eels@volksbuehne 20th february 2008

and so the story goes...

last time i saw mark oliver everett aka mr. e in concert with his band eels he was not very friendly to the fans. more than once a mocky "fuck you!" was shouted in direction of the audience.
when i went there yesterday i was quite excited, if he had turned into a "normal" person again.

the concert started with a bbc-documentary ("parallel worlds, parallel lives") about e., who was tracing the life of his father, who died when e. was 19 years old. "i remember seeing my father lying on the bed. he was fully clothed, with his glasses on and all. and i leaned over the bed and embraced him with both arms. he was completely stiff. that was the clostest i've been with my father. when he was dead."

44 year old e. starts looking for people that knew his father. people he had worked with. hugh everett III. was a quantum physicist who first proposed the many-worlds-interpretation.
as e. had never understood what his father was doing, the bbc showed him meet all those physicists and gets an explaination of the thoughts his father had. and he seems to have understood now.
the documentary takes a spin through all parts of e.'s life as well, the suicide of his sister liz, the death of his mum. it showed his quite lonely life with his dog and gave a quite intimate insight into his life.
not a bad way to start a concert, but 60 minutes were just too long.

after the film finished, the white sheet that covered the stage, was torn down and revealed a look onto at least six or seven different instruments. then e. came, sat down with his guitar and played the first song.
the first part of the concert was a bit sad, with "elizabeth on the bathroom floor" (which is abouth his sister's suicide) and "it's a motherfucker". but thank god was e. not depressive all his life and so we could hear beautiful songs such as "i like birds", "souljacker part I", "novocaine for the soul", "last stop: this town" and "flyswatter".
what impressed me most with "flyswatter" was, that in the middle of the song during a drum solo of his partner chet atkins III. (who by the way played the steel pedal, the piano, the drums, the guitar, the zither AND the musical saw) e. left the piano, went over to the drums and then first took one drumstick out of chet's hand - continuing playing - and then the other one, sat down and took over chet's part. chet meanwhile wandered to the piano, played a little, and then they changed it again. it was AMAZING!!

as e. has also written a book (things the grandchildren should know - his autobiography), chet would read some parts out, while e. would just sit there, listen and make some funny comments now and then. he even pretended to read out fan mail ("hello e. you scum, thank you for playing in perth and treating your fans like shit, you cunt!") and concert reviews (which turned out to be one of the eagles'...).
talking about other bands...after playing "novocaine for the soul", chet did a led zeppelin cover of "good times bad times" which was awesome!

including the documentary the concert was nearly three hours long (they did two encores) and was one of the coolest gigs i've ever been to. at some points it was a bit too obvoius that it's all acted but it was funny and seemed very honest.

and oh, e. seemed to have learned a new phrase just for his germany-gigs - danke schatzi!

likewise. a pleasure.

HE is the chef

seems like this blog is more about tv than about anything else, BUT i really have to go on about this subject as it's - again - about very good british tv.

you know all that cooking shows on telly? forget them.
forget johann lafer (although he's very cute with his styria-accent), forget horst lichter, forget tim maelzer.

and please forget that rubbish rach der restaurant-tester that aired on RTL. it's another bad copy of great british tv that just didn't work in germany. because you cannot replace a fucking cool chef with a pitingly looking guy whose profession by chance it is to cook. not gonna work.

a few weeks ago i discovered gordon ramsay - chef ohne gnade on DMAX and found out that it was the source material to rach der restaurant-tester. only with a funny plot, swear words and a bloody good looking chef who is verbally misbehaving all the time. the slight resemblace to dieter bohlen gets put on the backburner as soon as the scot opens his mouth. he's just cool.
the original title of the show is ramsay's kitchen nightmares which nails it. and again shows the boring translation german producers thought of for a really great programme. at least they only spoiled it halfway by only doing a voiceover and not fully synchronising it. this way you get a little bit of what everybody's originally saying.

you can watch gordon swear on thursdays at 9.15 pm (two episodes) and sundays at 11.15 pm on DMAX.

remembering chris r.

the minute i saw her face
the second i caught her eye
the minute i touched the flame
i knew it would never die

sting - saint augustine in hell

faq

i have had certain complaints that i started writing my blog in english. everyone's aking me:

are you ever going to write in german again?

whereas i ask myself:

am i ever going to live in england?

answers anyone?

bolly knockers

last thursday the life on mars spin-off ashes to ashes aired on bbc one. i loved life on mars and sam tyler who was played by wonderful john simm, so i couldn't hardly wait for it to start.

ashes to ashes moves from manchester 1973 to london 1981. this time sam tyler's psychologist d.i. alex drake gets shot in the head and goes back in time. dressed as a prostitute she wakes up on a boat where a massive drug party's going on. not much later she meets her new boss d.c.i. gene hunt who tenderly begins calling her bolly knockers.
as alex is also a profiler she has studied sam's case very thoruoghly and knows that there is a connection to the present, the real world. she tries to influence her fate in facing the man that shot her in the head, because she's hoping to break a spell and be able to go back to 2008. i'm not saying too much if i tell you that she has to stay a little longer in 1981...

i was watching it in the middle of the night because i could not sleep, and i have to admit that it was a little bit spooky. alex's hearing voices, faces quickly appear and disappear again, she's haunted by a sinister clown who she finds in her wardrobe and discovers that it was only a dream. was it?
but it was also very, very funny. the combination of heavily built gene and gorgeous and fuckingly smart alex (played by beautiful keeley hawes) creates new excitement for the audience. not to forget that d.s. chris skelton kind of grew up a bit. he's still a bit dull and still not as keen on being a copper like gene is, but he now has a girlfriend who is shy and sweet and who adores him. one is tempted to hug him and pat him on the shoulder.
in contrast to chris his partner d.c. ray carling has not changed much. he's still very sarcastic, sexist and tries to play it cool. the only thing that has changed is his hairdo: he's having a perm now.

while writing this i remember, that philip glenister (who plays gene hunt and who i secretly adore) was a guest at the chris moyles show this morning. you can listen to the interview here.

world hold on

it was 2005 when my friend franziska told me, that her friend yvonne was diagnosed with a brain tumor as big as an orange. i remember the day we went to visit her in hospital. a few days before that visit yvonne shaved her hair because she did not want it to fall out in tufts when combing it. i knew that she would be nearly bald and i had the worst imaginations of her with no hair and a big scar over her head.
but then everything was not too bad. she wore a scraf around her head and she laughed and said she was sorry if she could not answer right away because she was having a hole in her head now and the things she wants to say seem to fall in there and dissappear. i let her explain the operation to me and was quite astonished how calm she was talking about such a serious topic. she could have been dead. but she wasn't.

and nobody was expecting her to die. she was treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. she put off her apprenticeship to become a nurse and tried to get well again. we met at the beergarden during world cup 2006 and while we were drinking beer she would have apple spritzer, even if she was tempted to drink alcohol.
at the end of 2006 doctors found a relapse in her head where the tumor was. the cancer cells had started to grow again. this time she also was tested positive on a preliminary stage of cervical cancer. she had some of her eggs taken out and frozen, because she could not be sure if the cancer would damage her ovars.
i met her in spring 2007. she was in a chemotherapeutic cycle and often feeling sick and tired. it was a nice day, the sun was shining and i fetched her from home. she was wearing a woolen jumper to prevent her from freezing all the time. on our way to nymphenburger château park we bought ice cream. we spent almost one and a half hours in the park, watching people and i listened to the latest progress she had made in defeating the cancer.
after she had finished she asked me how i was and i told her that i was feeling very uncomfy with my studies and that tv was a bunch of shit. it's funny how your own big problems can feel so small and unimportant when you're talking to someone who has real problems. i almost apologised for telling her.
when we said goodbye i did not think that she could die. she was very, very sick, yes. she was suffering from brain cancer which is not a broken foot. but i never considered that it could end deathly. she was always too fun-loving, too alive and much too sarcastic when it came to the death-topic that i would ever have thought about her never getting well again.

yesterday franziska told me that yvonne is in extremis. in october 2007 doctors found another relapse which was growing very fast. her tumor is inoperable. it's growing into the cerebral tissue (instead of repressing it), which means that in an operation you would have to cut into the brain. one by one her brain functions will fall out and at some point there will be a cerebral haemorrhage that will cause a coma and death.

she is almost unable to speak anymore. she forgets things. she cannot understand why people are crying. franziska says she's not sure if yvonne is aware of the fact that she will die.

i don't know how it comes but again i underestimated the cancer. it is too abstract to believe or understand although i saw my father die from cancer. and there are enough people i know that had or still have cancer. it's hard to keep in mind that it is a bloody dangerous disease and that you're never never safe from getting it.

when it comes to death the absurde thing is that everything will continue. you will still laugh and cry and be hungry and shower and go to work. all people around you will act like nothing happened, cars will go, traffic lights will switch from red to green and back to red. everything will go on and on and on and act like nothing happened.
and what's left is a stupid feeling of being not worth this normal life. because there is absolutely nothing you can do.

people come and go
it's just the way of the world
love just ebbs and flows
what's left for us to rely on?

yvonne turned 28 on january 6th. her life has almost come to an end.