I was happy to hear that some thought of the spirit of Vama Veche – and not only – in connection to the Folk music, not only rock. This is how Jurnalul National and Radio3Net managed to put together, for the second time, this folk festival – Folk You !.

Last year it took place in Vama Veche and at Gura Portitei, this year it is going to be in 4 locations – Mamaia, Neptun, Costinesti, 2 Mai and Vama Veche. I am not sure what sort of audience will follow them in the first 3 locations, but I hope I will catch them in one of the latter.

The festival is taking place between 3rd and 26th of August. On the stage you can find Florian Pittis, Ducu Bertzi, Mircea Vintila, Florin Chilian, Alexandru Andries, Nicu Alifantis and many others. You can find the entire schedule here.

Mihai gave me the sad news today. One of the teachers I admired most in University – Prof. Dr. Paul Bran – passed away because of a heart-attack. He was one of the few teachers actually trying to apply what he was teaching in the real business life and he had a great passion for his job. Also, he was one of the closest to the students and helped a lot of them in their activities.

Rest In Peace !

It seems summer is the statistics season, as more and more charts are emerging. One I found particularly interesting – and seems to reflect a lot of truth – is the top Rock Guitarists chart made by Digital DreamDoor. The chart has over 200 names, and the artists are ranked based on their impact, influence, creativity, technical skills and popularity.

The top 10 on this list are:

1. Jimi Hendrix*
2. Eric Clapton
3. Jimmy Page
4. Jeff Beck
5. Eddie Van Halen n
6. Stevie Ray Vaughan
7. Joe Satriani
8. Ritchie Blackmore
9. Steve Vai
10. David Gilmour

It is quite interesting that Clapton, Page and Beck, ranked on 2, 3 and 4 have all been members of the English Yardbirds band, which is well known for producing a great deal of guitarists over the time.

Also, the ranking features the “best of the decade”, which are:

90s – John Petrucci
80s – Eddie Van Halen
70s – Jimmy Page
60s – Jimi Hendrix
50s – Chuck Berry

Overall, I think it’s an excellent chart and any changes to this would be mostly on subjective basis – for example, I would have put Frank Zappa higher than 39th position. For the entire chart, here is the link.

My Old Kentucky Blog made a top of the best songs released this year. While I must admit my “ignorance” in not listening to all those tracks, it is hard for me to understand why none of David Gilmour’s songs on Island never made it to that list.

Good thing that at least Regina Spektor is there.

Update: Thinking more about it I realize that neither Red Hot Chilli Peppers latest release – Stadium Arcadium – is not there. Nor is Tool, Johnny Cash and a lot others.

Some students from UNATC (Theatre University in Romania) had a great idea of putting in play one of the greatest rock operas ever – Jesus Christ Superstar.

The play has been written in the 70′s by Andrew Webber and Tim Rice and – in the original version – was performed by, among others, Ian Gillan playing the role of Jesus and Murray Head in the role of Judas.

The Romanian version is played free of charge at the ArCub stage on 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17 and 19th of July. It’s nice to see such initiatives happen and I bet their act will be worthwhile for anyone to attend.

Later Edit: It seems someone liked it very much. Also some pictures here.

Just discussing with some friends a couple of days ago….why did Heineken, one of the best beers in the world, positioned itself in Romania in relationship with house and party music ? I always considered them something like a beer for smart people (of course, it might be because it is my favourite beer and I have a very high self-esteem:) )

I know, it is highly typical for beer producers / marketers like to position their products in circumstances like parties, footbal, music and so on. This is because beer is considered as a drink for the masses and these are the places where masses gather and enjoy a nice drink.

Heineken did the same but…is it really working ? If I would go to a concert, I would prefer drinking some long-run beers insted of Heineken, which I love to enjoy over some nice talking in a pub.

I am still wondering how this week I managed to find a couple of hours for myself to try to put some order into stuff that was in my mind and on the hard-drive :) As expected, this proved to have amazing and quite unexpected benefits, as I discovered a lot of things:

- Wyclef Jean is still great and I love it, for example this track – Where Fugees At.

- Apocalyptica sounds also great and it’s a pitty I never managed to get to the concert. But maybe I’ll find someone to write about it ;) Meanwhile, Enter Sandman is heavily played.

- Erin Bode is very relaxing. I still wonder how would Graceland look like.

- Racla was one of the Romanian bands I used to love some years ago and I rediscovered how good they used to sound. Too bad they are not playing anymore. Even though a little commercial, this track – 2 in 1 – gives me a very nice feeling everytime I listen to it.

- Some bands can bring back great memories. For example Tapinarii. This track – Doi Bani – is about just sitting alone on the beach in Vama Veche while Puiul meu …. is really special.

- Once I was staying in a rented apartment in Titulescu and this track – Pearl Jam – Even Flow – was excelent for waking up. Thanks Cris !

- A new business idea has been put down on paper and it looks like it’s going to fly. The entrepreneur feeling gives me amazing energies :)

- Filling up your fridge with Heineken is always a good thing :)

- I need a better connection as upload is taking too much time.

- and a lot more which is going to be crystalized later.

Cheers ! 

After a short vacation to the beaches of our neighbouring country, I came back with a lot of appetite for posting and music in general. Maybe it is because I missed my tracks collection back home, or because in the car we had almost no music because the guy had a cassette player, not a cd-player as I thought initially….

So, after looking through some music blogs as I arrived back online, I saw that a lot of people posted about the recent top that Paste Magazine is publishing – the top 100 songwriters still alive. Here is the direct link to the list.

Some of my comments on it:

- Pink Floyd is much to low, on #80 !!

- Outkast is too low, on #99

- Notable artists not on the list are: Deep Purple, Lauryn Hill / Wyclef Jean / Fugees, Peter Frampton, Alanis Morissette, Katie Melua (maybe), Bjork and many more.

Even though the initiative is to be praised, maybe they should have dedicated more time to this. Leaving such good artists out of the list can make it highly questionable.

I am in search of a good trafic counter which goes well with wordpress. A plugin would be the preffered option. Can anyone help with some suggestions?

I want the standard functionality, but most important it is to be reliable. Currently, Google Analytics provides some data which totally conflict with AWstats which is installed on the server.

Thanks !

Throughout this entire month I kept a folder called “To review” where I decided to put all the songs I come upon during my (not so) daily hops on other music blogs – an effort for being more organized and make sure I don’t miss too much. Now the time has come to clean up the folder and see what was really valuable in there.

Except for some old tracks I knew for a long time and I gladly discovered them (some Nirvana, some RHCP and others), most of the things were crap pop-rock tracks, where a bunch of British-sound-like guys were torturing some instruments (the more, the better) and screaming at the microphone. That’s not music, it’s just some wanna-be people trying to impress a record label. 

Still, I managed to find a new artist I immediatelly fell for – a jazz / piano singer called Regina Spektor. I found her thanks to I Guess I’m Floating blog, which tipically provides some nice tracks.

So, if you are curious what is the most beautiful music I discovered this month, here it is, a sample – Regina Spektor – On the Radio.