There is something about Italy which, if you manage to catch it, it really makes your spirit high and gets you going. This is about how I felt in Sicily during the weekend, probably one of the best places to feel that old traditional italian spirit.

A city like Palermo, with (very) narrow streets, people who talk out loud, trattorias at each corner and on every alley, hectic traffic and an overall friendliness of everything which sorrounds you – this is something which you can discover in Sicily. Or the old villages in the countryside, the virgin beaches and shores and the most calm and blue sea which you can think of. And many more of the like.

As an overall, it was an amazing experience – just the kind of place you would like to visit all over again. Too bad it was kinda short. And for some more feeling, here is Umberto Tozzi with Gloria – not a typical Sicilian song, but a typical Italian one (yes, there is a huge difference).

And some pictures…

A nice picture, featuring 74 artists (click picture for large version)

Greece can be nice in music, for example: Sirtaki.

And Greece can be nice in pictures also. It really gives the feeling of a land where most of the civilization was born, a land where you can find things which are hard to belive and places which are trully inspiring. Some of them below.

An amazing experiment has been carried out by the Washington Post – they asked a violonist to play some music in a Metro location down in Washington city and analyzed the people reaction.

Of course, nothing strange up to here, it’s quite common specially in the USA to see people playing the violin for change in these kind of areas. Just that the player was Joshua Bell – one of the top violonists in the world, the violin he played was one of the finest  Stradivarius still existing and the plays were some classical masterpieces. The type of concert you would pay some hundreds of dollars to attend was moved down in the streets of Washington to see if the people would realize the difference and recognize the beauty of it all.

So the question was, would the beauty of such music transcend the banal setting of the whole situation? Here is the full story.

2007 seems to be quite a good year for concerts in Romania, as a lot of highly-reputated bands are coming for shows here. One of them will be Chemical Brothers.

The Chemical Brothers are going to have a show in Bucharest on 25th of May, at Sala Polivalenta. I think it’s a good opportunity to hear some excellent electronic-rap-rock combination from the 2 English guys. They are probably some of the best in their area at the time, I would say.

And just to get the spirit going, here is a preview – Hey Boy, Hey Girl single.

You can buy the tickets at www.bilete.ro, at the price of 85 RON each.

After quite a long time since seeing them live, I managed to get in Art Jazz yesterday for the Tapinarii concert. And it was great ! :)

Was quite a different concert from what Tapinarii is usually playing – they played mostly ballads and “rare” tracks – tracks they don’t usually play in concerts. Also, another good thing is that they played for about one hour and a half, which was really worth it.

One of the downsides was the opening act of stand-up comedy by Cristi Dumitru – people who saw him before said that 70% of the jokes were old ones and it is really not funny to hear the same “improvisation” again from the same guy. Also, large ammounts of vulgarity in his show made the whole performance pretty poor.

Comming back to the concert itself, one of the best performances was the “Sfarsit si inceput de lume” song. Awesome song itself, sounds even better live ! You can watch the video here. The audience was also great, a lot of singing along – seems that people really like Tapinarii :)
Overall, congrats guys for an excellent show and looking forward for the new album !

Some years ago I was sitting in the summer in the oh-so-calmy 2 Mai resort and listening all day long to, for example, Joan Baez. I was then thinking that her version of Blowing in the Wind sounds quite as good as Dylan’s. Actually, the best version is theirs, singing together, probably.

Joan Baez was – and still is – one of the most notable figures of the 60s and 70s folk / rock scenes. And she was also one of the most well-known and powerful pacifist fighters.

Even though she is a songwriter herself, she was also playing a lot of other people’s work – Dylan, Beatles, Rolling Stones and such. Still, she released over 30 albums and is playing for about 50 years now !

A great music to listen for chillout and not only. A classical overall, out of which some of my prefered songs are (with links to download): Gracias a la vida, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and, probably the best, Diamonds and Rust.

As I was thinking it’s just one month left till the seaside season starts – and the weekly trips to there -, one of the tracks which can get you in a summer-enthusiastic mood comes from The Kooks – Ooh La.

Even though I am really not a fan of the entire indie-pop trend, this sounds quite nice, specially because of the nice rhythm and the good voice of Luke – maybe he was inspired by his ex-girlfriend, Katie Melua :)

Overall a good track, would go well for getting into some party mood or something. Here is the download link: The Kooks – Ooh La.

It’s probably old news already, as Vodafone even started promoting it on TV, but it’s still worthwhile to announce probably the greatest musical event in Romania this year – Rolling Stones comming to play in Bucharest.

As it is already published on the Rolling Stones website – tickets.rollingstones.com – , they will be here in 17th of July to play on Lia Manoliu stadium.

The Rolling Stones name says it all – over 40 years of carrer, over 50 albums released and record sales all over the world. Albums like Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, Tatoo You, Voodoo Lounge and many other became platinum and made Rolling Stones one of the greatest bands in musical history.

It’s awfully hard to choose just a few Rolling Stones songs to mention, but here are some of my top favourites – so you can prepare for the concert

Songs:

• Satisfaction – ranked as one of the best songs of all time, it’s one of the most representative Rolling Stones hits.
• Angie – again a classic Rolling Stones and one of the best ballads ever.
• Brown sugar – great rock song, very representative for the Rolling Stones sound

Videos:

• Rolling Stones live in 1969.
• Rolling Stones playing together with Bob Dylan.
• Rolling Stones – Get Off Of My Cloud.

See you there, for sure !

P.S. The credits for organizing the whole thing should go to Events company. Vodafone is just sponsoring the thing.

Since about 2 weeks it’s really been a very busy and stressful period at work – this is one of the reasons for the low posting that’s been going on around here.

Another reason is that the latest releases in the musical industry are not at all inspiring – Except for an Air album, I was not able to find too many interesting news around.

Therefore, here comes the track of the day – K’s Choice – Busy (click to listen / download), which goes just quite well with the mood nowadays.

You’re so busy these days
Rearranging your place
Can you still find some space for yourself