Blender published a top 50 worst music artists of all time. As this is and should be considered as a highly subjective initiative, I would have some remarks to it:

I Agree with:
- Crash Test Dummies (no 28) – they didn’t impress with anything, released the Mmm Mmm Mmm … song which was quite lousy for a hit, even though heavily broadcasted in its age. Poor performance afterwards.
- Celine Dion (no 26) – regarded by many as a Diva, I was never keen on anything concerning her, specially the song for Titanic. Everything was too “predictive”, all the songs follow the same line. Boring.
- Creed (no 23) – Again, nothing of interest in that form of rock.
- Michael Bolton (no 3) – Sort of a masculine version of Celine Dion, he made a good impression on depressed young teens but his music is poor, with no innovation and no substance after all.
- Insane Clown Pose (no 1) – Actually, I never understood anything from that form of “music”, so they must be lame.

I do not agree with: here the list can get longer…

- Manowar (no 44) – actually, Manowar had their quite distinctive sound and played good music. DeMaio is a good bass-player and all of the guys are pretty technical with their instruments. Also, the vocals were good. They also managed to be the “loudest band in the world” in Guinness World Records hall of fame.
- The Doors (no 37) – Doors played an unique kind of music and they have to be appreciated for this. They also created and supported a large movement in the hippie groups and influenced a lot of other bands. The End has one of the best guitar solos ever, so this is another reason to appreciate them.
- Yngwie Malmsteen (no 14) – As they said in the ranking, he was big on solos but short on songs. Actually, I trink he was that big on solos, that the lower songs can be overseen and he should be ranked much better. After all, this is his purpose, to create some great guitar sounds.
- Mick Jagger (no 13) – I think his great merit is that he actually created a great band and managed to make it play excellent music for dozens of years. Very few managed to do this and for this he should be greatly appreciated.

Actually, I could add a lot of Romanian artists to “the worst list” and also a lot of pop-stars…actually, 90% of them. But again, it is a matter of taste :)

Not much going on recently in my music habits, except for the recent discovery of two excellent tracks.

The first one is from the Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift movie – it is actually the opening track, sang by DJ Shadow and is entitled Six Days. I was just too impressed when I first heard it and I immediately searched for it – you can find the video here.

The second comes from the radio and it was a pretty hard challenge to identify it. It is one of the very few house / dance bands in Romania I appreciate and it is the first single out of their future album – Activ – Reasons. You can download it following the link – not hosted by musicblog – or you can just wait for the album to go and legally buy it.

Quite strange that both tracks are from the same genre, not one I would particularly like, but maybe it is just my mood of driving these days….

It seems that the weather in Romania is not much favoring the snowboarders nowadays – we don’t have too much chances for snow until mid-December or so.

Still, I am happy that on New Year’s Eve I will definetely be on the board on the nice slopes of Zell Am See. So if you are around this area on New Year’s Eve, just give a sign, maybe we organize something :)

On the other hand, not much time for music these days, with a hectic schedule at work which prevents me from sitting still more than 10 minutes.

I am mostly in a mood for chill-out, and the first song which comes to my mind is Free Bird, again. Excellent guitar, nice lyrics and an overall relaxed atmosphere.

Browsing through the big and filled with music hard-drive recently, I just re-discovered one of my old obsessions in music, a track which I immediately liked the first time I heard it. I remember how I listened to it for dozens of times in a row for more than a week after hearing it…

It comes from a great Romanian musician – Ovidiu Lipan Tandarica – one of the members of Pheonix, but also an excelent artist on his solo albums.

Natalis – the song which made such a huge impression on me – comes from his Bachita album, released 2 years ago. The album is singed in Aromanian by Stelu Enache and is a collection of folk songs remastered in a rock atmosphere, resembling somehow to Goran Bregovic’s style.

You can find the song here – it is just for listening purposes only, please do not distribute and go buy the album !

Well, I am finally back from my 6-days-or-so vacation to snowboarding in Cervinia.

It was awseome, even though I had some bad-luck and only got 2 days of snowboarding – the rest were lost due to the high wind.

Cervinia is great as a resort, even though I found it in a not very populated time. Also, it offers a lot of opportunities to sky on all sorts of slopes, very well maintained.

Enough with the talking, some pictures are to be found here. Next stop should be Austria, for skiing on New Years Eve.

Spusa de un prieten, dimineata: “Numai maine nu-i poimaine“. It made my day, avand in vedere contextul :).

In 2005 it was Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd (on Live 8), Bon Jovi and Neil Diamond who did some surprising comebacks. In 2006 we had so far The Who’s, Iron Maiden, Meatloaf. It seems to be the year of the rock comebacks. But the year is not over yet, and here comes another one.

Guns and Roses, the band of the 80′s and 90′s who represented for a lot of people their entry point in the Rock genre discovery, is going to release a new album – Chinese Democracy is the name of the new album expected now to be released on 21st of November.
The album has been in development for almost 9 years now, since Axl is rumored to first started recording, somewhere in 1997. More recently, demos of songs like Better or IRS, who are on the tracklist of the Chinese Democracy album. Also, due to the long development time, it is said to be the most expensive album ever produced – with a price tag of over 15 million USD.

Below is a concert version of the I.R.S. track, to be found on the new album.

The RSS feed for Musicblog.ro is now fixed – you can subscribe and read the musicblog via RSS using this link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/musicblog/MtJx.

Awesome news today – it snowed in Paltinis and in Sinaia, and it seems its going to snow some more the following days. So, who knows, maybe Saturday would be a good day for snowboarding in Sinaia.

On the other hand, the trip to Italy in beginning of November, to the Cervinia glacier, is getting closer – hopefully everything will be properly organized and I will be able to get some good powder in those days.

With these thoughts in my mind, walking on the street and listening to Flipsyde – Trumpets seemed exactly the thing to do. Flipsyde’s music is excellent for snowboarding – no wonder their track – Someday – has been chosen by NBC as the official theme song for the 2006 Winter Games Olympics.

The track is best to be listened over the headphones, as some stereo effects are to be discovered. You can find it – for listening only – here: Flipsyde player.

As we previously announced, Tom Waits is to release a new album this year. Those of you who had the chance to listen to some of the tracks from the new album found it already an excellent piece of work, lust like most of Tom’s previous releases.

Some of the tracks from the album slipped so far, before the official release, and here is another one, found by Pitchfork media – the name of the track is Road to Peace and can be found on this page.