Euroman Goeth #2: Straight connection, T.E.E.
Posted on | January 18, 2012 | No Comments
“From station to station/Back to Düsseldorf City/Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie”
That’s the straight connection. Because there is no longer a direct train from Paris to Vienna. TEE was first-class only but now dapper German businessmen, like the ones Ralf Hütter portrays in the video below, can afford private jets. These days Ryanair shuttles the masses across the continent. Trains are just too slow. Thus the aspirational, futuristic vision Kraftwerk convey in this video is now laden with nostalgia.
And it’s just a train, we shouldn’t get too excited, right? Or is it? These words by Tony Judt resonate with the overal theme of this series. Somehow I agree with him that trains are special and mean more than you’d initally think:
If we lose the railways we shall not just have lost a valuable practical asset whose replacement or recovery would be intolerably expensive. We shall have acknowledged that we have forgotten how to live collectively. If we throw away the railway stations and the lines leading to them—as we began to do in the 1950s and 1960s—we shall be throwing away our memory of how to live the confident civic life. It is not by chance that Margaret Thatcher—who famously declared that “there is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families”—made a point of never traveling by train. If we cannot spend our collective resources on trains and travel contentedly in them it is not because we have joined gated communities and need nothing but private cars to move between them. It will be because we have become gated individuals who don’t know how to share public space to common advantage. The implications of such a loss would far transcend the demise of one system of transport among others. It would mean we had done with modern life.
Euroman Goeth #1: The European Cannon
Posted on | January 13, 2012 | No Comments
It all starts here, as far as I can tell. I don’t listen closely to lyrics. One advantage is that you can hear what you want and what I always heard was “The European Man is here”. Regardless…. I think the song still fits the theme. Alex Needham seems to agree:
The Thin White Duke was Bowie’s final persona, a character who embodied the allure of evil, immaculately dressed in waistcoat and Oxford bags, crooning rather than rocking out, determinedly European.
The Internet’s crappy lyric sites can’t decide if it’s “canon” or “cannon”. Needham says “cannon” so I’ll accept that. The mood of the album, the song, the persona is not optimistic but it was something new and symbolic of the future. This new identity certainly inspired the next song in our list.
Euroman Goeth
Posted on | January 9, 2012 | No Comments
Recent events in Europe are reminding me of the old songs that celebrated a nascent pan-European identity. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, well before the Euro, the future union was a kind of cosmopolitan dream and a good topic for a song. What actually turned out is aptly described by Ian Buruma in his “Is the European Dream Over?“. He says “democracy does require that citizens have a sense of belonging”.
As a North American I always thought there was some thing that was Europe to which people felt they belonged. Through work I’ve had the opportunity to speak with quite a few Europeans however, and it’s clear Swedes, French, Germans, Austrians, Italians and British are as lodged in their own national culture as anyone else. Was it absurd to expect otherwise?
The most hopeful sign I ever saw was on a home exchange in Ireland. In the house we stayed at, in the room of one of the (many) kids, was a map of the EU, produced not long after Ireland gained entry. That kid was proud his country had officially joined the club, presumably after spending so long on the sidelines. Was he supposed to now be in the world envisioned by Kraftwerk, Ultravox and others?
I was going to embed all the songs in this post but I couldn’t get past the first one (“Station to Station” by Bowie) without the urge to comment and annotate. So I’ll do this over multiple postings for each song.
These are all great songs. Enjoy them as their theme becomes ever more curious and nostalgic.
“Station to Station” — David Bowie
“Trans Europe Express” — Kraftwerk
“New Europeans” — Ultravox
“Do the European” — J.J. Burnel
“Hallellujah Europa” — Jonah Lewie
“Eurovision” — Telex
“Europe After the Rain” — John Foxx
Please send suggestions to add to the list.
The Window Dresser
Posted on | October 21, 2011 | No Comments
“Globalisation, he thinks, inevitably leads to uniformity. Across the globe, almost everybody begins their working day to the same little tune that tells them Windows is starting up. During the day they use the same programs—Word, Outlook, Excel—read the same books—Grisham, King, Brown—in the evenings, and watch the world’s news on homogeneous TV channels, with the same headlines at the bottom of the screen next to a stock market stream. Why do we need so many people, you ask yourself, if they all end up having the same experiences?” — The Window Dresser, Christiaan Weijts
SonicAngel
Posted on | February 19, 2011 | No Comments
Was wondering when someone would do this. Fans can invest in a record and get a share of the profits. Not really like owning shares, which makes sense — an artist’s purpose, after all, isn’t to increase value for shareholders per se. Here’s how it works:
To give you an example. Imagine a record makes a net profit of 50.000 EUR. The production costs were 35.000 EUR, and you as an Angel invested 100 EUR. Your payout will be 100/35.000 x 50.000 or 142,8 EUR.
I submitted Fluorine. Let’s see how attentive their A&R department is. Rejection email will be blogged. See their faq for more details.
New Title: Thing In Itself
Posted on | January 18, 2011 | No Comments
Changed the EP title to Thing In Itself instead of Dinger an Sicher. Was carrying my love of all things krauty a bit too far, even given the helping hand from Google Translate.
Graphic Sources
Posted on | January 15, 2011 | No Comments
The images above and on the cover of the EP appeared on stamps issued by Deutsche Bundespost in 1971. Take a look, they are great. Designed by the firm Förtsch und v. Baumgarten. I think I’m free to use them because they are in the public domain. Please inform me if I am mistaken and I’ll go back to the drawing board.
Free Dinger an Sicher EP
Posted on | December 17, 2010 | 1 Comment
There are two ways to get Fluorine’s first batch of songs, an EP titled Dinger an Sicher.
1) free via this web site at 160kbps:
2) pay for higher quality at Bandcamp
Hello world!
Posted on | December 17, 2010 | 1 Comment
Here are some references we have found useful:
- “Final Solution”, Pere Ubu
- “Little Johhny Jewel”, Television, live at The Earth Tavern, Portland OR, July 2, 1978
- 60s bubblegum (Ohio Express, 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Archies, Tommy James, etc.)
- The Sound
- Neu, Harmonia, La Dusseldorf, anything involving Dinger and/or Rother
- Girls Aloud
Free EP, Thing In Itself
You can pay $0.75 USD each for high-quality sounds at Bandcamp or you can have for free at 160kbps:To download, either right click or control-click and save as...
Songs written and recorded by me. Mixed and mastered by Neil Clark, who also contributed guitar and keyboard and helped arrange "Vox Populi".
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About
Fluorine plays robotic, loop-based rock and roll. Main influences are Napster and Ableton Live. Secondary influences are krautrock-influenced new wave and krautrock. Contact us at f l u o r i n e [at] p o l v o . c a
