Re-discovery of my past (the best bits in a certain way...)

G´day,

And another special welcome to my congregation, Hello Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord, Daniel, Andrew, Scott, Bill and Jan. Much has happened since I updated the blog last time and I somehow lacked the passion for blogging but now is a special time and I feel like telling you about the delight of listening to an album my band The Holy Chao has done in 1997 and I haven´t listened to it for a decade.

When I came back to Germany I have re-discovered our first CD release but I didn´t have the chance to listen to our first release "Use your Confusion" as my copys had drowned during the first flood of my parents basement in 1999 when I was in Bolivia and had all my stuff stored there...And finally my friend Mark (our dummer) has sent me a copy of one the only still existing six original CDs and I have uploaded the six songs on my iPod and then: fuck, yeah! While I write this, I listen to it for the second time, ok, it´s the sixth time with one of the songs that was always my favorite song of our´s, and it´s just plain fucking awesome...

I´m not sure if a non-musician can understand this but, well, if you have ever produced your first album with all your heart-blood and then you kind of neglected it as you have produced more albums, better produced and wrote much more sophisticated songs and stuff and then you listen to your firstborn 12 years after you´ve made it and a fucking long time after you have listened to it for the last time, it IS most fucking awesome, unbeliveable so...

During the first listening I heard all the mistakes, all the little errors in the production, the roughness of the whole thing, the edgy songwriting, all the stuff we learned to avoid in the second CD but quite fast I felt the underlying emotionality of the whole thing. I have no idea if someone who hasn´t witnessed this time personally would hear those differences...this CD is our pure heartblood, the quintessence of our early time from 1995 to 1997...the first songs we did when we had eventually completed out line-up.

It´s really interesting what kind of memories bubbled up with this stuff, o.k. I guess the fact that I also sorted the boxes with my old stuff from basement and attic also helped but interesting it is all the same...but back to the songs: there are four songs I have not uploaded to our facebook page and I even don´t know how they are all called I have to admit...schame on me but I intend to find out the one song I can´t name now...

On this album is my favorite song of all times by us: "104" (if I don´t confuse it with another song title). I always loved it the most to play live as it´s easy to play, has a awsome dynamic and I just adore the lyrics by Marc, our singer and he sings it like a cry from his very soul...fucking hell...now I listen to it for the 7th time and it´s just great, pure and simple and if you think otherwise, well, I don´t mind, can sit on your thumb and rotate for all I care, mate! The whole album is emotion pure and this song tops it all...and it was so much fun to perform it as it didn´t involve any complicated riffs, tempi changes or other stuff you have to concentrate for...

Well I´ll upload the songs during the next days onto our facebook page and then I write a little more about them as that´s the place where it has to go, not this blog but it´s quite funny how this experience opens a window into my past when dreams that have long died, brutally slain by reality, were still happyly blossoming and I was a different person in many regards. I don´t want to go back, mind you, I am quite glad that some dreams are dead and burried and I have developed to become the person I am now but to re-visit this time has a special magic. Between my early and late twenties life was fun! Life still is fun but at that time it had a certain carefreeness if you know what I mean and I´m pretty sure that you do.

I´m still not sure what I should think about my lyrics but to tell you the truth even though I was proud of them I was never really convinced that they are good. For me they certainly hold an insight into my younger self. I guess they are just too personal, too much out of my soul for me to face someone who doesn´t like them and would tell me they sound like written by a 14 year old. Well, I guess I have to overcome author´s vanity and fatherpride at one point but as most of them are still underage I can give me another year or two before I let go of my children...

But hearing Marc sing my words and give them interpretation and meaning is awesome, we fuckin WERE a great band, hell yeah!

That´s all for tonight, will continue sitting on the back porch and watch the full moon, drinking beer, smoking some of the 10-year old herbs that I found on the attic and have a 4th listen to "Use your Confusion". Take care, have fun, cya