I guess nobody remembers nowadays that Ritchie Blackmore once used to do nasty stuff with his electric guitar, that he had no chance running away from screaming groupies with no other thoughts but what he had in his pants. Nowadays Mr. Blackmore is a man in his 50s who performs medieval music and doesn`t even care about what his former mates from "Deep Purple" are doing. And this is a record of his band - basically it`s Blackmore and his wife who`s last name if I`m not mistaken is Night. On this record you won`t find a single guitar solo, but you`ll get lots and lots of pretty melodies and you`re bound to enjoy Night`s voice. Highlights are the title track and "Fool`s Gold". If I`m not wrong "Wind in the willows" sounds exactly like Shane McGovans "The Fairly Tale of New York". As a conclusion I dare say that this record has probably no significant value but it`s fun to listen to.

Brian Eno is remembered nowadays, when the world in which he lived doesn`t exist anymore, as the most evil person in the history of mankind. What else could you say about the man who singlehandily invented what is called "ambient music", and what reasonable people call "boring crap". Ok, I might be "a little" harsh here, but Eno`s successful attempts to compose and perform an LP by using only one finger don`t make me shake my ass and get pissed as an Irishman. Still this album was recorded way before the disastrous changes in Eno`s brain patterns that led to the global catastrophe of ambient. On HCtWJ we get some of the best songs he ever wrote. The opening "Needle in the camel`s Eye" is one of the most uplifting, energic, rocking in every aspect songs of the glam era (it was also used in the film "Velvet goldmine"). "Baby`s on Fire" is a weird poppy tune relying heavily upon synthesizers but it`s kinda nasty, kinda mean, kinda dirty, kinda super cool. "Cindy tells me" is a nice love song. And the other songs don`t deserve too many complaints either. If only Eno would have had more common sense and he had stayed this way until, say, nowadays...

Despite the fact that Aitmatov is considered one of the best writers of the former Soviet Union this book left me cold. It probably was a sign of something when it was written, it would probably provoke some people, but nowadays it seems more dated than those 80`s pop songs "Duran Duran" loved to perform so much. The plot is quite advanced - it combines the unifying story of Akbara the she-wolf and her he-wolf with a very long name, apart from it there`s the life of an idealistic man who`s been thrown out of a christian seminary because of his new vision of god, then there are two shepards - a good one and a bad one (the good one is named Boston, while the other`s name was too complicated for my memory, I`m no expert of Kyrgiz names after all). All characters in the book seem somewhat flat, especially it goes for the inserted part about Jesus and Pilate (it can be clearly felt that Aitmatov thought of himself as the new Bulgakov). As a matter of fact the only thing I got from this book was a pessimistic feeling just because it`s very depressing, apart from that it seems a bit dull and boring, which clearly isn`t a particulary good sign of anything. Preachiness and dated content ruined everything for me.

Jee, once again a record with a title almost as long as the LP itself. "Man" was an obscure British band that became famous for its song "Erotic", featuring the sound of an orgasm. So I guess it would be a wild guess if I said that the title of this album means "Masturbate at least once a day". So what? And what`s in its content? Since my mp3 files don`t provide lyric sheets I`m not so sure what the concept of this album is. There ain`t that much of singing, on "Bananas" the text goes something like "I like marihuana/cos it gets me stoned". Probably it was true for the band. Musically it gets no complaints from me despite the fact that the record basically is just jamming without a real purpose, but it`s quite good anyhow. Probably you wouldn`t want the entire world of music be like "Man" but for its own purposes the record works quite well.

Oh, yeah! Dave Grohl decides once again that he`s a singer and not a drummer and produces a new album of his band `Food Fighters, Car Lighters`. This time he`s decided to dump the formula and try something adventurous. Which means that instead of playing a whole CD of angry rock songs, he plays a whole CD of angry rock songs and adds to it another CD of acoustic music. The first CD of rock`n`roll ain`t a bad one but it`s not particulary memorable or interesting. It basically just is. What goes for the second disc, it ain`t that good either. Ok, it`s different. So what? It`s boring. A great songwriter Grohl never was, and most of his songs are about as distinguishable one from another as those of Leonard Cohen. Yet Cohen at least was/is a great master of lyrics, which Grohl isn`t. Probably the record ain`t bad either but I just can`t find anything about it what I should like.

Now this is one short title for an album! At least the name of the band ain`t that short. This is the band that came out of "the Small Faces", still having both Ronnie Wood and Rod "the mole" Stewart on the lineup. This record apart from the fact that its title is offensively long shall be remembered by the fact that upon it is the most popular song the Faces ever had - "Stay with me" - an arena rock song with screaming Rod ordering a woman to spend the night tonight with him and leave him in the morning. The music on those songs usually isn`t particulary innovative, and it could have been performed by anyone from "Cactus" to... 50 other bands. The opening "Judy`s Farm" is quite cool though. This certainly ain`t no milestone in modern rock music, but it`s a rockin` album with a young Rod Stewart who already has his trademark voice, and at least it came way before disco shlock was invented.

The latest from the greatest. If you consider "PV" the greatest Latvian band. At least it`s the most popular one. Or was. Or pretended to be. The new record contains 10 tracks, most of whom are somewhat optimistic, although you always feel a bit of depression in the optimism. Or I may be just a very, very sad and depressive person. I`m not a particular fan of the singer Renars Kaupers`s voice but in some cases it`s good enough for this pop-rock record. The highlights of the record are "Pilot Tim" and "Sunrise deep in hell". Ok, the second of them was known to me a long time prior to this record coming out. I guess I heard it a concert almost three years ago. Not that I mind. Not that I care. Not that it changes a lot.

Boring! I couldn`t manage it until the end. Who cares that Saramago is a Nobel-winning author! Who cares that I like books about old times and that magical realism is not a thing I hate and despise. Who cares that some moments in this book are brilliant. Since it`s about as entertaining as watching your toenails grow (by the way: have you noticed that toenails grow about 3 times slower than nails on your fingers? now that`s a mystery and one day I will probably write an essay in three parts about this anomality). Ok, there`s Baltasar - a one armed soldier who has come back from the war, his woman named Blimunda, and a weird priest who all work upon making a flying machine that uses the will of people as its lifting power. If the whole story would have been written on 100-150 pages it would probably make a great book. Since Saramago went for the number of letters he wrote about 500 pages, using particulary long sentences and describing things about as amazing as a boulder.

Once you receive a death sentence you start to look at things in a different way. Or you don`t. Not that it really matters. What is characteristic to any book of Rushdie`s is the complexity of his language and the low "readability" level. That`s just the case with "Fury", one of his most recent books. Malik Solanka is a Indo-British professor who leaves his wife and child and flees to the States for he doesn`t know how to cope with his fury and anger. Apart from being a professor he`s a dollmaker, and a bit crazy for that, as a matter of fact. Most of the time he either makes his weird dolls for a new project of his or makes love to some woman about half his age. Yeah, if you want to know there`s a lot of Rushdie`s biography in Solanka. But I really don`t wanna know whether Solanka had to performs blow-jobs on his step-dad or not. Rushdie certainly tries to be accessible and modern, the book includes numerous references to popular music, computer games, Hollywood films (especially "Star wars") etc., etc. But he doesn`t convince me that he really lives for that. And midlife sexuality isn`t particulary sexual for my taste. Still the book has its positive values in terms of fury and Furies Mr. Rushdie knows his stuff.

Probably it ain`t the best way to start a relationship with this weird German band. After all, 1987 is not a regular album but a collection of early songs (or versions of songs) the band did in mid-80`s. It means that I have no real reason to believe that this record depicts at full any stage of this bands weird career. Yet, be those songs outtakes or remastered demos or even a blind three-legged Spanish swordsmaster they are mostly good. The brand of music is a wicked mixture of Einsturzende Neubauten, Depeche Mode, The Cure and certainly Sparks. My personal favourite on this album is "Reincarnation" - a goofy song with lyrics going "There is no peace in heaven, there is no peace on earth" (and so comparing heaven and earth). "Battle of the ghost" in terms of vocals goes in the vain of "Propoganda" by the Sparks. Yet it`s possible that the Sparks took some elements out of German bar-room music, therefore it may be no clear lift. Of course, you`ll need some time to get through the weird arrangements and electronic sounds but the reward will be worth it. At least I`ve rarely encountered anything as interesting in the scene of German music.