Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

I have a book with some of this writer`s most famous plays (although to be quite honest I haven`t heard anything about this Edlis person), but I found it too troublesome to read all 8 plays included in the book thus I read just the half of it. First, there`s "Where`s your brother, Abel!" - a play for three persons where two of them were in a German concentration camp once, and one of them changed sides while the other one was the only honest person to survive - a typical Soviet piece of propoganda. Numero duo: "Mess for the Virgin" - a strange play where Joan of Arc wasn`t burned by the English but replaced by a different woman and after that got married yet she felt that a part of her was left in the fire and that she wasn`t herself anymore - a very strong play indedd. So is "The game of the shadows" - a dramatic piece about Cleopatra and her lovers. The last play I read was the "Solomennaja storozhka" - a silly Soviet styled comedy which doesn`t get too funny but serves its political goals. Therefore summary there are 2 good plays and 2 bad plays, so as a whole this is pretty average, although I admit that some talent from the author can be clearly felt yet the "obligatory content" doesn`t let him really spread his wings.

Most critics call this the hightest point of CS&N careers, and not absolutely without a reason - the album contains such classy and classical compositions like "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and... maybe some others. I still think that "Marrakesh Express" is the best song on the record - mostly because it`s much more energic than the rest of the LP. It`s no heavy metal of course, but at least it doesn`t put me to sleep like most of the songs on here do. I have little doubt about how moody all the songs on this record are and I`m aware that some of them have truly brilliant melodies but it`s not a secret fom me that it`s far from the kind of music I like it - it`s too rootsy and folky to be memorable. CS&N do a fine job for making background music but this would never become a part of the soundtrack of my life.

I guess it wasn`t such a great idea to watch this film again after I`d done it something like two and a half years ago. In my mind "High fidelity" had stayed as a very sincere film about love and music, a film for sheding tears if you`re a romantic person and thinking about life if you`re not. Rob Gordon has just parted with Laura, his girlfriend, and he needs to find something in his life that would keep him going. He owns a record store where he has two freaky employees and what they all enjoy in their lives the most is making top 5 lists. Like - top five songs you`d love to hear at your funeral, or - top five breakups. In some sort this film is similar to "Broken Flowers", only Frears isn`t such a great master like Jarmusch who`s able to - I can`t complain that "HiFi" is a bad film and for a music maniac like me it couldn`t be anyway but I just don`t feel the magic anymore. All the endless Cusack monologues, and the crappy "I`ll rather keep it all to myself and later everyone fill find out and hate me for the rest of my days" attitude doesn`t come over to me particulary well. Were it not for the music I`d probably have no interest in this film whatsoever. It`s sad that dreams sometimes tend to collapse like buildings in NYC.

I somehow didn`t like this book as much as others Frisch had written. The plot is quite strange, off course, an American man gets arrested by the Switzerlands customs police for having a false password. He claims that his name is White and that he isn`t a certain Anatol Stiller (the quiet man, if you judge strictly by the name). The book is written as White`s diary in his unsuccessful attempts to convince the police that he is a murderer who has just returned from Mexico and not the supposedly involved in spying Mr. Stiller. Still everyone who knows Stiller, including his wife seem to be convinced that White and Stiller are the same person. In the end it proves that everyone was right, although I guess Stiller in the past was even more of a bastard than the murderer White.

I would like to compare this book to Jack Kerouac`s "On The Road". With the precision that it`s written in German and therefore contains several typical German elements. It`s also quite in the same writing style as "The Goalie`s fear before the penalty shot" (which I read some months ago) - Handke offers the reader a journey with the hero through America of the 1960`s. It`s the age of the hippies, of the Stones, of Canned Heat and of looking for love in the strangest places. I would probably still choose Kerouac over Handke`s approach. This is the kind of literature where when you write about sex or something like that, you don`t need eroticism, it`s just written in the way - "so it is and I don`t care".

Wizzard was a band which was lead by Roy Wood - the leader of "Move" and the founder of "Electric Light Orchestra". Until today when I first listened to this record, I knew absolutely nothing about it and even now I don`t know much which is no wonder, since the sound of the band has failed to impress me much. The band`s style is a synthesis of pop/rock and jazz that sounds like it came from the era of Louis Armstrong. The opening "Main Street" has a nice little melody going on and it can be described as fresh and pleasant. The next song entitled "Saxmaniax" (not "Sex maniacs" although that`s also a good title, especially for a jazz-old time music piece) is an instrumental with a strong groove. "The Fire in His Guitar" switches away from jazz influences and sounds like it was recorded by some hard rock/prog rock performer - ranging everywhere between "King Crimson", "Led Zeppelin" and "Dream Theater". "French Perfume" is once again jazzy but it`s a bit too avantegardish for my ears (if I write avantegardish I mean that it induces pain in my ears). As a whole it is quite a solid effort, which can sound almost like everything (for example, the bonus "Ball Park Incident" sound exactly like "Slade" while the other bonus - "Carslberg Special" could have be recorded by "Renaissance").

Once I used to think that Kraftwerk was a strange phenomena in the world of popular music that had close to no analogues. I used to think that "Radioactivity" was probably the best album ever made. Later on I discovered that Kraftwerk wasn`t the only band experimenting with different sounds in the 1970s and I somehow lost interest in the bands work. So today I decided - why not listen to "The Man Machine" (the German version)? So I did. And I found out that this album not only contains some of the most famous compositions Kraftwerk ever wrote but that it`s maybe the most flawless electronic album I`ve heard in my life. It opens with "Die Roboter" - a true classic despite the wrong intonation in the Russian verse. Then we switch to "Spacelab" - a simplistic song that`s perfect as a soundtrack for driving at night. "Metropolis" is surprsingly good for a song that I didn`t know from a greatest hits compilation. And then comes "Das Model" - although I still prefer the English vocals for it, it`s even better than the Robots in its electronic coolness. The long and complex "Neonlicht" is probably the best long suite in Kraftwerk`s catalogue - it way better than the boring "Tour de France". And the closing "Die Mensch -Maschine" reminds me of the opening of the Kraftwerk concert in Riga with all the "Maschine Maschine Maschine" stuff. I may not be a great fan of electronic music but I certainly know good electronic music when I see it.

I wonder why it is that way that I tend to like Swiss literature much more than books written by German and Austrian writers. Whilst I rarely can enjoy a book written by a writer from Berlin or Wienna, I don`t need to force myself in order to enjoy a Swiss writer`s work. "The grandfather" is quite a compact story about a simple man living in a simple world (and he doesn`t prove to be as complex as the simple man in Chapek`s novel). The grandfather lives in a small village in Northern Italy and that`s where he meets his future wife, that`s where he tries hard in order to be able to survive in his builder`s job. I`m not so sure why I like this book - it`s nothing special, just a very sincere and probably even honest story, it doesn`t strike me instantly like a brilliant and pretentious novel by Umberto Eco, it isn`t funny and satirical as Franzetti`s compatriot Friedrich Duerrenmatt, it isn`t particulary intellectual for sure. But who needs intellectual aspiration anyway? I guess I`ve had enough of that from the terrible two books I took from the Goethe library the last time, so this time I have no problem with a book like "The Grandfather" whatsoever.

F.C.Delius goes in this book to write about one of my favorite periods of history - the late 1960s. Here you get the Vietnam war, the hippies, the Beatles and the Stones and a young insecure man who is nearly a poet but fully a loser. He can take part in demonstrations and he can love and hate the States at the same time, but he doesn`t know what to do with a girl. And when he gets a chance to do it he blows it about as good as the fellow in "American Pie" did. Not an outstanding book but not bad either. Forgettable, that`s the word.

One of these days I`m gonna cut all those Germans in tiny, tiny pieces! Man, how they know the best way to dissapoint me! This time I go to the library and I think to myself - now I won`t be getting me some boring and overblown crap, I`ll better stay with comedy. So I take a book with Hitler in Indians` closing on the cover and a title promising "Fun fun Fun!". And what do I get? Is this supposed to be funny? Man, even my change for Aerosmith`s "Falling in Love is Hard When She Pees" is funnier than these stories. Ok, they aren`t offensive, it`s just some sort of altered history which is meant to be a grotesque puzzle but to be it`s just another of those books that I can`t enjoy simply because there`s nothing in it. And it`s a book where you meet some of the biggest villains of the 20th century! It`s so depressing, how on earth can you find Stalin saying that probably some of the people who died in Syberia didn`t deserve it? I don`t find it inventive, I find it dull. And not because I would think - oh, God, how dares this Buch fellow write stuff like that! I don`t give a damn about what he dares and what he dares not. If you ask me, I would care if Hans Christoph Buch came to my place and peed on my rug - even then I would ask him how he dares to do it. I would only ask him how he dares to think that he`s a good writer if the only thing he`s capable of doing is peeing on the rug. So, Mr. Buch, what will you answer me for that?