Tommorow is the big event – Rolling Stones concert in Bucharest.

We are going, together with the entire PMO team :) Should be some good fun !

More details about the event here. Congrats to the Events team for the nice effort !

More about R.S. and some tracks I like in this previous post.

As usual, I began this summer spending most of the weekends at the seaside, in Vama Veche. Last year I have been there about 15 times, I guess and this year it seems to go pretty much in the same direction – just that I found myself no longer satisfied (at all) with the place and everything related to it.

Too much dirt, too many low-quality people and poor music in most places. Stuf is becoming crowded with all sorts of people comming just to get drunk and show-off, B-52 is gone and is replaced by an obscure place, Bavaria is thankfully gone but another similar “thing” emerged close to the former B-52 location and so on. The only places where you can enjoy lately are Expirat (not always nice) and a nice terrace with some skater guys. And Point, recently opened by a friend :)

Even worse is that you can hardly find other to enjoy that much and to resemble the old Vama Veche – there are some but I think I better not mention, I don’t want them to transform like Vama Veche did…

Still, some good thinks discovered lately in Vama Veche – Gulag now sells milkshakes and a nice track I found some weekends ago: Gogol Bordello – Start Wearing Purple.

P.S. Anyway, even so I would never go to Eforie or such :)  

One of the best songs recently came via 89.0 FM. I believe this is one of the best radio stations in Bucharest – great music, no commercials and no talking. Guerilla also started this way but now it just seems that way too many people think they have something to say out there and it became 70% talking and too less music.

Comming back, the track which really impressed me comes from Dar Williams, an American girl playing somethink called folk-pop. She has a great voice and I believe it’s enough to say she toured several times together with Joan Baez to say it all.

Therefore, here you go, Dar Williams – Are You Out There.

Dream Theater came back few weeks ago with a new album, the tenth in their career. Like most of the previous albums, Systematic Chaos features the same Dream Theater instrumental rich sound, but still leaves space for great compositions and vocals.

Tracks like Foresaken or The Dark Eternal Night sustain the album and can become singles at any time. Still, the value comes, like Dream Theater always did, from the overall sound of the album, where each track is carefully crafted for the best.

A great album overall, not spectacular for the band as a whole but consistent in their path.

Full album download available (still) here.

This is one of the best news recently – Rage Against the Machine reunites !

The entire story is here.

Sinner.com published recenly the top most exquisitelly sad songs in the world – quite a nice selection, I would say.You have to be patient and start from number 25 and browse through the entire list, but it is worth it.

And Sinnead O’Connor with Nothing Compares to You comes only at 24 ! :)

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.