Manafonistas

For god‘s sake I do have no photographic memory, but some scenes of my childhood are unchangeable by mood or colour,  some are dark, some are shining, some are simply there. One Saturday morning, I sat at the breakfast table with my parents, in a room full of false codes and wrong hopes, reading „Ruhr-Nachrichten“, our local newspaper. On Saturdays, there has always been a column for new music, and I was a music hunter by undiminished passion. Music gave me everything, encouragement, consolation (who needs Boethius when putting Mahler‘s 6th on the turntable, or Cohen‘s first), outer space travels, and instruction manuals for writing love letters to the most beautiful girl in town. Problem was, I was not the most beautiful boy in town, a bit shy, vulnerable, clever in defense, so my chances were low, and my portion of being love sick close to the Nick Drake‘s constant melancholia. But music was the place to live up close to your potentials. On that morning a critic (probably Werner Panke) wrote about Chick Corea‘s album „Return To Forever“: „Die Platte geht über den Ladentisch wie warme Brötchen.“ I had bought my first ECM albums in that year and the year before, so this little review set the day in motion. The walk to the bus,  the short stay at the drugstore for the best music of the world, the cover with the bird (the wings!), the return home,  the Dual record-player, the enchantment, the high rotation.