Manuel Göttsching - Live in Berlin

On Saturday February 4th, 2012 Manuel Göttsching will perform with New York's legendary Joshua Light Show at Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt, headlining the Transmediale Festival. Information about the event can be found above and also here and tickets can be ordered here.

Thank you, Lutz Ludwig Kramer!

Time for a quick update. On Tuesday evening I rang Lutz Ludwig Kramer in Germany to interview him for the book. Lutz, a founder member of Agitation Free, Walpurgis and later a solo artist, very patiently took the time to discuss post-war Berlin, his teenage memories, the music scene in late '60s Berlin (including the famous Zodiak Free Arts Lab), the Beat Studio where both Agitation Free and Manuel Gottsching practiced and perfected their craft, seeing Ash Ra Tempel live and reconnecting with Manuel after many years.

Lutz felt it was important to credit Mr. Ashra with encouraging him to relaunch his musical career and had this to say: "Manuel was always nice, not a selfish person at all and he's not an ego shooter like everybody else on the scene. He's a gentleman and he's one of the most modest guys I've ever met. Period."

I would like to thank Lutz for taking almost an hour out of his time to speak to me and for his patience in helping to fine tune my work over a number of follow-up e-mails. His latest project is with his band, MERCYSTREET, and I look forward to hearing their music in the not too distant future. I wish him every luck with this. Keep an eye out for the CD, which should be coming soon...

Happy New Year!

Hi all. I hope you had a great Christmas! These photographs were taken down in Whitley Bay, shortly before dusk on New Year's Day and in the distance it is just about possible to see St. Mary's Lighthouse.

The buildings in the background in the picture below are at the bottom of Whitley Bay town. Right around the corner of the headland is Cullercoats, which leads on to Tynemouth, another spectacular stretch of coastline.

I love to come down to the beach whenever I can (usually during evenings and sometimes at weekends) to reflect and also to take in the elemental surroundings. It is about 15 minutes walk from home and once I'm down on the sand in order to get a bit of exercise I try to walk as far as I can towards St. Mary's Lighthouse, time permitting, of course.

Moving on to a progress report with the book - I'm now whizzing quickly through a fourth draft and as a result of several days of work I have already managed to get as far as E2-E4 (almost 80 pages into a 140 page document). After several years of writing my efforts are finally starting to resemble a book, which is really satisfying.

This morning I received an e-mail from Elliott Sharp in New York. Elliott is an acclaimed experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist and played at both Manuel Gottsching's 55th birthday celebrations in Berlin and the More Inventions for Electric Guitar concert in Japan in September of 2010. He took the time to comment on his admiration of Manuel's music and his experiences of performing on both occasions. Big thanks, Elliott for contributing to my book!

Several other important figures in the Manuel Gottsching story have also agreed to contribute towards the book, something that I'm very excited about - more news as and when I get it. In the meantime I wish everyone who follows this blog from time to time a fantastic 2012! As ever I'll be back soon.....