* * * * * * * kdm

Old stories: During our tours in the seventies we used to have a little gimmick on stage, one different little toy for each tour. I remember when we had a little plastic faucet (water-tap) stuck to one side of the Big Moog, telling faithful fans and journalists this is needed for water cooling of the instrument.
. . . .Then we had a little plastic airplane (two times visible on photos in the Jubilee Edition set). On another tour we had a little Japanese plastic roboter also visibly placed somewhere among the instruments. For the photo collage inside the "...LIVE..." double LP we placed this toy at the right lower corner of the 50 Polaroids that were laid flat on the ground for doing the photo (Claus Cordes did the professional photo of my 50 snapshots). Of course I had the idea to use this photo again for the recent CD release of "...LIVE..." but it was just too small and no fun to the eyes. Therefore I dropped this idea. But it's not lost. Some day ... [PS: see 'Kommentar' below](Issue no.17, August '97, Klaus' 50th birthday)

. . . .[ ... ] But today? CD reissues with the original cover pic on front look still a bit poorly to our eyes. It's the small size, the cold plastic feeling, and it's the easily (and cheap) availability of music in digital form. In the meantime, record labels try to avoid some of this, they put CDs now in cardboard covers that look like the old fold-out LPs (nice, but still too small). Or they add to the bare silvery glittering disc plenty of things to make it look more precious; things that cannot be so easily downloaded such as the pure music.
. . . .Probably just the older generation (like us) notice all this because we grew up in the vinyl era. Our first and important musical encounter with music was from the radio - an external source. Something of our own and to our own identification were Singles and Longplay records of black vinyl which were really ours, which lay next to our record player. They were daily normality for us, they were satisfying and comforting us during our teen age.
. . . .Today's teenagers love to listen to not only completely other music, but they also use a different medium. They don't even 'collect' discs.
. . . .The new medium is hasty, ephemeral, volatile, the music does not really belong to us, we cannot write our name on it, we cannot put it in shelves, or in wrapping-paper to give as a present to a friend.
. . . .This new generation has other funs, toys, goals, wishes, and other music, other media. As we had, when we were 14 or 17 years old. A couple of decades later the (then) new generation will experience the same change with their next generation. And that is good so. Nature can only survive if it permanently changes and tries out all directions, to avoid harmful inbreeding leading to extinction. Und das will doch niemand, oder?
. . . .But, thanks to collectors, the old playthings or inventions or pieces of art are still there and can be seen and studied, be it paintings of Vermeer, or Oskar Barnack's first Leica camera, or Heinrich Göbel's first light bulb, or Siemens' first electric generator, or Emil Berliner's first record player. And you still can listen to recordings that a certain Louis Armstrong made in 1927, or Enrico Caruso made in 1904, or a Mister Schulze played 50 years ago into his tape recorder. These are just examples, of course. The available library is huge.

Karl Lagerfeld in der SZ vom diesjährigen(*) Silvester:
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"Ich habe eine Idee, eine Inspiration, und die wird dann konkretisiert. Aber an Unsterblichkeit denke ich nicht. Ich habe ja nicht einmal Archive. Ich mache, um etwas zu machen; aber nicht, um etwas gemacht zu haben. Wenn man anfängt, sich an das zu erinnern, was man mal gemacht hat, ist man gleich reif für den Mülleimer."
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Deshalb ist es auch nicht KS, der ein Schulze-Archiv aufgebaut hat und verwaltet, nicht KS, der in den Neunzigern die KS-Edition-Sets mit historischen Outtakes gemacht hat, nicht KS, der THE WORKS konzipiert & gestaltet hat und es auf dem neuesten Stand hält. Nochwas? Aber sicher. Doch momentan fällt mir's nicht ein, ich bin zu sehr mit dem neuesten CIRCLE beschäftigt.

Der Januar-Circle ging gestern in die Post; an alle, die auch im Jahr 2021 wieder dabei sind.
The January Circle was posted yesterday; to all those who will be with us again in 2021.

Marcin Burmiński, the Polish designer of the annual Xmas picture of Klaus Schulze just wrote me:

... In art it's not so much "what" is done - but "how" it's done. The way of realization is important. Not the topic is important, but the artistic presentation.
. . . .It's the content, the substance that influences us. Which is only possible through form, and the impact is more intensive the more perfect the form is (in which it appears). "Form is the peak of contents" said Hebbel. The primacy of form was always inexplicable to the masses.
. . . .Artistic standards are purely of formal nature, hence how an artist shapes and manipulates, how he accomplishes atmosphere, how he creates tension and excitement, how he produces transitions, blendings, nuances and how he avoids the obvious...
. . . .In art, the "what" isn't so important because this was and is repeated many hundred times - it's the how, the form of the statement. In art, it's the mastership that counts, not declarations.
. . . ."It does not matter what you do, but how you do it." (Fats Waller)

Die Erinnerung kam plötzlich wie aus heiterem (& herbstlichem) Himmel:
. . . .Die schönen, klassischen Orte Südfrankreichs in den siebziger Jahren (Toulon, Nimes, Montpellier, Narbonne, Avignon, Valence, Beziers, ...) bei warmem und sonnigem Frühlingswetter, mit gutem Essen, dazu vollen Konzerthallen mit enthusiastischem Publikum... Ja, es waren sehr schöne Zeiten für uns beide Kläuse, Schulze & Müller.

Vorgestern ging der neue (Oktober-) Circle in die Post. Heut' hab ich bereits fünf Seiten für die November-Ausgabe vollgeschrieben.

Gestern kam ein neues Bindegerät und THE WORKS sowie die anderen Bücher werden ab heute in einem festen Einband ("hard cover") gefertigt.

Yesterday a new binding machine arrived and THE WORKS as well as the other books are produced in a hard cover from today on. The former front page is now the first page inside.