brainsplotch

[On the train to Chemnitz with a gaggle of archaeology students]. After sleeping until 9 AM and lazing about in the airbnb, we eventually took the tram up to the main (?) MLU campus in Halle. Met up with Avery and wandered a bit, looking at various university buildings. Avery went to class and L. and I went to our favorite Halle coffee shop, 7 Gram, which happens to be directly across the street from B12 Musics, which is a excellent record shop. So we drank iced lattes and then, on my request, popped into B12. I bought Siouxsie & the Banshees' Kaleidoscope (on CD), which was a fortuitous find since I have been in a S&tB mood recently. B12 had so much good stuff that I could have easily gone crazy, but resisted the temptation. The clerk who rang me up was the same guy as 2023, the one who enthused over my Namanlos purchase. Good to see he's still there. I assume he owns the place. Avery met up with us shortly thereafter and we wandered further north into the city and sa...

No more Halle puns, I promise. I just slept 11 hours, which I desperately needed, in this lovely little airbnb on Huttenstraße on the south side of the city. Yesterday, Avery guided us through the cemetery across the street, which fascinatingly contains a section of Soviets who died, or at least were buried, in the aftermath of World War II. The all have the hammer and sickle on their grave stones. In fact, we spent most of our first day here walking, which helped prevent falling asleep and further throwing off our sleep schedule. It's hard, but I've learned you have to do it. We finished off the evening by looking at some of the Martin Luther University campus and then dining at Avery's favorite Middle Eastern restaurant.

Bear with me, because I'm running on fumes. We landed in Frankfurt without incident, but then had a mini-adventure when we discovered we couldn't take the train to Halle directly from the airport, but instead had to take train from the airport to the Frankfurt hauptbahnhof, and THEN transfer to another train that would stop in Halle on its way to its final destination, Berlin. This all added an extra level of intrigue, but we got it done.  I am completely demolished right now, having barely any sleep for the better part of 30 hours, so I'll continue tomorrow.

We just boarded our plane from Detroit to Frankfurt. So far, everything has gone smoothly. All in all, it seems like a calm day at DTW. We did have a mom and dad with a young child in front of us who somehow it would be okay to put a small child's bed in front of the emergency exit. No bueno. Looks like the flight attendant was able to have them trade seats with somebody else. Problem solved. And with that, I will sign off for now.

It all started in about 1986 or 1987 when I leafed through a friend's copy of a Rolling Stone history of rock 'n' roll (I can't remember the exact title or edition). There was a group photo of five or six scowling young guys in front of either a crumbling stone chimney or large boulders, half of the guys were white and two (or three--if it was the Da Capo era) were Black. The accompanying caption identified these guys as a band called "Love."  Around this same time, I flipped through a book called The Doors: The Illustrated History, which includes a promotional Q&A with the four Doors, they type of fluff that was common in that era and that bands likely hated having to do. One of the questions was something like, "What are your goals?" Jim Morrison's answer was essentially, "To be as big as Love." I had to find out more about this band called Love. A year or two later, I found myself at Jocundry's Books (R.I.P.) and on the shel...

Scratch Bob Mould off the list... It's embarrassing for me to say that, after almost 39 years of being a fan, I finally saw Bob Mould play live. I never saw Hüsker Dü because they broke up a year after I became a fan. I probably had multiple opportunities when Bob went solo or when he was in his band Sugar, but it wasn't high on my priority list. It wasn't until his recent career resurgence on Merge Records--and a further deepening of my HD fandom, that seeing Bob became a must.   I had tickets to see him in March 2020, but I don't need to tell you what global shit show caused that concert to be canceled. So, five years later, I finally caught him and his cracking band consisting of Jason Narducy (bass/vocals) and Jon Wurster (drums). Of course, Bob adds his slashing buzz saw guitar and anguished vocals to the mix. Since there is apparently a law that makes Lansing a live music black hole, we once again had to make the 1 1/2 hour drive to Bell's Eccentric Café in K...