Before I left home last night, a package had arrived via e-bay containing a live CD of Herman Van Veen playing in Vienna, Austria in 1986.
It's hard for me to describe Herman to a British audience. He is an "all round" entertainer. A singer-songwriter, he releases albums in his native Dutch as well as in German and French - the German ones are the ones I mostly get - and, very occasionally, he sings songs in English.
He does a lot of work for Unicef and helps children around the world in general via his own foundation. He also writes children's books and songs and has invented a cartoon duck, Alfred J Kwak, who is very famous in Holland, Germany and Austria.
He is a great interpreter of others' songs and has a penchant for Jacques Brel. There's a melancholic side to his work which appeals to me, but he's also an accomplished comedian. I have a few of his live albums, mostly in German, and, usually, around one third of his set is storytelling and comedy.
Anyway, the CD is just the job for a hermanophile like me and includes a German re-write of Pink Floyd's "Paranoid Eyes", from "The Final Cut", for good measure.
I've set up a link to his site - of course, if you can't read German then it won't mean anything to you...no wait, there's an English section too...
Today at FOPP for £1 I got Bryan Adam's last CD, "Room Service". I have a soft spot for Bryan, ever since seeing a documentary on him a few years back and realising what an all round nice guy he is.
He has a great voice and writes catchy tunes - I like that talent. The recordings appear to have been made in various European hotel rooms and backstage at concerts and then had overdubs added - sounds great despite what this method might suggest...
....and, again from e-bay, my most costly purchase for a while (costs $28 on amazon - I got it for $14 I think), Fennesz' CD "Venice", recorded on location there in the sumer of 2003 and overdubbed in his native Austria (hey, a connection to Herman) in 2004.
It is weird electronica without discernible beats and one track has a vocal by David Sylvian - I will grow to love this album. Here's the cover, which I also find appealing.
I returned to the Roxy tonight to pick up CDs containing wav.files of the performances from last night. The recordings omit Norman's soundscape (and my earlier one) and the first couple of Impossible Songs numbers. Other than a couple of glitches they sound ok and tracks from the CBQ/JJ sets may well make it into the market place at some point, though it appears that my mic was a bit louder than Jamie's...Richard Herring is reviewing the papers tomorrow morning at 7:20 and 8:20 on the BBC so I must get up to see that..
We recently received signed programmes for his upcoming Edinburgh Stand Up Show and for two past shows we've seen, "Talking Cock" and "The 12 Tasks of Hercules Terrace"...looks like Jim Park's got some stiff competition....
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