BeRKA.com

Let’s Dance

BeRKA — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 06:08:01 +0000

Let’s Dance, it’s 30 years since David Bowie’s album called Let’s Dance was released. I like the even older stuff from David Bowie better, but this is Bowie’s best-selling album. The title-track was number 1 in lots of countries:

Another great track was China Girl. This is a song that I have played myself on both electronic keyboard and guitar.

Cat people, a.k.a. Putting Out Fire is another cool track and was the title song of the 1982 film Cat People with Nastassja Kinski.

This track has also been used in other films. It was used in a new (more modern) version in Inglourious Basterds with Brad Pitt and Mélanie Laurent. Someone made a cool youtube video with clips from the film of this version. (SPOILER ALERT)

It’s so True – 30 years today

BeRKA — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 06:30:49 +0000

Funny how it seems. The album True with Spandau Ballet is 30 years today.

I know this much is true, since I have checked it at wikipedia. It’s a Gold mine of information.

U2 – War 30 years

BeRKA — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 06:30:13 +0000

Today it’s 30 years since another very good album was released, War by U2.

There are a few good tracks on it that I think everyone remembers. First, Two Hearts Beat As One:

Then Sunday Bloody Sunday:

The final one is on our playlist we usually play on New Year’s Eve. That is the track called New Year’s Day:

The video for this song is really cool and was filmed in Sweden. But I couldn’t find it at Youtube.

Nena – 30 years ago today

BeRKA — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 05:07:19 +0000

99 Luftballons (or 99 Red Balloons) is a song we remember from Nena‘s first album called Nena. I remember listening to this at Danne’s house before anyone had heard of Nena. He had got the album as a gift from a visitor from Germany. It’s a really cool album from the time when Germany still was divided by a wall.

Today it is 30 years since the album was released.

The Rise & Fall of Madness

BeRKA — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:58:14 +0000

It is today 30 years since the album The Rise & Fall by Madness was released.

This was Madness’ fourth album. For Madness, this was their most successful album. Personally I like the first three albums better, but I think there were some great tracks on The Rise & Fall as well. Their most known song is Our House.

Another good one from this album that you might remember is Tomorrow Is Just Another Day.

Lots of other good stuff was also released in 1982. It was a good year!

ZX Spectrum by Sinclair Research Ltd.
Rio by Duran Duran
New Gold Dream by Simple Minds

Old Gold dream (11-12-13-14)

BeRKA — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:04:36 +0000

It is today 30 years since the album New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84) by Simple Minds was released.

This album was a commercial success. Simple Minds moved away from the cool industrial style used in the previous album (Sons and Fascination) that I love. Instead, this album might be easier to listen to and that might have been one reason why this album was more successful. There are lots of good tracks to listen to. Here are two that you might remember. Promised You A Miracle and Glittering Prize.

Lots of other really good music was also released in 1982. Have a look at the list at Wikipedia that includes a few other albums in my collection

I ate X pancakes

BeRKA — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:33:00 +0000

Today is Thursday, and on Thursdays in Sweden it is a tradition to eat pancakes. I ate 6 pancakes today. But this made me think about how many pancakes other people eat. So I googled, and this is what I came up with.

I ate 6 pancakes, You ate X pancakes? Graph made using GD for perl.

Here we can see that eating just a few pancakes is the normal thing to do, and that eating two pancakes is the most popular thing to do. Then there seem to be some who use 10 as a big number if they have eaten a lot.

However, I thought I had to examine this further. So I continued checking number of google hits. As I expected, 20 was the next big number for those who wanted to brag about how many pancakes they ate. But then nothing happened until 33.

I ate 6 pancakes, Olivia Wilde ate 33 pancakes. Graph made using GD for perl.

Why is eating 33 pancakes almost as popular as eating a few? The answer is that a lot of websites writes that Olivia Wilde (known from House and Cowboys and Aliens.) once ate 33 pancakes in 20 minutes.

Olivia Wilde at a San Diego Comic-Con panel for Tron Legacy in July 2010. Image from Wikimedia. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.