These last days we (the band) got to a very interesting point…Costin, the lead singer told us that he would want to quit making music (not just the band). WTF?! Why? What happened? After all your life so far singing, making music, all of a sudden you decide to just stop. It doesn’t work like that, man!

So, I (given the wisdom I am gifted with, of course) tried to grasp WTF is actually going on. One of my beliefs is that most of the issues in life when it comes to people is that their (unshared) expectations don’t meet. So, could it be that?

We had a discussion, me and Costin (after all we are like 10 m away all day long, I have the office right on the flour above him and we have a long history behind us), to see what’s going on. Indeed, he felt like we are not heading anywhere, the band doesn’t have a clear direction, this kind of things. I should have seen it…

Given that, I tried to confront the rest of the guys, so everybody speak his mind about what each one expects from the band, where we see the band, what we should do, where we should go from here, why everybody is in the band at this point, this kind of things, to try to come to a common conclusion everybody should agree with.

The fact is that now, that I have spoken to them, it’s me the one that is a bit confused…

I mean:

• 2 (out of 5) go for the big scene(they say no reserve), same style, rock, pop-rock, recordings, video, etc
• 1 (myself) go for the big scene also, same things as above, but with the reserve that if it would happen (which usually doesn’t without a big and maintained effort from the band(!!!)) none of us would probably be able to live up to it (given the fact that it would imply a total change of lifestyle). I love to play, study, learn what I don’t know and I realize the music is so damn huge that I know so little of it and I discover each and every day new grounds that I love to explore. That’s my reason for playing…
• 1 sees it a s a hobby, which is not a bad thing as long as you treat it with responsibility. I mean from my point of view, seeing it as a hobby is at least as important as a business because you invest the best you can in yourself, so you should study because you love it, you should buy gears because you love it, you should spend time playing because you love it and not think about the return on your investment.
• 1 needs a change. He asks for playing at the weddings, a totally different kind of music that none of the others enjoy, no overdrive, no rock, something that would put us out of the direction we once had (the one where we were heading for the big scene) and I don’t agree with that. And the others think the same. He goes for the money, for an extra job playing at weddings, music that none of us like, know or want to learn. It’s just a different musical universe that none of us like to explore.

Now it is a difficult situation since we are long time friends, play together since 12-13 years and with some of the guys even longer, but the situation put us in a position where we don’t know where to go to from here, since it seems we don’t have a common goal anymore and we clearly need to find that goal if we want to continue.

At this point I am trying to define some common goal from all I could get from them, to define some guiding lines that i would like to present to the guys, to try to define our way to get there, in order to find the our way again.

And most of all, we would need to find our pleasure of playing music for the sake of it, because this is the reason we all started this, isn’t it?

Did you experienced such a situation? How did you handle it?

Please share!

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This Sunday we had a show in Cuba, the same club here in Pitesti where we used to play a couple of months(?) ago. We really enjoyed the show, since it was our night, nobody else played, we had the liberty to play whatever we wanted, electric, drums and everything and I could say we really rocked the night. Ok, I am free to say it, argue with me on that!

So, this post is not about that night, but about a discussion that started during that night about a famous band in Romania, named Cargo, a band that we (almost) all love and appreciate. That band is one of those bands that started like 20 years ago, built a fan base thanks to a great vocal and great songs, a band that actually made a mark on my own path.

In 2003, a rumor started to spread, that the lead singer of Cargo is going to leave the band and…emigrate to Australia to work there.

Stop! WTF?!!

I remember I was really pissed off at that time and I could not understand what could possibly be the reason that could drive a great artist, well known in his country, to leave showbiz for another country where he could only work for a living…

And so he left, the band promoted the second guitar player and backup singer as the lead singer and actually he did a far better job than expected, being able to fill in for a great voice and sing the same songs, in his own way (kind of) and release new songs breaking new grounds.

So 2 days ago we were wondering what happened to Kempes (the lead singer that left for Australia). Mihai, my band mate sent us a link this morning that kind of explained what happened in the last 7 years with Kempes in Australia.

Seems that the money he made from music were not even close to enough to make a living here, he was waiting for a child to be born so he took the decision to leave Romania for Australia where he took a job as a house painter, job that he did for the last 7 years.

I could not miss the fact that he lives in Brisbane, owns 2 houses now there, 3 cars and one Harley that he has no time to ride. He stopped singing, except while driving. He provides whatever needed for his family and 2 (now) children…

He came back to Romania once, he was at a show of his old band but was not part of it.

I can’t tell you what a bitter taste I have in my mouth now while writing this. I am in my office  next to our rehearsal room, listening Cargo…

This should have not happened this way, a great voice must be allowed to sing, an artist must be allowed to grow, not be forced to work for a living…

I added here a few songs, listen them. They are in Romanian. You should do it, beyond the language barrier and appreciate a great hard and heavy voice.

End of story.

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OK, not THAT Cuba, but a local club here that was recently open.

Last night we were invited by the house band to play there as guests. I can tell you we had a great time, i really felt good and the fact that there was another band there that was used to the environment lightened up the atmosphere quite fast.

I can tell you that quite fast everything turned into a gear discussion, look, I have this new guitar, I use this new amp.. Ok! My Variax guitar was a bit different and it was for a short while the subject of discussion.

We played, as expected, mostly covers since we were in a club, people there enjoyed every song, we had a great time, people actually sang along and this is always nice.

Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures from the show, I didn’t bring my camera and also none of my band mates did so you just need to trust me on this, we’ve been there. We’ve been in Cuba!

PS: For me the evening ended a bit earlier since I got a call from my wife who didn’t join us yesterday evening. 2 days ago a neighbor next door died. She phoned to ask me to come home because she is really afraid to stay alone…

Women…

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I was telling you a couple of days ago about the fact that we (the band) intend to record a few songs to put them together on an album. I have already been to a recording studio in Bucharest to speak to the guy there, who’s the keyboard player of a quite popular band here in Romania, Spin where a buddy of mine plays the guitar. He actually pointed us to this studio, they also record there. Of course, when it is your studio it would be strange to go to the neighbor…

Me and the guys spoke about recording this album and finding a record company to produce it/publish it and here our ideas went apart…Me and the other guitar player wanted to contact a producer to put his/her mark on the record since a bit more experience never hurts while the lead singer doesn’t want to hear about it. And I really know why: we had 4 such experiences with producers over the years and everybody wanted a different thing, in the end doing nothing but making us lose our direction and this is bad… You actually need a direction, one of your own and stick to it.

So we got to the idea to build a website (doh!) and publish what we record there, on YouTube and other similar sites and forget everything about recording companies. Original, huh? I guess nobody did it before, right?!!

I guess making yourself known is what really matters after all, if you sign with a record label that does nothing but keep you in a closet, doesn’t help you too much, right? Better to make yourself known to the public using other media channels such as the internet. And if you manage to come up with a few good songs you could be spotted and signed by somebody.

The fact is that we really want to do this since at a moment we took kind of a break, then re-united with new forces, new gear and started to make music again.

We decided to cover also a few good songs that we like and this is not something that we used to do, I can tell you in the past we only covered 1 or 2 songs, it was all about our songs.

When we reunited we decided to cover a bunch of songs to glue together again and I can’t say it hurt. By the way, Costin, the lead singer just sent me an SMS, he is an club where a buddy plays and he says the atmosphere is great and tries to arrange a show for next week. Now, in a club you definitively need covers…

Also, since we decided to record something, I came up with 2 new songs that are not bad at all, seems I didn’t lose it completely

So, I just wanted to post that here so you know I didn’t completely vanished…

I just have things to do but I need to get in shape soon!

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Yesterday evening we were part of a cultural event: my buddy and band mate Costin released his 3rd poetry book!

It’s a very interesting side of culture, I am a musician and I am also a keen amateur photographer but poetry is something a bit outside my regular interest area so being part of such an event is always great since it opens new worlds to me and makes me aware there’s something more around us! Plus that I know the artist, I took the pictures and I designed the poster and the invitations. So I was also involved in this, in a way.

I don’t know much about poetry to I won’t dare say anything about the book itself, there were 2 critics there that did their jobs when presenting the book.

And of course, because the poet is also a musician we also had good guitar music to create the mood. The guitar player in the pictures below is an old friend, a very interesting and complex guitar player, I always liked to joke asking him if he still uses all of the available chords in every single song he composes

He always answers me he does…

By the way, the guitar here brings back some nice memories since he lent it to me when recording one of our songs that is very dear to us.  He promised to give it to me again when recording since the guitar has a lovely, clear sound. The guitar is a Cort, I would recommend it to anyone.

That’s about it, guys! I go to bed now since it is late and I think I got a cold since my back muscles hurt when I move and my eyes too…

See you tomorrow!

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Seems I haven’t updated my blog since a good while, haven’t I? Well, I feel I owe you, my readers a few words about it.

Here it goes:

Last week the company I used to work for just died. Period. The administrators decided that given the difficult economic period we are all facing, the best thing to do is close the company or at least freeze it for the time being. This being said, here’s the unemployment notification and off you go!

Well, honestly I have been expecting this since a while since the new management didn’t show many signs they can put the company where it should have been. I mean, beside Everything is going to be OK and we have trust in the team and we are going to bring contracts, not much happened.

Just for the record, we used to be a team of .NET developers that had a quite high technical specialization, developing over the years programs that were quite complex. Personally I have worked in this company since 2002 and for 6 years I have been part of a research project that was very interesting and complex.

Now, everything is down and dust sets over the whole thing.

As I was saying, I can’t say I was too upset since I was expecting this since a while. I don’t know, you just see it and feel it coming.

The period is not good also, we are right before winter holidays, it is a difficult time to find work, no matter you are looking for a job or for a contract on your own. Which, by the way, it is what I have decided to do.

I have decided to not look for work anymore, the whole thing pissed me off, the company kind of took every bit of energy I had, the whole process of closing the company was a mess and a pitiful thing to do. Not because of the situation itself but for the people involved in the process. Whatever.

So, I have decided to work for myself, to find jobs and to live the dream, my friends!! I have decided to go on my own way, as an entrepreneur and do my own things.

I will keep you posted on this one, I don’t wanna talk much about it for the moment.

From another point of view, my baby girl who just turned 7 months old yesterday suffered a pneumonia (I still wonder why that happened) and I had to put her in the hospital, Ani, my wife stayed with her there and myself too for 2 full days, then I started to also leave for short periods since I had things to do, but generally speaking, 5 days were just lost from all points of view, trying to put our wonderful baby girl on her feet. Hypotetically speaking since she doesn’t yet stand.

So, those being said, not much reasons to blog, is it? But I plan to come back to bloging since I have another reason to do it: we plan to record a few good songs and put them together as an album. There.

We have already spoken to the studio, I will speak again with the guys there on Monday, we are trying to go in the studio somewhere in December to start recording. Most of the songs will be old songs that we will try to record in a trully professional way but we also have some new material.

I will keepp you posted on this one also.

Meanwhile whish me luck and I will keep you posted.

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Today, Costin told me about a video of our band on YouTube, a video that Mihai put up from a concert and the recorded song, and uploaded on YouTube.

I didn’t know about it, but it’s nice to see it.

So, even if you have heard the song before, see it on YouTube again, this time with video, not only audio: the song is Nu-mi pasa (I don’t care). At the moment we played this, Mihai was not with us, he was video recording this. See the whole band here.

So, enjoy listening and comment!

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Well, my dear friends, let me tell you that on 26th April, 5 days ago a new “artist-to be” was born into this world: my little daughter, Alesia Maria.

My wife gave birth to a beautiful little baby girl that is going to be a great artist and a great person when she’ll grow up. Says me.

I only posted about it today since this period was really crazy for me, my wife was in the hospital in Bucharest for a few days and I was driving between cities, leaving the very first thing in the morning and coming home late at night, only having the time and mood to take a shower and fall asleep…

But now, when everything settled down a bit, I can tell you I have a wonderful baby girl, named, as I was already told you, Alesia Maria Oprescu, very cute and most of all…very quiet! I can actually sleep, you know!!

I can tell you I am very proud of my little baby girl, she only cries once in a while, she usually stays and looks at me, she has a lot of hair, which is more than I can say about me and she is also a great music critic, you know, she actually falls asleep while I sing to her. I must be really good at this…

So, here she is, Alesia Maria Oprescu, born on 26th April 2009, great artist-to be, daughter of a very proud father!

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I will start by describing an old tradition in Romania that you, if not familiar with it, you may find it less pleasant and why not, a bit barbarian.OK, I’ll take my chance. So…

Each year, on one of the days around Christmas, people in country side, kill/cut/sacrifice a pig that is grown usually in their own backyard farm. This is something that goes back a very long time, I guess, and I am not able to tell you the origin of this tradition. Romania is a Christian country. Well, this tradition I bet it’s not Christian, but pre-Christian. The fact is that it blended so well with Christmas that it became part of it, without anybody asking about the origin anymore.

Coming back to the point, this usually goes like this: the family gets together in the country side, kill/cut/sacrifice the pig, then prepare it on top of a fire, then slice it and prepare it for storage for the months to come. Because it happens on Christmas, usually a cold period, with snow, local Romanian drinks are also part of a tradition (think Whiskey or Vodka as more famous alternatives). Actually, if you want, you can look at this as a big barbecue, because actually a barbecue is always part of the process.

I was part of this tradition a week ago, at my parents in law. OK, I came in a bit later, to skip the part where they actually kill the pig, because I don’t like it…

OK, why am I telling you this? You may ask yourself where’s the relationship with playing the guitar?

Well, two days ago, Costin, the lead singer in my band invited us to …play at such an event. What?! Yeah, it’ll be fun, he says, you’ll see! Some friends of my brother invited us, yadda, yadda, yadda…

Aaaah…yeah, I guess…we’ll see…

OK, the fact is that we all spoke about it, but only 3 of us were available for that day, the other 2 were away for the holidays. So I packed up the guitar, took my gig bag thinking this might be like the strangest place I’ve ever played…

The fact is that I didn’t know where this will take place, Costin only told me the general coordinates, so I had a bit of trouble finding the location. I called the guy: do you have the cars outside? Will I see your car at the gates? Well, he says, there’s actually no gate, how to put it, it’s a large property near a lake, a small hotel…

OK, after a bit of search, there I was. A nice hotel and restaurant near a private lake…And I was expecting a backyard of some guy in the country side…

I entered the restaurant where everything took place and I was a bit overwhelmed at first. There were about 50-60 people there, a stage, drums, amplifiers, some guys already playing on stage, and a few familiar faces.

OK, but where’s the pig? I was expecting something different, you know…The fact is that this friend wanted to throw a party for his friends, so bought a pig, already sacrificed by the owner, brought it to the restaurant(that his uncle owns), then gave it to the chef to prepare it for everybody. Drinks and the meals were on the house. OK then, a real party!

I can say that we came in for 2 hours and we stayed there for about 6 hours, canceling other things we had planned for that evening, because we’ve felt very well there. The fact is that after all, from the band, only me and Costin, the lead singer, managed to get there, but hey, after all, we’ve been to a few parties together and can play a few good songs with only a guitar and voice.

As I was saying, there were a few guys there that could play a bit, a drummer that said he didn’t play drums in the last 12 years and that the one that taught him to play drums is our current drummer. What do you know?! My wife told me this, I didn’t know about it, she talked to the guy for a while, interesting story, too bad Coco, our drummer was not there to meet him. My wife told me he was explaining to her how he and his band of 12 years ago were opening for Kapela back then. Well, imagine when my wife told him that me and Costin used to play in Kapela…

The fact is I can say I was impressed how things went along when we’ve got together on that small stage, we started to play songs after only one minute of preparation for each of them, I knew the song and I was telling them the chords as we played. But in the end, everything went well. At one moment we also played a few “acoustic” songs, just me and Costin, the way we used to play at parties.

My Variax guitar proved to be the star of the evening, I can only say it was great and that if I would have a rack of guitars to chose from, for a cover songs party, between a Gibson Les Paul, a Strat and a Tele, I would pick a Variax anytime since I had there everything I wanted, just a knob away!

We played blues on my “Tele”, solos on my “Gibson” and balads on my “acoustic guitar”, and I can say it rocked the house!

I think that you couldn’t spend Christmas better than this, partying with friends playing the guitar!

Christmas rock parties rock, don’t you think?!

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Since I have purchased that TonePort recording interface I can tell you I have no time anymore. No time to do anything…but record!! I learn with every day and every second and I love it! I record various pieces, not necessarily complete tracks, but I feel every moment spent this way like a big step forward. You know, I feel like a sponge in a bucket of water, first time after a few good years when I have this feeling.

You know, every new thing I learn on guitar, helps me, I am eager to learn new things, but guitar playing is not a secret anymore, it is something that I do since a while and I don’t have that feeling anymore, but with this home recording, I really feel every second, every note…

While in studio, you learn things just watching the engineer there and I consider I have learned a few things while recording various songs during these past years but really nothing compares to these days in front of my home computer, spending quality time with my blue guitar…

No, really, before making fun, let me tell you that I have just finished a raw version of a cover song that we play since a few years and I was more than happy about the result so far. Of course, there is a raw version and I have so much to add to it, like proper drums(at this moment it only has a “control” track), I need to call my colleagues to record their takes (I recorded everything myself so far but hey, I am not a one man band, you know?)

Spending time recording opened my eyes regarding the guitar possibilities. For the moment, so far I had the impression that the Fender Stratocaster emulation on my Variax guitar doesn’t have personality. Well, I was so wrong, for this song I can tell you that I couldn’t find a better match than the Strat, of course, through a particular setup.

At this moment I can not upload the song here anything since I speak about a cover, a song from a professional touring band here so until I am sure about the copyrights I won’t risk, but I will contact the band since my drummer of 8-9 years ago is with them at the moment, as a keyboard player. If I can only find his phone number…

Here’s the band, not the song, cause I only have one unplugged version of the original song, it hasn’t been released on anything else, as far as I know. By the way the guy I speak about is the keyboard player in the first video.

Enjoy!

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