Equilibrium has once again been achieved!

Something utterly weird happened last week. I received a large stash of cash from Tina, and a pretty significant bank transfer from my ex-girlfriend Louise.. Which means that I not only gained DKK 1600 in an afternoon but was also in a strange, unfamiliar situation in which, for the first time in years, no one owed me any money what-so-ever.. Well, none that I know of anyways.

You may think this is a good thing, and indeed it was. But to me, it was also a very unfamiliar situation because we have, literally for the past couple of years, been in a situation where Tina constantly owed me at least some amount of money and where I’d be able to cash in on her debt with me whenever we were going somewhere or doing something.. And then, all of a sudden, this nice, familiar comfortable situation came to an end with her paying off her debt and changing everything.. Clearly something had to be done, because the prospect of her not being financially dependent on my just wasn’t very appealing.

So I did what any reasonable person in my situation would do and lend her some more money! A much smaller amount this time, granted, but it served the purpose of not only bringing things back to normal, but also allowing for us to have more than one concert to look forward to in this year. Long story short, I bought two tickets for us to go see the Five Finger Death Punch + Shadows Fall show @ Voxhall in Aarhus on November 13. Which is cool for a myriad of reasons, the first being that Five Finger Death Punch is one of my absolute favorite bands right now, another being that it’s been a while since we saw any live acts, and yet another is.. Well.. Just the plain awesomeness of it all!

I mean, look.. Most guys my age have female best friends whose idea of quality time together on a Friday night is probably something along the lines of sipping tea together while watching Dancing With The Stars or America’s Next Top Model. Me, I’m blessed with Tina who’d take a beer with a Jägermesiter chaser over a cuppa tea any day and would all but love to spend a Friday night leading the charge with me in the front row at a thrash/metalcore show.. Hah! How awesome is that? I mean.. really!

But I digress, I guess, but you’ll have to forgive me on account of me being just a wee thrilled about the fact that I’m seeing one of my favorite bands live in a month in a small and intimate setting with good company. I really could think of worse ways to spend a Friday evening..

In closing, things are better now than they were just a few days ago. I have more concerts to look forward to, Tina once again owes me money, and rumor has it that Denmark beat Sweden in footie this past Saturday and is now heading to the World Cup in South Africa next summer

Thanks, Zascha!

After a wonderful weekend with the gang at Zascha’s parents’ place and some talks with Zascha, this song is absolutely stuck in my head.. I may have found a new favorite song of the month.

Bruce Springsteen – The River

All hail the Boss!

Oh.. WOW!

This is officially a first for me.. For the first time ever, I’ll be praising Chris Cornell, a love song AND a cover in one sentence. We all probably know that I’m not usually one to get excited about cover songs. We also know that I consider Chris Cornell ever so slightly overrated. And, we most certainly know, that I’m not usually the guy to get all soft and mushy over a love song. Never the less, I have to share this song.

So, I give you: Chris Cornell doing a breathtaking cover version of what I sincerely believe to be the most beautiful and sincere love song ever written: Led Zeppelin’s Thank You.

Impressive, really..

Roll On..

Kid Rock – Roll On

Aww, the Kid is all growed up like and sensitive..

Amazing choir performance of Toto’s “Africa”

As much as I loved this song to begin with, I’m not usually into this kinda stuff.. But this performance is downright impressive!

Thunderstruck!

AC/DC – Thunderstruck, Live at Donnington

Hey, yo! Guess what kinda weather we’re having!?

Out of the Blue and Into the Black

Neil Young – My, My, Hey, Hey – Live 1985

I really can’t stop listening to Neil Young these days! Like really.. I think he’s a fantastic artist and has some absolutely classic songs.. This one in particular.. “Rock n Roll Can Never Die!” :]  It’s really quite sad that, in my generation, this song is mostly known for being quoted in Kurt Cobain’s suicide letter.

Whoa!! Jeebus!!

Holy Hell, Batman! I just had the bejeebus scared out of me on my way home from work.. Twice.. Within two minutes!

So, here’s the deal.. In case you hadn’t noticed, I dig music! Like really! So I hardly ever go anywhere without my trusty iPod and my walk to and from work is generally no exception and neither was today. Also, I’ve been kinda metalled out lately, so I’ve been listening to a lot of softer, more mellow and classic stuff. Which is probably why I, on my way home tonight, on a particularly cool and slightly wet summer night, was listening to Pink Floyd’s classic “Wish You Were Here” album. Now, this album, which actually ranks pretty high on my list of favorite albums is rather on the experimental and psychedelic containing only five songs despite being a full length album. One is a pretty, little ballad carrying the same name as the record, the other are longer songs featuring a lot of trippy guitars, synths and quite a large array other sound effects, most of which really take advantage of the stereo music media as to appear to come from only the left or the right speaker or to shift and fade between the two.. It’s really quite a lot more  mesmerizing  than it sounds. Especially if you’re listening to it in headphones or earbuds because the soundscape seems to completely surround you.. And no you don’t need to be on drugs to enjoy it. It can be enjoyed quite nicely and in a very sober manner on an early Tuesday morning on a byroad slightly outside downtown Kolding.

Of course needless to say, such haunting soundscapes take on a totally different feeling when you’re trotting along a dark, dimly lit slightly wet road at 2 AM in the morning.. And even more so when you suddenly look over your shoulder to see a figure clad completely in black approaching you. Not that this is actually what scared me though it did make me a little uneasy. It turned out to be just some random, drunken young man on his way home who, for whatever reasons decided that he needed to converse with me as we were apparently both heading in the same direction. As such, we didn’t really have much to talk about, he made a couple of remarks along the lines of “Good thing it stopped raining, huh?” to which I stuck my hands out and caught a few drops to prove that it was in fact still raining but other than that trying to silently let him know I wasn’t really interested in talking which he seemed to understand. After having made a few more seemingly friendly remarks, he wished me a good evening and turned left down another stretch of road while I walked on, feeling slightly weirded out.. A feeling that suddenly turned to sheer terror as I heard the very same guy’s voice laughing softly in my ear..

Needless to say, I screamed bloody murder and spun around myself like four or five times, heart pounding, dead silence and empty space all around me. It literally took me about five seconds to realize that I was neither going crazy, nor were my ears playing tricks on me, the soft chuckle in my ear had simply been a sample on the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” recorded by a member of the band who obviously sounded a lot like the guy I’d just bumped into.. At this point, I couldn’t help but laugh at my own stupidity, but my heart was still racing at a pretty alarming rate as I walked on down the sloped, dark road and bumped heads with a cute, wittle, pwayful kitty!

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I have absolutely nothing against playful little kittens. What I do have something against is playful kittens who pounce on you from the darkness of bushes at 2:05 AM on a dark Tuesday morning when your heart is already racing at about twice the recommended rate.. Needless to say, more spinning and turning and crying of bloody murder ensued as I once again gathered myself and mumbled something along the lines of “Holy shit, kitty, you scared the shit out of me” and walked on, just to nearly stumble over said playful kitty’s playful kitty friend..

Which, incidentally, is about when I decided to get back onto a more brightly lid road and play some less psychedelic and less progressive music. Not that there’s anything wrong with Pink Floyd but it probably should be saved for a day when I could give it my full attention and not having to worry about finding my way in the dark while stumbling between or over drunk strangers and random kittens. A good decision, it turned out, as the remainder of my trip turned out a hell of a lot easier and with far less shock value.. Lesson learned!

The making of a fan-boy..

This may sound odd to a lot of people, especially for those from other countries, but I come from a time when Denmark had exactly one (count them.. ONE!) public TV channel.. State owned, to boot!

So, the whole fall of the Soviet bloc aside (which is really another post), one of the most revolutionary memories from my childhood was getting another public TV channel (appropriately named TV2) in 1988. Another is watching said new TV-station airing the piece of footage below:

Long story short, what happened is that Bruce Springsteen happened to be in town to perform a show and he happened to be walking down the main shopping street in Copenhagen, our capital, only to hear a street singer performing a few covers of his. Since Bruce happened to be carrying a guitar of his own and since this was all within his working class spirit, he thought.. “why not give this performer the time of his life?” .. And, in doing so, he shaped a lot of other lives.. I first became a fan those 20 years ago (at age 8, mind you), and have been a fan ever since! Such behavior shows a kind of affection towards your fans that you hardly ever saw back then and that you barely ever see now..

EDIT: And for the record, this remains my favorite Bruce Springsteen song to date.. And I most certainly hope I’ll get to see it in concert some day!

Blitzkrieg Bop.. On Ukulele?

I’m a pretty big fan of The Ramones.. And this is just awesome on SO many levels!