Saturday night, around 2 am, as I was watching the Rome marathon on HBO, my soundproof windows must have had a screw loose because I could hear Vama Veche’s Hotel Cismigiu coming from the beer-fumed walls of my neighbour’s house. As I was waiting for the climax- all those chavs howling “Americanii-s de vina, futu-i in gura sa-i fut”, I was beginning to wonder – it’s Saturday night, they’re pissed, it’s 2 am, what could be next in line after cussing the Americans? I had to ask. Manele frate*. I am so not going to be politically correct here. I hate that music being thrust in my ears. I have no problem when they keep it to themselves, because I don’t have to care.
This made me think about how universally liked some songs can be. Hotel Cismigiu as most have figured out is about reading between the lines, not only about swearing. It’s swearing with a reason. People who listen to manele would listen to something totally different like that because it’s just… good.

Recently, as in last week, the UK has made history. Getting to number one purely due to downloads might not be worth a lot of hoop-la to some, but since Romania doesn’t even have an official whatevs chart it sounds light-years ahead to me. No sales, no Arctic Monkeys coming over.

Gnarls Barkley (Cee-Lo and producer-extraordinaire Dangermouse) are therefore also down in history with a dance concoction that appeals to both teeny-boppers and mature listeners that would, as of now, never admit to actually liking it, or skipping around to it in front of the bathroom mirror.

Gnarls Barkley – Crazy mp3
(to download, right-click and ‘save target as’/or ctrl+click and ‘save link as’ on a mac)
buy single

BBC Doc on Gnarls Barkley

bonus Vama Veche – Hotel Cismigiu mp3 buy LP

*Manele is not to be confused with traditional gypsy music.

Phoenix is another band who is in my soul for a long time now and I have the same admiration for them I usually am inspired by bands who manage to play excelent music over long periods of time, despite of the trends and mainstreams that change next to them. So, as soon as I spotted the Baba Novak album – which they released back in the end of 2005, it’s a shame I only managed to see it now – I grabbed it to listen and see how they sound like nowadays

Phoenix managed to release another good album, maybe not as good as their old ones or maybe I am not that keen on this kind of music now and I see it with different eyes. Still, it is a rich music, with complex instrumental parts, with quite the same type of lyrics and a general feeling that inspires.

Quite a surprise for me was to hear them play 2 tracks in English on this album. Maybe it is part of their “quest” to also gain some popularity outside the Romanian borders, although I think they have enough now.

Definetely recomend you to buy it – it really has an affordable price -, and here you are a sample. The first track on the album, called “Zori de Zi“.

But don’t go just yet.

*Grabs the mic* God bless Mihai, and God bless you all as well. Hi I’m Linda and I’ll be your co-host as I write this post and a few others more, fingers crossed.

As I spring to life on The Music Blog, I have to talk about death, and remind you of the darker side of things. It won’t do much good to write about the man that changed the face of popular music (Nirvana did the unthinkable and bested Michael Jackson by throwing him off the top spot in the U.S. way back in 1993). A band that every neo-punk idiot loves to hate nowadays, Nirvana weren’t only grunge, they represented an era, and Kurt killed it the way he bred it.

All this is merely an introduction for an omage, Sinead O’Connor covering All Apologies.

Sinead O’Connor – All Apologies mp3

It’s very tragic to me, how Kurt also captures a quintessential Romanian myth by melting two words, married and buried.
More
Kurt Cobain Journals – buy / read excerpts
Buy the goods chez Amazon.

Remembering Kurt Cobain

This post is to welcome Linda among the authors & editors of musicblog.ro. I trully believe Linda will add a valuable contribution to the musicblog and therefore I invited (and she accepted) her to be one of the authors who will delight you (hehe…) with nice input about music, bands and events.

Welcome, Linda and enjoy !

Meanwhile, please read Linda’s review of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And she also has a song to download.

Roger Waters and The Who are keeping up the headlines of this year’s Hyde Park Calling Festival. Waters will be performing Dark Side of the Moon live on Saturday, 1st of July. I don’t think the album needs any introduction to Pink Floyd fans, but just for you to know, it was released in 1973 and, together with The Wall, it is considered to be one of Pink Floyd’s greatest albums, selling over 40 million copies.

The Who will be playing on 2nd of July, one year after their Live8 appearance.

Other bands playing at Hyde Park are Texas, Starsailor, Razorlight and Primal Scream.

The ticket costs 80 pounds … and I am seriously thinking of attending :)

An interesting article about Music Blogs owners can be found here.

Excerpt: “It’s no secret that if you run a music blog of any note, promotion companies will offer to supply you with the latest news, free CDs, tickets to shows, MP3 streams, contests and other wares. Who doesn’t like free stuff? If you happen to already like the band, even better. You just want to help your favorite bands get heard. Everyone wins. So what’s the problem?”

Well, until now nobody offered me anything for publishind reviews on the musicblog.ro (maybe it is too low-profile till now). Still, I greatly appreciate the fact that the guys from Tapinarii allowed me to put their song for download. But I did it because I like their music, not because they asked me too (I wrote the post before asking them…)

What is your opinion on the issues described by the above-mentioned article? Should bloggers be objective or subjective? Should they accept receiving materials to publish or to review ?

Some bands play for one season….others play for some years – 3, 5 or even 10. But there are others who after 20 years of activity are still capable of releasing excellent albums and filling up a whole stadium when touring.

Sepultura is one of them, as after 22 years of playing they just released a new (great) album. Dante XXI – Hell. Heaven. Purgatory. is the album’s name and, as the name says, it is inspired by the famous opera of Dante Aligheri.

The first thing I noticed when first hearing it is the excellent voice of Derek Green, the vocalist that some years ago replaced Max Cavalera. I cannot say I like him more than Max, as Max had a certain something that still makes me consider him one of the best vocals ever, but Derek certainly improved significantly and is now fully integrated in the band. He adds a hardcore feeling to the general sound now and his occasional screams throughout the tracks are excelently integrated in the whole. The entire sound is much more mature now and you can feel them playing as a whole group, not as distinct individuals.

The album definetely adds more thrash to the sound Sepultura had on its previous albums and somehow it reminds me of their first albums. Even though, without Max, it is not the same (yeah, I’m a sucker for him…)

The track I liked most – and is here for sharing – is “Convicted in life“. Starting with the famous “Abandon all hope he who enter here” verse, it is one of the fastest tracks on the album.

Overall, I can definetely say I like Dante XXI most out of the ones Sepultura released recently (post-Max era). Definetely worth a try, worth buying and worth listening for a long time. Congrats !!!

In the last days I noticed a lot of spam comments on posts around musicblog.ro. Maybe you didn’t notice them, as they are usually comments to old posts, but I saw them in the admin tool.

Now, Tina suggested I should install a image verification system for all comments in order to prevent spam but, as I hate this method because it fights spam by adding an extra field / effort for the regular users, I decided not to do this yet.

Meanwhile, I installed a new “intelligent” plugin that should detect spam based on certain patterns (it was quite easy to see a pattern in all the spam comments that appeared until now), so I hope this works and I won’t have to add a plugin which will harden your posting of comments.

From my point of view, Music Blog is determined to remain an open communication tool that all of you can use and freely express your wildest opinions :)

Please feel free to suggest other spam-fighting methods as well.

I happen to have a special attraction to band / artists who, besides playing vocals, also have an important role the instrumental side of the sound they produce. Likewise, Kate Tunstall can be appreciated both for her nice voice and the guitar parts she plays in her songs.

Kate is an Irish songwriter who made her first public recognaisance when performing what later became the famous “Black Horse and The Cherry Tree” song. Still, if you have the ambition not to let yourself distracted by only one or two singles of a certain artist, you will discover a rich a consistent sound throughout Kate’s albums, like “Eye to the Telescope“, her debut album.

Here you can listen to the “Black Horse and The Cherry Tree” track, but please be advised that is strongly suggested that you buy the songs from the shops !!

It seems lately I am in the mood for some jazz…and searching for some new artists in this field I discovered Hugh Masekela.

He is a well-known African Jazz musician, released some 30 albums so far and played the trumpet along with famous other jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong. His music has a powerful African taste, along with some Latin influences as well. A rich and quite powerful jazz sound, with a strong voice and remarkable trumpets.

If you are a jazz fan, you should definetely give it a try. For example, you can try the Send Me (RAM format) track out of his new album to make an impression. Also, if you are interested, just ask and I can provide you more tracks to listen to.