All is quiet, it is night here. No fireworks, not even a distant police siren to break potential suburban spells. For some reason, I've made it a tradition to write a blog entry for New Year's Eve, and I don't think I even ever bought a firecracker in my entire life. I did, however, have a neat program on the Commodore 64 as a child that was pretty much a fireworks display simulator (!) - they just don't make games like that anymore, do they?
2014 was a strange year in many ways. A couple of people I used to know died young, a couple of musicians I thought I knew left our live constellation and, I might add, in rather strange ways. I recall a scene from Anders Østergaard's documentary on Danish author Dan Turèll in which dear old Uncle Danny is having a perhaps somewhat fictitious post-mortem discussion with his mother - those more romantically occult might prefer to see this as the mother talking to the ghost of her dead son, but I digress. The brief conversation is about people who slip out of your life and are no longer interested in whatever you are or do, and mother and post-mortem son agree, all matter of fact-like, not to be bitter, go and find other playmates or start collecting stamps. I might not go to such extremes but overall I tend to agree.
We managed to pull off concerts throughout the year nonetheless, using shifting live constellations for different gigs - thanks to all of you who played along and also to all of you who showed up. Really. Also wore out a couple of lasers, bought some new ones and went from the BassStation to the SH-101 - if you're going to strapon, do it with style. Put up a few more concert videos on YouTube and, very recently, also a new song, all about nostalgic feelings for the Berlin Wall and the all out nuclear war that never came. Speaking of eighties references, 2014 also brought Midge Ure, of Ultravox and Visage fame, to our Klub Golem during the autumn. It was nice to host yet another childhood hero and I hope we can continue presenting interesting acts, old and new, also in 2015. And that would be all. It is getting cold.
Our brief mini autumn tour of four concerts in November is over now. It came off to a really bad start when our co-singer and synth player, very surprisingly, opted out a week prior to the first of the concerts - something you really don't do as a musician unless your kid brother just microwaved your hamster, starting off a family crisis. Which, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't really the case here. No hamsters were harmed, etc.
So, left with the task of finding replacement musicians for the four concerts and with very little time to do so, made for a feeling of mild (and every now and then not so mild) panic here. Needless to say this is not exactly an ideal situation. However, at the end of the day I must say I seem to have some friends in need, and so we were joined during the mini-tour by electronica musician Giedo Primo, Christoffer Bagge of Metro Cult, Andreas Innocentius Wandegren of Morlocks and Darkside Cowboys, and electronica artist, Tonje Terese. A big thanks to all of you - I will probably repay in vinegar.
Copyright: Ras Bolding 2014