Schonhose

While browsing through my music collection I rediscovered a lot of songs with memories attached. Funny how that goes, how a certain song can remind you of a certain period of your life (good or bad).

Currently I have found the memories attached to these songs most pleasing:

• Nelly – Hot in Here: reminds me of my 2002 trip Chapel Hill, NC. The song was the hottest on the radio that month and boy, it was hot indeed (both the song and the temperature).
• Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart: Try to imagine a nearly empty discotheque, just two persons on the dance floor, a boy and a girl. The DJ just dims the lights and throws this number in his German Hardstyle set. Seriously, it was as romantic as it gets.
• Bruce Springsteen – The River: While I was a lot younger, I guess some 20+ years ago, we went to the German ‘Schwarzwald‘ on holiday and I had this Sony Walkman that used tapes. Nowadays with all the iPods and such MP3 players this sounds unbelievable but that is what we used at the time. This song was on the tape and happened to be one of my favorites during that holiday. Imagine the difficulties of putting that song on repeat for a while.

What music jogs your memory? Let me know in the comments.

Being a man I’m obviously not a sucker for marriage proposals but the proposal in the embedded YouTube flick is really nice.

This guy definitely has raised the bar for every man and all marriage proposals after this.

Thanks to Oz for pointing this out. Anyway, I can’t hold a decent tune, so the chances of catching me singing a proposal are non-existent.

update: Thanks to Jay, who pointed me to another site, we now know it is a fake.

Update: Since this ran, we’ve received information from a tipster informing us that the video is a fake: the actress who plays “Erika” has a different boyfriend In Real Life. Which means that this is, indeed, purely for PR, and the Lamest Scam Ever.

Nevertheless, the actress who plays “Erika” does really a nice job expressing emotions from joy till looking freighting. IMHO she deserves an honorable mention for an Oscar.

Back in the days I loved to spin the records at the club. My style was mostly vocal trance or, depending on my mood, German based hardstyle. I haven’t mixed live in a long time and I was wondering if I could still do it. Today, being a day off, would be a nice day to try to find out just how much my skills have diminished.

Obviously I haven’t kept my music collection up to date, so I was stuck playing some old records. Those songs brought back a lot of memories and most of them where fun. However, there was one song which brought back some more ‘painful’ memories, although the event in question could have happened to anyone.

While mixing in a record during a set at the club one of the needles of my decks broke. Normally this wouldn’t be much of a problem, while playing vinyl I keep at least one compact-disc ready when this happens. Not this time. And to make things worst, Menthal Theo was taping his show “Menthal Theo on the road” for the musicstation TMF. At least he was quick to help fill the silence by using the audience. What did he do? Well, perhaps this clip on YouTube provides some insight. Needless to say I provided the beats as quickly as I could.

Afterwards Theo, who spend some time on the decks himself, told me not to worry about it. It could have happened to him as well. And to be honest, if I didn’t break it he probably would have. So I guess I saved him.

Today I finished two mixes of about 2 hours, one containing the more vocal trance and the other more hardstyle. At least I got something to fill my iPod with when I pick up running again.

In yesterdays news there was this report about an Afghan suicide bomber who accidentally blows himself up along with 6 other militants (Reuters). First thing I had to think of was this sketch by Jeff Dunham called “Achmed the dead terrorist”. Here is the clip from Youtube:

(I have to say I had a good laugh when I read the news. Good riddance!!!)

Someone recently send me this video by Nick Vujicic, a 25-year old guy who was born without limbs. This is truly an inspiring video, so I decided to post it on my website.