Storyteller – Page 4 – betterwithmusic

December 8, 1980

“JOHN LENNON was shot to death by a fan who had idolised him for years. When the 25-year-old killer, Mark David Chapman, gunned down Lennon he was carrying 14 Beatle tape recordings in a satchel. Chapman, a dishevelled out-of-work security guard, told friends that he intended to meet Lennon.”

” A stunned generation of Beatles fans was in mourning for their murdered idol John Lennon last night.”

“John loved and prayed for the human race. Please do the same for him. Yoko Ono”

“A shoked Paul McCartney said last night: John was a great man. His death is a bittel, cruel blow – I really loved the guy. He was one of the best.

He added: He will be sadly missed by the whole world. John will be remembered for this contribution to art, music and world peace. I can’t tell you howmuch it hurts to lose him.”

“I owe everything to John. He commited himself 100 per cent to the music business.

Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones was shattered.

He was given the news in Paris, where he is recording a new album, and said: I knew and liked John Lennon for 18 years. But I don’t want to make a casual remark now at such a awfulmoment for his family, millions of fans and friends.”

Text and photos from THE SUN, December 10, 1980

Back to 90s

Are we back at 90s or has 90s returned to us? Or 90s just never left us at all. That’s the point, surely.

I do not mean the great rock bands of the decade. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Pixies, Alice in Chains, MBV, Mudhoney, NIN, even Melvins… they released recently albums. Some of them after a long time in silence. But I do not mean that. Many of them refuse to get off the stage, so they can not return.

I speak of the new blood. The young bands that recover those sounds, in a more or less veiled way. Some “rookie” bands that makes me go back to my adolescence. It is not a case of a simply “remembering” act, isn’t a question of revival music. They speak the language of those years like just-arrived guys from another era. As if they really have traveled back in time. Nowadays tunes that would have been huge in 90’s MTV ( Do you remember when MTV put music videos, and you could hear grunge, powerpop , hardcore … ? )

The thing is that, at times, they can rejuvenate you 20 years and let you feel similar sensations, or what remains of them. Something that many of the survivors, 30 years on the road later, fail at.

Here are some examples:

Yuck

Cheatahs

Swearin’

Valentiine

Joanna Gruesome

Speedy Ortiz

And finally… Just another song from Speedy Ortiz. I really love this album, maybe one of the best I listened in 2013. Get out of my head!!

One last detail: Of these six groups, four have a woman ahead (5 if we consider Yuck’s bassist Mariko Doi). At the end, Kurt Cobain would be right…

“I like the comfort in knowing that women are the only future in rock and roll” (Kurt Cobain Journals)

New Release: Viikinsaari

Viikinsaari is an island located in the lake Pyhäjärvi belonging to the City of Tampere, Finland. The island is a popular nature resort and an outdoor recreation area, attracting visitors all year round. In the summertime there is a boat connection to the island from the Laukontori harbour. In winter, the island can be reached by walking or skiing. The western part is a nature reserve, but there are also swimming shores, playgrounds, a small chapel, a fireplace for roasting sausages, a restaurant, a footpath through the nature reserve and a dance pavilion on the island. (Wikipedia)

Viikinsaari is the name of a movie that does not exist. A love story, a drama in which water plays a key role: the lake, the sound of the rain, a flood … An encounter in a extreme situation. But a situation that the players don’t know. To watch how something can be born while all around disappears. And viceversa (Spoiler?)

It’s a music poem and an imagination exercise for me and the listener.
The realization of an idea that I’ve been going around: create a soundtrack from three or four ideas, from an imagined story. There are no “real” images; it’s the listener who must to put it with a little help of the sound. So intimate, so universal.
Viikinsaari is small pieces for piano. And it’s water. It’s the piano that calls the shots through melodies and rhythms inspired by the sounds of water, their ways, their reflections … With string and wind arrangements that sound like whispers at times and other times explode in the ears leaving the piano in the background, like waves. A space for melancholy and contemplation.

Influences: Nyman & Sakamoto, a weekend in Tampere, leaky faucets, the first cold days of fall, lakes, images with cold colours, Chopin preludes, wet clothes near the fireplace, broken umbrellas in a dustbin, Satie & Debussy, Tom Wait’s Asylum Years…