Di Ana is one of the people who always has some nice song recommendations for me. This is why I invited her repeatedly to post on this blog, but every time she refused to do so, due to lack of time and such.

Still, as this is the second time I see her listening to Velvet Underground, I decided to post about this band. An US band best known in the 70s, they reunited in 1992 for a couple of years. They feature an excelent sound and, although not very commercially succesful, they had a great impact on the rock sound of those years.

Together with their reunion in 1993 came one of the singles I like most – also being the first I listened to – called Venus in Furs. It is now for you to listen to, appreciate and make them a regular of your playlists.

[MP3] Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs.

Hopefully, Di Ana will come back with some more suggestions and eventually some posts here :)

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.

As I could not attend this second Buena Vista concert this month, I asked a good friend, Dani, to write about it. Here is how she felt it:

“Thursday, 25th May a great concert took place at Sala Palatului -  “Live from Buena Vista – Havana Lounge”. The concert was held in the memory of Pyo Leyva who should have made this concert if he hadn’t passed away because of a heart disease on March 23rd. It turned out to be a genuine show that was definitely worth the money, due to an excellent performance of all the artists present on stage: Teresa Garcia Caturla, Guillermo Rubalcaba, Yanko Pizaco si Alberto Virgilio, Valdéz, Maria Viktoria Rodriguez and many more.

Teresa Garcia Caturla, the lead singer managed to electrify the entire audience and made everyone dance and have fun. She even came down from the stage and started to dance with the audience. In the end she played with the spectators a popular Cuban sport very alike to baseball.

Another star of the night was Guillermo Rubalcaba who managed to make magic every single song thanks to his piano. The solo he made entertained the audience to the maximum and at one point he even joked about leaving the stage as everybody sang along with him.

Other solos were given by the percussionists, the two guitarists and the trumpeters, the main attraction being Yanko Pizaco – the first trumpeteer of Afro Cuban All Stars. Every artist from the band succeeded in making the public feel excellent.

And now a few things about the beginning of the show: a very lousy one. The band that started the concert was Mandinga which, despite its change of image and style their music didn’t improve. Their performance only managed to underline the value of the true artists like Buena Vista.”

 

The traditional Golden Stag music festival is not going to take place this year, because its main organizer, the National Romanian Television decided they have other more important projects. And as they would rather make only one thing but make it good, they decided the Junior Eurovision Contest in December is more important and all energies should be focused on that.

Now, I am not a great fan of the soft pop music that is usually displayed at the Golden Stag, but this festival had, apart from a long tradition in Romania, quite some interesting stars over the years, like Ray Charles, Joe Cocker and Kylie Minogue among other.

On the other hand, I personally regard the Eurovision as more a political event – countries voting for one another….what has this got to do with music? But then again, we’re talking about the National Romanian Television, which still has some good politics inside and probably this is more important for them.

As the Golden Stag 2006 is still a very uncertain project, the official website decided to post some info about the 2007 edition instead of the 2006 one :)

Sony Legacy recently issued a Johnny Cash record, featuring some of the songs they found in an old drawer in his home and labeled “Personal File“. Therefore, this is the name of the record, too. Definetly something to search for !

This was the status a friend had over YM, a fraze which amuzed me a lot. Probably this is the way every lover feels like after an unsuccessful romance which had this song as a “foreplay”.

And of course a lot of lovers share a slow-dance on this song because it became so popular. Just like Metallica’s songs are so popular among fresh rockers.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe the song is excelent, nice lyrics and nice voice! It is just too much played nowadays and I usually don’t like when this is happening, because the song is so much aired that it looses something, that certain something which makes a song special if you hear it just when you need to, and not everytime you turn on the radio.

But then again, who am I to judge that….I had Nirvana’s “Where did you sleep last night” as an “our song” sometime ago :) 

Google just announced that the new Pearl Jam video is available for free on Google Video. There are quite some hard images in there, but it looks nice. Still, the song is not one of their best, in my opinion.

I just noticed that Google Video introduced a categories bar on top of their page, finding it much easier to find Music Videos for example. Too bad some of them are not available for Romania….bad, bad, bad !

As I said previously, it’s been a busy period and this is the reason for the low posting…but things should be back to normal pretty soon.

Just came back from Olimpiadele Comunicarii where musicblog won the prize for the best thematic blog. We are very proud about this and…thanks a lot ! Also, congrats to the other winners, as well. You can see the full participants list here.

Also, I was on a roadtrip throughout the country and Hungary some of these days, which kept me away from posting, but made me discover a nice track. I usually end up listening to a certain track in these kind of journeys, and then it remains in my mind totally connected to that specific trip. So, this time it was all about Salome de Bahia – Outro Lugar.

Salome started her music in a Jazz Cabaret in France, and then had various experiences working with Bob Sinclair, Stevie Wonder and others. This track has a very nice rhythm and inspires a clear Brazilian feeling. Also, it is great for listening in the car, probably this is why Vlad was so happy listening to it while driving :)

Also, this trip gave us the chance to experience an iTrip device…you probably know about it, it’s that a device which enables you to listen to music from an iPod played on the car radio. Even though the idea is great and is a pretty cheap solution (about 50 USD), it has some quality issues, because it might interfere with other frequencies and it has a pretty low volume. Still, it was worthwhile all the way, being able to play some hundreds of tracks.

P.S. The picture shows some Budapest ducks, in a park quite similar to Cismigiu. They have ducks, we have frogs :(

Well, extremely tired. It’s been a hell’s week, with a lot of work but also with a lot of fun. Soo many uptime hours…. And it feels like there is no weekend in between, as on Sunday morning a working-tour starts.

The only music I could bare for tonight and which helped me not fall asleep while making the final charts is Ray Charles’s latest release. Cannot stress enough what a great album this is !!

Have a good night, wherever you are :)