Folter

I found this poem, browsing around in the great book displayed above.


Die Junta erlässt Richtlinien für Folterer

Es ist strengstens verboten, zu foltern
ohne einen triftigen Grund zum Foltern.

Ob ein triftiger Grund zum Foltern
vorliegt, ergibt sich am besten durch Foltern.

Stellt es sich im Laufe des Folterns
heraus, dass kein triftiger Grund zum Foltern

vorliegt, so sind alle Spuren des Folterns
zu beseitigen, indem der Gegenstand des Folterns

beseitigt wird. Der Tod wird daher nicht durch Foltern
bewirkt, obwohl er die Folge des Folterns

sein mag. Wer immer diese Wahrheit über das Foltern
leugnet, gibt damit triftigen Grund zum Foltern.


Felix Pollak (1909 Wien - 1987 Madison, USA)

rants or comments?

I've had quite a few impatient, impolite, rude, rough, disrespectful, uncivil comments that more seemed to be like rants than comments. That makes it rather unpleasant to write this blog. I enjoy sharing some music, but I have a life outside of this blog (and away from the computer, too). I don't have the time nor the equipment (nor the money) to just fulfill all the wishes (and demands - who the hell really thinks he can ask anything from me? Do you know me or what?).

That should be clear enough.

Further I do understand that some readers' grasp of the english language might make it difficult to get all the twists and wrinkles. However, english is not my mothertongue either and it's sometimes difficult for me to find the right words as well.j I hope to treat these readers kindly in my reactions to their comments, and I hope I have apologized to all those whom I've treated a bit less kindly in the past.

Anyway, as english has become the lingua franca, I still feel like I am allowed to ask anyone dropping by here to actually read my posts. Sometimes you can only find some links when you actually read the whole thing, and if you don't please don't just post a question (or a threat) in the comments, alright? Show some kindness, behave politely, and now open one of your favourite beverages, spin some good tunes and relax!

Summer has arrived here a few weeks back, though it's been rainy and chilly in between, but still, summer may slow down my posting activities, here and elsewhere. I hope no one posts any unruly comments because of that...

I also won't allow any anonymous comments from now on. It's easy to sign up with any of the services that allow you to post here, believe me. If I could figure out how to write that blog, how to rip, tag, encode and upload music and more, I feel like I may ask for just a bit of patience and for grown-up and decent behaviour from anyone who drops by here. Understood?

Also, the ratio of comments vs. downloads is very much not in favour of the readers/downloaders. Possibly some don't realise the work and time I put into this blog, but I'd certainly appreciate a  shout now and then!

Death of Hi-Fi... and the RVG series

I know some may find it strange to find this on a music blog... but still, most of time at home, I listen to one of my three or four or five thousand CDs (I refuse to count them), or to one of my few of dozen LPs, or to CDRs burned from radio broadcasts or lossless downloads of live shows.
Hardly ever do I play MP3s, only having a notebook and no equipment to hook it up with my amplifier helps... I do play MP3s when commuting or when I'm out for a run, on my ubupod. However, in these situations I don't really care for sound quality, anyway, normally I still prefer having my daily listening dose in good sound quality.

So here's an interesting article on this issue, courtesy of Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print

Bear in mind that I am no audiophile at all, still I enjoy music much more - even at relatively low volume - if it unfolds in the air, in some kind of space (my messy chaotic room full of CDs, books, CDRs, and other stuff, usually).

As a jazz-related side-note: the RVG Edition by Blue Note - which has its merits, or rather had its merits once it was a series of albums that had not been out on CD for years - nowadays, many RVGs are reissues of albums that had been on CD just three or four years earlier, which is a pity, even more so as the CD reissue market seems to dry out slowly, and as there'd been some Blue Note material that has never been on CD in a regular way... why not bring out the Art Hodes sessions that only were part of a Mosaic set years ago, when I wasn't there to buy it... also lots of 60s material hasn't been on CD yet - more Rare Grooves would be a great idea, in my opinion! Okay, I got off the track, let me begin anew: the RVG series seems to me to be an example of that trend, to make reissues louder and more compressed. I have more or less stopped upgrading older Blue Note CDs since more often than not I feel the difference is not in quality, but rather in loudness and volume. If you know of discs where the sound is really an upgrade, other than the early BN sessions (Monk, Powell, Miles), please let me know - I'd be glad to get some recommendations! I got plenty of RVG discs myself, yet most of them are from the first years of the series (before EMI started throwing their copycrap cactus sh*t on the European market).

Possibly I'm much too harsh to good ole RVG to put this second topic in the same post as the third - I'm sure his efforts still are fine, compared to much of the crap that the majors keep flooding the market with. Apologies for that!

Post #100 - Some Food for Thought

Some thoughts in this jubilee post.

The year has started in an utterly bad way, by now I'm quite depressed - our kitten has been away ever since we let her out late night on December 30th. I looked around and asked some neighbours, but no one has seen her later than we did... I'm by now slowly accepting the thought that we might never see her again.

Update: bad news: Alas, as we were hanging up some notes about our missing cat, we got news that she was picked up close by on 31st. This morning we were finally able to reach the person in charge, and indeed she died on the evening of the 31st of December - may she rest in peace - she brought us (and most notably me) many moments of joy, and she had a good life at our place (at least for the past five years, before she was pushed around a bit, but then we offered to take care of her, as I had fallen for her charms...) 

***** 

Then let me add a little bit of info for new readers of my blog.

:: 1 ::
I post music (tags: musical offerings, for europeans only, exclusif)

:: 2 ::
I post links to music that I share via that great bit torrent tracker, dimeadozen.org - usually I do not share that music here, too. Dime is lossless only, and my bandwidth isn't good enough to share lossless files via RS. Also it's a lot of work to create fully tagged MP3 files from the FLAC files I have prepared for dime upload - so please don't ask for me to share it all here, rather try your luck and join dime. Dime, btw, is a place where you have to give in order to take - just some food for thought! (tags: dime pointers)

:: 3 ::
I sometimes post some thoughts, reviews, whatever (tags so far: cinema, concert reviews, literature, on the air, recommendations, references, reflectativity, remembering, reissues, varia)
If I mention a concert I've had the luck to attend, that doesn't mean I have taped it, so quite possibly the answer to obnoxious requests is: no, I don't have any links, I don't even have a tape. And if I had a tape, it would go up on dime anyway (see #2).


I hope this clears some things!

Something else, about politeness etc: I don't see much of a point in anonymous comments (or comments from people with "profile not available").
Also, as live is - or in a more ideal world ought to be - "give and take", rather than "grab and run", I'd enjoy very much to see a few more comments from you who read and download what I post. Not just "thanks this is great" (that's far - I repeat: far! - better than not adding any comment at all), but I'd also enjoy some actual discussion of the music, some more comments in short that are more content than form!

Enough preaching and teaching for now - I hope you all had a more joyous start into 2008 than I had!

ubu goes to cinema

I wanted to do this for some time... it's highly incomplete, containing perhaps between a fifth and a fourth of the films I have actually seen in theatres (tv and DVD doesn't count, of course!), but still, it was fun compiling it! Maybe I'll try and fill some gaps another time, or just add films I have seen but don't know when. Also it comprises only the last three and a half years anyway, and I've been going to the movies regularly for almost ten years now...



::: 2004 :::

January
03 - Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
10 - La petite Lili (Claude Miller)
11 - Scarface (Howard Hawks)
17 - The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)
23 - Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)

February
07 - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph Mankiewicz)
07 - Suspicious River (Lynne Stopkewich)
12 - Late George Apley (Joseph Mankiewicz)
13 - Lost in Translation (Sophia Coppola)
14 - Secretary (Steven Shainberg)
16 - The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci)
18 - All About Eve (Joseph Mankiewicz)
19 - A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph Mankiewicz)
28 - Europa (Lars van Trier)

March
01 - House of Strangers (Joseph Mankiewicz)
02 - Element of Crime (Lars van Trier)
04 - The Barefoot Comtessa (Joseph Mankiewicz)
05 - Salvatore Giuliano (Francesco Rosi)
06 - Suddenly Last Summer (Joseph Mankiewicz)
09 - The Quiet American (Joseph Mankiewicz)
10 - The Honey Pot (Joseph Mankiewicz)
11 - Sleuth (Joseph Mankiewicz)
13 - Godfather I / Godfather II / Godfather III
25 - Le mani sulla città (Francesco Rosi)
27 - Temps du loup (Michael Haneke)

April
03 - Underground (Emir Kusturica)
10 - Elephant Man (David Lynch)
12 - Der Redner (?)
15 - Shoah (first half) (Claude Lanzman)
17 - Lucky Luciano (Francesco Rosi)
22 - Shoah (second half) (Claude Lanzman)
23 - Cadaveri eccellenti (Francesco Rosi)
24 - Návrat Idiota (Sasa Gedeon)
26 - Il caso Mattei (Francesco Rosi)
28 - Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Francesco Rosi)
29 - Otosanek (Jan Svankmajer)

May
01 - Kuhle Wampe (Slatan Dudow)
05 - Werckmeister Harmoniak (Bela Tarr)
07 - Die Dreigroschenoper (Georg Wilhelm Pabst)
17 - The Return (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
23 - Five Obstructions (Lars van Trier)
23 - Billy Liar (John Schlesinger)
25 - iXième (Stéphane Blok/Pierre-Yves Borgaud)
30 - L'histoire du Marie et Julien (Jacques Rivettte)

June
05 - Nathalie (Anne Fontaine)
09 - Stupeur et tremblement (Alain Corneau)
13 - Darling (John Schlesinger)
25 - Djävulens öga (Ingmar Bergman)
26 - Tokyo boshoku [Tokyo Twilight] (Yasujiro Ozu)
27 - Soshun [Early Spring] (Yasujiro Ozu)
29 - Peccate che sia una canaglia (Alessandro Blasetti)

no entries done for July and first half of August, probably most of Ozu's other great filmes, incl. Early Autumn, Late Autumn, Early Summer, Drifting Weeds and one or two others

August
15 - Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel)
19 - The Ghost Train (Géza von Bolváry)
21 - Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim)
26 - Wunder der Schöpfung (Hanns Walter Kornblum) / La reine des papillons (Ladislaus Starewitch)
28 - Eva (Joseph Losey)
29 - Viva Maria (Louis Malle)
31 - Les liaisons dangereux (Roger Vadim)

September
02 - Count Basie film shorts
04 - Fantome de la Liberte (Luis Buñuel)
08 - Journal d'une femme de chambre (Luis Buñuel)

probably nothing for two months... (it does happen!)

November
14 - Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming/David O. Selznick)

December
27 - Le serviteur de Kali [Nizhalkkuthu] (Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

no other entries for late 2004... probably just too lazy to fill in my diary back then.




::: 2005 :::

January
09 - Les noces rouges (Claude Chabrol)
12 - Themroc (Claude Faraldo)
21 - Max et les ferrailleurs (Claude Sautet)

February
01 - In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai)
13 - La belle noiseuse (Jacques Rivette)
26 - 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai)

March
07 - The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman)
13 - Accordion Tribe (Stefan Schwietert)
16 - 92 Minutes of Mr. Baum (Assi Dayan)
19 - Two Weeks in another Town (Vincente Minelli)

April
02 - Rebellion [Jî-uchi Hairyô tsuma shimatsu] (Masaki Kobayashi)
10 - Senso (Visconti)
16 - Sedmikrasky (Very Chytilová)

May
07 - Viskningar och rop [Cries and Whispers] (Ingmar Bergman)
12 - Sommaren med Monika (Ingmar Bergman)
25 - Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grossstadt (Walter Ruttmann)
27 - Entr'acte / Ballet Mécanique etc.
27 - Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard)

June
16 - Rat der Götter (Kurt Maetzig)

no entries for all summer and fall

November
09 - History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
16 - Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
21 - La belle dame sans merci (Germaine Dulac)

December
02 - Alfie (Lewis Gilbert)
04 - Get Carter (Mike Hodges)
07 - The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie)



::: 2006 :::

January
14 - Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch)
18 - Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
19 - Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)
21 - Radio Days (Woody Allen)
21 - Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen)
21 - Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen)

February
06 - Nora Inu [Stray Dog] (Akira Kurosawa)
14 - Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano)
15 - The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer)
18 - The Ice Storm (Ang Lee)
25 - Where the Truth Lies (Atom Egoyan)

March
08 - Przypadek [Blind Chance] (Krzystof Kieslowski)
10 - four shorts/documentaries by Kieslowski
13 - Decalogue I & II (Krzystof Kieslowski)
14 - Decalogue III & IV (Krzystof Kieslowski)
17 - Decalogue V & VI (Krzystof Kieslowski)
20 - Decalogue VII & VIII (Krzystof Kieslowski)
21 - La double vie de Veronique (Krzystof Kieslowski)
25 - Decalogue IX & X (Krzystof Kieslowski)

April
05 - L'appartment (Gilles Mimouni)
26 - Irréversible (Gaspar Noé)
27 - La société du spectacle (Guy Debord)
29 - Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini)

May
02 - Institute Benjamenta (Stephen & Timothy Quay)

July
18 - Dites-lui que je l'aime (Claude Miller)
19 - Le cercle rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville)
20 - Le dernier métro (François Truffaut)

September
29 - Under the Volcano (John Huston)

October
10 - La dignidad de los nadies (Fernando Solanas)
12 - La nube (Fernando Solanas)
14 - Nachbarn (?)
15 - Ung flukt (Edith Carlmar)
25 - El sur (Fernando Solanas)
28 - Das Leben der Anderen (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
?? - Memoria del saqueo (Fernando Solanas)

November
03 - Black Dahlia (Brian de Palma)

no more entries in 2006


::: 2007 :::



January
05 - Pasolini short films
16 - The Following (Christopher Nolan)
21 - Serpico (Sidney Lumet)
27 - Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini)

March
12 - Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks)
15 - L'année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
17 - Futarizuma (Mikio Naruse)
21 - Ukigumo (Floating Clouds) (Mikio Naruse)
22 - A Girl in Every Port (Howard Hawks)
27 - Les témoins (Eric Rohmer)

April
06 - Zazie dans le metro (Louis Malle)
09 - Une femme est une femme (JLG)
14 - I pugni in tasca (Marco Bellocchio)
28 - Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki)

May
03 - Do You Remember Dolly Bell (Emir Kusturica)
05 - Bin-Jip (Kim Ki-duk)
06 - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (Kim Ki-duk)
10 - Oldboy (Park Chan-wook)
13 - Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook)
16 - Junta/Garage Olimpo (Marco Bechis)
18 - Prima della rivoluzione (Bernardo Bertolucci)
19 - Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
20 - Partner (Bernardo Bertolucci)
20 - Prima della rivoluzione (Bernardo Bertolucci)
31 - Tsisperi mtebi anu daujerebeli ambavi [Blue Mountains] (Eldar Shengelaya)

June
12 - The Last Show (Robert Altman)
26 - Black Book (Michael Verhoeven)

July
03 - Laura (Otto Preminger)
13 - Infernal Affairs (Wai Keung Lau/Siu Fai Mak)

ubu's vienna haul

Mêre & père ubu spent two great weeks in Vienna - lots of art in the cities' many great museums, Sheila Jordan at Jazzland, "Laura" and "Infernal Affairs" in a great open air cinema at the Augarten... possibly more later. Anyway, of course I couldn't live two weeks without jazz... I knew about the shop called Red Octopus since I got the first volume by the Erich Kleinschuster Sextet from them, two years ago, so I dropped by there again, asked about volume two, long announced, and luckily just out in our second week in town - picked up at the second visit - of course I didn't leave with empty hands at the first visit!

Anyway, here's what I bought:


:: Red Octopus (8., Josefstädter Strasse 99) - the best shop in town ::

Lou Bennett - Enfin! (RCA)
Von Freeman - Serenade & Blues (Chief) (the companion volume to the great "Have No Fear" - many thanks to Chuck Nessa!)
Art Farmer/JimmyHeath/Slide Hampton/Erich Kleinschuster Sextet 1968/71 Volume 2 (2CD) (Universal Austria)


:: Audio Center (1., Judenplatz 9) - from an Enja sale (10 euro a pop) ::

Dollar Brand Orchestra - African Space Program (seemingly a classic, didn't get it so far, although I'm a big fan, as anyone who noted my recent Organissimo BFT knows)
Dusko Goykovich - Swinging Macedonia
Ben Webster / Gene Ammons - Tenor Giants


:: Rote Laterne (1., Riemergasse 11) ::

[Ingfried Hoffmann -] Hammond Bond (a good one among Universal German's cheapo "Jazzclub" series - a gift from jug21, the guy who works there, whom I knew from Organissimo forums but didn't know to work there before... I dropped by that store by accident, just at the same minute as Matthias Rüegg from the great Vienna Art Orchestra dropped by, too...)
and also, to leave some money there and support this adorable great shop:
Harry Sokal/Wolfgang Puschnig - Red - White - Red & Spangled (from Universal Austria's great "Austrian Jazz Art" series)


:: EMI Austria (1., Kärntnerstrasse 30) ::

Hans Koller - Kunstkopfindianer (my second of Koller's 6 MPS CD reissues, still trying to get the remaining four from amazon marketplace sellers...)
Herbie Mann - Great Ideas of Western Mann (one more in my huge OJC/Fantasy list...)


:: and finally at a second hand store (likely Sing Sing, 5., Neustiftgasse 19/23, but I'm not quite sure...) ::

Art Pepper - Surf Ride (Savoy/Denon)

ubu in vienna - and more!

I just wanted to let you all know that until July 16th, I'll be on vacation in the great city of Vienna. Hence no new posts for a while now...

Below you'll find a recapitulation of what's been posted here so far - it's quite a bit more than what I'd have thought, actually! Anyway, there'll be more to come once the vacation will be over (oh no, don't think of that now, I'd be most happy to have a few months of vacation, rather than just a lousy couple of weeks!) - anyway, the "for europeans only" series will be continued, there shall be a compilation of songs by the great Mildred Bailey, and hopefully many other things, including live recordings not fit for dime, that I shall transfer for exclusive sharing on this blog. Also the recent George Russell Paris 1964 recording will be put up in an MP3 version here.

The labels under which you can find the posts with actual musical content are as follows:
musical offerings
for europeans only
exclusif
Actually, the first of these should lead to all the posts below, but I am only human, so I make mistakes...

**********************************************************

Lee Wiley / Bobby Hackett / Joe Bushkin - A Night in Manhattan
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/lee-wiley-bobby-hackett-joe-bushkin.html

Lenox School of Jazz Concert 1959
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/lenox-school-of-jazz-concert-1959.html

Lee Wiley - Unrequited Love's a Bore, Yeah... A Selection of Songs, 1931-1940
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/lee-wiley-unrequited-loves-bore-yeah.html

Sonny Rollins - Arnhem 1967
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/sonny-rollins-arnhem-1967.html

Martial Solal - 1959 & 2001 (Exclusif)
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/martial-solal-1959-2001-exclusif.html

Potlatch - selections from the discs I own so far
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/potlatch-my-june-sale-order.html

Les Nouveaux Monstres - Lausanne 2007 (Exclusif)
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/06/les-nouveaux-monstres-lausanne-2007.html

Nicolas Simion Group feat. Zoltan Lantos - Berlin 2000
http://ubu-space.blogspot.com/2007/05/nicolas-simion-group-feat-zoltan-lantos.html

Romano-Sclavis-Texier - Cully 2007 (on the great H&H blog)
http://huppeshyalites.blogspot.com/2007/06/by-special-agreement-of-king-ubu-here.html