Do you like coincidences and The Band? Then read this column by Josef Winkler with lots of star name drops.
Digital natives, please take off your VR glasses quickly and pay attention! I now need some expertise here as to whether this is still an algorithm or a coincidence. I’m a fan of crazy coincidences, and of course as such you have to stick to the residual analog reality; in the rithmized digital everyday life, the old smart-ass dictum “There are no coincidences!” has come true. In any case, it is NOT a coincidence, McFly, if you have just googled guinea pig photos and ten minutes later you are offered guinea pig picture books in the online department store.
Some time ago I googled something about heavy metal for, cough, research reasons, and the children promptly streamed a Disney film for, cough, careless cultural educational reasons. An email promptly arrives from eBay with the beautiful line: “You like heavy metal and Disney? Check out these popular finds!” Among the popular finds was a DVD with Freddie Mercury in black leather clothes on the cover – apparently what the AI had calculated as the cross sum of Heavy Metal and Disney.
Algorithm vs. chance
Anyway, about algorithm vs. chance: In August, 80-year-old Robbie Robertson died, who I learned from the ME as a young reader that he was great, long before I heard MUSIC FROM BIG PINK for the first time. Remembering my parenting mission, I called the children over to me in the glow of the YouTube machine, and we watched a few clips from The Band’s concert film “The Last Waltz”, including the ending, as the names of all these hairy men The following are shown: Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson.
Then the junior clicks on a clip of a live recording of “Comfortably Numb” with David Gilmour and David Bowie from the noughties, which is also offered in the sidebar, and we abruptly turn thematically and musically down a completely different alley. Gilmour starts to play his famous solo, I say: “During the solo he stood on top of the wall that they built on stage during ‘The Wall’.”
Now the children want to see the wall, I’m looking for “The Wall 1990 Berlin” (without Gilmour, but with a clearly visible cardboard cube wall), and then I remember that Sinéad O’Connor was there at the all-star party at the Brandenburg Gate after whose death we recently made a memorial round on YouTube, and I’m looking for the clip: Sinéad O’Connor stands on the wall construction site with a button in her ear and sings “Mother”, then cut to the accordion player and the background singers, what kind of older gentlemen are these?
The info says: They are Rick Danko, Levon Helm and Garth Hudson from The Band. And now I don’t know… Is this an old-fashioned coincidence that I’m allowed to add to my collection? Or can the algorithm do something like that? I have the impression that he must have connected my brain to this. But I’ll stay cool until someone explains this to me in more detail.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 10/2023.