11.29.08
The Maker by Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds
One of the most beautiful songs to me is Daniel Lanois’ The Maker, appearing on his album Acadie, released in 1989. Although Dave Matthews has been covering the song since early ’90s, I wasn’t very familiar with it when I saw it live at a Dave and Tim show in Berlin, spring 2007. Since then it has become one of my favorites performed by the two.
I feel the song is at its best played acoustic, and I just love Dave’s emotional performance. The following video is from 2003. Nowadays Tim often plays a solo after the third verse and the end is different. A great version of the song is found on Dave and Tim’s release Live at Radio City Music Hall (2007). Especially the DVD is worth checking out if you already haven’t.
11.25.08
From the Archive #2: Jack Johnson @ Kokua Festival
Last week I started covering shows from the Live Music Archive with a house concert by Jason Mraz. This week we go to the Kokua Festival in Hawaii, where Jack Johnson played a two night stand last April. It was a highly popular event, some people stayed listening to the show behind the gates as they couldn’t get tickets.
Last week’s taping was directly from the soundboard, this week it’s by a taper with a microphone. The sound quality isn’t as perfect and sometimes there’s chatter, but on the plus side you hear the audience much better, which is essential to a Jack show, where the audience likes to sing along to almost everything.
In addition to FLAC format, this time the recordings from both nights are available as MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, so you can listen to them in the onsite player or easily with your favorite media player. Just click on one of the links in the “Whole item” section to get all the songs.
Night One – April 19, 2008 at Waikiki Shell
The opener is Hope, a catchy song from his latest album Sleep Through the Static. It’s followed by one of the most popular Jack Johnson songs of all times, Flake. They are actually in the same file on the recording. Furthermore, the song names in the description are often incorrect, but don’t let it bother you.
Many popular songs find their way into the set. For Go On – one of my favorites from the latest album – Jack is joined on the stage by his brother Trent Johnson. Many other friends sit in for a song or more; there’s Paula Fuga, Kawika Kahiapo, Matt Costa, Mitch Townshend and Mason Jennings.
The encore opener is Plastic Jesus, a song from the movie Cool Hand Luke. It is followed by a song called Home. Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds also played their sets on both nights at the festival, and they sit in for the last two songs. First is the Jimmy Buffet cover Pirate Looks at 40, then a fun song to raise environmental awareness, The 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle).
Night Two – April 20, 2008 at Waikiki Shell
The second night is kicked off with What You Thought You Need, another nice tune from the latest album. There are lots of same songs and some of the same guests as the night before. The sound quality of the recording is pleasantly a little better than that of the first night.
Staple It Together is interleaved with Led Zeppelin’s famous Whole Lotta Love. One of my favorites is the Mason Jennings song Livin’ in the Moment in the encore.
Dave and Tim join the “super mellow folk singer” on the last two songs, which are the same as the night before. Speaking between the songs is usually placed at the end of tracks on live recordings, so you can hear the introductions after the previous song, Better Together. They play such a nice version of Pirate Looks at 40. You can hear that Dave and Tim got to practice the songs the night before.
All in all, Jack and the band played good warm-hearted sets on both nights. There were songs from all his albums and some by the guest artists. Take a look at some of the pictures on the Kokua Festival site to get in the mood for the show.
The show from the second night was webcast on the Internet, but it doesn’t appear to be available anymore. However, many videos can be found on YouTube at the moment.
11.21.08
“This Old Love” by Lior
One of my newfound favorites is the Israeli born, Australian singer-songwriter Lior. I only have his live album Doorways of My Mind, released in 2006. Besides that, he has released two independent studio albums. I think he’s pretty much unheard of outside Australia. Hopefully that will change, given the talent he has. Listening to Doorways of My Mind, it becomes quite obvious that he had devoted fans in Australia already at that time.
What I most like about Lior’s music is his singing. Some of his songs can be listened to on his website. Below is a video of his song This Old Love, which is one of my favorites. If you’d like to hear a more well-known song, there’s a video of Lior and Serena Ryder performing Neil Young’s Heart of Gold.
11.20.08
Funnyman by KT Tunstall
Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall performs her song Funnyman with two backing singers on the video below. I’ve been listening to her pretty much lately – she has many other good songs as well. I really like her voice and she’s such a natural strummer.
11.18.08
From the Archive #1: Jason Mraz @ Ootmarsum
The Live Music Archive is a great place to check out new music. Lots of music can be found in mp3 or ogg formats and played in the embedded onsite player. Some of the artists only allow distribution in lossless formats, which makes the music a little harder to access, but just a little once you know the drill. The recordings vary much in quality, but many good ones can be found.
I’m starting a weekly series of presenting shows from the Live Music Archive. So I plan to post one every week, let’s see how long I can keep it up. The first one is a very special one:
Jason Mraz Live at Backyard Dagmar on 2007-07-15
Now world famous Jason Mraz was on a backpack trip around Europe in summer 2007, mostly playing shows for small audiences. This one took place at a backyard in countryside Netherlands. It’s a soundboard recording, so the sound quality is very good. The only downside is that audience is barely audible. The audio files are in FLAC format, here’s instructions how to listen to them.
This recording has such an unusual warm feel to it – a big artist playing for a group of dedicated fans in a faraway place on a sunny summer day. Before the show starts, Jason is asking the audience to request songs they’d like to hear. He’s willing to try out songs he hadn’t played in ages, like Did I Fool Ya.
Jason is really fantastic on this show and the setlist turns out to be very good. It has his old hits The Remedy, You And I Both and Curbside Prophet. Included are fan favorites Halfway Home and 0% Interest, which is always so nice to hear because of the different endings. Beautiful songs I‘m Yours and Live High are there from his latest album, which hadn’t come out yet when the show was played.
Interaction with audience is amazing and the recording gives me lots of good laughs. The most brilliant part of the show is definitely Jason first collecting words and phrases from the audience
and then coming up with a song out of them (The Ootmarsum Song)
There are also many other videos on YouTube from the concert.
11.15.08
A new start
I started this blogging project a week ago on blogspot, but it didn’t take me long to realize I feel more at home here. Since I only wrote two entries there, I feel no need to import them here. I’ll keep the other blog still around, should I change my mind again. If you’d like to link to my blog, please point your links here.
Last time I wrote about snooker. Well, Matthew Stevens made it all the way to the final at Bahrain Championship! It is indeed great to see him back. Just that I won’t be around TV to see the final tonight. But there’s lots of more tournaments still ahead this season, like all the big ones.
