07.11.09
Travel Greetings
I spent the last three weeks traveling around Europe, and now I’m back home safe and sound. Sorry for the unannounced pause in blogging, I was going to schedule some stuff to be published, but ran out of time before I left. I was traveling happily without any devices to get online, so my exposure to the internet has been limited to short stops at internet cafes or using friends’ computers. It is very relaxing to take time off of the things you usually do, and now I’m glad to be back with a lot to write about!
I spent the first week in Southern France, doing other things than music. The weather was great, and it was an interesting experience to travel alone in small towns in a country whose language you don’t speak beyond a few simple expressions. I thought I would have been lonelier than I was, but I managed to find nice people who spoke English, and at other times I just enjoyed spending time by myself. Afterwards it was great to meet friends in Paris.
The rest of the trip was like I usually travel, seeing lots of live music along the way. The first night in Paris, there happened to be a “secret show” by Jason Mraz. The following night was the much anticipated Dave Matthews Band show at Paris Olympia. After some more days in Paris I took a train to Cologne, where I saw Amos Lee, and a smaller show by two singer-songwriters. From Cologne we also drove to Amsterdam to see DMB at Heineken Music Hall.
I’m off for the weekend now, but next week I’m back with reviews of the shows mentioned above, so stay tuned!
06.08.09
Song of the Week #24: Dave Matthews Band – Why I Am
I just spent a refreshing week in the middle of nature away from electricity and all that. While I was there, Dave Matthews Band’s new album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King was released. My pre-ordered package is still on its way from the States, but I couldn’t help but to burn the songs on a CD for listening while driving.
Among many great songs on the new album, Why I Am is one of my favorites. This performance is from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last Wednesday. More words about the wonderful new album later!
Still here dancing with the GrooGrux King
We’ll be drinking big whiskey while we dance and sing
06.01.09
Song of the Week #23: KT Tunstall – Heal Over
This week I’m unable to be online for blogging, but here’s a nice version of a cool song by Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall.
05.25.09
Song of the Week #22: Xavier Rudd – Come Let Go
Australian singer-songwriter Xavier Rudd is an interesting artist who plays a variety of instruments, including didgeridoo. This is a live performance of a catchy song called Come Let Go from Bonnaroo 2007. If you want to hear cool didgeridoo parts, here’s something.
05.19.09
Zee Avi’s Debut Album Released
Zee Avi’s eponymous debut album was released today by Brushfire Records! It can be listened to in various places, like on her MySpace page or Spinner, and I also found it on Spotify. The warm sounds of the album make it a great one for the summer. If you like it, why not buy it, for example from Amazon.com or iTunes.
This is the Malaysian singer-songwriter performing four songs from the album at Brushfire Records’ solar powered studio, accompanied by Mitch Townsend and James Fletcher. The songs are from first to last, Honey Bee, Bitter Heart, Kantoi, and Monte, which is my favorite one off the album after some listening.
05.18.09
Song of the Week #21: Sean Murphy – Same Damn Thing
Sean Murphy is an aspiring young singer-songwriter from Hawaii. His influences include some of my favorite artists, like Dave Matthews and John Mayer, so it’s no wonder I like his music. His first single, Us, was released in early 2009. This beautiful song is called Same Damn Thing, and I like it even better.
Sean is currently working on his debut album with plans to tour the world once it’s released. Check out his MySpace page for more of his music, and you can also follow him on twitter.
Also, isn’t it funny how these Hawaiian singer-songwriters have such common names as Jack Johnson or Sean Murphy? Well, I’m just glad that they can make their careers under their own names.
05.13.09
Beer on the Shelf
A few summers ago a warm sunny day inspired me to take the speakers of my stereo out to the balcony. After opening a beer I wondered which O.A.R. song it was that said “I put my beer on the shelf.” I couldn’t remember, but I wanted to hear it. Google found nothing. But I was still pretty sure there was such a song, and finally I found it. Just that it said “fear on the shelf,” not beer. But the song still made my day.
Misheard lyrics are funny. And it’s good that I find them funny because I’m so good at mishearing lyrics. I hear what I want to hear. There are many sites listing these, like KissThisGuy.com, appropriately named after the Jimi Hendrix song.
But this is the song, it’s called King of the Thing. After hearing the song, I thought how stupid of me to think the line could be “beer on the shelf,” because the very previous line is “I put my pint down on the table.” Wrong again!
05.11.09
Song of the Week #20: Neil Young – Don’t Let It Bring You Down
An older song for a change. Neil Young is one of those artists who have written a million songs over a long career. Everybody knows some of them, but how many of the young (pun not intended, this time) music fans have an extensive knowledge of his songs, even the essential ones? So in the hopes of presenting something new for some of you, here’s Don’t Let It Bring You Down, a song from his 1970 album After the Gold Rush.
This is a live performance from 1971.
05.08.09
Ultimate Guitar Interviews Jason Mraz
Jason Mraz performing (Photo by Shanna Murady)
Ultimate Guitar is the site I first go to when I want to play some song on guitar. They have a large collection of tablature and chords, and it really helps that people can rate the different versions to see which version to look at first. They just posted an interview of Jason Mraz, which was an interesting read. Jason talks about his songwriting, equipment and future goals, among other things.
It’s good to hear he wants to develop himself as a musician and not just be comfortable being a famous musician.
05.07.09
Why Can’t We Just Rewind?
Lots of writings on blogs are pretty much timeless, but they are only read at the time of writing by the people who follow the blog, and after that only by those who happen to find them through search engines. Blogs have archives, but who reads them? I know I sometimes do when I find a new blog, but I think I’m in a minority here.
Blogs that are updated as hobbies tend to go from busier periods to slower. First there’s the inspiration to write, then it wears off with time. Then it’s found again some time later, if not forgotten. It’s surprisingly hard to keep updating a blog frequently over time. This blog has been pretty quiet lately as I’ve been busy with other projects. I just took a look at what I have written to inspire myself to get going again. Here’s of a short summary of the stuff that I like myself the most.
Of of the first things I did was introducing concert tapings from the Live Music Archive on weekly bases. And I think I started with the coolest show that I know from there, and at a time when only few people knew about the blog. So here it is again, Jason Mraz’ house concert in Ootmarsum, Netherlands from summer 2007. I managed to write about ten shows before it got too overwhelming to do it every week. Some that I’ve been listening to a lot myself have been the Matt Nathanson show and O.A.R. at Madison Square Garden. I plan to do a couple more sometime soon.
Most of the bands I’ve been covering are very well known. However, it makes more sense t0 my regular readers to write about less popular ones, so that there’s actually something new for them here. But it’s also harder to do because you usually don’t know so much about them and there’s less material on the Internet to use. So far I have reviewed Fiction 20 Down’s sophomore album Welcome to the grassroots and wrote about a Finnish guitarist called Petteri Sariola. But there’s a lot more of the more unknown to come during the summer.
I was excited to find Dave Matthews Band coming to Europe this summer and wrote about it. The coolest thing this year has been traveling in France and seeing Jason Mraz twice. And maybe the best thing I’ve written here is about a weekend when I got to see a great deal of great music.
Funny, I think people usually make posts like this at the end of the year to sum up the year, but I wanted to do it right now to get back into blogging for real again. This is something I haven’t talked about yet, Paolo Nutini performing his song Rewind.
