Musique des voyages

Classiques Digitalisés

Radio/TV Digitalisée

Musiques des Fêtes

Dance

Editions limitées

Travel Discs

Vinyl Classics to CD

Media to CD

Holiday Favourites

Dance Mixes

Special Editions

Compilations WDR

WDR Compilations

Chronological Index chronologique

testosterone

53

A gift certificate to Amazon from my brother Rich somehow turned into this disc, a wallow in the muscular (yet emasculated) music of my high school days.  I suppose it could also have been called "Midlife Crisis 2". It's all there: Foreigner, Styx, Rick Springfield, the Cars and those great Vancouver bands Loverboy, BTO and Bryan Adams.  Apply with moderation.

52

Midlife Crisis

As of October 2004 I am 40 years old.  Time for reflection and a good old-fashioned midlife crisis.  But what if (as usual) I've anticipated things, and in fact my midlife crisis has actually been going on for a couple of years now?  I'm going to diary-land, writing down things I see in a pink and pretty CD with a Hello Kitty sticker on it (saying "Keep out, private thoughts inside!"

Spring in Autumn

51

I first heard this music in May 2004, played by our driver as we negotiated the suicidally busy streets of Tehran, Iran.  Armik, the guitarist featured on this disc, is an Armenian Iranian who emigrated to the USA and now lives in Los Angeles.  I have been unable to find this record among the list of his work available in western countries.  There is no page for this disc, but I recommend the beautiful guitar work.  I took the picutures of the shia mosque in the center of Tehran.

My Planet

50

My 50th CD compilation in six years had to be something special.  For this CD I chose music that I have heard as I've travelled around this lonely but beautiful little planet.  World music yes, but my world music, that has somehow become influential in my own life.  From Rap and Rai to Kwaito and Country,  fun collection from Bellingham (USA) to Bellingham (South Africa) and everywhere in between.

Deep End

49

In the space of just over a month I made two trips to the Persian (well, Arabian) Gulf region.  The result was a new rush of arabic music, the largest since Beirut and Dream Park in 2001.  Thanks to easy shopping in Dubai, I could hear the hits of late 2003, as usual mainly from those two pop-culture poles of the Arab world, Lebanon and Egypt.  Is it just me, or is the music more accessible to European ears since 2001?

Taming North Dakota

48

My great-grandfather left the German region of Silesia for the USA, and reached the prairies of what would become North Dakota in 1883.  120 years later his descendants converged on this relatively empty land of extreme temperatures and dry, solid and almost exclusively European-American people.  Would the 19th century Germans even recognise us?  Are all the old (and new) family scandals forgiven at last?

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