Mother's Cake

Summer 2014

One more long motorcycle trip brings me to my beloved Austria for one more time. I'm staying outside Innsbruck at a generous friend of mine and one coldish night after a few drinks out he takes me to a friend of his. We enter an artistic place where we are welcomed by the host, named Arno, with a warm smile that stayed on through the whole night. I chatted with this guy about music so he decides to bring out a guitar from a case, very similar to the ones Santana usually plays. It had a great fretboard and felt really nice in my hands. I appreciated his move so the music chat went further. I told him "you know...the kind of music I like is must have the groovy heart of Led Zeppelin, you know this fat meaty drums but also with some explorative progressive attitude." He smiled in agreement and told me " You have to listen to Mother's Cake". I kept the name on my phone to check it later and he talked about that band a bit more, including the fact that since they were new local heroes at Tirol he decided to make a mocking band with friends of his called "Father's Cake". Singing was among his talents. I left his place with a warm heart and next day I continued my trip which would take me up to Sardinia and then back to Greece spending so much time on ferries that I really appreciated the fact that back in the day I had a tent with me to use on board. I was keeping it in place with neodymium strong magnets out of a hard disk:

 When I got back home I rushed to check that band out in my sound system and...I couldn't thank Arno enough. Top notch stuff.

Arno shocked us when he passed away a year later (2015) and ironically enough it was me that learned it before my friend who couldn't believe the news. We will all leave this world one day but the music will always be here.

Why did I recall this story? Blame Youtube's algorithm that brought on my screen this masterpiece:

Girls 'n Boys, come have last year's Mother's Cake and do yourself a favour to also check the rest of their albums:

Back to the roots?

...kinda...if roots is this blog of mine. Not out of nostalgia (though we're all vulnerable to "her"). It just seems that my relations with various social networks ended up more or less like my relations with all my ex girlfriends...not for the same reasons though :)

My "career" started with a very short period on FB. This was way before the global FB hysteria (more than a decade ago). A friend insisted that I should join and after a couple of months I knew I should leave it behind. Some creepy terms and conditions about the photos, invitations from my schoolmates about all shorts of BS and not much interest in general helped me decide it's over. Back in the day you couldn't just delete your account but only deactivate it. FB was sued about that and gave this option later if I am not mistaken. This was enough for me to hate the whole thing and Mark himself really made me sure about that.

The first social network I joined and used for good was the good ol' Myspace. This poor thing was maybe just unlucky to be the first one. Opened the road for the next ones, had all the social features needed, only to become an internet ghost later overtaken by less decent platforms.

After Myspace I started this blog of mine in the beginning of 2011. FB hysteria was already counting a few years and everybody was asking my FB. Most of the times their reaction to my reply "I don't have FB" was as if I have said "I don't have a cellphone". It's the same people who made an ass like Mark multibillionaire, they created a thing like "you're not on FB=your are not alive" and now they cry for their "lost privacy". At least Jews didn't vote for Hitler...you know what I mean...

I was more than happy to see Google joining the social game mid 2011. Not because I am brand patriot (though I could with all the help Google maps have offered me as a travelling biker all these years) but an alternative is always good to have. And G+ was a better one when it started. More good looking than FB with all the social features needed. Too good to be true? Unfortunately. For undisclosed reasons (if you know more please enlighten me) Google started desocialising it bit by bit. They took out the Photos to a separate app/site, they separated the messenger as well (Hangouts) and after years of castration they led it to a dead end. A petabyte of WTFs is not enough to comment this.

I must mention at this point two of the greatest things I ever discovered around the net, social related. One was Jango, around 10 years ago. Amazing free internet radio, customizable with social features and interaction between members. It was playing all day long in my house. I discovered so much great music and great people in it and I even uploaded my tracks (it hosted independent artists too). One more "too good to be true". At some point they stopped its social features and substituted them with FB login, castrated it and I don't even (want to) know how it ended up. The other great thing, a true game changer is Couchsurfing. It is the platform I use the longest time (11 years by now) and it's a hospitality exchange site. It is not as good as it used to be but mainly because of the abuse of the users themselves and less from the abuse of the new owners. Well, when it comes to people they know how to ef it up big time :) However, the nicest ones are in it. You just have to be picky to find them.

Lately I got proposed Mewe.com but I find it missing basic stuff and I have no time to wait when/if they fine tune it. I wonder why they even decide to release an unready thing. I mean...it's 2018...

Now begs the question...why the Fuck we evolved so much technologically, only to not be able to see any of the above good things survive as nicely as it used or could. Maybe because we didn't evolve as much on the rest...

So...with this and that...back to my blog ladies and gents :)