Another week has gone by and things look really good. First of I would love to invite all Brazilian fans, especially those in Sao Paulo, to go and have a look to the new record store in town: Locomotiva Discos. It’s run by the always enthusiastic Gilberto Custodio and they are stocking all the best indiepop records around. These days, in the iTunes and downloadable music, where people don’t value physical records as they deserve, imagine how passionate one must be to open a physical record store. And that’s how Gilberto is: passionate. And, to push a button, if he let’s me quote him from an email exchange we had: “I don’t think physical records stores will be extinct, at least not until I am still alive”. A Cloudberry package is already in it’s way there, too which makes me very happy as I love Sao Paulo, a place where I spent so much time during my teenage years.

Yesterday I managed to find a cheap flight to NYC in May. Just $179 round-trip. It should be a great NYC Popfest, the lineup is ace! Sure, there will be those who don’t like seeing bands playing back to back Popfests, but these bands, that are repeating, are among the bands that have grown the most the past year. And even then, they put up a great show. I think Gold-Bears, Dream Diary and Sea Lions, were my three favorite bands at Popfest 2010. So let’s see if they can live up to that and make it even better this year! So yes, good decision of the organizers to give them another chance to dazzle the crowd. On top of that, there is Go Sailor headlining one of the nights. That is such a treat that I cannot wait! Also this Popfest will showcase Persian Rugs and Caucus. If you haven’t noticed these two bands have a 7″ coming out soon on Cloudberry! If nothing goes wrong at the pressing plant, both 7″s should be sold during the festival. And of course to see in America for the first time two of my dearest bands, and friends, The Sunny Street and The Felt Tips, is probably what makes this Popfest worth for me. Should be a blast!

There’s been good news here and there. Had a nice birthday time as well. Got some more rare records for cheap. And there are new freelance possibilities coming up. It’s still a long shot to make it to Indietracks though, but if these jobs happen soon, there is a slight chance I can make it! Only problem will be that the Premier Inn is already fully booked and the Travelodge is almost full. And it is true too that as of late I feel more compelled to save the money and go to Stockholm in October instead. I’ll have to see, still Indietracks haven’t announced any bands, and can’t think of that many bands that I’d love to see live that I haven’t seen. Maybe Very Truly Yours?

Anyways, new band to recover this week: Second View. Still no luck at finding their one and only 12″, which is as rare as they come. Maybe even impossible. It seems lots of copies found their way to Philippines. Mind you, the record and the band were German. There was a re-release of this 12″ too, under the name of Moscopeboys, but that one is as hard to find. Well, maybe someone can give me a hand with that? The two songs included, “Machinery” and “Everything is Gone”, are true guitar pop gems. Two fantastic slices of 80s pop, with classic new-wavy keyboards, that reminds a bit to This Final Frame, The Wild Swans or Care, but with a German flavor!

The 12″ was released by the band’s own label, “View Records”,  in 1986. Catalog number was F 669.602. No idea how many copies were made. Shouldn’t be more than a 100o as it is extremely rare. The internet doesn’t have much information about the band aside from a couple of blog posts from some Pinoy fans. We do know that the band’s lineup consisted of: Andreas Knirsch (bass, vocals), Oliver Sassin (guitars), Ingo Kreutzer (keyboards), Martin Buberti (drums) and Jens Rohracker (percussion).  The address on the back cover says that they were based in small Eschershausen in Lower Saxony, between Bielefeld and Braunschweig. If you check this location on Google Maps, you’ll see it’s so small, and you get to wonder how come these guys created such great music being so far away from proper civilization! Where did they get their ideas? their inspiration?

Then this same record was released by Fun Factory Records on that same year 1986. Though the artwork was totally changed and the band had started to call themselves Moscopeboys. Not sure what a moscope is. Any ideas? The only word that comes to mind is ophtalmoscope, but that can’t be it, right? In any case, could it be that when Fun Factory released the record they asked the band to stop distributing the View Records version? If so, where is the rest of the stock?

Some further research, trying to locate the guys behind the bands, make me end up on the worst site in the world: Myspace. I find that both Oliver Sassin and Ingo Kreutzer have been making music for the past years under the name Ultramarin. It sounds much different to Second View but it’s really nice as well, very soothing! And they sing in German now! Sadly they haven’t logged in since 2010. Can’t blame them, no one wants to login to Myspace these days. In any case, I left them a message there, hoping to hear from them. If not, I’m hoping they get in touch here! It would be great to learn more from them, maybe do an interview! And of course, if anyone has any more information about the band please share!

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Listen
Second View – Machinery