The Guardian features a nice article about Gypsy music from the Balkans and from Romania. What I specially like about it is that this is one of the few articles that shows that the author is really knowing what he is talking about, he is not mistaking Gypsy music for Manele like a lot of foreigners do and so on.

And I didn’t know Johnny Depp is a fan of Taraful Haiducilor :)

It’s about 24 hours since it was over and I wanted to write about this all this time. How was the Buena Vista Social Club concert some of us have been waiting for so much ?

Well, in just a few words it was excellent ! It all started with the Before the show Party just before the concert, when a Buena Vista Social Club DVD has been played in Coyote Ugly and Analia Selis held a very nice concert. It was the first time I saw her live – it was the first time for them playing in a club, too – and I realized she is much more than just the Yo No Soy de Qui track all of you might know. She plays a very passionate music, dedicating herself (and the band) totally to it, and it sounds excellent.

Next, the concert came, where I was a bit late but fortunatelly I managed to convince some more friends to come and it was worthwhile the effort. Analia played about 5 or 6 tracks, opening the way for the masters of the night, Buena Vista Social Club.

Comming after their concert in Timisoara, not speaking a bit of English (at least not to the public), the 4 grands of the old band, plus 7 from the new age, they played about one and a half hours of excellent Cuban music.

The big star was Senor Cachaito Lopez – from the old band, together with Roberto Fonseca – a great pianist from the new age. In my view, the most remarkable were the pianist – Roberto, Jesus Ramos – trombone, the trumpet player – Guajiro Mirabal and the guitarist – Manuel Galban.

What I particularly liked about the concert was the arrangement of the songs, alternating between high-pace rhythms, slower plays and a lot of individual solos.

The audience was also a high quality one, getting involved all the way, dancing and having a good time. You don’t see this too often….

Another good thing is that this is not their first time in Romania – we had the change to have Ibrahim Ferrer 2 years ago in Bucharest – and not their last time – Omara Portuondo is comming here with them on 23rd of November. See you there !

Yeah, it’s just like crazy how Britain embraced this hit of Gnarls Barkley, Crazy by its name. And not only this no. 1 hit, but also the entire just-realeased album, St. Elsewhere.

Mixing some rap with pop music, just like the good old-fashioned way, Gnarls made Britain (and not only) move on this rhythm, and he deserves all the credit for this. Nice work !

It is true, some might find some similarities between his music and the Gorillaz style, and one should look no further than Danger Mouse, who is producer of both. Which proves the people in the back really do have an influence :)

|If you haven’t been listening to it in the last month or so, you should definitely visit Gnarls Barkley’s Myspace page to listen to some of the tracks (Crazy hit included).

As his website points out, the New Tour Dates of Billy Idol are confirmed, with July 10th being marked as Bucharest show on Cotroceni Stadium.

I cannot stress enough how important this event is, having Billy Idol, a pure Rock legend here to play means a lot more than just one show.

This show is part of the Promotion Tour of his latest album, The Devil Playground, but I hope he will put up some of the old tracks too, like “Dancing with Myself”, “White Wedding” or “Eyes without a Face”. This way, maybe some of the kidds dancing on the tables or in the sand of Vama Veche will recognize some of the tracks being played there, as his latest album is hard to find in Romania.

Tickets can be bought from Sala Palatului or in the Diverta stores. Maybe with this opportunity, Diverta will bring his latest album in, too :).

The concert has been initially advertised as being performed inside, in Sala Palatului, but Billy Idol’s website confirms the Cotroceni stadium as the final location. What do you think, should it be played inside or outside? Personal preference – inside.

P.S. The image of this post represents Billy Idol’s only tattoo.

Thanx to my good friend Octi for pointing out this “bitch” to me.

(He said she reminded him of me, so I was bound to like her from the start…)

I just love her rough voice and all her covers sound excellent; they really got my blood pumping again – after a very exhausting week/month/trimester of my life :)

I hope you will enjoy the songs as much as I did. After all, the world needs as many bitches as it can get…

Internet Explorer users Anonymous I think it should be called. A place to sit and chat about a worrying condition that is not getting over the damn IE thing. Mihai and I had a chat via gmail and I’m not reluctant to say I called anyone who still uses IE a dumbass. He said then he must be one, or what didja say dude… that you don’t think you’re one.
IE 7 is the latest Windows version right? Well take a look right here and see what an allmighty bitchslap Microsoft’s giving y’all.
Now what has this to do with music eh? Well. This. See, there are other options out there besides Firefox or Opera and one that every music afficionado should know about is Songbird. Yep, sounds good don’t it? songbirdnest link

…from the seaside. It was 3 (or four) days of fun, laughing and sitting without doing much. Exepct for the nights….oh…the nights !

Well, I guess all of you know what is usually happening there, it was not much of an exception now just that I felt much better than the last time, at Stufstock last year.

The goods: the way to the seaside, the Saturday - all day long, the place we’ve been stayin’, the music and, most important, the people there.

The bads: tequilla, the cold nights and … again, it was too short.

Speaking about the music, this track has been played over and over again, in all clubs… So here you are, for the ones who were there and liked it and for the ones who were not there – to get a feeling: Partice – Soul’s Storm.

P.S. Some pictures to come soon…

I noticed that in Romania you have two types of hipsters. It all stems from communist censorship I think- people in their twenties want to deny a heavy burden of a past by hating the mainstream and anything that has to do with the (musical) past and can’t be retro-hip; and rockers perpetuate that fuck the system adage by hating the mainstream head-banger style. Electro music fans or rawk fans, two camps that are in no way camp. You could look at rock at being more traditional form of dissent and electro is just the opposite, so scenester definitions no.2 respectively no.1 apply. On one side you have Therion or Nightwish or whatever (when did we become fucking nordic-philes?) on the other hand you got a bunch of DJs. The Rogue Wave or Mazarin we leave to the NY hipsters while we deal with extremes.

But finally… A home grown festival all of our own. Artmania Sibiu 2006 (official site). I can’t say it would be refreshing for me to see H.I.M. live, but I know some of you out there are squealing squeals of joy. The festival’s in July. Tickets are 65 RON. That’s uh what..20 euros. For a four-band mini-fest. HIM, Amorphis, SILENTIVM, Carmen Gray. Be warned: angry black-background links those are.
And remember: it is not recommended to bring infants in prams or children under 5 years old to the festival area. Or drugs of any nature, not that you would.

The Cribs have nothing to do with the festival. But I think the scenesters song touches on the earlier subject I was contemplating.

If you’d like to hurrah something, do it now so that all our 30 unique hits/day know about it. Being a scenester doesn’t mean you can’t share.

The post below is written by Mihai Seceleanu, a best friend and a musicblog.ro contributor :) 

In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman on earth. In Internet mythology, it’s the name of a new Web based service that can be compared to your very own radio station. All you do is tell it what kind of music you like and it lets you discover more music like it.

It’s based on the Human Genome Project – http://www.pandora.com/mgp.shtml – a group of musicians and music-loving technologists that got together and built the most comprehensive analysis of music ever, researching songs of over 10,000 different artists. But there are even more good news – Pandora www.pandora.com is continously evolving, by adapting itself to users’ preferences – you can always rate the songs and say what’s ok for your radio station, according to your preferences, and what isn’t. And you can just imagine how accurate Pandora will be when there’ll be 100 million users using it.

There’s no mean to go back and listen a song one more time. But you can buy it either as a separate song from iTunes or as an album from Amazon. What’s the best thing about it – there are no commercials – like on Yahoo! Radio or similar services. You just keep the browser window open and the music plays.

 

…is comming…or I am going…or something like that. The idea is that we have a date on 28th, and I will make sure I am going to be there. She brings the waves, I bring the wine.

Unfortunatelly, this year the 2 main weekend activities (snowboarding and seaside-sitting) could not be linked as I would have wanted, but 1st of May is almost here and I will make sure I will be with some sand in my shoes by then.

Yeah, some might call it mainstream or some might call it old-fashioned, but I don’t really care. I will meet about 30 nice people (best friends included), we will have some wine and finally I might get some vacation.

And as this blog is about music, I could say that sure the guy who is going to drive the car (Tutu – the legend:D) will apreciate this song played over and over again: Rosu si Negru – Ora de Mare. Maybe some of you will apreciate it too.

See ya there !