I was writing back in mid-2006 that The Who are back. And they are, but it seems age takes it toll as they had to cancel a show during the first song in one of their recent concerts.

It was in Tampa, these days, when the lead singer felt so bad due to bronchitis that he had to go off stage as he could barely speak.

Still, it seems they are not off for good, as the show is going to be rescheduled in about 10 days.  You can see The Who playing at Live 8 here.

Air, the French electronic music duo, recenlty released their seventh album, Pocket Symphony. This is one of the most well-balanced works since Moon Safari and should be a delight to the Air fans. Overall, the album gives a dreamy and atmospheric feeling and most of the tracks are built on the love theme.

A great album as a whole, I was quite fascinated by the second track, Once Upon a Time, as it is one of the more alert songs on the album and features some excellent vocals. Can be downloaded here.

It seems impossible to find a decent online music service to provide payed mp3 or wma downloads in Romania… I tried Yahoo, iTunes, MSN, Rhapsody, Allofmp3 and others – none of them seems to work for us.

Is Romanian money not good enough for this ? Do you have any suggestions ?

One of the best metal and trash bands of the 80s and 90s, Megadeth, is preparing for the release of a new studio album. Originally scheduled for end of 2006, United Abominations is going to be released in May – a nice present for my birthday most likely :). This is one of the most awaited comebacks, after their reforming in 2004.
An even better news is that, as a preview, they recently released for download a song from their new album. Sleepwalker is the title and it can be found for download – for a limited period, here: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.co.uk/sleepwalker/.

The song is an excelent one, very powerful and fast, and also featuring one of the typical Megadeth guitar solos. A real must for listening to !

It was first released in the somewhere in the 70s and then remastered and made a hit in 2006. The U2 and Green Day version of “The Saints Are Coming” can now be found also over the radios in Romania, becoming an instant hit.

The story of the song starts somewhere in the 70s as it was first released by The Skids and became quite popular at that time. Then, in end of 2006, U2 and Green Day played a remake of that hit in the opening baseball game in Louisiana, giving the song a two-faced meaning: first is a song played in the memory of the victims of the Katrina hurricane and second it became the opening song for all the games of the New Orleans Saints baseball team.

The video also features an interesting footage of the army deploying help for the victims of the floods – but the images are actually not reflecting the reality, they are just arranged in such a way to give an indication of how things should be done and is actually a criticism to the Bush administration for not taking firmer action in helping the Katrina victims.

Overall, the song is an excellent one, where two bands joined forces for creating an amazing spectacle. The song can be downloaded here and this is the video.

Whenever I think of “the jack“, 2 things immediately pop into my mind – the first one is the AC DC song with the same name and the other one, named after the song, is the former Vama Veche – currently only Bucharest-based – hard-rock bar, called The Jack.

The song remains one of the best AC DC songs ever, one of the few slow-paced songs the band released. Also, it is a song with a very strong story for myself – after an excelent weekend in Vama Veche, I woke up on Monday morning and I was hearing this song like it was played all over the place in my apartment. A really strange feeling, but one which engraved this song into my mind for good.

The bar was one of the nicest in Vama Veche, but it was sort of ruled-out and is currently only existing in Bucharest. Still nice, a good place to hand out if you are really into good quality rock music.

Another nice thing about the song is that, even though the lyrics reffer to a game of cards, the songs story is about a totally different thing – it is about a girl who is supposed to have been sleeping with all of the band members, eventually getting a sexual disease and blaming the guys for giving it to her :). So, the story is not that nice, but the cards metaphore is quite a nice one.

Therefore, enjoy – AC/DC – The Jack. To be served with some cold Jack (Daniels).

I was writing some days ago about music for listening to while driving. Well, mostly I would listen to rock or, anyway, to some high-paced music, which gets the spirit going.

Still, some other prefer other kinds of music, even when driving an extremely speedy car on a race circuit. For example, I was quite stunned to see what this guy was listening to while driving the Carrera GT and trying to beat – actually he did – the SLR record lap time. If you look at the video, you will notice that in the car you can hear Foreigner – I want to know what love is.

Well, what can I say, British are weird…. Awesome car, by the way – “He knows that that V10 landmine will bite”, talking about the 650 HP engine :))

Again discovering music while looking at snowboard footages – this time is about the Mad World song.

This Gary Jules version of the song was used as a background for quite a nice snowboard video. But actually the song is an excellent one by itself. Originally performed by Tears for Fears, it was remixed in 2001 in Gary Jules / Michael Andrews version.

A relaxing and inspiring song altogether – you can download it here (Gary Jules version).

Thinking again, I think Overseer – Doomsday is an even nicer track for driving by. Actually, the entire NFS Soundtrack – the driving tracks – is one of the best music compilations, i.m.o.

I was wondering….if you listen to this track while driving through the city, are you going to actually drive like a maniac ? Because it can only inspire you to do so…. :)

On the other hand, a really nice track to listen in the car, with the roof down, while going to VV in the summer, should be this one – EMIL – Dub Shot. Looking forward to trying that soon.