The Worst Albums Ever

On April's edition of Q magazine, they listed the 50 Worst Albums Ever. Some albums listed were indeed very very bad (Oasis' Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants, Spice Girls' Forever, etc).

As any normal music anorak, I went through the list and see if I have any CDs on that list. I have 1. Then I checked again if I ever bought a tape of one of the albums in my previous life. There are 2 tapes.

Yes, Babylon Zoo's The Boy With the X-Ray Eyes was listed on the list and I remember buying that tape because I liked Spaceman. Remeber that Levi's ad? So that's the first tape.

Number 2 on the Worst Albums Ever list is all Spice Girls solo effort. Well, I bought Melanie C's Northern Star on CD. In my defence, that effort is probably the best out of all Spice Girls' solo efforts. Too bad she used to be a Spice Girl otherwise that album would not have made it on that list. Oh well, at least I don't have Forever on CD.

The Worst Album Ever is Duran Duran's Thank You, their album of covers, where they covered the likes of Lou Reed, Public Enemy, The Doors, etc. Being an avid Duran Duran fan of course I bought the tape. I still rank Thank You better than Pop Trash but I guess Q doesn't agree.

So there you have it, I own(ed) the Worst Album Ever.

Berlin

On Easter weekend we took a break and went to Berlin, mostly to celebrate my girlfriend's birthday.

Thursday afternoon we took Easyjet to Berlin and landed in Berlin Schoenefeld. From there we took S9 and then U2 to the hotel. When we were checking in they asked us if we would be interested in changing hotels, to be put in a new hotel instead. After much deliberating, we (well my girlfriend) decided that it was worth to have a look and we found ourselves in the new hotel. Thank God for curiosity! The new hotel is a really nice hotel and we enjoyed ourselves a lot there.

Friday we headed to the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz. Turns out that shops are closed for Good Friday, so we walked down to the Brandenburg Gate instead. From there it's a short walk to the Reichstag, although the queue put us off from entering. We had lunch at a nice vegetarian place and then went to visit the House at Checkpoint Charlie. There were really creative escapes from the East to the West. In the evening we watched V for Vendetta and then had some cocktails and food in an Australian pub/restaurant/cafe/bar.

Saturday we want to do some serious shopping so we headed for the KaDeWe. Unfortunately it was packed with all kind of people so we went to Galeries Lafayette instead. Pottered around Friedrichstrasse until we found a place to have a drink and a bite. We also had a cake at the Operpalais cafe, apparantly a must do when you are in Berlin. At night we celebrated my girlfriend's birthday at one of the best restaurants in Berlin.

Sunday we had some time before our flight back so we passed by the Pergamonmuseum to see the Gates of Babylon and the Great Altar. Amazing stuff!

After that it was back on Easyjet towards home...

"Tell me when did the water surround me?
And tell me is that love in your eyes?"

Arranging music

We got a new CD cupboard on Friday. It fits around 650 CDs. So Sunday became my "arranging my CDs" day.

It's a hard task, arranging the 500+ CDs I have into 24 drawers. I was trying to make each drawer a genre and then sorting it by artist and then by album. It took me most of my Sunday and even then I sort of gave up at the end.

As it is now I have these genres:

• U2 and Radiohead (I have all their albums and they all fit nicely into one drawer
• Artist influenced by the 80s (The Killers, The Bravery, etc)
• British bands influenced by Britpop (Hard-Fi, Kaiser Chiefs, Blur, etc)
• Singer-songwriters (Josh Rouse, Ed Harcourt, etc)
• American bands (Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., etc)
• Grunge (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden)
• Emo (Weezer, Jimmy Eat World)
  
• Female (Dido, Jem, Corrine Bailey Rae, Norah Jones, etc)
• Electronica-ish (Massive Attack, Zero 7, etc)
• Bands from other countries (Phoenix, The Raveonettes, etc)
• 80s (Duran Duran, Tears For Fears, etc)
  
• Old stuff (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, etc)
• Dance (my DJing stuff)
• and some unfinished drawers...

At the same time I tried updating my iTunes library.

I still have a long way to go...