Sensual songs..

I wanted to avoid any cliches here - like taking any song from Marvin Gaye, or Chris Isaak's "Wicked Games". I started with creating a list of ten "love" songs, but ended up just limiting it to three. To keep it select. To keep it limited. To keep the standard high.

(1) Robbie Robbertson - Somewhere down the crazy river


This song sounds like a hot summer night - a night too hot to sleep.
Robberston's smokey voice, the smooth bass, the subtle guitar, the loose drums - it all melts together to make a perfect "love" song.

I'm a man with a clear destination
I'm a man with a broad imagination
You fog the mind, you stir the soul
I can't find, ... no control

(2) Vangelis - Love Theme

No need for lyrics. Without the saxaphone the song is so clean - so beautiful - so untouched. As soon as the saxaphone sets in - it becomes very, very sexy - dirty even at the points where it starts to crack up. It sounds like two people coming together. A forbidden love. They know they shouldn`t, but it's unavoidable...

(3) The Flamingos - I only have eyes for you

Nothing a little doo-wop can`t fix. It's slow, it's gentle, it's warm blooded - and has that great hollow tone. You can serenade it to her - or just be the bass if you can`t make the high notes.
Best part of the lyrics:

You are here
So am I
Maybe millions of people go by,
but they all disappear from view.
And I Only Have Eyes For You

Honourable mentions: Peter Gabriel's Steam, Sade's Smooth Operator, War's Spill the Wine, Santana's Black Magic Woman.....

The True Battle of Chernobyl

After seeing a documentary on Belgium television about people in France demonstrating against the bad maintenance/state of French nuclear power plants - I got interested in the biggest nuclear disaster we had in Europe: Chernobyl. This documentary is fascinating - do yourself a favour and watch it.

It convinced me even more that nuclear energy is not a viable replacement for fossil fuel.
Although the possibility of disasters like this one are extremely small - I feel it is not worth the risk. Europe was lucky in 1986 - it could have been far worse.

Blood on the Rooftops

For years I skipped this song.

I heard the intro and thought: "An acoustic guitar playing on and on, it must be some kind of mix-up; this is not Genesis. Probably some Spanish acoustic singer which they accidentally put on this tape. So I went on to the next song of Wind & Wuthering, Genesis' second album with Phil Collins on the lead vocals.

It was my second Genesis album after hearing "We can`t dance" a few 100 times, and it is still my favorite. It has got something magical about it. Something you just can`t touch. A fifth element. For those first years however I kept skipping track number 6 - completely clueless of what I was missing.

I can still remember the day when I kept on listening, passing the 1 minute mark.
Tears came to my eyes. It was the most beautiful piece of music I ever heard.
When listening to the lyrics I always get vivid images in my mind.

A family is sitting in front of a television in the middle of winter. It's warm and cozy inside their home. Outside it's dark and snowing. Snow piles up on the rooftops while the moon is shining bright. It's a cold night.

The family is captivated by the images displayed on the television. It's five past eight in the evening. The world's news is on the television. After a segment about local politics and people complaining about a new tax being implemented the topic switches to a third world country.

War broke out there a few months back. People are suffering. Thousands are on the move, trying to get to the border of their neighboring nations. Many however do not make it. Images of corpses are lying on the side of the road. Rotting, nobody has time to clean them up.

In the meantime the family is enjoying a cup of hot chocolate. The news jumps to the next topic, an important foreign statesman is visiting their nation. They can barely remember the images in the previous news topic. And why should they? They see those images almost every week. They have gotten used to it. Accepted it as something that just "is".

The tube creates distance, and as soon as their favorite comedy show starts they have forgotten all about what they have seen. There's Blood on their Rooftop. It stains the white virgin snow. The ugly truth of a society that is becoming increasingly individualistic - or are we just becoming numb?