for, it should be possible to use a reference system for the reviews that stays completely within the realm of what has been reviewed. That doesn't get me any points with google, but who gives a damn about google, anyway.

7^th November 2005: It is not good manners to write something like "this record is very promising for what is to come in the future for this band" or "can't wait to hear their next record", because this implies that the next one will be better than this one and this one here is actually not worth hearing, better to wait for the next one. It is also just a different way of saying, they could have done better. A lot of writers use phrases like this, and they always felt wrong to me. A band puts a lot of effort into the recording of this album right here and it is the only album they are thinking of right now. A music writer on the other hand has a lot of albums he is thinking about at the moment and the influx is usually rising. So it is understandable that the writer does a poor job from being overworked and the band is pissed off. Understandable, but still not likeable. I have made a rule for myself not to use phrases like these. Except maybe in the case of demos of new bands.

7^th September 2005: Took a look at the last 15 entries to the reviews section and realized, these are all records someone sent in for a review. At first I didn't believe it. I am still humbled and pleased as well as really curious as to what music will be on the disc (rarely ever is it a tape, don't bother sending sheet music, though ...) when I get a record sent. I have heard and discovered so much great music in the last years. Sometimes I worry because at times it really takes me a lot of time before I get a review done. Not only because I want to listen to the music real good before I state an opinion on it, but also because there is so much other stuff to do (the work, the house, the other stuff that creeps up and hits me on the head ...) Well, as far as I am concerned, this is really good the way it is at the moment. I just saw that I wrote about not wanting to make it any bigger the last time I did an entry here, so I'll scrap it. Thanks for stopping by.

31^st March 2005: Counted the reviews today (easy with a computer) and it is exactly 474. That is only a little over two dozen away from 500. Five-fucking-hundred reviews!! I can't believe it. Even though I have no idea how many ideas I have written in my life all in all (maybe about 2 or 3000), but this is starting to use up quite some webspace. (Thanks to Monochrom for letting me use it once again...) When I started this website four years ago, I would never have thought it'd get so far. I should start make a living off this. But then, if I would, I'd have to do it, and suddenly all the fun would be gone. Aw, chuck it. I'll just keep on baking my small cookies here, because they are tasty and I sure hope it is fun devouring 'em.

14^th February 2005: A new resolution: I have given up on wanting to have all good records, or even all records by bands I like. There are way too many records out there anyway to even get halfway close to that target, and I also own too many records as it is. Two big storage boxes filled with CDs, some of them actually really good, 120 kilometers away from my stereo are proof enough of that. From now on, I'll just see what music comes my way and then gladly occupy myself with that. I won't wait up for records to come to my favorite store, but I'll buy from what they have (and they always have something good...). I'll build my own musical universe from the flotsam that gets collected on my beach.

24^th January 2005: I put down the "More than 444 served"-tag onto the reviews-page. Wow, an impressive number. That is about 100 reviews per year. Including the ones I have written for magazines, websites and fanzines over the years, I guess I'll get to ten times that number. That is a lot of words about music. Does anyone read all this?

13^th December 2004: Everywhere I read about the death of John Peel, it said how he was always honest, likeable and open about music. Oftentimes even ludicrous in his sympathy for mediocre bands, but always with an intense and integer liking for the music he listened to and made people listen to. And always these paragraphs would end with the question, who would fill that gap now that he is gone? I feel that I will. Not fill that gap, of course, I ain’t ever big enough for that, but there is a lot common between John Peel and me in the way we perceive music, obviously. Always searching for that little unknown gem, preferring the small and undiscovered to the big thing, distasting hypes and never trusting anything except our own senses. And there are dozens of people out there on the net, in pirate and free radios and doing zines, who in sum might be able to fill the gap. If you, honoured reader, take it upon you to search them out and support them by reading, listening and buying their little by-products.

7^th October 2004: Lately I have been hearing this a lot: “I have downloaded the new album by XY. But if I really like it, I will buy it.” There is something completely wrong with that statement, in my opinion, though I am not sure yet what it is. Maybe the customer demand to get a free trial time with the album, in which he decides that he might or might not like the music. Or that I can’t believe that all these albums really get either bought or erased from harddisks (I mean, how cheap is diskspace – burn the mp3s on a CD-Rom even if you only like it halfways and its okay.) Or the “no harm done”-attitude of those people, regularly in connection with an “I just can’t afford to buy all the music I am interested in”-statement. Or the complete missing of any excitement about discovering great new music, like it used to be. Maybe it is a mixture of all of that. Or maybe it is just me getting old and conservative in the end.

1^st February 2004: It is absolutely mind-boggling the number of records I have listened to, the number of movies I have seen and the volumes of books I have read. Just to think about the hours and hours I have spent ingesting various forms of mediated cultural products is beyond my capability to visualize (apart from the problem of how to visualize time). I see myself fast-forwarding through motionless recieving of information, slowly aging and not gaining any ground. It is a mircale, how all this input hasn't turned into one big melée of data, into which every new piece of information is sucked into without ever coming back up again. It is a wonder, that I am still able to remember one little piece of it, yet I can clearly and easily make out as many diverse and different pieces of information and memories as I have time for. No, that doesn't mean that I am a more than average clever guy or am in any way above others. What absolutely is amazing is the capabilities of an average brain. The vast number of information it can store and process. I have about seven metres of old-fashioned vinyl records in this here room and a few big boxes of CDs, seven inches, tapes and whatever music has been stored on (no 8-tracks, though) and even tough I will never be able to make a list of all of them from memory, whenever I see one of those objects, I know what's on it and can say a few words about it. Damn, what good for the world I could have done, if I had used that to something worthwhile. But here I am, stuck forever as a music maniac and nothing I can do about it. Tough shit.

8^th December 2003: "I'm going deeper underground. There's too much panic in this town." (Jamiroquai) I can't tell you, how much I start to hate all these hyperinflated, pr-produced, fashion-trend-bands that are everywhere on the radio, tv or magazines. The worst is the trend of casting bands in tv-shows to make them superstars. The positive side is, though, that I see the gap between the mainstream and the underground widening. There are less and less "alternative" bands in the charts, especially if compared to some years ago and there might be a stream of cool, small-scale stuff available again (if you get your arse off the couch and try to find them, that is.) Check out some of the beautiful stuff, that made it to my little island: Escape Pod, Hippy Gone Wrong, Logh, Ghislain Poirier and so on and so on and so on. I have never heard of these artists before and I guess, I only heard about them by mere coincidence or luck. And lucky I am. But everyone is his own luck's master, so there you go. The internet makes contacting small and even smaller labels really easy. Send them a few bucks and get some great music in return. That is adventure, excitement and discovery all at once. There are some great ideas and starting points for you in the reviews-section. So why I follow my own path of discovery, why don't you turn off the tv-set and start your own.

1^st November 2003: Sometimes I feel like I am writing a catalogue for you, but that is okay. I know, I tell you a lot to get this or get this, because these are great records and I want them to be heard by a lot of people. That is the main reason I do this, actually, to support music that I like and of which I think that it is undeservedly unknown by most people. But who am I to tell you what is good and what isn't? I am just a listener and a music fan like most of you, I guess. I am just a normal man (with an abnormaly large record-collection, I admit) and I guess I listen to much more music more intensively than most people. What does that make me? A gatekeeper in the information-age that helps you sift through the vast amounts of music that is appearing today? Sometimes I like to picture myself as such, but then again I might be nothing more than a stupid record-collector with the egomaniac drive to make myself heard by a lot of people. 

9^th July 2003: This is me, sitting here, listening to really old and obscure Bruce Springsteen-bootlegs on tape a friend passed along to me, searching out the clues to early genius and the roots of songs that later on became all-time favourites of mine, while I should busy writing down some reviews to brandnew electronica-records I recieved, and stunning new albums by guitar-bands I bought myself. But this music draws me in, the magic of finding these little hints at what is to come underneath the juvenile testosterone and fun (there is Steel Mill-stuff on those tapes, thats how old they are) and underneath heaps of hissing noise and other tape-sounds. The magic of music, the way it evolves, its roots, its future and its meaning, this is what makes me do these things here. As they used to say in these old ads for "The Wire": definitely crazy about music. That is true.

Now there is a stack of record sitting next to my stereo waiting to be listened to, pondered about, searched thoroughly for meaning and reason and then mentioned to the world. But they'll have to wait. There are four tapes of these bootlegs and there are some songs noted on the sleeves (barely readable) that I am really looking forward to.

25^th March 2003: Should we really be talking about records during these times of warfare? The question already reveals the double-morale behind it. During the existence of this website - and the centuries before - there never was a single day of peace in this world. The Near East was always troubling, Russia fought various wars, in Africa civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people. That never kept us from writing and reading about the newest and best records released. True, rarely ever the biggest, best equipped war-machine striked against a small, undemocratic country with the whole world watching and shaking its head in disapproval. If we are honest, we knew that this war would come. Some of us went out and bought a lot of records, to have something listen to, when shit hits the fan and we have to stay at home. C'mon, 'fess up. Ain't it cruel how fast we get back to normal? How fast we don't give a damn about all the small details of this war that chained us to our tv-sets just some days ago? Yes, that is just the way we are.

19^th January 2003: There are way too many records out there. It is impossible to hear them all, and then you'll listen to a few mediocre ones and you just know that you could have listened to a few great ones instead and it makes you angry to know that you have wasted your time so uselessly. Sure, there are more important things than music (though listening to some people you wonder if that is true) but wasting your time is an important issue. You only have so much time, and spending your time listening to good music is a good thing. Listening to mediocre music is even worse - in comparison - than listening to bad music, because with bad music you either have fun doing it (thereby enjoying it), do something else next to listening to the records (so you don't care, because you are using your time meaningful anyway) or you just stop it right there. But with mediocre stuff you usually only find out later. You might have bought a few rock-albums because you really like to listen to Seventies-influenced, heavy guitar-rock right now, but then you get ahold of a record that blows you away. And then you look at about a half or a full dozen of CDs and you just want to throw them away, because suddenly they have become mediocre, and mediocre is the worst thing that could have happened. If there were only the great CDs around, the choice would be much easier. And please do not fool yourself, the CDs bought the most are never the best ones, but also the most mediocre ones around.

05^th September 2002: I know my reviews are long, but hey, that is how I like them. I am also well aware of the fact, that in my reviews there isn't a lot of information in the narrower sense. No hard facts, no line-ups, no dates or figures, sometimes I even get discografies wrong or I have no idea that what I think is a young unknown bands is actually the new project of some old legend. But I don't give a damn, you see. I guess it all comes from one reason: I don't use the internet to write my reviews. I have read way too many reviews that sounded a lot more like press-releases that where slightly re-typed, that were so full of "facts" and "figures" about the band, that the music fell off the floor completely. Music isn't about information. Maybe sometimes some information about the artist can make things clearer and understandable, but music isn't about clarity or comprehensibility either. Music is about emotions. And I can write about emotions, my emotions as evoked by some record for any lenght I wish without even knowing the name of the band or the record. Of course, I do have to mention the name of artist and album, because otherwise, how would anybody be able to find that piece of music in stores (or since you can't download it right away). Interesting point.

25^th July 2002: Have you noticed that records get reviewed earlier and earlier? I mean, if you buy some music-mag nowadays, all you get are band-interviews and record-reviews to releases that are planned in the near future, usually in about three or four weeks ahead. Surely you all know how this works - the record company or the affiliated publicist sends of promotional copys to the magazines and tv-shows and they'll do something on the band / record. There are two important aspects that are rarely ever spoken out aloud: First, the closer the relation between the publicist and the media (e.g via friendship, things done before and not to forget advertising-revenues) the better reviews or the more space their bands / products will get in the media. Second, the media compete among one another and mainly they try to get ahead by "telling the story first". So they'll print the article to the new record by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, of whatever, before everyone else does. And that might be one and a half month before it is released. Why not: as soon as they'll get a copy, they'll have a half-assed listen to it, judge it accordingly, hack down the article, shoot some photos and off they go. Ever wondered why bigger bands have to do "promotional tours"? To give the magazines something to write about and an opportunity to shoot photos. Ever wondered, why everybody is raving about the background-vocals on the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album? They ain't so revolutionary or great (Bad Religion did them ten years ago), but this aspect was shoved down the journalists throat by some hard working publicist-person. 

Well, for me personally, I have decided that I'll take myself out of that race. I can't compete anyway. But I figure, that a good record stays a good record even if another good record comes out next week. So, I'll tell you about the good records as soon as I have listened to them thoroughly and made my mind up about them. There we go, another paragraph to my review-politics.

16^th Mar. 2002: I have been to a record-fair last weekend. A rather big one with a lot of tables, a lot of records and a lot of people. I tell you, this was one of the most depressing sights I had seen in a long time. What a bunch of fat, old losers with dirty hair and bad hygiene, scrounging over baskets of records, greedy and evil, lonesome and sociopathic. And the sellers and traders are even worse. „Record collectors are pretentious assholes“, I think Killdozer said that. I don’t want to be counted into that sorry crowd. I wanted to get some fairly new records for cheap, but they didn’t have anything I wanted. So I left with an old copy of Machine Head, Cathedral, a sampler and, the only record worth mentioning, an older album by Granfaloon Bus I didn’t know existed. (for a total of about 35 Euros) Anyway, I asked my wife to remind me of this record fair the next time I want to go to one.

18^th Jan. 2002: Sometimes I get an uncontrollable urge to buy some records from a certain genre. As you might have noticed, I rarely listen to  or describe single songs in the reviews, but rather I concentrate on the style, the genre the band / performer / artist is producing. That is the way I listen to records as well. I name them "Metal" or "Alternative Rock" or "Dark-Hardcore with an emo-edge and screamy singing" or some such. Lately I had the urge to buy me some electronica-records. I have that from time to time. Then I go and buy me some current 12"es. This time it was really heavy. I dreamt about myself in my favorite record store (Substance, of course) filing through the records, choosing some, listening to and buying them. So I had to go. Yes, I know what the core of addiction is.

30^st Dec. 2001: I won't do a top-list 2001 of records. I can't do it. I am sure I'd forget so much, that I either spend a few days searching all the records, expanding the list to 50, then 100, then more and then skipping the thing completely, or doing it again and again and again and then over again. It is useless, really. As much as I like reading those, I can't do them this way. If you ask me, what my favorite records are, right here and now, then these are the ones, which - obviously - come to my mind the quickest (my new 4-CD-Box with all the early records by Townes Van Zandt), but how should I be able to remember what I felt and thought spontanously a year ago. 

22^nd Dec. 2001: This I realised this morning: it is perfectly possible to survive completely on the music I present here. There is so much diversity, styles ranging from country to metal, from electronica to grunge and rap, that there should be something for everyone. And, what might be even more important, I only write about the best stuff, the albums which strike me as filled with lots of life and energy and originality. Music that keeps you interested and gives you back more than you put in.

As an afterthought: as you might have guessed, I don't write about every record I own. So, at least me, I don't survive on the music I write about on this page. But I could if I had to. (Sounds like a heavy smoker talking about quitting...)

16^th Nov. 2001: I checked my user-stats last week and I was in for a surprise. You people like reviews, which is good, because I like doing them (as you can see, the review-section is the fastest growing part on this page). But as shown in the stats, the top-three acts you like are Bonnie Prince Billy, Slipknot and Marilyn Manson. What’s gotten into you? Or were you just checking out, what I had to say about them? If you thought, I was gonna dis them, you were mistaken. Usually, I don’t waste my energy on music I don’t like. (Only if they are really bad, I’d consider making an exception.) Anyway, since you asked for it, you’ll get more alt-country and more shlock-metal in the future. Satisfied?

23^rd Sep. 2001: Decided to put my review-politics on here someday. Not because they are very cool or interesting or anything. I have two other reasons: 1) I like reading review-politics. I enjoy people, who pride themselves on their tolerance, make up rules, which border their tolerance. 2) Writing down my review-politics I will have to find out what they are. That might be interesting for me. Up to now, the only thing I can deduct from my reviews is, that I write about whatever suits my fancy. Is that enough?