I’ve added the category “Listen to this!” which I will be using as sort of a directory of my journey to discover new music, which although there is more and more new music it’s becoming harder and harder to discover it. My feeling is, that pretty much everyone just copies their recommendations from each other which makes it sort of boring for me.

Most of the music I’ve discovered lately come from NPR, a public radio station in the US that does good programming albeit it’s lacking a lot of the punch that the loudmouth commercial stations have. Well, that’s a good thing I guess.
I’ve tried to do the same thing over on funnk.de but the two guys I’ve planned on running it are just not as much into it, so I’m moving it to my main site.

Just a quick heads up, I do post more than what you see here. The posts here are meant to be interesting for pretty much everyone while the posts over in the blog are more personal, frequent but also less meaningful 😉

So if you did subscribe to it I suggest adding the RSS feed generated by the link above…

I’ve been looking through the access log and saw that there are actually a couple of subscribers, hence the advice… 🙂

Cheers
Hans

OK, last nights rehearsal was the first one to take place in the Kultursaal of the prison. So it was the first time we saw the stage design and the actors (read inmates) as well as the part of the team that hadn’t seen it yet were really impressed. It’s amazing how you can create a world within a confined and brutal environment such as a prison where you totally forget where you are. It really takes theatre back to what theatre should be and what supposedly only movies can do: be carried away from where you are. Which of course is also particularly necessary in a prison.

Anyway, the guys where thrilled and finally realized, that we’re not there to just entertain them for a couple of hours a couple of times a week, but to actually put on a production and give them a chance to do something creative for a change.

So, without further ado, I invite all of you who are in Berlin to watch this spectacle. And really it is a spectacle as some of the guys have outgrown themselves and really developed some nice licks for their characters. Also of course we have some good music, a good rapper and also a good arab pop singer.

If you think about it, it’s becoming quite a show. All the info is on the projects page.

The dates are as follows:
Premiere: May 15th
Shows: May 17th, 19th and 24th
All shows start at 6 pm but you have to be there at 5:30 pm

If you do like to attend then either contact me or the theatre directly as you have to register beforehand.

Cheers
Hans

Well, between editing the ice recordings, going to Messe, every now and then thinking about what to do with the kids in prison and first and foremost getting my old G3 Powerbook (yeah, the one from ’97) back into shape since I rented out my main Powerbook I hardly find the time to post here anymore.

We’re also still in the middle of pitching some rather big job for German television, let’s see what comes out of that and, oh yeah, I’m trying to break into that music-for-mobile-phones market. As usual I’m late to the party, but hey perhaps there is still a little piece of the pie.

Hope everyone’s fine lately.

Cheers
Hans

Alright, we’re off to Musikmesse… pictures will follow, I think it’s gonna be a wild ride this year since we don’t have to be at the booth all the time.

Yeah yeah yeah!
Hans

The link below is in the German, but it does affect other nationalities in their effort to get their music heard. Basically the idea is, that internet radio stations can’t license anything anymore and it’ll be like in the film industry that you have to license directly from the owner of the work in question.

See, I wouldn’t have such a big problem with the music industry if it would at least reflect what is going on around me, but it doesn’t. And the latest Echo awards don’t exactly show courage or even knowledge of what’s going on in the listeners head. I don’t mean to sound nationalistic but why in the world is Kelly Clarkson performing on a German music industry awards show? There are a lot more questions but to ask all of them wold just get me mad. Anyway, back to the original story, the internet radio licensing problem. If you understand German it’s an interesting article:

Intro – NEWS – Goodbye deutsches Internetradio? – Phonoverbände fordern Ende des ”Sendeprivilegs”

I know it was pretty silent in here the last couple of days. It was due to a bigger project that I had to finish. It went really well, let’s see what will happen with this in the future. Maybe I can get one or more of the tracks on a sampler, or maybe I can even produce a whole CD, let’s see if we find a budget for that.

The next project is a theatre project with prisoners. That’s right… Yesterday was the first day in the prison. As you can imagine it was quite an experience, even though I expected it to be a whole lot different than it was. The kids are alright and it is very easy to forget that the victims are actually on the outside. One of my teammates said that in the meeting before and it does make a lot of sense.

I’m supposed to do some HipHop with them and I’m sure there are some cats with some skillz, but we shall see. So far we just had too many interested and as it is with criminals, it was hard to keep them focused. Plus at that age male humans tend to push themselves to the forefront at every possible moment. So with 30 of those you can imagine the level of noise we had to deal with. Let’s just hope that we can get them to work with us. But I’m sure we will. Of course I will keep you posted. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to take pictures so there won’t be any. But a prison is a prison and it looks much like the prisons we know from the movies.

I have started a little blog for some of the random thoughts that come into my mind. I feel I need to work on my verbal expession. Anyway, here it is with the first post:
Hans Hafner – Producer, Composer, Drummer » Blog