Drums in the snow

The Optimal record shop and club invite two concerts:Saturday, 28 April 2012, 20h 
 30 years presents optimal:ERIC ARROW 
 "Come, let's take a drum in the snow" - readingOptimal record shop, Kolosseumstr. 6
Rocko Schamoni called him "one of the best music critics in this country" and said: "His book has made me curious about pop music again." Said book is beautifully titled "Come, let's take a drum in the snow." In it the author tells FAZ revered cult times hilarious, at times surreal, psychedelic kind of trembling, sometimes with passion about his adventures in the strange world of pop music.
He goes on holiday with Morrissey, tasted strange drugs, goes to costume parties with the Beatles and James Blunt wants everything bad in this world. The intro magazine writes: "As far as the balance between serenity and extravagance, gallows humor and deadly seriousness, Arrow has the hang of it. He makes his subject so well. Yes, better than many others. "
 
 In an interview with Eric arrow cleaning Jellen.
Q: Mr. Arrow, write concert reviews, which are better without a doubt the U.S. concerts himself. How does it work? What kind of meditation that mental exercise, which studies literature, which potion can recommend us to this?
A: Thanks for the Geblüm! I'm using an ancient potion of enthusiasm, prejudice, curiosity, Nachurteilen, Zirzenischen joy and a small admixture of alcohol. Studying this helps a little. What I really want to paint a picture, although I am not really matter who is there now just to paint. As long as the people on the stage as types are to grasp, it's fun. Bad are really just the concerts, where absolutely nothing happens. There is also a musician, to whom one can not go more than once. These include people such as James Blunt, Katy Perry, as well as forest and meadow-like indie rockers Mando Diao.
Q: We as Northern Soul fans, with The Jam, grew up Squeeze and Elvis Costello, to then swing to the heights of a Burt Bacharach, Scott Walker and Brian Wilson comes up when listening to newer British bands sometimes the feeling of a subtle cultural pessimism, thank God you do not share. What kind of message makes you discover the music of younger artists to your letter so merrily and nimbly?
A: Oh, this cultural pessimism affects me even now and then. And yes, I am now of opinion that can not hurt a bit cultural pessimism, for all the soon-reflexive, controlled enthusiasm soon cry. I also feel more comfortable if the music sounds senile Super composers and songwriters can strap on your high-uncles, the guitars. But there are always great young bands, with "young" is relative, of course. I liked but also as a young boy, no music, which is too bubbly "young". And everything is too close to the so-called "cutting edge" bores me anyway. A bit premature senescence is not harmful. I like young bands that sound a bit oldish - and gives it over again, because the boy is fascinated by the ancients. Just me Brian Lopez of Tucson and the Briton James Levy & The Blood Red Nose very much. Or yes, panic, where is the Elderly, the youngest, yes.
Q: Obviously, you feel no disgust at the German popp rock stretching a la Udo Lindenberg, Wolfgang Heinz-Rudolf Kunze and Niedecken. At the same time you appreciate the work of quite peculiar looking like Jochen Bard Distelmeyer and Jan Delay. Can you explain the reasons for your kindness Sibylline something?
A: To put it in the characteristic style of playing for time talk show politicians: We must differentiate you! First: to sing with a German accent is not easy, you can hear that in the many that make it so depressingly bad. I was always interested in what you can do with the German language, not least because I write myself and I feel much closer to song writers as poets. In addition: I grew up with this early-eighties German rock nonsense. The shapes, whether I like it or not. And so I'll probably all my life remain soft and receptive to the early work of skeptical eyed gentlemen Niedecken and Kunze, who have taken both approaches, Nice. Both late work is mostly scary, but only at the margins. Lindenberg I mean, aside from a few individual songs, there is nothing but a brand. In Beyonce's is similar: Musically, I am interested in about the same as snowboarding or peat, but the inconsistency of this type is not uninteresting. And Distelmeyer - in addition to Funny van Dannen and Hans-Eckart Wenzel - German my favorite lyricist. He is also a very interesting, because mature and edgy stage character.
Q: Do you have journalistic role models? We believe in your book, for example read out a kind of quiet admiration for the blessed Clara Drechsler to have ....
A: As a model I would not call Clara Drechsler directly, but I've read your article very much like Spex because they had delusions and humor. To Ms. Drechsler me in the eighties but more impressed that here in Cologne, the first ever concert began after they had entered store. I also like to read Wolfgang world, but again, I would not talk about role models. I actually have really influenced more musicians here, especially my hero, the English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock. As a perspective and a sound that is ultimately a worldview that shaped me, and doubt if that can be read out.
Q: How would you outline for your world view and that has to do with your favorite pop music?
A: I am inclined to understand the world as an absurd place. This is not particularly original, is added. It does show how I got music (or art in general) look: I am moved by it just to watch people while trying to create the midst of a Gestöbers of futility and counter to the Beballerung with close lying and banal beauty and sense pin end, also if they overstretch oneself is this desperate. Often it is this failure that this thing makes me so touching, because we would then again at the German Rock. Or when Prog And if someone really something bewitching works, then I get very small and amazed. There are songs in which something may occur to me, because songs are for me the artistic unit in general. It may sound simple, but if someone in three minutes and twenty seconds explaining something about the world - and if there is another explanation of their inexplicable - then I'm blown away.
Q: Do you think that politics is important in pop music?
A: All "Important" scares me. I think it is inevitable. As love.
Q: But the love is just a classic topic in pop music!
A: Yes, I also believe that politics is fairly classic.
Q: So ... is the policy as anything in pop music classic in good hands?
A: I think so, although I prefer love songs and I just can not think of a political favorite song.
Q: Hmmm. They are not communists schonmal. Are you at least for Catholics?
A: Of course. That probably explains my love for a) Dylan and b) the Italian pop in general, and Adriano Celentano in particular. Now I remember a political but a favorite song: "Prisencolinensinaiciusol" by Celentano. But yes Celentano has also made more political songs than Italian cheeses.
Q: Celentano is of course a comrade ...
A: But I could well imagine that even a Communist - provided he is also an esthete - offense on many political songs might take 
 
 Q: Of course.! The most horrible songs like "Joanna" by Eddy Grant's "Imagine," "Blowin 'In The Wind" (sorry!) and "We Shall Overcome" are all meant politically. Here, the "break the soft water of the stone" to better classes such as the German political Schunkler á la. As one of the nuclear death appears again as a consolation 
 
 A:. For this I recommend Heinz Rudolf Kunze "I am against peace".
Q: Touché! Now the question at the end: How do you envision as a Catholic music critics as hell and heaven?
A: Oh, the hell that is so hard to imagine, because the earthly reality is already so filled with terror. So I can not say that singing in hell louder Schluffi German boys with Xavier Naidoo-para-sensitive voice songs, which is often reported as of perplexity and confusion, and continuously the word "somehow" falls.
 But I'm not a good Catholic. So I am waiting in heaven matters not the hereafter. Prince has once responded to my presence on the same question: "How fucking again am I supposed to know what's going on in heaven for music?". Then he pulled apart the interviewer's question list. But I'm not Prince. I leave myself to the thought experiment and others suggest a mixtape with Sinatra, Dylan, Hitchcock, Morricone, Gainsbourg, the Flaming Lips, Celentano and Sam Cooke before. And of course Prince.