I told you this is the year of the great comebacks… Recently Iron Maiden, a band which has had numerous ups and downs in the recent times, released a new album – A Matter of Life and Death.

With Bruce Dickinson again on the vocals, the album gives a feeling of continuity to the initial Iron Maiden style – pure rock and metal style, excellent colaboration between all the members of the band and a clear message of the album.

As a sample, some videos are here, here and here.

I posted the “The Roots – The Seed 2.0” track some while ago, after dicsovering it in VV, together with a friend. We loved the track since then, and I still listen to it with great pleasure.

In the same time, quite a lot of people downloaded it and listen to it, but most of them came back with the same reaction – “Man, those lyrics are so obscene!“. So I decided to put some clarity into it :)

At the first listening, yes, they sound quite strange. Lyrics like ” I only wanna fertilize another behind my lover’s back”, ” I push my seed in her push for life” or ” I lick the opposition cuz she don’t take no pill” may seem just out of line. But wait a second ! What if all this song is really about something else and the message is just hidden ?

Actually, the song has nothing to do with sex, but it desguises the message in those strange lyrics for a certain reason. Actually, the story is about this guy – the singer – who is just fed up with the popularity of rap and hip-hop and being pushed to sing that when he is actually a fan of rock-and-roll and this would be his dream – to sing rock-n-roll. Let’s look up closely.

Background: The Roots are quite a rap band, most of the songs would fall into this genre. Still, this song – The Seed 2.0 – is only one of the few that is more rockish. Why the sudden change?

The lyrics: Here is how the lyrics should be interpreted and their actual meaning

“She want neo-soul, this hip-hop is old
She don’t want no rock-n-roll
She want platinum or ice or gold”
“She” is actually the substitute for the audience, the record label or such. These lyrics show that the interest is mostly focused on neo-soul and not on rock-n-roll.
“And we can make money to burn
If you allow me the latest game
I don’t ask for much, but enough room to spread my wings
And the world finna know my name”
Talking about the potential success of this experiment. He just wants some liberty in choosing what to sing and he is sure that fame will follow.
“I don’t ask, for much these days
And I don’t bitch, and whine, if I don’t get my way
I only wanna fertilize another behind my lover’s back”
This is actually about how he will make the experiment of singing rock-and-roll even without the support from the “partner”.
“If Mary drops my baby girl tonight
I would name her Rock-N-Roll”
This is actually revealing that the “baby” of his experiment is going to be a rock-and-roll track.

So, actually The Seed should be regarded more as of a poetical license and not a song about sex and “behind the back” fertilizing :) It is actually a song about following your dreams and creating the music you like, not just the one that sells.

This is official – I am buying the “Last Concert in Italy” Nirvana DVD. Anybody got one for sale ?

So, not much posting going on lately…this is mainly because of being busy at work, focusing more on the reminder to “read that pile of books” and doing … stuff :)

Still, I could not help noticing that I don’t feel much like changing that series of 20 or so tracks in Winamp which I am listening for some weeks now. Am I getting old / bored or is it just that latelythere haven’t been too many great releases ? And reaching for the old HDD full of excelent music just seams too much….

So, just for sharing, here are some of the powerplays of the last 20 days or so:

- E.M.I.L – Dub Shot – no download link, but go and search for it, it’s really worth it !
- Sergio Mendez – Mas Que Nada

- Bob Dylan – Hurricane

- Red Hot Chilli Peppers – On Mercury (thanks to A.)

- Outkast – Roses

- Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird – that guitar solo is fantastic

- Patrice – Up In My Room – (again, A.)

- The Roots – The Seed 2.0

- Regina Spektor – On The Radio

- Radiohead – Video Killed the Radiostar – yes, it is not the original version, but sounds excellent.

- and a lot of that Ray Charles album.

- Emily Haines – The Lottery – this is newly discovered and sounds great !

After Tapinarii in the first day, the second day had as main “attraction” the Pheonix concert. First of all, congrats to the organizing committee for managing to get Pheonix together on a stage in such a great line-up – with Baniciu, Covaci and Tandarica and all the others.

The show was excellent, even though myself and other people would have liked more old songs and not many from the new album. They managed to offer great solos – I specially liked Cristi Gram (guitarist) and, of course, Tandarica. This guy is amazing how he can play the drums at 53 years old !

For all of you who did not have the chance to attend, here are some pictures – Pheonix at Stufstock 2006. Sorry for the low quality, they were made with a mobile phone camera…

The target for yesterday evening was to reach Vama Veche quickly enough to attend the Tapinarii concert, at 21:00. Luckily, I managed to do so ! :)

They did not start at 21:00 sharp, but about half an hour later, with a huge audience packed at Shoni’s terrace. I was lucky enough to find a seat thanks to some friends, but this didn’t help much as I hardly saw the band play …  too many people in front of me. Still, the quality of the show was worth the effort, they played excellent and they have a natural way of entertaining the crowd during live concerts.

They played some of the old songs but also 2 new ones, which sounded excellent.

A first photo from yesterday can be seen below, but some better quality ones and made from a little closer are going to come later, from Stefan. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, one of the Tapinarii songs I love – Doi Bani.

Via blogsarefordogs.com I discovered another great voice – the one of Emily Haines. Definetelly worth listening to:

- Emily Haines and The Soft Skeleton – Our Hell
- Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton – Reading in Bed
- The track available on her myspace page.

Her album will be out in late September, so make sure you look for it !

Vama Veche recently released a new song, called “La Radio“. In my view, it fits perfectly with their efforts of staying in the spotlight, even though they are mostly producing commercial songs and trying to be again something they used to be quite a long time ago. It is not working, guys !

The “La Radio” song has quite no meaning whatsoever, except for repeating the same theme of “we are all products of the society around us and we live our lifes in clichees”. Ok, you said this on 3 or 4 albums so far, is it really meaningfull to repeat it once more?

What is even worse is that some people are so thrilled of this song they start screaming it all around – like a couple of drunk guys did at Club D’Or few days ago. Bleah !

If you want to be convinced – or if you just want to get “To The Radio” – here is the video.

Since some days ago, Google opened a new project, called Google Music Trends – based on the anonymus data from Google Talk they are able to say which are the top most listened / preffered songs worldwide. If this will continue, it is going to cover a much bigger range of users which other music charts are not covering, but this depends mostly on the number of users taken into account.

Until now, there are different figures regarding the total number of users of GTalk. Some say it’s 866.000 [link], others mention a figure as high as 7.126.000 users [link]. Due to the fact Google Talk can also be used directly from the browser, with the Gmail window open and does not require a special install, it might be hard to find out the real number, but I believe it is a pretty high one.

Recently, almost every time I look at the new things released by Google, I tend to belive that the “20% time for own projects” culture thing is really working and a lot of products are being developed in that fashion.

Finally, after some years since the last real vacation, I managed to decide to leave for some days. Of course, all the plans for this vacation have ben changed and changed and finally it seems I will be in some quiet and peacefull seaside retreat.

The plans for these 8 days or so are quite impressive: 4 books and dozens of business articles to read, about 2 Gb of music to review and some business plans to put in order and analyse thoroughly. Hope I will manage to do most of them while also getting some rest and relaxation.

And as all these activities require some nice music in the background, the playlist for this time is impressive. Here are some of the tracks which will keep me company through the days:

[mp3] Bob Dylan – Hurricane – One of the most powerful of Dylan’s protest songs, released in 1976 and inspired by the story of Rubin Carter and his trial.

[mp3] David Gilmour – On An Island – One of the most relaxing songs ever, this is meant to give me that state of bliss an island should inspire.

[mp3] Dido – Sand In My Shoes – Well, sand is for sure to be found there, so this track goes along pretty well. One of Dido’s best tracks, in my opinion.

[wma] Eliades Ochoa – Chan Chan – My favourite Buena Vista Social Club song. It is one of Compay’s last songs he composed and became an instand success after being released in 1987. Like this songs inspires, sifting sand on the beach is probably going to be one of the daily activities :)

[mp3] Erin Bode – Graceland – Along with David Gilmour’s On an Island, is one of the most relaxing songs, as I mentioned previously on this blog.

[wma] Gotan Project – Una Musica Brutal – this song has remained in my mind since hearing it the first time at 6 AM on a beach, with an incredibly strong coffee in my hand.

[mp3] Johnny Cash – Father and Son – Johnny Cash is one of my favourite artists and his music was a great partner some years ago, in the same resort. Therefore, he could not fail the playlist.

[mp3] Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird – Combining both an excellent guitar (I am a sucker for guitar, in general) and a great melody, this is one of the songs I would recommend to Andrei when discussing guitarists and their performance. Probably Van Halen’s Erruption and Pink Floyd’s Confortably Numb are going to come along, too.

[mp3] Sergio Mendez – Mas Que Nada – A recent addition, provides a great feeling of the Samba spirit. And Brazil is marked as a “not to miss” destination for the future years.

[mp3] The Cult – Painted on my Heart – I just like this song a lot, so he makes the playlist.

Well, this is about it. Some 24 hours till departure left, so let the music play.

Downloads above are just for sampling purposes, respect copyright and go buy the album, do not distribute.